{"id":166502,"date":"2026-02-06T09:13:12","date_gmt":"2026-02-06T09:13:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/166502\/"},"modified":"2026-02-06T09:13:12","modified_gmt":"2026-02-06T09:13:12","slug":"bad-bunny-look-alike-contest-in-san-francisco-draws-hundreds-of-fans-5","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/166502\/","title":{"rendered":"Bad Bunny look-alike contest in San Francisco draws hundreds of fans"},"content":{"rendered":"

SAN FRANCISCO \u2013 A Bad Bunny look-alike contest at a San Francisco restaurant snowballed into a street party after hundreds of fans of the global superstar showed up to cheer his doppelgangers and sing along to his music ahead of his Super Bowl halftime show<\/a> this weekend. <\/p>\n

More than 30 contestants from across the Bay Area, including men with tight curly hair, women in wigs and fake facial hair and a kindergartener in a fedora, white tank top and bow tie, competed for a $100 prize at a packed Mexican restaurant in the Mission neighborhood.<\/p>\n

They channeled the 31-year-old Puerto Rican singer through some of his signature looks, donning straw hats known as a \u201cpava\u201d and traditionally worn by Puerto Rican farmers, or a shearling aviator hat like the one the artist has worn at times since the release his 2025 album, \u201cDebi Tirar Mas Fotos,\u201d which translates to \u201cI should have taken more photos.\u201d It won album of the year<\/a> at the Grammy Awards on Sunday. <\/p>\n

Adam Fox, 24, and his friend Alejandro Kurt, 23, traveled from Belmont, a city about 25 miles (40 kilometers) south of San Francisco, after both men with curly dark hair and dark facial hair were told they look like Bad Bunny.<\/p>\n

Fox, an aspiring actor who wore a suit, bowtie, and dark sunglasses, said he is a fan of Bad Bunny\u2019s music even though he doesn\u2019t speak Spanish.<\/p>\n

His music \u201cis like art. You don\u2019t have to totally understand it. It could just be something that\u2019s beautiful,\u201d Fox said.<\/p>\n

The contestants imitated Bad Bunny\u2019s \u201cperreo,\u201d or twerking, and repeated his criticism<\/a> of the Trump administration\u2019s mass deportation campaign with one wnnabe-Bad Bunny in a wig and a black tuxedo holding an \u201cICE Out\u201d sign as she danced through the packed Tacolicious restaurant to roaring cheers from the crowd.<\/p>\n

But the artist\u2019s music remained the focus of the lookalike contest organized by Mission Loteria, a group that promotes Latino businesses, with people spilling out to the street where a DJ played Bad Bunny’s most-loved tracks and some in costumes resembling the Puerto Rican crested toad<\/a>, an endangered species that is featured in one of his music videos, danced with contestants. <\/p>\n

Pamela Guo, 33, traveled from San Jose to compete in the contest dressed in an aviator hat, shorts and an athletic jacket. Guo, who had a painted-on beard, said she is such a fan of the singer that she traveled to Mexico City to see him in concert.<\/p>\n

\u201cI love to perrear and dance, so I do love that aspect of his music,\u201d she said, adding that his last album has deeper lyrics that speak to her because they talk about our shared humanity.<\/p>\n

The grand prize went to Abdul Ramirez Arroyave, a professional Bad Bunny impersonator from Colombia, who was dressed in a red shirt and straw hat on top a tight curly hair wig. <\/p>\n

When asked to say a few words after his win, he said \u201cthanks for everything\u201d then broke into song with the crowd singing along Bad Bunny\u2019s \u201cDebi tirar mas fotos.\u201d <\/p>\n

Ramirez Arroyave then joined the party outside and took photos with his new adoring fans. <\/p>\n

Copyright 2026 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without permission.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"SAN FRANCISCO \u2013 A Bad Bunny look-alike contest at a San Francisco restaurant snowballed into a street party…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":166503,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[30],"tags":[80272,52499,80274,29160,536,967,80273,101,103,102,104,106,105,17],"class_list":{"0":"post-166502","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-san-francisco","8":"tag-abdul-ramirez-arroyave","9":"tag-adam-fox","10":"tag-alejandro-kurt","11":"tag-bad-bunny","12":"tag-donald-trump","13":"tag-entertainment","14":"tag-pamela-guo","15":"tag-san-francisco","16":"tag-san-francisco-headlines","17":"tag-san-francisco-news","18":"tag-sf","19":"tag-sf-headlines","20":"tag-sf-news","21":"tag-u-s-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/166502","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=166502"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/166502\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/166503"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=166502"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=166502"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=166502"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}