Where am I?

At work this morning, someone called in to ask where my office was located. Mistakenly I assumed he wanted to know the address so I gave it to him but he soon clarified his question. He wanted to know what city we were in, and I told him it was San Francisco. A minute later he called again and asked what state San Francisco was in. Maybe this guy was Canadian or something, because I couldn't detect a foreign accent throughout the conversation with him. I really should have asked if he was or not – because I would have felt better if he was. Maybe that's why he doesn't know where it is, it's not like he watches or reads American news, has ever heard of Nancy Pelosi or anything else other than this place having a large gay community and sourdough bread.

But I wonder, wouldn't people know that San Francisco is in California though? Or maybe it's because I live here that I assume people actually know where it is. After all, it's not like it has a name like California City, in the state of California – that being equivalent to New York City, in the state of New York. But then again, Kansas City isn't in Kansas. So people shouldn't assume, like this guy and in this case I really can't blame him.

It could be that San Francisco is famous for being San Francisco, and nothing else, not the state it's in. California is a big state. It really is, so it could be that people don't know their geography. Oftentimes it's the latter; the media have made enough video segments and articles about it already. Either way, I'm sure the caller wanted to make sure where the heck the city was for some marketing purpose. That's always handy. I bet he knows where Los Angeles is because most people (from the US at least) know that, right?