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One of the most powerful images of Philadelphia’s Italians was the sight of Sylvester Stallone in the film Rocky (1976) running through the streets of the neighborhood and up the steps of the Philadelphia Museum of Art. The ethnic composition of Philadelphia’s Bella Vista neighborhood has been ethnically mixed and changing for almost a century and a half. Italians Americans comprise the one European group which stayed in large numbers after Irish Catholics and Russian Jews moved away (Juliani 1998). Yet the neighborhood is still described as a "Little Italy" in the same way that the Black, Chinese, Jewish, Korean, Lebanese, South Asian, Vietnamese and other merchants bring their ethnic foods and other products to sell at the famous Ninth Street "Italian Market". |
