Bad Bunny’s much-watched Super Bowl halftime show paid vibrant homage to his home of Puerto Rico and to a sort of home-away-from-home right here in Brooklyn.
Partway through the performance, Bad Bunny wound his way through a crowd of dancers toward a set depicting a New York City street and took a shot offered by a beaming woman standing inside a bar.
The set was a precise replica of Toñitas, the beloved Puerto Rican social club in Williamsburg. Above Bad Bunny’s head, the bar’s address, 244 Grand St., was visible in reflective letters, just as it looks at the real bar.
And the woman was the bar’s founder and owner, Maria Antonia Cay — better known as Toñita.
Toñitas is the last Puerto Rican social club in Brooklyn, a symbol of the Latino communities that have called Los Sures home for generations.
Cay founded the bar as the members-only Caribbean Social Club in the 1970s, as immigration to New York City from Puerto Rico and the Dominican Republic peaked.
A lot has changed since then — Williamsburg has gentrified rapidly, its Latino population has begun to shrink, and many locally-owned businesses have shuttered — but Toñitas remains. Cay cooks and serves up Puerto Rican food herself as visitors sip on cheap beers, play dominoes and pool, and chat in Spanish.
At some point, the bar caught Bad Bunny’s attention. He celebrated the release of his album “Un Verano Sin Ti” at the bar in 2022 and shouted it out in “NUEVAYoL,” the leading track of his 2025 album “Debí Tirar Más Fotos.”
“Un shot de cañita en casa de Toñita y PR se siente cerquita,” he says on the track, or “A shot of rum at Toñita’s house and Puerto Rico feels so close.”
He celebrated the release of that album at Toñitas, too, with a rollicking party attended by U.S. Reps. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Nydia Velázquez.
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He brought Cay along during an appearance on Jimmy Fallon last year, dancing with her on stage after a parade through the audience.
Dozens of Brooklynites took to social media after the show, thrilled to have seen a local icon on the big screen. “Did Toñitas just serve Benito a drink at the Super Bowl?” one person wrote on X. “Karol G and Pedro Pascal looked so gorgeous as guests, but the real guest of honor there is Toñitas,” said another.
Brooklyn Borough President Antonio Reynoso, the son of Dominican immigrants, wrote simply “TOÑITA!!!”
“Everyone who grew up in Williamsburg knows who Toñita is, and now the whole world is fortunate enough to say the same,” Reynoso told Brooklyn Paper. “She is a Boricua icon who for more than 50 years has welcomed every single person that’s walked through her doors. She embodies the spirit of hospitality and inclusivity that’s so badly needed in our culture right now, and as a son of the Southside myself, I was beaming with pride to see her share the stage with Bad Bunny in front of one of the largest audiences on Earth.”
As Cay and the replica Toñitas appeared on screen, dozens of Brooklynites were watching at a party at the bar itself in Williamsburg. After she caught a video of the performance herself, Cay took to Instagram to connect with her supporters.
“I’m so happy I watched. I feel like I’m there with all of you,” she said in Spanish in an Instagram story. “Thank you Benito for the shout out. It was so nice to see. And thank you God that I was able to view it and share it with all of you. May God bless you.”
