What do locals call San Francisco?

The natives called the San Francisco Bay area Ramaytush Awaste.

I was born and raised in the San Francisco Bay Area and usually people just refer to San Francisco as San Francisco. I lived in the East Bay Area, and someone would say something like Let's go get dinner in the City and this would mean that you are going to San Francisco. However, I feel that it would be better to say San Francisco when you are in San Francisco as saying the City, at least in my perception of it, is referring to San Francisco when elsewhere in the Bay Area.

I think this is a very much opinion-based question and experiences will vary greatly from person to person, even amongst locals -- so take all these answers with a grain of salt.

I was born and raised in San Francisco proper, and I personally like to use SF in both speech and text a lot because it is short and simple. I think most of my friends do the same.

If your goal is to try to pretend to be a local, I suppose some of these answers may help you. However, if you're just trying to be more likeable to the locals, I'd like to point out that most people don't really care what you call the city. SF is a diverse city and many people don't speak English well enough to care about a detail like this. (I grew up in an immigrant family and we really don't care.) Even among proficient English speakers, the ones that do care are a minority (and these are the people you probably want to avoid anyway).

I was born and raised in San Francisco, and I use SF a lot, mostly in writing, but in speech, too. "San Francisco" is long to write out, so you'll often write "SF." Locals also say "San Francisco," but that's a pretty long name to say as well.

"SF" is pretty ingrained in our lexicon - the baseball team is called the "SF Giants," and the football team is called the "SF 49ers."

Only tourists, newcomers, or people outside the Bay Area call it "San Fran" or "Frisco." That makes San Franciscans cringe.

It's really odd that people living in a major city or region are LESS likely to give it catchy nicknames. I remember, for a time in the 90s-2000s, "SoCal" was used a lot. Now I hear it a lot less. People from that area tend to say they're from "Southern California" if they don't want to be more specific. But chances are, especially, if they're non-white, they're from the LA area.

Lately I've been hearing "The Bay" used to refer to the Bay Area. I've never heard of a shortened way of saying The Bay Area before. I used to think this was some outsiders' way of saying it - like how they say San Fran or Frisco - but I'm hearing Bay Area people say "The Bay," too. Maybe I'm just not that used to it, but it sounds bad to me.

"The City" seemed like it was used more in the 90s-2000s--at least, with the capitalized T and C, in writing or in speech. Now, when people say "the city," I think they're just referring to the city in general, the way you would refer to any major city in a metropolitan area. I've always thought "The City" was very pretentious. Why is SF "The City?" There are many important cities in the Bay Area, and SF isn't necessarily any better.