What Did You Call It?
Walking through the neighborhood this evening, my former roomate mentioned that she recently had a conversation with a new-gal-in-town. New Gal said she was looking to buy a place here in her new Bay Area hometown (lucky gal). After listing off a few places, she ended her list with Irvington.
“Is that in the East Bay?” asked my curious roommate – who has a pretty good background in real estate and knows most of the cities and neighborhoods around the Bay Area.
“No,” New Gal said. “You know, it’s that area around 9th and Irving.”
?????
Irvington? Since when? I thought I was just spinning hyperbole when I explained to a visiting friend of mine that every 3 blocks in the city band together to stake a claim to a ‘hood name of their own. But 9th and Irving have some special name?
Last I checked, this is the Inner Sunset.
So is this Irvington a recognized name or is it one real estate agent’s ignorance, idea of a joke, or misplaced attempt to fluff property values with a faux-tony name?
It’s one of the five old towns that were consolidated into the incorporated city of Fremont.
…But I assume this means that now Richmond’s not the only city with a San Francisco neighborhood as its namesake.
Although I primarily drive taxi in San Jose, I have good knowledge of most of the San Francisco and East Bay area. The only Irvington I know of is one of Fremont’s commercial districts. Unless this “SF Irvington” was before our time?
I am TOTALLY going to start calling it Irvington now. I don’t care if it’s a real name or not.
Hey, this is random, but in geographically related news, did anybody else see that weird structure they were building in Duboce Park for a couple of weeks (glimpsed from the N Judah day after day) and then suddenly TORE DOWN?? What’s the story?
Irvington is a neighborhood in Freemont. As a relative-newbie to San Francisco, it’s already confusing enough with all the micro-neighborhoods!! :)
p.s. Robin, the Duboce Park structure was …. a BART station! Well, for a week or so. They were filming a movie with Will Smith, and that was one of their “props”. (see http://sf.metblogs.com/archives/2005/09/run_will_run.phtml for more info & pictures.)
Charles, so that was what was up with the film crew at either Glen Park or one of the Mission St. BART stations this weekend! We caught a glimpse of a film crew, but we weren’t about to get off the train to check out what was going on.
I think “Irvington” is uglier than Inner Sunset which is prettier just in the words alone and also more SF-y with the whole double meaning, inner peace angle.
Irvington doesn’t seem very Cali to me.
I think the agent was either making it up or it references some old housing installation many moons ago.