Coming to Grips
May 19, 2010
The Bold Italic is a site which shares local San Francisco knowledge, but it’s nothing like the star ratings and reviews found at Yelp. In Coming to Grips, Tara Ramroop shares the story of how she got hooked on cable cars.
Many of our readers will probably notice some factual mistakes — there are only three cable car lines, not four, and calling a cable car a trolley is a sin that ranks up there with using the word “Frisco.” But the important thing is her personal story of how she came to discover something that had been there the entire time.
Calling a cable car a trolley may indeed be a sin, but using the word Frisco surely should not. The City was Frisco nearly from the beginning and was known around the world as such. And not just by tourists, but by San Franciscans as well, particularly the sea-going, dock-walloping sort.
Even Herb Caen who authored the “Don’t Call it Frisco” in his column recanted on the notion, referring to it as the worst idea he ever had.
If the City has some imagination we might focus a PR campaign around Frisco, promoting the city and the word in the same way New York used “The Big Apple.”