Toñita’s Club Fights Erasure

Latino USA

Futuro Media and PRX

Society & Culture

4.9 • 3.7K Ratings

🗓️ 9 February 2025

⏱️ 43 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

When you enter the Caribbean Social Club, or Toñita’s, it feels like you could be in your grandmother’s living room. And that’s exactly what its owner, Maria Antonia Cay, —better known as Toñita— was aiming for when she opened the club in the 1970s as a gathering place for the local baseball team. 50 years later, Toñita’s is still standing in Los Sures, the south side of Williamsburg—the most gentrified neighborhood in New York City. Yet over the years, Toñita has faced ever greater challenges to keep her club open. In this episode of Latino USA, we follow Toñita through her latest hurdle, a court battle, and we learn about how the Puerto Rican community in Los Sures has kept culture alive.

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This episode originally aired in 2024.

Transcript

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0:00.0	It's May 22nd and the world is raving about the release of Bad Bunny's new album,
0:13.6	A Verano Sin Tee.
0:18.1	During his promotion in New York City, the king of reggaeton, or pop music in general, basically, chose to celebrate the lunch in a quite unexpected place.
0:30.9	He's in this modest Puerto Rican bar in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, decorated with LED Christmas lights, flowery tablecloths, and walls
0:39.2	full of family photos, baseball posters, and framed newspaper clips.
0:44.3	It could be your grandma's living room.
0:49.7	Bud Bunny is next to this tiny old woman with frizzy white blonde hair who's always smiling.
0:58.2	All of her fingers are taken over by these giant, colorful rings.
1:02.9	She exposes them in front of her chest for the photos, like a peacock opening its tail.
1:09.2	And Bud Bunny imitates her. People shout La Reina, the queen. But Bani describes
1:17.7	her as the real flow. Her name is Maria Antonia Kai, but everyone in New York City knows her
1:26.7	as Toinita.
1:33.3	She's the owner of the Caribbean Social Club, a gathering for Puerto Ricans and other Latino communities since the 1970s.
1:36.0	And it's also the last Latino social club standing in Brooklyn.
1:44.2	But Bunny is behind the bar next to Toñita, drinking a medalla beer, the Puerto Rican
1:49.6	label, and serving cocktails in plastic cups.
1:54.0	Having a Puerto Rican star, like Bad Bunny, spending the night at Tonitas, was a big deal
1:59.1	for its Boricuan owner and her community.
2:02.0	And he's not the only one. Jennifer Lopez, Madonna, or Maluma have shown up at the club as well.
2:09.0	But a year after Bad Bani's visit, Tonita herself was in court,
2:13.9	fighting to keep running the club the way she's always done it.
2:22.1	From Futuro Media and PRX,
	...

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