Hot on the heels of yesterday’s candid discussion about the impact of gentrification in Bernal Heights, here’s an item that’s both appropriately inappropriate and inappropriately appropriate.
Songwriter Thao Nguyen is currently enjoying some much-deserved success in the indie scene. She doesn’t live in Bernal, but she has strong ties to us; she lives in San Francisco, her management company is a Bernal-owned business, and she did a glamorous photo shoot on Bernal Hill last August.
The hit from Thao’s new album is a song called “We the Common,” and it’s rather terrific. For the Citizens of Bernalwood, the best way to enjoy it is by watching the video, which interweaves hilltop scenes from Bernal Heights with screetscape scenes from Brooklyn — a place which is in some ways the Bernal Heights of New York, but even more so.
Plus, the video includes a cameo by NPR celebrity Ira Glass! (Swooooon!)
Plus plus, the video includes a cameo by Bernal celebrity Jackie Jones!
Thao’s video makes the cultural affinity between Bernal and Brooklyn look seamless and more than a little glamorous. And it does all that with an infectious hook that’s really so now right now — just like us. Listen, watch, and enjoy:
Bernalwood 
That chorus is stunning. Wonderful.
Just FYI, Thao will be co-hosting 826 Valencia’s annual benefit lunch along with Francis Ford Coppola, and rumor has it there will be some singing (with the kids no less). Tickets are pricey, but it goes to a great cause that helps out the neighborhood: http://826valencia.org/826-news/luncheon2013/
I believe the other dude in the photo with Ira Glass is the faux (?) gazilionaire on The Daily Show.
Yup, looks like John Hodgman to me, too.
Loved the video. Name of club in video?
Yup, that’s Hodgeman.
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