For nearly six decades, Los Tigres del Norte’s name has been all over the charts, on countless marquees, seven Grammys and, now, one street in New York City.
On Thursday, the historic música Mexicana band showed up to the Sunset Park neighborhood of Brooklyn, surrounded by fans at the grand presentation of the newly minted Los Tigres del Norte Way.
“Starting today, a street in Brooklyn carries the name of Los Tigres del Norte,” the group wrote in an Instagram post Thursday evening. “Thank you for walking with us, today and always.”
The Sinaloense legends’ street sign is located on 5th Avenue and 47th Street in Brooklyn, surrounded by a litany of Latino restaurants.
“We’ve been coming to New York for so many years,” vocalist and accordion player Jorge Hernandez said in a TV interview Wednesday with New York’s Fox 5. “We’ve been able to connect with the community, so that’s why we’ve been selected today to have the street and we are very happy to be honored tomorrow.”
The road naming occurred on the same day as the release of the “La Puerta Negra” artists’ latest five-track EP “La Lotería.” The title track is a sociopolitical corrido that uses the imagery of the popular bingo-like Mexican game to comment on topics like immigration and the past criminality of the current U.S. president.
The band will play its first-ever show at New York’s historic Madison Square Garden on May 24 to wrap up their current East Coast stint before performing June 13 at the Agua Caliente Casino in Rancho Mirage, Calif., and June 15 in Del Mar, Calif.
However, Thursday’s festivities weren’t the first time that the “Jaula de Oro” band was honored with a street-naming ceremony. A strip of W. 26th Street in Chicago is honorarily named after the 12-time Latin Grammy winners. The street runs through the Windy City’s Little Village neighborhood, which is known as the “Mexico of the Midwest” due to upwards of 80% of its residents being of Mexican descent.
Los Tigres del Norte were feted locally in 2014 in the most L.A. way possible — with a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.
In June, the group will receive lifetime recognition for its members’ continued immigration advocacy from Monterey County officials ahead of their tour date in Salinas, Calif.
