10 thoughts on “This Cool Bernal Heights Image Is a Metaphor for Our Zeitgeist”

  2. Trying to figure out how a large pixellated image of the hill is a metaphor for anything other than how far image software has come in 20 years.

    • Well, Byrd, there was a time not long ago, where our lives and our communties were “high resolution” – we paid attention to the details; we cared about the little stuff, and the little people; we spelled out all of the letters in our words; we communicated, campaigned and reviewed in long form; we shopped locally; we celebrated the little events of the day;

      We’re in a lo-res, hi-speed, big dollar, meme-worthy, CEO-heavy, gray-box architecture, lol-inducing, 24-7 GoPro, hand-crafted™, drone-delivered twitterspheric world.

      • Well Snobby, you find what you look for. There’s no doubt change is afoot, and there’s no doubt the arts and culture population is being supplanted by the start up and wealth population, but this is not being done by force, it’s being done by economics. While your artists and culture creators were busy making their world beautiful, the economic forces have eaten their lunch.

        Perhaps your arts and culture creators were short sighted, and the new population doesn’t miss your personal idea of “meaningful.”

        The arts and culture creators were fortunate to be in the city before money took it over, but they were never going to resist the changes money brings, because money talks, while arts and culture walk.

      • Snobby, fascinating that you should view things this way. Doing Bernalwoood has taught me that there is significant cultural overlap between the Old Bernalese and the New. Both are intensely creative, and intensely committed to making Bernal as great as it can be. To use a contemporary bit of jargon, both Old and New Bernalese tend to be makers. True, they probably have very different attitudes toward capitalism. But my own opinion is that there is great continuity in terms of the kinds of people who want to settle here. Of course, YMMV (Your Metaphor May Vary).

      • Harrumph and hurrah. I was simply attempting an answer to Byrd’s fair question to your too clever declaration that a hyper-pixalated image of Bernal Heights “is a metaphor for our zeitgeist”. You can’t blow that kind of hoohah without defending your thesis, my friend. Let’s hear it…

      • That’s an interesting perspective, Todd, and it reinforces my “you find what you look for” comment.

        That said, from what I’ve seen the new Bernalese do tend to be less focused on community, which is understandable when the community is less necessary because wealth provides self-sufficiency.

        Even when I moved to Bernal over a decade ago, I didn’t do so for the community as much as I moved here because it was one of the last places I considered to be somewhat close to downtown that I could afford, and even at that time neighbors were very quick to point out how much more I had paid for a much smaller house than they had payed for their much larges homes – some even inherited their homes from family (and these people tend to be least concerned about being good neighbors).

        In addition, if you knew my neighbors, you’d know that a lot of people in Bernal couldn’t give a rat’s behind about the culture, the community, or their neighbors. They were there first, and newcomers will always be second class neighbors to them, with a perceptible lack of consideration offered.

  3. In other words, arts and culture viewed the city through rose-colored glasses, seeing it as a right that they could live here.

    It never was, and it never will be.

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