"The 101"

[Jim Parish]

Geoffrey Nunberg wrote:

> To San Franciscans, there was always something ludicrous about the way
> the characters on the cop show "Nash Bridges," which was set here,
> talked about "the 101" and "the 280," a gaffe equivalent to referring
> to the city as Frisco. What would you call the geographical equivalent
> of an anachronism -- an atopism?

For that matter, the usage did not spread south to San Diego until
relatively recently. In my youth there - from the late '60s to the mid-'70s
- we referred to "8" and "5", not "the 8" or "the 5". A few years ago,
when I first heard this described as a Southern California usage, I
called my brother and father, who still live there; they reported having
heard it on the radio, but not in person. The last time I visited, though,
last December, it had become entrenched. (The radio source, I believe,
was KNX, which is Los Angeles-based but which has an unusually
powerful transmitter; it can be clearly received in San Diego.)

Jim Parish