Are you referring to the California-or-bust lists? Or perhaps the Must-go-to-Miami lists? I agree that location becomes a huge factor in the residency choice (in contrast to the medical school choice) for many legitimate reasons. And the sunny states win that battle.
However, when it comes to arrogance, I think there's plenty of it in the northeast as well - certainly no less (and even greater imo) than the west coast bias. I've noticed quite a lot of california-bashing in the northeast, most of it coming from people who have not spent signficant time out there or none at all. There is less Miami bashing, I think, because so many more northeast snowbirds spend their winters in Florida/Carolinas and so they are more familiar with the southeast. The californians... well they generally don't think much of the east - not in the sense that they think down on the east, but rather that they don't think of the east at all for 99.9% of the time.