Fresh off winning three Grammy awards and selling out a world tour, Bad Bunny visits the Bay Area this weekend to perform at the Super Bowl halftime show — and the Bay is fired up for “Benito Bowl.”
“We are so proud of him,” says María Medina Serafín, a musician who moved to San Francisco from Puerto Rico to form an all-women salsa band. “He has elevated Puerto Rican culture and has done it in a way that is true to himself.”
While the Bay doesn’t boast a Puerto Rican diaspora as large as New York City or Philadelphia, Bad Bunny’s music and style have been embraced by the region’s many Latin American communities. His views on the gentrification of his home island, female empowerment and the role of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement have strongly resonated with those in the Bay Area that live between two cultures.
“Y claro, it gives you a lot of pride to hear your language on the biggest show on the planet — all right where you live,” adds Medina Serafín.
Below, read about local artists whose work is inspired by Benito, along with moments in Bay Area history marked by the reggaetonero’s influence.
A short ride on the 14 or the 49 Muni bus from Celis Castro’s mural is the Excelsior District, home to Flor de Oaxaca, a shop that for years has imported craftware, clothing and art from the Mexican state of Oaxaca to San Francisco. In recent years, owner Nayeli Bustamante has also sold masterfully decorated piñatas, which she and her staff make by hand.
While she doesn’t describe herself as a “superfan,” Bustamante has followed Bad Bunny’s career, and admires his dedication. “I have also learned a lot about Puerto Rico through him, and the way he talks about his home reminds me of Oaxaca.”
Ahead of his halftime show, she’s been making Bad Bunny-inspired piñatas. Some look like the unhappy heart from the Un Verano Sin Ti album cover, and others take the form of the singer’s original logo: a white bunny with crossed-out eyes.
“We start with a basic image, but as you build the piñata, you find so many different ways to add more detail, texture and spark,” Bustamante says. “When you present the piñata to a child on their big day, and you see their huge smile, that’s the best part of the process.”
A block away from the 24th and Mission BART station stands a larger-than-life recreation of Benito’s 2022 album Un Verano Sin Ti, complete with a sun setting over the horizon, flying dolphins and, of course, a very sad heart. On the side of a liquor store at the corner of 24th and Bartlett streets, the mural was painted in 2022 by 22-year-old Efren Celis Castro.
Growing up in the Mission, Celis Castro was surrounded by the neighborhood’s murals — testaments to the social justice and artistic movements constantly moving through the neighborhood. In high school, while selling his own paintings along Mission Street, a local restaurant owner gave him his very first mural commission. While he soon received more opportunities, there was one image he wanted to paint.
“The album art of Un Verano Sin Ti. It was the album of the summer,” he says. “The vibes, the sound, you had to experience it in that moment.”
No one was willing to commission it, though, so he walked to a liquor store nearby and convinced the owner to let him paint the mural for free. Years later, he still gets tagged on Instagram from Bad Bunny fans who happen upon the mural while walking to BART.
“Kids see it too, and they’re going to remember that,” he says. “I think that’s what’s most important for me. Helping out the youth and giving inspiration to the young ones.”
Two days before an Oakland show in 2022, Benito brought an entourage of 80 friends and members of his production crew across the Golden Gate Bridge for Puerto Rican food. They found it at Sol Food in San Rafael, and packed the place, ordering almost everything on the menu, says restaurant manager Francisco Gómez.
“In the beginning, we didn’t even know if he was with the group,” he says. “We assumed it was just his team working the concert — until he walked inside.”
With such a big party, all hands were on deck. Gómez himself jumped into the kitchen line to get orders out. “But everybody was laughing, eating, taking pictures, and enjoying the food,” he says, adding that Benito took plenty of selfies with the restaurant staff and thanked them for the meal.
Since that visit, Gómez says, Sol Food gets new customers from all over who heard about the restaurant after the reggaetonero’s visit. He’s particularly excited that more people are trying out Puerto Rican food.
Close your eyes and picture a Bad Bunny music video: a Caribbean beach, most likely, toasted by the warm sun, with happy people running and dancing. Pretty good guess — that essentially describes the visualisers from Un Verano Sin Ti.
A cold and foggy day in San Francisco may not immediately come to mind, but that’s precisely the setting for the music video for 2021’s “Lo Siento BB:/,” featuring producer Tainy and Mexican indie legend Julieta Venegas. Directed by Colombian-American director Stillz, the video follows a large, hairy Where the Wild Things Are-like creature as it joylessly walks around the city, interrupted by memories of its sweetheart.
Matching the song’s melancholy lyrics, the video shows the quiet solitude that comes when fog envelops the city. Potrero Hill, the Mission, Ocean Beach and Chinatown become the background for the protagonist’s journey through heartbreak.
Bay Area immigrant advocates have worked around the clock to prevent deportations, assist families with legal proceedings and speak out against violent acts by ICE agents, most recently the killings of Renée Macklin Good and Alex Pretti in Minneapolis.
While there’s no shortage of symbols used by folks on the ground to organize, posters have lately gone up in San Francisco with a familiar character: Sapo Concho, the Puerto Rican crested toad that appears prominently in his Debí Tirar Más Fotos world tour.
The design is simple: Sapo Concho staring directly at the viewer while bold Barbara Kruger-style letters spell out “Chinga la Migra” or “Fuck ICE.” Around his neck, Sapo Concho wears a whistle similar to those used by volunteers with rapid response networks trained to spot ICE activity and alert vulnerable community members.
In an interview last year, Bad Bunny said he decided against performing in the United States on his Debí Tirar Más Fotos tour out of fear that ICE would target fans attending his shows. And although several Department of Homeland Security officials previously threatened to bring immigration enforcement to the big game, local officials and the NFL affirmed this week that “there are no planned ICE or immigration enforcement operations that are scheduled around the Super Bowl or any of the Super Bowl related events.”
During his Grammy acceptance speech for Best Album, Benito sent out a clear message on a night when other major celebrities strongly criticized the White House’s immigration policies. “Before I say thanks to God, I’m going to say: ‘ICE out’,” said the musician. “We’re not savages, we’re not animals, we’re not aliens. We are humans, and we are Americans.”
Many young Latinos organizing Super Bowl watch parties are ensuring their events acknowledge immigrant families’ current fears. In Oakland on Sunday, local musician and educator La Doña hosts a watch party at Crybaby, with event proceeds going to the California Collaborative for Immigrant Justice, a group that demands transparency and better conditions at immigration detention centers.
In San Francisco, El Rio in the Mission District hosts eight DJs for a Super Bowl and halftime show watch party. Event organizers tell KQED they plan to distribute stacks of “red cards,” which list people’s rights during encounters with federal immigration agents.
“We’re not going to be afraid. We’re going to be smart. We’re going to be informed and we’re going to be there to protect one another,” organizer Óscar Delgado says. The party’s name — “Play Bad Bunny” — is inspired by a constant request that he and other DJs unanimously get from their audiences.
For those who won’t be at the stadium but still want to be close to Benito somehow, Bad Bunny impersonator Abdul Bunny performs Feb. 4 at Beaux in San Francisco and Feb. 6 at Que Rico in Oakland.
