Viernes Social: How One Man Launched a Puerto Rican Tradition

In Puerto Rico, Friday is not just Friday. It’s SOCIAL Friday. We all call it that. It means happy hour starts anytime after noon and continues throughout the evening. It’s when we let loose after a long work week, where Cuba Libres flow, salsa music blares, and hips sway in concert. If there are a few fritters involved to picar, or pick at, all the better. Bacalaitos, alcapurrias, surrullitos, and pastelillos. And, if it’s a Friday during Christmastime (between Thanksgiving and January 6), it’s Viernes Social on steroids.

I was surprised to learn Viernes Social originated in the 1930s at the exclusive social club called Casino de Puerto Rico.* It was housed in an exquisite Beaux Arts building with a copper mansard roof at the entrance to Old San Juan. In 1933, José S. Alegría, one of the Casino’s leaders (and its president from 1935-1937), set out to increase club attendance on Friday nights. He came up with a slew of activities, named the initiative Viernes Social, and launched it on June 9. It didn’t take long for members to embrace the concept of gathering at the Casino to start off the weekend in a festive manner. You don’t have to invite a Puerto Rican to a party twice! Like in the old Herbal Essence Shampoo commercial, word spread fast, and people began to celebrate Viernes Social all over the island. From its origins in the hoity-toity Casino de Puerto Rico, the concept of Viernes Social spread to the humblest of bar shacks, and became baked into the cultural fabric of my island nation.

*It was not a gambling club, but called “casino” because Spaniards disliked the term “club.”