Yes Virginia, the "Bay Area" is really pretty near the middle of the state, not the "Northern" part. If you look breifly at a map, this fact is obvious. Yet, people local to the region generally refer to this as "Norther California" or more crudely, "NorCal". This has always bothered me a small bit, in that "it doesn't matter but it is kind of annoying" sort of way. I mean, there it is on the map.
It seems to me that with nearly half the state falling North of San Francisco, it is unfair and disrespectful to call SF "Northern" as if the rest of the state simply doesn't exist. Perhaps the reason I find it annoying is so many of the local residents act as if they are unaware that there is anything north of San Francisco.
As I write this, I am sitting in a cafe in Santa Cruz, California, along the central coast. If you draw an east/west line through Santa Cruz, you bisect the state almost perfectly. Santa Cruz is in itself a story, and "centric" would certainly not be a word locals would hang on to. But there you go, look at the map, here we are.