Scottsdale bar manager accused of racism after an incident during the Super Bowl halftime show

SAM DINGMAN: Mark, I don’t know about you, but this year, it felt to me like the Super Bowl halftime show was a bigger story than the game itself.

MARK BRODIE: I mean, it does seem like that’s the thing people are still talking about relative to the game, almost a week later.

DINGMAN: Yes. Every day, there’s another story trickling out about an extreme reaction to Bad Bunny’s performance. And yesterday, I heard about a troubling incident that happened in Scottsdale.

BRODIE: Now let's hear more about it.

DINGMAN: The bars in Old Town Scottsdale are packed with sports fans almost every weekend. But last Sunday, during the Super Bowl, the scene was super-charged.

There was plenty of anticipation for the game itself, but also for the halftime show, which featured Puerto Rican singer Bad Bunny singing in Spanish. But at Casa Amigos, right in the heart of Old Town, the crowd didn’t hear much of his performance. Just as Bad Bunny started performing, the audio of the Super Bowl broadcast abruptly cut out.

Footage posted on TikTok shows the moment it happened: the video feed of Bad Bunny plays on a screen behind the DJ stand. The general manager of the restaurant appears to direct the DJ to replace the audio with a remix of a 1990s rap song, “Ice Ice Baby.”

Kim Hunt was not there. But when she saw the video on TikTok, she was furious. Hunt’s in her early 30s, and lives in Scottsdale, where she’s a full-time social media content creator, frequently commenting on politics.

She saw the GM’s choice of “Ice, Ice, Baby” as a blatant message of support for the Trump administration’s Immigration and Customs Enforcement raids, which have often targeted the Latino community.

KIM HUNT: I am Latino myself, and I just found it incredibly hypocritical that someone who is the GM of a Spanish-named bar, called Casa Amigos, was so irate that the halftime show was in Spanish, when his entire profitability is based on Latino culture.

DINGMAN: Hunt pointed out that, in addition to the name of the restaurant, Casa Amigos regularly promotes Latino-themed food and events.  

HUNT: They have promos for Cinco de Mayo, they’ll even say, like, "Come and fiesta with us!" Obviously, they’ll promote things like “Tequila Tuesdays.”   

DINGMAN: She later posted about all this on her own TikTok channel, where her handle is SlaytheGOP.

HUNT: I think it’s just really important that people dismantle these right-wing talking points that aren’t at all true. As someone who was born and raised in Tucson, and has relatives from Mexico, it’s just deeply harmful when I see people using, like, immigrants as talking points to defend their racism. 

DINGMAN: In a statement posted on Instagram several days after the Super Bowl, the parent company of Casa Amigos, Evening Entertainment Group, said, “We are aware of the decision made by an employee during the game this past weekend. This action does not reflect our standards or our operating procedures, which specifically included a policy of airing the full broadcast with audio.”

They added that the GM has been suspended indefinitely.

We reached out several times to Evening Entertainment Group, as well as the GM, but have not received a reply.