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<\/div>\n<\/div>\nBad Bunny’s Super Bowl halftime performance, explained<\/p>\n
USA TODAY’s Rebecca Morin dives into Bad Bunny’s halftime performance and five easter eggs you may have missed.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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Victor Villa stood in the endzone<\/a> of Levi’s Stadium on Feb. 8, Mexican flag in hand, overcome with emotion as Bad Bunny<\/a> sang “Baile Inolvidable.”<\/a><\/p>\n No, no te puedo olvidar<\/em><\/p>\n No, no te puedo borrar<\/em><\/p>\n T\u00fa me ense\u00f1aste a querer<\/em><\/p>\n Me ense\u00f1aste a bailar<\/em><\/p>\n Villa looked up, pointed his finger towards the sky and shouted: “Abuelo! This one’s for you! Danny! This one’s for you!”<\/p>\n It’s been nearly two weeks since Villa, the owner of beloved Northeast Los Angeles taco staple Villa’s Tacos<\/a>, participated in Bad Bunny’s record-shattering halftime show<\/a> at Super Bowl 60 in San Francisco. Toward the beginning of the Grammy-winning artist’s performance, Bad Bunny<\/a> walked through a set modeled after sugarcane fields and was handed the Puerto Rican shaved ice treat known as a piragua. From there, he walked over to a silver taco cart with the name “Villa’s Tacos” emblazoned in blue script and handed the piragua to Villa.<\/p>\n The whole interaction lasted less than five seconds, but it was enough to go viral.<\/p>\n El Super Bowl? <\/strong>How Bad Bunny is changing the face of Latin pop<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n When Villa landed back in LA the next morning, he drove straight to one of his three locations<\/a>, over at 5455 North Figueroa Street in Highland Park. Awaiting him was a crowd that took up the entire sidewalk and wrapped around the parking lot.<\/p>\n While no stranger to large crowds, this one has yet to subside. Many locals stopped by to get their regular fix of the Michelin Bib Gourmand-award-winning tacos served on their signature handmade blue corn tortillas. Many others in line waited eagerly for their first bite, some of whom had driven hours from places like Palm Springs and even Fresno.<\/p>\n “They’ve been non-stop,” Villa told USA TODAY Sports. “They’ve been the most tiring 72 hours of my life, but they’ve been some of the best 72 hours of my life. Not only because we were seen on the highest platform ever, but because we were received with so much love.<\/p>\n “And that’s ultimately the message that I got from Benito. Just this whole performance, and all the people that I met along the way, the cast that I spent three weeks with, day in and day out. It was just like, ‘Love is the greatest force on Earth.'”<\/p>\n That love is evident in the way Villa carries himself. Everything he does, he does so with love. So when he heard Bad Bunny’s message over the three weeks he spent rehearsing with the cast, it felt like hearing himself talk.<\/p>\n “I learned a lot from Bad Bunny’s demeanor,” he said. “Who he is, like more in depth. And it was nice to see that. It was nice to just see someone who would look at certain things the way I do.”<\/p>\n He barely takes breaks. Instead, he cleans tables. He helps get orders out to customers. And he goes down the line one-by-one and introduces himself to every single person with handshakes, hugs and selfies.<\/p>\n Villa’s Tacos is a true grassroots effort, started out of his grandma’s house in 2018 before evolving into a pop-up, then a brick-and-mortar location, followed by two more. Eight years, a documentary, and an appearance on Netflix’s “Taco Chronicles” later, Villa was in the Super Bowl \u2014 handpicked by the biggest artist in the world.<\/p>\n More: <\/strong>Bad Bunny makes history (again) with new career milestone<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n “I don’t live my life with any limitations,” he said. “I think the sky’s the limit, so I pray to reach the sky and that day came on Sunday. \u2026 I did think that I would be where I\u2019m at today. I was always my biggest fan and I was always rooting for myself.<\/p>\n “So now that we’re here, it’s not necessarily a surprise, but it’s a blessing.”<\/p>\n On Nov. 2, 2018, Villa fired up a grill he found on OfferUp in Long Beach and put some music on. The sounds of Vicente Fern\u00e1ndez, Los Tigres Del Norte, cumbias and merengue filled the air on the block as he made tortillas and welcomed guests into his grandma’s front yard on Avenue 50 and Lincoln Street.<\/p>\n It was a full family affair: his parents and grandparents, cousins, his then-girlfriend (now wife), his sister and all of his cousins \u2212 some of whom were small children at the time and now work at the Grand Central Market location \u2212 were present when Villa sold his first taco.<\/p>\n He was happy.\u00a0<\/p>\n Before making tacos, Villa threw parties for a living. That first day of Villa’s Tacos was one big function that he said lasts to this day.<\/p>\n More: <\/strong>Bad Bunny’s Super Bowl halftime show brings powerful message, celebrities to world stage<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n But no party comes without at least one hangover.\u00a0<\/p>\n Villa’s goal from the very beginning was to make the best tacos he could, even if it wasn’t the most profitable. Everything from the cuts of meat to the marinade, to the guacamole and the salsas, to the masa (a corn-based dough used to make tortillas) had to be top-tier. It was, as he calls it, “the Villa\u2019s way<\/a>.”<\/p>\n That uncompromising vision has paid off today, but eight years ago, it almost ruined him.\u00a0<\/p>\n The gas tank in the Dodge Ram truck he bought specifically to make the trips back and forth from his grandma’s house to the pop-up stand on York Boulevard more efficiently was empty. His refrigerator was empty. So was his bank account. His credit cards were maxed out.<\/p>\n \u00a0“It was the toughest year of my life,” he said. “Tough financially, tough staying in the battle when there was no more gas. \u2026But we still needed to eat, and there was no way for us to eat.”<\/p>\n A month behind on rent every month, Villa started to lose hope in himself. The people who had always supported him were now starting to question him.<\/p>\n “Maybe you should go back to your other job,”he remembers people telling him.<\/p>\n There was one person, however, whose faith was unwavering: his wife.<\/p>\n “She looked at me dead in my eyes,” Villa recalls. “And she was like, ‘If anybody could do it, it\u2019s you. Keep on going, you got this.<\/em>\u2019 And I was like, \u2018Wow, alright let\u2019s go.'”<\/p>\n Villa’s grandmother died in the years since he started making tacos, but that house on Avenue 50 and Lincoln is still in the family. And when he visits, Villa will sometimes just sit in the yard, thinking about where it all started.<\/p>\n “I’m definitely grateful for it all because of those times that brought me here,” he said. “… It\u2019s just a reminder of where we came from. And not only where we came from \u2014 that house \u2014 but where we came from<\/em>.”<\/p>\n Villa’s father, Victor Sr., immigrated to the United States from Jiquilpan, a small pueblo in the state of Michoac\u00e1n near Sahuayo, with his brother when he was 18 years old. After eventually reuniting with his mother and the rest of his six siblings, who had stayed behind, they settled into an apartment in Echo Park. However, they lost everything in a fire.<\/p>\n “We had to start all over again,” Victor Sr. said in the documentary film, “\u00c9chale Ganas<\/a>.” “But we were safe, and we were together as a family.”<\/p>\n With aid from the American Red Cross, the Villa family moved into their new home, where they’ve now been for 45 years.<\/p>\n One of the oldest neighborhoods in Los Angeles, Highland Park has historically been a heavily Latino working-class community. That\u2019s been changing in recent years.<\/p>\nVilla’s Tacos gets Bad Bunny stamp of approval at Super Bowl 60<\/h2>\n
Villa’s Tacos owner ‘learned a lot’ from Bad Bunny<\/h2>\n
From financial hardship to steadfast faith, Villa’s Tacos rise<\/h2>\n
Villa’s Tacos: A Highland Park story<\/h2>\n