I’m sure that as soon as she told anyone that she was from San Diego, she was immediately overwhelmed with Northern Californians telling her how horrible SoCal is, and how they would never consider living someplace so boring and evil.
As an LA/OC guy who was at Berkeley, I constantly had to hear about how bad the traffic was in LA (really? seemed worse in the Bay Area to me), how LA stole all of its water from Northern California to water its lawns and fill its swimming pools (really? the Owens Valley thing is indeed a travesty, but at least we didn’t dam up a canyon in Yosemite for our water, and hey, my city actually used the local aquifer), how culturally superior SF is (really? where’s the better art scene? which city has better museums?) .
Maybe some of this stuck, or maybe this is about her finding a place that she can call her own for the first time in her life. I think “boring” is in the eye of the beholder, but I would argue that the Bay Area is generally a lot more interesting than Southern California, and San Diego in particular. I love them both, for different reasons. Rather than having hurt feelings, I would be glad that my daughter has fallen in love with a place that is, as you pointed out, a short jaunt away.
