"My favorite thing is when people think we're doing a show about Colonial Williamsburg," writer/actor Matt Yeager says. The 'Burg (www.theburg.tv), the online sitcom to which he is referring, is not about candlestick makers in eastern Virginia but about the inhabitants of Williamsburg, Brooklyn. Produced and created by Kathleen Grace (who also directs) and producer Thom Woodley (who also writes), The 'Burg lovingly mocks the angular-haircutted trust-fund babies who ride the L train.
Since The 'Burg's inception a little over a year ago, online video has expanded in popularity at the same rate that hipster jeans have tightened. Between their day jobs, this dedicated group of twentysomethings has created 10 professional-looking 15-minute-long episodes and 13 shorts (thanks to editor Ana Veselic) with no money, each of which gets approximately 2,000 to 10,000 hits a day. In one particularly amusing episode, obsessed with finding the next cool bar, the 'Burg crew goes to Office, a bar . . . that's an office. Sitting in a cubicle, they decide Office is over ("it's packed with NYU kids"), and they head to Bathroom.
While many of the show's touchstones are New
York–specific, Grace stresses, "Even though it's a show about
Williamsburg, there's something universal about being in your twenties
and not having any fucking clue what you're gonna do with your life."
You could accuse the 'Burg creators of making fun of their own kind:
Both Woodley and Yeager wear striped scarves during our interview, and
Grace and Veselic sport pixie-chic haircuts. In this case, that's OK.
Says Grace: "Even though we'll never admit we are them, the most hipster
thing to do is make fun of oneself."
Alexis Swerdloff
(l-r): Matt wears a jacket by adidas. Ana wears a jacket by Oxford Style Lab, shirt by Rogan. Thom wears a sweater by adidas. Kathleen wears a T-Shirt by Diesel.
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