In the SF Bay Area, "French bread" and "sourdough" are near synonyms, or at least were prior to the reasonably recent culinary bloom (1990s / aughts). Though of course there are sweet French loaves and baguettes, and non-baguette sourdoughs.

General / wider availability of true sour loaves outside California was exceedingly rare as of the 1980s, and I'd tend to believe well into the early aughts.

2020 et seq blew the lid off the Dutch oven, so to speak, though Tartine Bakery and others were cultivating the field / getting ... started ... before. Tartine itself was founded in 2002, according to Wikipedia.

<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tartine>

Google's Ngram Viewer shows a doubling of occurrences of "sourdough bread" in print from 2007--2019, roughly, with a long slow climb from ~1960 and a sharp inflection in 2007. That ... roughly ... matches my own recollection.

<https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=sourdough+brea...>

I am from the bay area so maybe I acquired the taste early, but I love a good strong sourdough personally. I think a big part of what people enjoy eating is culturally inherited. If you've been told all your life that good bread should be sweet, you're likely to regard a different less sweet loaf with suspicion or derision. Certain cultures relish in eat things that may seem pungent or unlikable to outsiders. I didn't initially enjoy kimchi, but after some time having it around here and there I've come to love the unique intense flavor.

The standard for bread is so low in the United States, anything with taste is amazing!

I find slow overnight fermentation with industrial yeast can be pretty decent when you don’t have the time to keep a starter going and just want to bake some bread once in awhile. Big fan of no knead method.