Four quarters. That is what an original Philadelphia print costs if you know which vending machine to find, and the one I keep thinking about sits in the Merch Store at Reading Terminal Market. It is a machine from the 1970s that is not made anymore, and the artist who runs it says she took it “from rusty and crusty to shiny and new.” She is Fabiola Lara, an illustrator, and she now has 15 of these machines scattered across the city. I have spent my whole life in hospitality, and the best thing a place can do is give you a reason to walk to the next place. She built that out of quarters.

Who Fabiola Lara is

On her own shop page, Lara describes herself as a Chilean-American illustrator, content strategist, and full-time artist based in Philadelphia. She has been drawing for clients since 2016, and she lists Instagram, the Philadelphia Museum of Art and Adobe among them. The Inquirer noted in 2022 that she grew up in Florida and landed in Philadelphia in 2020. So this is someone who chose the city, and then spent a few years working out how to say thank you to it with a pencil.

Her answer arrived in 2024. In her words, she launched her Mini Print Vending Machines that year, and the project has grown to 15 machines. Her Instagram account has about 37,000 followers, which tells me a lot of people are watching where the next machine lands.

What comes out of the machine

The prints are small, and they are meant to be. The Inquirer described them as resembling postage stamps, with scalloped borders framing illustrations of Philadelphia landmarks like the LOVE sculpture, Rocky and the William Penn statue. Every design starts in her studio, gets risograph-printed locally in Philly, then is cut by hand and loaded into the machines. Risograph, for anyone who has not met it, is a stencil duplicating process that Billy Penn compares to screen printing. It lays down flat, bright ink in layers, which is why the prints have that handmade, slightly imperfect look I tried to borrow for the poster.

Each print costs a dollar, and the shop page answers the practical question plainly: one dollar in quarters. The mix changes from machine to machine. At the Independence visitor center there is a Liberty Bell print, and at Reading Terminal Market she has two prints, the market sign and the corner sign, as she told Billy Penn.

Fifteen machines, fifteen doors

When Billy Penn first spoke with her, she had five machines. Now she has 15. Her live location map, which I read on November 8, lists the same number, and the hosts are a good tour of the city. Her store locator includes Reading Terminal Market, the City Hall, Independence, LOVE Park and Italian Market visitor centers, Bok, Dilworth Park Cafe, the Hyatt Centric Rittenhouse, Sister Cities Cafe, Snail on North 3rd Street, At My House and The Merrygold Shop on South 4th Street, BODIE in Fairmount, The Little Apple gift shop on Main Street in Manayunk and Triple Bottom Brewing on Spring Garden Street.

Read that list as a walking route and it stops looking like a list of vending machines. It looks like fifteen doors, and I would bet a few of them are doors some people have walked past for years. A gift shop, a brewery, a cafe, a hotel lobby, a visitor center. I keep wondering how many people stepped into Snail or The Little Apple for the first time because of a print the size of a postage stamp. A map note on the locator adds that the Reading Terminal Market machine has a change machine right next to it, which is the kind of hospitality detail I can appreciate.

Locations rotate, so check the map before you set out. The Bok machine is listed as temporarily in the Dudley Street entrance vestibule, and the LOVE Park Visitor Center spot is marked as a new location.

The passport that makes it a hunt

The newest piece is the Mini Print Passport, a pocket-sized booklet that costs $10 and measures 3.5 by 5.5 inches. Lara told Billy Penn it is basically a little booklet with a QR code for the vending machine map inside, with 19 pages where you place each mini print, log its name, where you found it and the date you collected it, and stamp it. She designed a stamp for the locations, and the map notes tell you at which shops to ask for yours at the counter.

I like what that does to a trip. A dollar print on its own is a nice souvenir. A passport turns it into a reason to cross a neighborhood you were not planning to visit, buy a coffee, ask for the stamp and talk to whoever is behind the counter. In her words, it is a very social activity, especially because once you are out and about you can explore the neighborhoods further. She also said people tell her it works for every generation, so grandma, mom and the kid can all do it together.

Why people travel for it

The line from Lara that stayed with me is about out-of-town visitors. She said she knows people who come in with the explicit purpose of filling up their passport and seeing Philadelphia through her art and through the locations she has chosen. Most city souvenirs are made somewhere else and say nothing about the street you bought them on. These are drawn here, printed here and sold in the places they depict.

That is also why I think this belongs on a Philadelphia page and not only an art page. She is choosing hosts that are, in her words to Billy Penn, creative and cool places or landmarks people already want to see. The machine gives each of those places a small extra reason to be visited, and a visitor gets a guide to the city that nobody could download.

What she does next

Restoring a machine, getting signage ready, preparing the location and keeping enough prints stocked is a slow process, and Lara said so. Still, she told Billy Penn she hopes to get machines into Fishtown and North Philly and to work on new collections, including prints themed around the Eagles. I would not predict where the next machine lands. I would only say the map has room, and that each new host tends to be a business that gets a fresh crowd of curious people.

If you want to try it, here is how I would do it. Pick a Saturday, start at the Reading Terminal Market machine with a pocket of quarters, and let the map decide the next stop. Bring a friend, because the hunt is better shared. Then tell me which door surprised you.

About the Author

Harry Hayman is a Philadelphia-based entrepreneur, music producer, and cultural advocate. Through his work with the Feed Philly Coalition, he explores and documents the creative, culinary, and civic life of a city he believes is one of the most inspired places in America.

Fabiola Lara's Philadelphia Mini Print Vending Machines