My state smells like ...

Never thought of Gilroy as NoCal, more far northern Central Coast. Sorry to split hairs.

 

Especially right around Stairtown!

 

Gilroy is north of Santa Cruz and well north of the Monterey Peninsula. That's NoCal, bro.
And furthermore, everything north of Santa Barbara is NoCal. That's my story and I'm sticking to it.

 

Like Chris said, Gilroy is comparatively north in California. It's the southern tip of Santa Clara County (20-25 miles south of San Jose proper and slightly more than 10 miles south of the SJ city limit) which puts it in the Bay Area and thus in NorCal.

I'll disagree and say San Luis Obispo is roughly the dividing line from NorCal and SoCal with gray areas from Fresno south to the Kern County line.

 

One major city I used to live in smelled like sewage about a quarter of the time when the wind blew from a certain direction. I wasn't fortunate to live in the meatpacking city that my dad grew up at (Omaha).

 

Virginia smells like a metric shit-ton of pollen.

 

I'm not a CA native, but I've been here 17 years now.
The geographic center of the state is at North Fork, which is northeast of Fresno.
Attempting to divide the state in half and refer to northern and southern california from that perspective has little meaning to anyone.
I wouldn't consider Gilroy Northern California. Northern California starts with the Bay Area. Gilroy is below the Bay Area.
Southern California starts from the Grapevine south.
The seven counties of the Central Valley, the Central Coast and some other stragglers are just central. They are not really northern or southern.
Calling Merced Northern California is a real stretch.

 

Lived in a smallish town with a Swiss Miss plant. My goodness did it smell good when the wind blew the right direction.

 

Keep it simple. North and South is all you get, no gerrymandering, no tinkering with Central. If they make two states out of it, it will be North and South, the border at about Santa Barbara. You say Fresno is about the middle. Merced is about 60 miles north of Fresno. It is also slightly north of North Fork. And, roughly, it is latitudinally equal to San Jose. According to the map I looked at. Sounds North to me. Bottom line, doesn't matter.

 

If you have ever had the misfortune of driving on US 80 from Demopolis to Montgomery, through Selma, you would know that Alabama ranks right up there in the putrid paper mill sweepstakes.

 

Similar to NJ? Pretty much everyone in North NJ calls south of the Driscoll Bridge South NJ, even though it's geographically north or central.