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Food empire drives growth to the Max’s
Phil-Am Food Mart is unshakeable in its Jersey City neighborhood, its home since the ‘70s. But something is different now. The grocery, founded by the Aguila family from Batangas, has expanded into a merchandising behemoth supplying Asian food products to restaurants and groceries throughout the East Coast. The grocery has branched out into a restaurant-bakery, […]
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Manny Pacquiao as American pop culture icon
By Daniel de la Rosa The iconization of Manny Pacquiao has begun. The Filipino boxer, who has won eight world titles, is now the flag bearer of CBS (whither Charlie Sheen?) and is lending his name to a men’s cologne. The first time something as memorable has happened to a great American athlete was football […]
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‘I was called Negro; people didn’t know what Filipino was’
By Cristina DC Pastor Artist Maria Watts, who grew up in Wayne, West Virginia, is making a film about finding her identity within a biracial family. TF: Tell me about your film. MW: I’m gathering interviews from my mother, my father, my two brothers and sister. I want to ask them questions about how it […]
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A mural grows in Philly
A stained glass mural depicting Philippine history through its heroes and regular folks is being crafted in Greater Philly by noted muralist Eliseo Art Silva. Unfortunately, all work is on hold right now because the project is low on funds. “If I get partial funding by mid-May this year, it should be done by December […]
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• A boy for Kevin James, wife • FAHSI is Miss America partner • Volunteer for Tagalog language class
“King of Queens” actor Kevin James and his Filipina wife Steffiana de la Cruz welcomed a baby boy April 24, the first son for the couple. Kannon Valentine has two older sisters Sienna-Marie, 6, and Shea Joelle, 4. Kevin and Steffiana, a former model-actress, are both from New York. They married in 2004. A year […]
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Manhattan artist’s creative downsizing in a recession
By Dulcie Dee Two weeks before Christmas of December 2008, I was suddenly laid off from my 9-5 PowerPoint designer job at an engineering firm. I went home disappointed, disgruntled, dejected and worried because it was the start of the downfall of the U.S. economy. Since 2008, jobs have become scarce and hard to come […]
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Reporter gets own scoop on ‘Hawaii Five-O’
By Andrea Stephanie McPherson On a whim and a prayer, I decided to go out on a limb and take my friend up on his offer to couchsurf in Hawaii. Never would I have imagined going from couchsurfing to having my own apartment and working regularly as a background actor on “Hawaii Five-O.” It’s always […]
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The story of Paco Larrañaga
By Cristina DC Pastor There is something Kennedyesque about the story of Paco Larrañaga, a Filipino-Spanish man who, at 19, was charged in the double murder and rape of two Filipino-Chinese sisters in Cebu in 1997. “Give up Tomorrow,” currently screening at the Tribeca Film Festival captures every chilling detail of his conviction as well […]
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Bloomingdale’s today, N.Y. Fashion Week next?
By Cristina DC Pastor The t-shirt was the beginning for designer Robin Tomas, son of Imelda Marcos impersonator Tessie Tomas. But, boy, was it a jumpstarter: The shirt he designed for Supima – marketing unit of American Pima cotton — won in 2009, impressing the likes of New York Times fashion editor Horacio Silva and […]