NorCal is the current slang (At least in California colleges) for [Northern California].

The idea of NorCal and SoCal is less of a physical separation rather than a culture separation. Most particularly, a lot of NorCal people (Or maybe just teens?) say, "hella" (i.e. That's a hella cool!).

It could be argued that NorCal culture tends to be perceived to be more cultured than SoCal which is defined by [Los Angeles, California|Los Angeles] and the mess that is the [freeway] system, the [movie] industry, and various other stereotypical traits that tend to make the culture of SoCal be perceived as vain and facetious. NorCal, is, on the other hand, defined by [San Francisco, California|San Francisco]. It has the Golden Gate Park with its myriad museums and splendor, a blossoming artistic community (Not to say that Los Angeles doesn't have one, it's just not as propagated), and some interesting quirks.

If I were asked to define a physical boundary of these 2 ideologies, I would have to say the end of SoCal is [Santa Barbara, California|Santa Barbara], and NorCal starts around [Santa Cruz, California|Santa Cruz] or the Monterey Bay area in general (I think Carmel-by-the-Bay is a bit of a push...after all, [Clint Eastwood] was its mayor once, and yes, I know he was born in San Francisco). Central California is too sparsely populated to have a real definition...unless you just want to call it farmland...(I'm kidding!)

* This is speaking from someone who's lived in Los Angeles their whole life...

NorCal (idea)