Street Latinos
⚡ ALL INFORMATION CLICK HERE 👈🏻👈🏻👈🏻
Street Latinos
Street Art & The Latinos That Influenced The Culture of Writers
Before hipsters scattered around urban areas like organic roaches. Before Bansky. Before 3-D images, bubble, boxed and futuristic typography sprayed on subway cars were called street art by mainstream art collectors and gallery curators, the 1970s spurred an army of devoted graffiti artists called “writers” who just wanted to showcase their art, talent and bomb their names all over New York City.
OK, so bomb and New York City is not the thing to say, especially after September 2011. But during the ‘70s and ‘80s the term “bombing” meant that your tag, name or artwork was spray-painted on one of the Metropolitan Transit Authority ’s subways that traveled all over the concrete jungle of New York City. Along with break dancing, DJing and rapping, writers no older than 19, considered this unlawful, risky and dangerous act as one of the four elements of hiphop.
One of the pioneers who paved the way in creative expression while using his name as a tool to capture the attention of haters, fanatics and subway riders oblivious to the incoming artistry arriving at their station is Lee Quiñones. The Puerto Rican-born and Lower East Side-raised Quiñones debuted his unsolicited artistry in 1974. His underground fame became mainstream once “Wild Style,” a 1984 film that followed a group of New York graffiti writers and hip-hop artists, hit theaters. By the late ‘80s he was already selling urban style art pieces in galleries all over New York City. The graffiti icon is not only immortalized by films and documentaries but also by the art book “Subway Art,” which is one of the top selling art books to date.
The film “Wild Style” also featured Sandra Fabara, better known as Lady Pink. This Ecuadorian writer, who was raised in Queens and graduated from the High School of Art & Design in New York City, made her mark in the male dominated graffiti world from 1979 to 1985. Like most writers, Lady Pink traveled and entered the darkest and most dangerous subway tunnels to display her artistry. Quickly, the graffiti community recognized her creativity and fearlessness. Now, more than 30 years later, the respected, beloved and admired Lady Pink is still a highly sought-after painter, muralist and graffiti writer with works featured in art galleries, museums and sponsored building walls all over the U.S.
Most associate the history of graffiti with only New York. But Philadelphia, D.C. and Los Angeles also had writers showcasing their talents on billboards and vacant buildings. During the early ‘70s Mexican-American Chaz Bojórquez brought his style of Asian calligraphy and the Chicano graffiti style of the ‘50s to the streets of East Los Angeles. Bojórquez is now considered the godfather of The “Cholo”-style letters seen on the hoods of pimped-out rides, motorcycle jackets and tattoos that usually goes along with an image of a skull or a red rose placed next to them.
Quis autem vel eum iure reprehenderit qui in ea voluptate velit esse quam nihil molestiae consequatur, vel illum qui dolorem?
Temporibus autem quibusdam et aut officiis debitis aut rerum necessitatibus saepe eveniet.
A Look Back at the Latinos of ‘Sesame Street’
Keyboard Shortcuts Enabled Disabled
Sign up for our newsletter and receive the coolest updates!
About Us
Careers
Advertising
Contact
Agency
Privacy Policy
If you are part of the 95% of American children who watched Sesame Street before age three — or perhaps a product of one of the 140 countries where the groundbreaking educational show is syndicated — you probably got a little bummed out last week. Yes, after 44 years, María just up and left us .
Okay, to be fair she actually retired at a perfectly reasonable point in her career, but that doesn’t make it any easier for those of us who found one our earliest positive images of Latinidad in Boricua Sonia Manzano ’s fictional small business owner, caring mother, and second-floor resident of 123 Sesame Street. That’s because Sesame Street was waaay ahead of the representation curve for children’s television, and — let’s be honest — for American television in general. Over 46 years, the show’s cast has been stocked full of African-Americans, Indian-Americans, Japanese-Americans, Native Americans, fuzzy green monsters, fuzzy red monsters, giant birds, and of course, Latinos. Oh and in the Sesame Street universe we’re not gangbangers, drug dealers, drug addicts, or petty thieves — what a revolutionary idea!
And indeed, when Sesame Street first kicked off in the late 60s, it was actually revolutionary to show young children that all sorts of different looking people with different cultures live together in the United States. And over nearly five decades the show has only matured its innovative approach to children’s eduction, staying relevant throughout the years and continuing to be the gold standard for educational programming.
Along the way the faces have changed, but Latino characters have continued to be a cornerstone of Sesame Street ’s idealistic urban utopia, where black and white, man and monster live together, play together, and learn from one another. So in honor of María’s departure from the block after all these years, here’s a look back at the past and present of Latino Sesame Street .
Yes, before María there was Miguel. Officially the first Latino on Sesame Street , Miguel was played by Puerto Rican born Broadway actor Jaime Sánchez, who also happened to play Chico as part of the original cast of West Side Story. After his departure from the Street, Sánchez went on to have a prolific career on stage and screen, appearing in films like Bad Lieutenant, Carlito’s Way, and Piñero.
Here he is introducing young audiences to the letter ‘A’.
Does she need anymore introduction? The Bronx-born Boricua got the gig for a recurring role on the show fresh out of the Carnegie Mellon Theater Department. Starting out as a teenaged book store employee, “María” grew along with Sonia, eventually marrying her fictional boo, Luis Rodríguez, giving birth to their fiction child Gabi (first played by Manzano’s actual daughter, Gabriela,) and hopping on as co-owner of Luis’s Fix-It Shop. After becoming a permanent cast-member in 1974 Manzano also started writing for Sesame Street , for which she’s earned a total of 15 Emmy Awards.
Here María plants a racy, PG kiss on Luis’ lips as martians look on trying to make sense of the whole thing. General audiences must have been scandalized.
Behind every great woman, there is a great man. Over 44 years this Calexico, California native played a handyman, small business owner and aspiring writer who just so happened to be married to the most sabrosa Boricua in the hood. Along the way, he earned the title of longest running Mexican-American actor on a television series. Indeed, Delgado has proven to be most at home on the small screen: outside of Sesame Street he’s taken roles in everything from Law & Order to Person of Interest to a bit part as “Ambassador Davila” in season 3 of House of Cards .
In this classic clip, Luis discovers the joy of prescription eyewear.
I bet you didn’t know Gomez Addams himself lived on Sesame Street for a few years before his Hollywood career took off. Juliá’s character, “Rafael” was Luis’s business partner and co-owner of the Fix-It Shop for four seasons. It is unclear whether his time on Sesame Street inspired Juliá to take the part of M. Bison in 1994’s Street Fighter, but his starring role in Capcom’s critical dud probably wasn’t the best advised career decision. Tragically, it was the last film before his premature death.
Here we see one of Puerto Rico’s greatest leading men igniting a passion for Spanish in preschoolers with words like “oreja” and “mano”:
Sonia Manzano took the dreaded mother vs. career conundrum by the horns when she brought her biological daughter on to the show to play “Gabi”, María and Luis’ fictional daughter. All was going swimmingly until a two-year-old Gabi started chewing her hair during takes. Manzano was smart enough to pick up on the behavioral cues and asked little Gabriela if she enjoyed acting on the show. “Not much,” was the diapered diva’s wise-beyond-her-years response. And that was the end of that.
Here, the whole Sesame Street gang witnesses the joy of birth (or rather, the moments immediately after) as a newborn Reagan makes her television debut.
Another Bronx-born Boricua, Cruz was brought on in the early nineties as part of a curriculum push on race relations. He’s since gone on to act in film and television, landing supporting roles in big time features like Stargate and The Brave , alongside Johnny Depp and Marlon Brando.
This New Jersey-born Ecuadorian-American landed a recurring role as a local teen on Sesame Street over five seasons before majoring in Visual Arts at Rutgers University. He’s since gone on to guest star in series like Law & Order, Oz, and Prison Break–notice a trend here?
Here he is counting heads alongside María, Luis, and Gabi as part of Sesame Street ’s “The Add’ems Family” skit.
When the real-life Gabi ducked out of the limelight, eight-year-old Nuyorican Desiree Casado took over fictional daughter duties and continues holding it down to this day. As the original cast has aged in grandparent status, the now 30-year-old Casado has become increasingly central to the show. In addition to her work on Sesame Street , she’s taken supporting parts in films like I Like it Like That and Gloria , with Sharon Stone.
Here we witness Gabi undergo that sacred right of passage: taking off her training wheels.
This native of Aguas Buenas, Puerto Rico claims to have learned English watching Sesame Street , so how appropriate that the 28-year-old would gain national attention as a Latino writer and techie named Armando on that same show two decades later. He’s also landed roles on CBS’ The Good Wife , and most recently the xenophobic action-thriller In the Blood .
Here Mando teaches elementary schoolers how to rhyme in Spanish with some special Caribeño flair.
8 Latino-Owned Streetwear Brands You Need to Know
Keyboard Shortcuts Enabled Disabled
Sign up for our newsletter and receive the coolest updates!
About Us
Careers
Advertising
Contact
Agency
Privacy Policy
The label “streetwear” can often feel like an oversimplification, an umbrella term that fails to do justice to the creative brilliance behind threads and accessories conceived by those with ideas bigger than just clothes. Once secluded to the same underground as the subcultures that produced them, streetwear now sits cozily alongside high fashion, sharing spaces in boutiques, department stores, and online alike – inadvertently setting the tone for styles and trends through its effortless cool.
The shine from that spotlight isn’t always a good thing, making for an oversaturated market of ill-informed design that lacks substance. That said, amongst the never-ending sea of emerging “streetwear” brands, there are streetwear purveyors making all the right waves with fly threads driven by messages of clear opposition towards the ills of gentrification, police brutality, or any variation of systematic authority. Let it be clear, there are brands out here putting on for the subcultures that birthed them, and some of the best doing it are at the hands of Latinx designers and visionaries. Peep them below:
A post shared by FourTwoFour On Fairfax (@fourtwofouronfairfax) on Sep 21, 2017 at 7:36pm PDT
Guillermo Andrade brought forth LA concept shop FourTwoFour on Fairfax in 2010, along with the subsequent creation of the aesthetically aligned shop’s in-house label 424 in 2015. Andrade, an undocumented Guatemalan immigrant in his youth, reimagines classic pieces with bold prints and an artful attention to detail, like his highly coveted police brutality-protesting 424 red armband. Streetwear purists might be off-put by a high price point, but Andrade’s dedication to keeping the creative process from conception to production in LA simultaneously provides quality garments and serves the community.
A post shared by FourTwoFour On Fairfax (@fourtwofouronfairfax) on Aug 27, 2017 at 7:39pm PDT
A post shared by MIDNIGHT STUDIOS (@midnightstudios) on Nov 8, 2017 at 11:07am PST
Perhaps no brand sits so comfortably on the fine line between streetwear and high fashion like Midnight Studios, the product of California whiz kid Shane Gonzales. A child of punk aesthetics, hip hop sensibilities, and a distinct veneration for designers like Raf Simons and Jun Takahashi to name a few, Midnight Studios has provided coveted pieces with an essence all its own, which might explain an impressive resume sporting frequent collaborations with Virgil Abloh’s Off-White, A$AP Mob’s AWGE collective, and most recently classic denimwear GUESS.
A post shared by MIDNIGHT STUDIOS (@midnightstudios) on Aug 17, 2017 at 3:08pm PDT
A post shared by S T R A Y R ☆ T S (@strayrats) on Jun 8, 2017 at 10:55am PDT
Now in its eighth year, streetwear brand Stray Rats consistently drops one-of-a-kind collections inspired by a careful consideration to the intersections of subcultures. Born to a Cuban mother and a Colombian father, Julian Consuegra conceived the brand as an ode to underground punk scenes and inner city living in mind. Founded in Miami, the brand saw a relocation to New York City that brought along streetwear veteran JR Ewing, previously of FUCT, to see Stray Rat at its most polished. With Consuegra having been tapped to implement his talents to design Drake’s tour merch, we can only imagine what the future holds for the Stray Rats brand and Julian Consuegra.
A post shared by S T R A Y R ☆ T S (@strayrats) on Oct 10, 2017 at 9:03am PDT
A post shared by Spaghetti Boys (@spaghettiboysofficial) on Apr 24, 2016 at 1:39pm PDT
What don’t the Spaghetti Boys do? Kings of the youth, multimedia artists, DJs, New York City underground socialites, unintentional IG influencers, fashion designers, but mostly just a couple dudes putting out their creative vision in whatever capacity and medium they find fitting. With a youthful aesthetic to match, the NYC-based collective headed by Kerwin Frost and Ray Martinez produces clothing and accessories at its liking, most recently releasing a backpack in collaboration with Sprayground only available from the back of a U-Haul truck pop up on Lafayette Street; adding to collaborations with Off-White, Heron Preston, Fool’s Gold and Nike.
A post shared by PARADISE.NYC (@paradis3nyc) on May 20, 2017 at 12:33pm PDT
The symbiotic relationship between skate culture and streetwear should be of no surprise, and that’s apparent in the half-Salvadoran / half-Irish skate phenom Sean Pablo’s (skating for Supreme and Fucking Awesome) streetwear brand PARADIS3. Founded in 2015 when he was just 16 years old, the brand boasts an unapologetic amalgamation of religious imagery and an array of graphics drawn from car decals to bail bonds ads; effortlessly embodying the chaotic beauty that is Pablo’s youth in LA.
A post shared by PARADISE.NYC (@paradis3nyc) on Dec 12, 2016 at 7:34pm PST
A post shared by BORNXRAISED (@bornxraised_official) on Dec 7, 2017 at 2:24pm PST
In a market visibly oversaturated with poor blackletter design and severely lacking substance, BornxRaised prevails as the realest brand out there since its founding in 2013. A sticker graphic by co-founder Spanto reading “Gentrification is Genocide” would make the connection with fellow co-founder 2Tone to build this never-ending homage to Venice and its roots. From quality threads, to zines, videos, and one-of-a-kind of events like its annual Sadie Hawkins dance, BornxRaised has proven to exist beyond the limitations of simply being a streetwear brand, with garments that remind us to put on for our home turf and combat gentrification.
A post shared by BORNXRAISED (@bornxraised_official) on Jan 23, 2018 at 11:38am PST
A post shared by FELT* (@feltusa) on Feb 1, 2018 at 7:33pm PST
2013 saw the founding of Kristian Acosta‘s streetwear brand Felt, an acronym of “For Every Living Thing.” Born in Miami, Acosta – aka Kosta – spent a portion of his youth in Colombia. Kosta’s designs recall the simplistic essence of early streetwear, with a minimal implementation of graphics and text playing with bold colors and often referencing the cartoon, music, and sports-filled bygone days of the Miami native’s upbringing.
A post shared by FELT* (@feltusa) on Aug 8, 2017 at 9:29am PDT
A post shared by Publichousingskateteam.com (@publichousingskateteam) on Feb 4, 2018 at 10:31am PST
For all its intersections/crossovers with high fashion markets, the best streetwear will forever be a product of the youth. No brand in recent memory embodies that more authentically than Public Housing Skate Team – a raw encapsulation of hood living in hoodies, tees, skate decks, just to name a few. Founded by The Bronx’s own Gun Hill Houses project skater boy Vlad Gomez, this gritty streetwear brand has found international acclaim but don’t get it twisted, PHST will forever be for the kids.
A post shared by Publichousingskateteam.com (@publichousingskateteam) on Dec 15, 2017 at 1:11pm PST
DDoS protection by Cloudflare
Ray ID: 72582f9e48287a64
Please enable Cookies and reload the page.
This process is automatic. Your browser will redirect to your requested content shortly.
Hot Women Striping
Thick Legs Naked
Giantess Vore Me Time