San Fran

1.A widely disliked abbreviation of San Francisco that locals often treat as a sign that the speaker is a tourist, newcomer, or outsider. San Francisco, SF, and The City are generally considered safer alternatives.

He called it San Fran at the founder dinner, and everyone immediately knew he had just moved here.

01Origin

There is no identified coiner of "San Fran." It appears to have developed as an obvious shortening of San Francisco, but unlike SF or The City, it never became broadly accepted local speech. The outsider test was established well before the current tech scene: KQED condemned the name in 2010, and The Bold Italic later described it as outside the local vernacular and liable to set off alarm bells. ([kqed.org](https://www.kqed.org/perspectives/201007260735/first-it-was-frisco))

The taboo subsequently became part of transplant and tech-culture humor. It appears in an SF Tech Bro Purity Test as something insiders criticize, while tech entrepreneur Greg Isenberg used "San Fran" to illustrate that a young programmer from Nebraska had never visited the city and did not know local conventions. In 2024, state senator Scott Wiener amplified the joke by demanding that the California DMV stop printing "San Fran" on residents' driver's licenses. ([techbropuritytest.wtf](https://www.techbropuritytest.wtf/?utm_source=openai))

02Notable sightings

Senator Scott Wiener · @Scott_Wiener · view on X
DMV issued driver’s licenses listing “San Fran” as the address. On behalf of all self-respecting residents of the City by the Bay, I’m asking DMV to promptly cease & desist this nonsense. My letter:

GREG ISENBERG · @gregisenberg · view on X
The internet can be your prison or paradise. Depends how you use it. I got an email from this 18-year-old kid in Nebraska. Raised by a single mom in a town of like 500. WiFi was his lifeline to the world. Most people get trapped in the scroll vortex. Watching lives, not living them. But this guy vowed to use the internet to escape his tough situation. He dove into coding. Self-taught with YouTube videos. Haunted Reddit threads for business ideas. Eventually, he built a SaaS app. He had like 10 customers for a year. Was losing hope. Couldnt even pay SaaS bills with it but kept at it. He started to recruit affiliates. And they helped promote it. Then SEO started kicking in. And he had a few viral social posts. Now he's pulling in $28k a month. And he got an offer from his dream company to buy his company. Life-changing money, sure, but the confidence boost i think is priceless. Guy turned his phone into an escape pod in just 20 months. He'll never be the same again again. Went from corn fields to code fields without leaving his bedroom. No fancy Stanford degree. No Silicon Valley connections. Guy's never even been to San Francisco. Calls it "San Fran" and "Siliconeeeee Valley" cause he doesn't know any better. You love to see it. Not saying everyone can pull this off. But it fires me up when people use the internet to launchpad into a new world. I notice these people obsess over learning and experimenting and stay consistent. The internet is either your holy grail or your black hole. All comes down to which way you're swiping.

Henry Schulman BLUE CHECK MARK · @hankschulman · view on X
From Will Smith, via text: "My time in San Fran is something I’ll take with me forever. From the training staff working hard with me to come back from TJ is something I will forever be grateful for, the coaches for always trying to make us better and to my teammates... (1/3)

D.R. · @DougRiggs · view on X
@hankschulman Don’t call it San Fran

More sightings on X →

03Spread the ism

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San Fran

01Origin

02Notable sightings

03Spread the ism

04See also