I was thinking about this a few weeks ago. I lived in San Diego up until this summer when I lost the job opportunity I had due to COVID and had to move, and I miss it there. I'm sure most of this is like speculative dot connecting, but I think there is something to the names of the big cities in California that makes them attractive. Even the state name itself has a ring to it that I don't think most other states have (granted I'm originally from Kansas, which has as flat and neutral of a name as the state itself deserves). But like Los Angeles, San Diego, San Francisco, Sacramento, those are good city names. I think those names carry a mystique. Maybe it's just the length of the city name with the state name. I can't fully explain it, but some names just fit, like how New Orleans, Louisiana and Miami, Florida sound like the perfect names for those cities' cultures, or how most of the big Texas cities have two-syllable names like the state's name does, so when you hear "Dallas, Texas" there's some straightforward, no-nonsense power to it. I think that's a pseudo-cogent phenomenon.
Also there's that weird phenomenon where every city and state's name is somewhat affected by the population's accent (most obvious case is how the two O's in 'Boston' exemplify the Massachusetts accent or how you can diminish the 'r' in 'New York' for that accent too). I don't know if that fits here but I always found it interesting
