A halftime set sparked outrage no one expected.
Danielle Jurinsky says a simple Super Bowl decision turned her life upside down. The 41-year-old owns JJ’s Place in Aurora, Colorado. She says she only tried to give customers what they wanted during halftime on Sunday. Instead, she now faces racism accusations, online criticism, and many one-star reviews.
Jurinsky told the Daily Mail that customers walked in asking which halftime show she planned to air. “People were walking through the door and before they would even sit down to look at the menu, asking: Which halftime show are you going to be showing?” she said.
Many wanted to watch Turning Point USA’s All-American Halftime Show. Others preferred Bad Bunny’s official Super Bowl LX performance. Jurinsky decided to show both.
“I just put the TVs on half and half,” she said. “I let Bad Bunny be on the sound for a little bit, and then I switched the sound to Turning Point.”
Online Backlash And Super Bowl Review Storm
The mood inside the bar quickly changed.
Scroll to continue reading
latest in NFL news
Jurinsky said a small group protested by feeding money into the jukebox and blasting Bad Bunny songs. When the game resumed and other customers wanted the game audio, the group demanded refunds. Jurinsky said they also accused her staff of favoring white patrons.
“These gals started calling me a racist,” she told the Daily Mail.
Get notified of the most viral NFL stories via Google!
One of the women, local Mexican singer Monica the Great, later posted a video on social media criticizing the bar. “F*** your racist ass bar tenders,” Monica wrote on Instagram. She claimed the bar “accommodated the white racist people.”
Jurinsky said she refunded their money and treated them kindly. Monica even noted online that “there was this nice white lady with glasses, she apologized a million times and gave us our money back,” referring to Jurinsky.
Still, the fallout hit hard. Jurinsky said the bar received about eight one-star Yelp reviews from people who had not visited. “People who hadn’t even been to my establishment were seeing this gal’s Instagram post and were giving me one-star reviews,” she said. “I got so upset.”
Jurinsky shared her side on X. Supporters soon flooded her page with positive reviews, donations, and gift card purchases. Some critics accused her of inventing the story to gain sympathy. She rejected that claim.
“I had to refund money. I had to tolerate bad reviews,” she said. “I’m not lying. This girl put this video up, and this is what happened.”
Jurinsky, a Republican and former Aurora city council member, said politics did not drive her decision. “Probably 75 percent of the people who come through the doors, they have no idea what the political views of the owner are,” she said.
She says she only wanted to run her bar like any other Sunday. Instead, she says, the night left her dealing with what feels like a nightmare.
