The Beat: “River City (Richmond, VA)“

With shout-outs to Mamma'Zu, the Byrd Theatre and Belle Isle, "River City (Richmond, VA)" taps some of the area's most recognizable names.

Throw in the Edgar Allan Poe Museum and the statue of Bill Bojangles, and now you're really talking Richmond.

Last week, the viral video starring two amusing, physically incongruous dudes was unleashed on YouTube. It has since amassed almost 70,000 views.

The idea sprung from the YRichmond steering committee, a group of young professionals and community leaders whose purpose is to promote Richmond.

With a little push from First Market Bank -- recruiting manager Katie Coleman is also a committee member for YRichmond -- the process to create a video that could advertise Richmond and help recruit possible new hires to Richmond companies was ignited.

During the summer, Coleman and fellow YRichmonder Dana Bolfing, who also is a sales executive for the local production company Park Group, holed up in a room with Bolfing's colleagues Nathan Burns and Stuart Holt, along with the video's stars, Blaine Lay and Sam Abouhasira, both financial service advisers at First Market Bank.

"I was a little skeptical at first," said Lay, who dons a hat, glasses and earrings for part of the five-minute homage to become a character named Craig. "I thought, 'It's been done before, and it's hard to do.' There are other videos out there that take shots at the city, and I didn't know if we could pull it off."

One 13-hour day of shooting on a sunny Sunday and a few hours of studio voice looping later, and "River City" was birthed.

Borrowing in spirit from "Saturday Night Live's" digital shorts ("Lazy Sunday," in particular), the crisply shot video zigzags around scenes of Monument Avenue ("Statues, statues, statues comin' at you," the guys rap to quick cuts of the Arthur Ashe and Robert E. Lee shrines), downtown at Tobacco Row, in front of The National and the Segway Tour office in Shockoe Slip.

At times, Lay and Abouhasira evoke the nostalgia of DJ Jazzy Jeff and the Fresh Prince as they throw their limbs in gently mocking rap gestures, humorously scrunch into the Byrd's teeny chairs ("What about the seats that crush my legs into oblivion?" Lay raps with priceless facial expressions) and bop around with kids from Church Hill as the Richmond skyline glistens behind them.

"Richmond is such an interesting city, it's hard to have one archetype," Church Hill resident Lay, 26, said. "There are these different pockets: the artsy Fan . . . , the West Enders who wear bow ties and go to the riv-ah, then the downtown professionals. We were trying to find a way to represent each of them. What you see is a little bit of a caricature, a little tongue in cheek. It's not written from the perspective of the art kid who hates the bow-tie guy. I think we're trying to be optimistic and fun."

The Park Group was instrumental in the organization of the video -- filming it and helping with creative services -- and also shared the cost with First Market Bank.

Bolfing declined to share the price of "River City" but said the Park Group wanted to be part of the project because it was certain to garner notice.

The lyrics to the song were a collaborative effort among the group. Holt, who belongs to the local band Cubscout And The Rhinoceros, created the music, and Eric Heiberg, an audio engineer at the Park Group, assisted with the recording.

Neither Lay, a graduate of James Madison University, nor Abouhasira has any genuine acting experience, and both volunteered their time.

"I'm still waiting for my residual check," Lay said with a laugh.

And who knows? Plenty of classic-rock bands have found new lead singers on YouTube. For these guys, "River City" could be just the beginning.

Contact Melissa Ruggieri at (804) 649-6120 or . Follow her at http://twitter.com/MRuggieri