I used to hear jokes that seeing a white girl in Bushwick was as rare as finding a unicorn. While the recent influx in hipsters might make that term no longer applicable, there is still one genuine unicorn to be found in Bushwick.

Natalie Weiss, aka Unicornicopia, has been living and performing in Bushwick since 2005. At 5′10″, with almond shaped eyes and and a huge smile, Natalie could be confused for a fashion model, a fact Vice magazine took notice of. But Natalie’s mission is not to stand around and look pretty for the cameras; rather she spreads her message through “experimental worship-tunes” that sound like a cross between Laurie Anderson, The Magnetic Fields (when the chick sings), and a 1950’s musical. Not surprisingly, Natalie accredits some of her earliest influences to musicals and has even written a couple — but it wasn’t till a 2001 trip to Africa as an AIDS educator that Unicornicopia was formed. “I was filled with the joy of the lord” Natalie says, smiling widely with no trace of irony. Natalie takes that joy wherever she goes, even when she was transplanted to the Halsey stop on the M J train in 2005 when she moved from Florida to try to have one of her plays performed off-Broadway.

Though the play fell through, Natalie stayed in Bushwick, and though she described her initial experience as scary — always a friendly face, Natalie found it hard to meet people in an area she saw as “more industrial than community-oriented.”

It was only after moving above Goodbye Blue Monday on Broadway and Dodworth that Natalie found the community spirit she was looking for. She accredits the change of Bushwick addresses with the shift of her perspective on the neighborhood. Far from finding the noise of the overhead J and the populated streets a detriment, Natalie finds her music influenced by her scenery, “I’m much more into a noise-oriented sound these days!” she exclaims, ever the optimist.

Her outgoing nature has finally found a home beneath the train, as one can often spy Natalie on the streets outside her home or in GBM, chatting with older residents. “I prefer the old men in this neighborhood to the hipsters,” she sniffs, “at least when you make friends with the old guys, they stop objectifying you!”

Good point — and one she plans to live by — as she is now having to plan a sudden relocation. Though she won’t be living above me anymore, Natalie plans to stay in the neighborhood while doing a back-up singing gig for Fischerspooner. She loves the neighborhood, and as she says on one of her songs, “It is so important to feel cared about.”

–Unicornicopia will be performing live at Monkeytown on Wednesday, September 26th.