A scene from the West Village in NYC.
oil on canvas. 11” x 14”
NBC/Getty Images
Bad Bunny. So good.
If you haven't heard the new Bad Bunny album, what even are you doing? Anyway, you should go listen to the Bad Bunny album, or watch THE SHORT FILM HE MADE because it's really fantastic but more than that it's a piece of cultural history already. Senor Bunny was already a superstar, but this album is a love song to Puerto Rico and it has turned into a call to action, from what I have seen on social media. I watched a few interviews with him and I feel like the dumpster fire that was the Republican National Convention at MSG last summer where they took time out of their day to trash Puerto Rico set a fire in Bad Bunny, and it’s not hard to understand why. As an unincorporated territory of the United States, residents of Puerto Rico are US citizens but cannot vote in US presidential elections. They are subject to compulsory military service - as in when there was an active draft during the Vietnam war 48,000 Puerto Ricans were drafted and fought. A long and complicated colonial history. I don’t speak Spanish but I love this album DeBÍ TiRAR MáS FOToS.
Wild horse on Vieques, Puerto Rico - January 2013
I had one of the best vacations of my life on the island of Vieques in 2013 and man do I wish I was there right now. Wild horses, bioluminescent bay, pristine tiny beaches, clear blue water. Tourism is a very complicated thing in the Caribbean, and I can barely add much to that conversation with my limited knowledge, except to say that I would hope that the extreme interest in Bad Bunny’s music will drive a good kind of tourism for PR, with money flowing to the actual residents of the islands, and not just giant multinational hotel chains. I stayed at Hix Island House back in 2013 which was great, and that is owned by Canadians I discovred now.
Bad Bunny announced a whole mess of tour dates only in Puerto Rico, which is such an amazing move. If you want in on this situation, you are going to have to pull up in the PR yourself! But slow down, many of these dates are for PR residents only, AND already sold out of course.
Below is a painting I made a couple years ago in my old house here in Connecticut. I don’t have a rabbit. I was painting my space, and one day, the rabbit just showed up.
