Pinched Nerve has a new music video called “Back Door Step Down” that will appeal to fans of Bernal Heights, public transit, and guys who wear fishnets:
I wrote a song about riding the bus then shot the video on the bus. Shot mostly in Bernalwood. We rode the bus from El Rio out to Pissed Off Petes. Hung out at Mission and Highland for a while. I wear fishnets.
Work it!
Neighbor Joe Thomas created this gorgeous time-lapse of last night’s moonrise from his observation post in Bernal Heights. Spectacular!
There was a wonderful little piece on the SFGate website this weekend about Jose Marquez, a man who has turned his Cortland garage into a foster home for cast-away stuffed animals:
Basically, we give these stuffed animals a second chance,” said Marco Marquez. His grandfather, Jose Marquez, stood by his side and his year-old son Anthony sat in his arms. The collection of stuffed animals started 16 years ago shortly after Grandpa Jose purchased a Bernal Heights apartment building. Back then, Jose was a construction worker and would rescue the toys that had been thrown into gutters, bringing them to the garage for a second life. Now Jose is retired, and the garage has become a haven for him.
Amazing, amazing, amazing multimedia storytelling, and the video above is a gorgeous must-see (be patient while the video player loads, please). Don’t miss it.
PHOTO AND VIDEO: SFGate
Woa. Check out this gorgeous mini-documentary about the Avedano’s butcher shop on Cortland, created by Tribute SF:
Started by three friends, Avedano’s butcher shop pursues the purest forms of butchery while providing the Bernal Heights neighborhood with sustainably raised meat and fish.
It is easy to be inspired and educated by the cleaver-wielding bunch behind the counter. Avedano’s is a place of business where craftsmen (and women) are “perserving the art of butchery.”
But wait, that’s not all! Avedano’s also features prominently in The Cook & The Butcher, a new book by Brigit Binns:
In this innovative look at a favorite subject, author Brigit Binns draws on tips and tricks learned from renowned butchers and expert steak-house chefs to show you the best—and most delicious—ways to cook beef, pork, lamb, and veal at home. Meat is the star in this collection of over 100 modern recipes, which use fresh, seasonal ingredients and a wide range of cooking methods—stir-frying, sautÉing, panfrying, grilling, roasting, braising, smoking—to create irresistible dishes. Binns introduces us to such flavor-boosting cooking practices as residual-heat roasting, which slowly cooks large cuts to perfection in the lingering heat of a turned-off oven; double-searing steaks and chops on both ends of a long resting period to develop a tempting crust and melt-in-your-mouth texture; and seasoning meat before and during cooking.
But wait, that’s not all! There’s also a promo video for The Cook & The Butcher that just happened to be filmed at… Avedano’s:
Yes, that’s right: Before there was Bernalwood, there was Bernaltown.
Bernaltown was a 1997 film project by Gregory Gavin, starring neighborhood kids and a variety of locals. It premiered in early June 1997, in an outside screening at the Bernal Heights Playground behind the library. 500 people showed up.
A narrative neighborhood film project structured around the Powerbuilders, a foursome of pre-teen superheroes who resist an evil scheme to build a gigantic casino on top of the community’s sacred resource – Bernal Hill. Instead of fighting evil with guns the kids build fantastic crime fighting gadgets in a secret underground workshop from which they also launch their homemade soap box cars through secret tunnels into the narrow streets of Bernaltown.
VHS copies of the movie are — or were — available at the Bernal Heights Library and 4-Star video. You can watch some excerpts from it on Gavin’s website.
So, find a hat like mine, and you get instant street cred.
What is Bernalamo? Quite honestly, I have no idea. Regardless, they live in Bernal, they seem like nice young men, and they have a SkeeBall game in their kitchen (!!), so they are obviously gentlemen of distinction and taste. In this episode, we watch them create the world’s largest strawberry pancake of 2011 that uses no flax seed and only organic egg. The competition in this category is intense, and the suspense is gripping, but as you’ll see — Bernalio delivers. Whatever it is.
A gorgeous iPhone photo, captured yesterday morning from atop Bernal Hill by Smersy as he looked east.
The house next door has been for sale for months — you can check it out right here. Trouble is, squatters have already moved in…
Reader Andrew lives on Cortland, and he wants to join the Sutro Tower Fan Club. As part of his application, he writes: “I witnessed beautiful fog action and thought would send [this animated gif] your way.”
Welcome to Da Club, Andrew!
Call me a complainer, but how about replacing Eugenia Street with a chairlift that runs from Mission to Winfield? A proposal like that would even get me to vote for Leland Yee.
I met this smiling gentleman last weekend while he was playing his ukulele on a bench atop Bernal Hill. He said he was visiting from Brooklyn, and that he was enjoying the view. I’m glad, because I enjoyed his music. Listen in:
PHOTO, VIDEO: Telstar Logistics
Joe Thomas lives in Bernal Heights, and from his house he’s got a nice view of the tower atop Bernal Hill. He recently used that to good advantage by creating this chiaroscuro time-lapse video that shows the tower coming in and out of view amid the all-encompassing fog that is our fate this time of year.
For something a little warmer, Joe also made a sunny-day video taken from the same spot:
Also, following up on our previous post about how Bernal’s microwave tower needs a name, Joe proposes that we call it “Sutrito.” I quite like that, actually. “Sutrito Tower.” (The mini-me resemblance is undeniable.) Thoughts?
UPDATE: 23 Aug 2011
Rebel La Lenguan Burrito Justice shot some superb time-lapse video recently that shows Sutro Tower (aka Sutro Grande) floating in a river of fog. Behold:
Here’s yet another MTV moment for Bernalwood.
Bernal Hill gets some key cameos in this music video for a romantic song that tells a classic tale of “artsy loner dude meets smoking’ hot girl, loses hot girl to douchebag other guy, gets hot girl back when douchbag guy reveals his douchey inner nature, but in the end it turns out the whole thing is just a made-up fantasy, because really, he’s an artsy loner dude.” In other words, it’s a very typical Bernal Heights relationship story.
The song itself is called “What If” by Summer Breeze. It isn’t as clever or as funky as that one from Jahmeel, but as we all know… that’s showbiz.
Bernalwood 