Santurce es Ley

You would’ve thought I was at a Kanye concert, with how excited I was to be at Puerto Rico’s Santurce es Ley, a street art festival that was created six years ago bringing in street artist from all over the world! Back in 2010, artist begin to paint all over an abandoned and dilapidated buildings in this neighborhood which soon turned into Santurce’s Law. I literally hopped, skipped, and jumped through the streets as I turned every corner to find gargantuan sized street art on EVERY SINGLE building.

We ate lunch at a restaurant called Tresbe (I’ll tell you more about them tomorrow) that was surrounded by street art. Our waitresses noticed us taking pictures and talking about it and recommended we go to the festival! PERFECT SURPRISE BIRTHDAY PRESENT, which next to the rainforest might have been my favorite part of the trip.

A lot of the painted buildings were abandoned and some had been turned into restaurants and bars. There was one restaurant with no ceiling like in the movie, Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs! There was another building that was beautifully painted but the ceiling was collapsed in and whatever it used to be, it still contained merchandise. Some abandoned buildings had become homes for the less fortunate but still managed to even have art in the inside.

As we walked the streets we kept seeing people with what looked like an oversized piece of fried bread, we later find out it was catfish and Keisha had to get one. It was a bit much for me but it was good. Keisha then got her arm painted by an artist (@carlitos_skillz) who had some of the most gorgeous murals in an abandoned lot.

The people of Puerto Rico were so nice and friendly. I even saw a dope gentleman on the streets with a Santurce es Ley t-shirt. I was so in love with it, that I had to have one, so I stopped him! Come to find out he made the shirt. We started talking and I was having trouble pronouncing his name so he pulled me over to one of the murals on the walls and pointed to it, Javier, he was one of the artist! I’m an art geek and was so excited to meet him!

(Photographed by: Maurice Glaspie) (Photographed by: Keisha Little)

We met so many artist walking the streets, ate and drank different foods we never had before, and finished the festival being cooled down by the rain. The wonderful experience about the art in San Juan is that it doesn’t limit itself to the Santurce area; The art is all of San Juan! I am so in love with this colorful city!

(All photos were taken by Snooty unless noted otherwise)

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