Nuevayol
On Bad Bunny, the city, and winter
Hi! It’s officially 2025, so you know what that means. It’s the year that my book comes out! Here is a link for you to pre-order!
Now, that I’ve tried to sell my book, here’s some new writing.
I think it’s a very funny joke that NUEVAYoL, the first track in Bad Bunny’s new album, was released on the eve of one of the coldest fronts I’ve experienced in my ten years in New York City. The song heavily samples the phrase “Si te quieres divertir/ con encanto y con primor/sólo tienes que vivir/un verano en Nueva York.” (If you want to have fun/with charm and delight/you just have to live/a summer in New York) by Andy Montañez y El Gran Combo de Puerto Rico, and I’ve been blasting it on my headphones while I wonder if I can take my gloved hand out of my jacket pocket to google “can you get frostbite on your eyeballs?” Do I think Bad Bunny intended for this release to be a great joke on New Yorkers? I don’t know. He can probably do comedy since he’s hosting The Tonight Show next week, and maybe he can control the weather. I mean, he’s the world’s biggest pop star and has no songs in English. If he can do that, he can probably do anything.
I’ve always loved the city in the winter because the cold gives it an old-school New York vibe that can’t be shaken off. Sure, the Fall is the best season in New York City (don’t fight it. You know it’s true,) but the winter in New York is better than the winter in most places I’ve been to. During the weeks leading up to Christmas, it’s the New York of the movies! The Rockefeller Center Tree! The Macy’s Christmas lights! Santa-Con! What’s not to love? (Santa-Con, Santa-Con is not to love.)
That said, it’s the weeks after New Year’s that the city truly feels like the New York of old. It’s when people still go out because goddammit it’s a Saturday and we shouldn’t stay cooped up at home because our homes are tiny little shoeboxes with screaming radiators and one scalding hot pole that heats up the entire apartment and if you touch it your fingerprints are chargrilled off. So New Yorkers go out and walk around the city and try to find something to do that will be warm and fun, and most times they will find it because despite what every news story and manosphere influencer who’s afraid of big cities will tell you, this is still the best city in America and there’s always something to do here. One of my favorite memories is going to a cozy bar in Chelsea when I had just started a job at an ad agency in 2016 and hanging out there with my new coworkers for hours to hunker down from the cold. I remember the bar was in Chelsea, but I have no recollection as to why we picked that bar and what we did there. But I remember picking the place and walking in because hell, it looked cozy and it looked like it could fit us all, and oh my god, it’s so fucking cold. I had a great time.
Winter in New York allows you to wander, and wandering is one of my favorite things about living in this city. With Instagram and TikTok and Yelp Reviews and Goodreads and Spotify, it feels like every single thing in our lives is algorithmically selected for us. Visiting a city, a tourist hotspot or a restaurant has become a confirmation exercise, not a journey of discovery. You go to New York to get a slice at Joe’s because it’s good because a TikTok said it’s good and it’s got 5 stars on Yelp and then you post the slice to your IG story. You are reinforcing opinions that perhaps were not originally your own. And you know what, I don’t think that’s necessarily a bad thing. I like Joe’s. Not to be all “I liked it before I was cool” but I’ve liked it since I used to work close to the Williamsburg location and the guy would give me a free extra slice because I spoke Spanish to him. Most trendy, algorithmically-optimized places are pretty good! Shout out to Los Tacos No. 1 and the Lexington Ave Candy Shop, and Gasoline Alley Coffee.
The thing is, I love to just find a place. Even if it just turns out to be fine! One thing that makes this city amazing is when you go to a restaurant with a friend, it’s amazing, and you ask them “how did you hear about this place? “ and they say something like “oh, I don’t know. I walked into it one time with some friends when I was in college at NYU.” Then you ignore the fact that once again they brought up that they went to NYU because you’re friends.
Last weekend, my wife and I tried to have dinner at a trendy New York restaurant on a Saturday at 7 pm. It did not go well. It was fine! We expected it. So we needed to find a new place to eat at the busiest time to try and eat out. To prove I’m not trying to be some sort of Luddite, I ended up finding a place on my phone. But I didn’t google “best places to eat around me.” I just asked Google Maps to show me restaurants and ended up in Sevilla, a tiny Spanish restaurant in the West Village. Turns out it is the oldest Spanish restaurant in New York City. It was recognized as an American Classic restaurant by the James Beard Foundation, a designation that is awarded to the best family-owned restaurants in the country. Speaking of family-owned, the owner is a man in his 80s who still runs the place. He moved tables around to fit everyone. It was cramped, riddled with Christmas lights, old school in the sense that all the waiters wore blazers, but new school in the way that they were playing a football game in a single TV by the bar. The atmosphere was almost hazy from the radiator heat and the unrelenting aroma of garlic and butter. It was packed full of people from the neighborhood. People who knew the owner. Families coming together for the weekend. I had scallops in a creamy, garlicky white wine sauce and a negroni, my wife had arroz con pollo and a gin and tonic. I had never heard of this place and had no way of finding out about it. After we were done, we wandered in the blistering cold for about ten blocks, warm with booze and food and happiness.
So, I posit one thing about Nuevayol. I agree with the sentiment. The original song rocks. The Bad Bunny song slaps. But I would like to say that “Si te quieres divertir/ con encanto y con primor/sólo tienes que vivir/un INVIERNO en Nueva York.”
Anyway, pre-order my comedy book! It comes out on March 11th and it’s about that one thing Americans love to talk about: immigration!