You've been hearing southern ex-pats in that case. No true Bay Arean (Aryan?) would dare refer to a freeway as "the 80" or "the 101".

Maybe it makes sense because the diareses aren't used to demarcate all diphthongs but only those that are normally pronounced as one vowel, i.e. "coop" and "reel" versus "cooperate" and "reelect".

That was Samuel Clemens' other, lesser-known pseudonym, right?

Hey now, don't lump us northern Californians in with those accursed southlanders. That's hella rude!

Just wash your sheets afterwards.

I like to think of it as a subsection of a Disney theme park, like Tomorrowland or Frontierland.