Donde estan mi gente (Where are my peeps)?

A couple of weeks back, I took a trip to New York for business.  I decided to fly up the day before my meeting and took Danny with me so that we can hit the town :)  Last time we were in NY was when we introduced my last product for my company and we had a great time.  He was going to be home from college for spring break so we decided to make the most of it.  I asked Luisa to find things for us to do while we were up there the week before due to the fact that it was a busy week.  I asked Danny to do the same.  Needless to say, the night before, the 3 of us were trying to figure out what to do since they really did not put much thought into it.  See, Luisa is Cuban, I am Puerto Rican.  So Dan is Cubarican, as his friends have named him.  When he was a baby, he used to say that he was an "acano de Jayuya" or American from Jayuya". 

Most of Luisa's suggestions included Cuban restaurants, Cuban museums...etc. I kept on telling her that this was not what I was interested in Cuban things since we go to Florida all of the time and Dan has had is fair share of Cuban influence.  So I wanted to take him to the land where Salsa was invented.  Where the Puerto Rican Day Parade is held.  Where the term NuyoRican was coined due to the amount of Puerto Ricans in NY.  I figured we would go get some Puerto Rican food, music, t-shirts.  Go all out - Boricua style!

We flew up to New York's LaGuardia and were there by 11:30AM.  We took a taxi to our hotel in Times Square and immediately went down to get our tickets for a spanish play in Broadway.  The play is In The Heights. Luisa actually suggested it and at first I was not crazy about it but after looking at it online, thought it would be cool.  It was spanish and looked cool.  We then ate our first slice of NY Pizza and since it was early, decided to stop by a Flea Market in the Hell's kitchen area of NY.  It was neat but nothing that really caught our attention.  We went back to the hotel and relaxed.  We then headed out to go to dinner.  A Cuban restaurant in Manhattan.  OK, so I caved.  I decided that we would do Cuban that night and have a Puerto Rican meal for lunch the next day.  My meeting was at 1PM so we would do some shopping in "el barrio" and have lunch around Spanish Harlem.  The dinner was actually very good.  The service was great as well.

It then was time to go to the play.  It was fantastic.  It had a great story about trying to get out of the projects but still remembering your roots, family values, and trying to follow your dreams. It was also very funny.  Well, after a great play, we went looking for NY Cheesecake and according to everything we heard, it was Juniors.  And boy were they right.   It was amazing.  We took it back to our hotel, along with a quart of milk and had our own party, watching the Oscars while we had the cheesecake and milk.  Yum.

So after a long day, it was time to pack it in.  We woke up the next morning, had a quick breakfast, and lugged our stuff to find a taxi.  We were off to Spanish Harlem.  (Here's a secret:  I had never been there.  I was pretty excited, and slightly nervous at the same time.)

We hailed a taxi and hopped in.  We told him where we were going and he quickly asked "why?".

We told him that we wanted to go shopping and he immediately responded that there were good places to shop close to us.  We told him that there was a spanish restaurant we wanted to try as well.  He said, there were other spanish restaurants close to where we were.  Hhmmm.  Is he trying to say something?  We said yeah, but we had to be in the area for a meeting anyhow.

He took us there and as soon as he dropped us off, he bolted out of there like a bat out of Hell.
Anyhow, as soon as we got out, we saw a homeless person.  We kept on going.  We walked about 4 blocks looking for a Spanish restaurant or place to shop.   I had looked up some spanish record stores on my phone and went straight there.  We got there and while I was looking for a Puerto Rican style store, the guy who opened up for us turned out to be from Spain. Oh Well.  He clearly had a lot of Puerto Rican stuff such as music and instruments and t-shirts.  I bought a bunch of CDs and then asked him for a recommendation of a good Puerto Rican restaurant in the area.   He said there aren't any. The one over there that is Puerto Rican is really just a "tourist trap" and not worth the effort.

He said that most of the Puerto Rican's are gone.  Moved to Orlando!  What used to be a very Puerto Rican area is now inhabited by Mexicans and Dominicans.  Wow.  What a dissapointment. The other restaurant that was "good" apparently was down back in Manhattan!

So we left, and walked around.  Looking for t-shirts.  None to be found.  I hit another store, looking at guitars.  They won't ship it back home so no-go.  We went to the 3rd store.  Now, we're talking.  The owner was Puerto Rican, with lots of PR flags all over the place.  Kind of interesting though.  Pretty much everything in there was junk :(.  I picked up some dominoes and while I was talking with him, I told him I was Puerto Rican.  He asked me "You're Puerto Rican?", I said yea.  He said again "You're Puerto Rican?" and I said, again, "yeah, I'm Puerto Rican.".    His next words to me came crashing like a brick over my head.  He then says "I thought you were Cuban!". 


Wow.  You know, it is not that I am ashamed of Cubans or think that Puerto Rican's are better in any way.  My wife, whom I have been very happily married to for almost 25 years, and dated for 5 years before, comes from an amazing family.  I have practically grown up with them and am very proud of them and love them dearly.  But you have to understand the pride that I have in my personal history.  While I was not actually born in Puerto Rico, my mom was pregnant when she moved to NJ.  So as my dad says, I was "made in Puerto Rico, but born in the US".  It is something that I have always been proud of.  I've been there many times and have made sure that my wife and kids have been there to meet the family that I have over there.  Spanish people in general, are very proud of their heritage.

To be told by some uneducated person, who does not know me from Adam that I am not Puerto Rican or don't sound like it, well, pretty much was devastating.  Not to mention the fact that I was not able to get a Puerto Rican meal, t-shirts or even experience what I thought all along was Puerto Rico, in USA, away from the real Puerto Rico. 

I was crushed.  We walked to my appointment and on the way, stopped by a deli to have lunch. Amazing.  They served Puerto Rican rice, pork and other stuff.  Of all of the places to finally get part of what we were looking for, it was in a deli.

We came home that evening.  Not having been able to experience what I thought we were going to experience.  I told Dan that our next trip would be to Orlando, to try to get a piece of what we were supposed to experience in New York's Spanish Harlem.