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"Out in BFE"......is this not a common phrase here?

I've always said "Bumfuck nowhere" but I thought it meant you were getting fucked by a hobo :teeth
 
i'd rather hear BFE than ' we're lost in the ghetto'...
 
aminalmutha said:
BFE is very common in CA. You should get out more often. :D
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Bullshit. I get out plenty. having spent most of my life in Contra Costa, but also Alameda, Sonoma, Mendo and Humboldt counties. Lots of different jobs, social strata, etc etc. As for historic, I go to quarterly meetings of an organization of people descended from the old Hispanic families and they are my kinfolk and friends. We are as homie as you can get, save native people and even some of them are in our organization because of intermarriage.

But it's one of those things, where certain families, and even certain towns have a usage uncommon elsewhere. I knew ONE family, for example, that ever referred to soda as "pop" whereas many people in my hometown (Martinez, a very old town) used the generic term "coke" for ANY soda. Tom Hanks, who lived in both Concord and Oakland, I think, used to riff on the coke thing. I never heard people say "soda pop" but it was one of those things I'd read in comic books. And that's another thing: most of the children's books used in elementary school as rec reading, like Beverly Cleary, were always from back East or the Midwest. I always wondered who the heck ever went to "summer camp" because the books were full of that. Snow sleds, too!

I have heard people refer to the abstract "Bumfuck, Idaho" for a distant place.

I really wonder if its got something to do with military families as noted above. The only people I have ever known to use the term "skivvies" for example, came from military families. Even the tendency to use letter abbreviations is a big military thing, like the good ol SNAFU, which I think originated during WWII....

I think colloquialisms are pretty interesting and amusing to ponder....Even though people continue to migrate to California, there was a sharp dividing line around here before the Dustbowl and WWII eras. Tens of thousands of people poured into this area to build ship in the Kaiser yards and probably brought a ton of new expressions that hadn't been here before....maybe BFE came with 'em. (?)
 
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born and raised in the bay area, 52 yo, heard Bum Fuck Egypt often as a kid along with boonies or the middle of nowhere. Went to high school in Richmond, grade school in Oakland and college in Chico. Heard BFE more often than any other like expression.
 
I have deep CA roots and I have been using BFE for a long time. It's not a mid-western thing. Tho, I am familiar with "the tules" as well. :D
 
Now I just have to ask my Dad, whose 84, born in Eureka, about this! Ha. If you two guys say its so, I can't argue it, but I sure never heard it.
 
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planegray said:
+2

I got nothing against Egypt though.. pyramids, yo
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Abyss said:
I've always said "Bumfuck nowhere" but I thought it meant you were getting fucked by a hobo :teeth
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Aby, are you even old enough to have always said something?

Back on-topic:

Heard it pretty commonly used all over the US, even in CA.
 
Reli said:
I'm from the Midwest, and was recently made aware that "out in BFE" isn't a well-known phrase around here. True?

BFE means butt (or bum) fuck egypt. It basically means some out-of-the-way rural area.

So I looked it up and discovered it is indeed a Midwest term. Apparently the southern tip of Illinois is called "Little Egypt" for some reason, and the phrase was used in a derogatory fashion by the folks up in Chicago, probably in the same way we bash the Central Valley.
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BFE is totally common here.

So is the sticks.

The boonies.
 
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I bet the thing about Little Egypt is because Cairo, Illinois is a sort of prominent river town; probably had a lot of gambling, transients, etc etc from the river traffic.
 
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aminalmutha said:
Eureka is barely California.
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Oh come on.:laughing It's been a town since 1853 or so...sheesh. I will admit that its a transition zone into the Northwest. There is a kind of line of influence that ends at about Ukiah, then over and up to Redding, of places that had Hispanic occupation first, including landgrants, adobes and such. You get up into Humboldt and its more like Anglo-Celtic and German-Scandihoovian that continues right up to Canada. BFE or not.....

I'd ask my Mom, who always lived in the East Bay, but she's dead. I'm stickin with military , or lots of travelers coming thru theory.
 
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