Meet the woman behind “El Bloombito”

Tue, 30 Oct 2012 21:14:00 +0000

In the past few days, as New York City Mayor Mike Bloomberg held forth at his numerous Hurricane Sandy–related press conferences, two surprisingly entertaining sideshows have emerged in the midst of disaster. There has been the lively, expressive work of the mayor's sign language interpreter Lydia Callis, whom New York magazine accurately praised as a "both lightning-fast and emotive" presence during Hizzoner's updates. And then there's been Mayor Mike Bloomberg's awkward, shambling attempts at "Spanish."

Delivered with all the Latin aplomb of a tone-deaf Tijuana tourist, Bloomberg's Spanish has been a hallmark of his administration. But it first became a full-blown meme during Hurricane Irene, in 2011, when Rachel Figueroa-Levin was watching the mayor's not-quite-Rosetta Stone-level attempts to communicate with his Spanish-speaking urban population in pre-hurricane amusement. "I was joking with people on Twitter," the Inwood resident says. Rather than "clutter" her own Twitter stream with her joking imitations of Bloomberg's stilted stabs at multiculturalism, she created a "speaky the Spanish" alter ego: Miguel Bloombito.

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Meet the woman behind “El Bloombito”