I moved from the bay area to the central valley for college and you could tell if someone was from norcal or socal after talking to them for 30 seconds. Most of us had never met someone from the other side but our whole dorm went to In-n-Out the 2nd weekend of school and made fun of eachother the whole time about how everyone from socal said chill and people from norcal said hella. The dialect and culture is even more different than the slang. I'd say there's 4 distinct zones in CA: Norcal goes from crescent city to redwood city and is full of farmers, retired people, and these emo hippie hobos they call scrodes; the bay area is a 2 hour diameter around SF and is probably one of the most diverse and overpriced places on earth; the central valley goes from stockton to Bakersfield and is full of cows, immigrant workers, and druggies; and socal starts an hour north of LA and is full of millions of workaholics, beach bums, and valley girls. It's weird because people in the bay area and socal don't ever really think about eachother, but people in norcal and the central valley HATE them. Talk with one of them for long enough and they'll tell you all about how we're taking their water and jobs and spending all our money on expensive houses and cars. It's a completely different lifestyle in central and northern CA.
Speaking of Willits, that's actually the place I came the closest I've ever come to dying. My old roommate and I drove 4 hours to visit our friend who had dropped out after the first year to help his dad with the family "business". The next morning we decided to go shooting on top of the tallest mountain in the area, and our friend was driving like 40mph and drifting around every corner in his truck the whole way up these dirt switchbacks. We told him to slow down but he said "don't worry, people up here drive on dirt roads better than the freeway"... well on the way back down he was doing the same crap and about 3 miles up he started fishtailing. I was in the back and held onto the drivers seat headrest for my life as he swerved towards the cliff, but when the front tire went over we suddenly turned back towards the mountain and the truck flipped, landing on its side 2ft from a power line. I could see the glass and metal crushing under me as I was holding my weight up with that headrest, and when it stopped rolling my hat was stuck under the truck. Somehow none of us were injured besides minor cuts but all I could think about were movies where the gas tank blows up, so I told them we had to get out NOW and pushed them out the top window by their shoes lol. After we climed out and looked at the road, you could clearly see where the tires had traveled in the dirt. We walked a few hundred feet up to where we almost went over the cliff and found a bush split in half where the front tracks vanished. If it weren't for that bush being in that exact spot the truck would have gone over with us in it. We were so high up you couldn't see the valley floor and the chp wouldn't send officers to help. Even the local tow company couldn't get up there but luckily my friend knew someone that owned a tow truck. I actually took a branch from that bush, wish I knew where it went so I could put it in a tank.
Nor Cal is crazy, other than my friends from there 
