COLGR49--specificity of place

[Paul Mackin]

Probably "the Peninsula" has undergone more change than most areas of America
since I resided there (on  "the Farm") in the early 50s. For one thing the
morning traffic back then (and still in Oedipa's time) was mostly North and the
evening traffic  South whereas the reverse is true today because of Silicon
Valley (I am constantly hearing from my sister who lives in Menlo Park).  I
don't even remember Hewlit Packard having started up yet though Varian was
going strong.  Sunnyvale was not even a place. The persnickity people I hung
out with were terribly careful about saying things in the correct San Francisco
and Peninsula way even though many were from places far away.  This is probably
not so true now and I don't doubt Doug on this.  It a whole different place. A
really funny thing is that back then people were proud to read the (SF)
Chronicle--something few would admit to doing now.  Now it's the San Jose
Mercury something Of course the area between San Jose and San Francisco was
never spoken of as "the San Francisco Peninsula" its full moniker (P got this
right)  but simply as "the Peninsula" In fact the word "San Francisco" was
under no circumstances ever uttered. It was simply "the City" something P would
have learned his first day in town. One more interesting change, the OTHER
university to the east was more often than not referred to as Cal rather than
as Berkeley as we say now. Maybe it's still Cal for sports.  Ah, fond(ue)
memories.

                                            P.

Doug Millison wrote:

> You're off the mark.  ;-)
>
> People who live on the Peninsula (between San Francisco and San Jose) use
> all kinds of expressions to indicate where they're going when they go home.
>
> An important point may be
> that it's suburban, its not San Francisco and it's not arty,academic,
> political Berkeley in the East Bay; Stanford University, on the Peninsula,
> is "The
> Farm."
>
> Among the Peninsula
> suburbs are some of the most affluent in the U.S. -- Hillsborough and
> Atherton. Palo Alto and Menlo Park (near Stanford) were also quite tony in
> the 60s and remain so, where simple 3 and 4 bedroom homes sell for $1
> million and up depending on the neighborhood.
>
> Oedipa's town in COL49 has always reminded me of Palo Alto.
>
> Silicon Valley didn't exist in the mid-60s, at least not beyond its germinal
> beginnings at Stanford, and the Ames Air Force Base (now NASA) in nearby
> Mountain View, and Hewlett-Packard plus maybe another electronics instrument
> maker or two (Varian was another early one).  When I moved to the SF Bay
> Area in the very early 70s, San Jose was still the prune capital, so-called
> for the
>  miles and miles of orchards that extended to the north and south of that
> city -- land that has over the years been turned into bland industrial parks
> that house Silicon Valley, which really began to develop in the mid-70s.
> Now, of course, "Silicon Valley" stretches all the way around the southern
> curve of the SF Bay into what is more properly called the East Bay, up
> through Milpitas (which also used to be fruit orchards, as late as the
> '80s).
>
>
>  Paul Mackin
> Some current resident of the Bay Area may now tell me I completely off the
> mark.