ICE CUBES: Little black boxes stuffed with immigrant history

Just the other day, a series of black news paper boxes sprouted up in my neighborhood offering a take-away version of Mural Arts' textJourneys Southtext program.

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ICE CUBES: Little black boxes stuffed with immigrant history

POSTED: Friday, April 29, 2011, 12:00 PM

Filed Under: Ice Cubes

Mural Arts' Journeys South program has already received big praise and big press (like the cover of this week’s City Paper) for its interactive outreach into the immigrant tales of South Philadelphia. Everything from walking tours to installation art will tell the stories of this area’s known and unheralded cultural touchstones. But just the other day, a series of black news paper boxes sprouted up in my neighborhood offering a take-away version of the Mural Arts program. While I spied the first on my morning walk with my greyhound Django (the black box featuring the wood carved-looking illustration of Bill McIntyre at the corner of Passyunk and Dickinson) the second box at 9th & Washington starring cover gent “Frank Snock” of Snockey’s Seafood fame was easier to photograph when I wasn’t being pulled by a long, lean pooch.

What is in these boxes are newspaper broadsides — 11 1/2 by 13 inches in diameter — dedicated to several icons of South Philly immigrant culture. Along with a brief paragraph that tells, in brief, the biography of said icon (Snock was a Polish immigrant who boxed under the name “Johnny Coffee” to earn money to open a restaurant) with drawings by Eric Ruin and poems (or “Neighbor Ballads”) spread across two pages written by Frank Sherlock. Each box — whether in tribute to Joe Tayoun or Ba Nyugen or Fabiola Canto — is a welcome surprise. I won’t tell you where to find them. Just be on the lookout.

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