News

Letters from the Issue of June 8, 2006

“The only crime on South Beach is how beautiful the women are”

It was 9/11 that got the bouncer: I was, and I am, extremely disturbed, as a Miami Beach resident and taxi driver, to learn of the murder of a bouncer at the very high-end Mansion Discotheque ("Full Moon Murder" by Lyssa Oberkreser, May 25). That very night, a party was being hosted there by television star Elisha Cuthbert, of the TV show 24, which features Kiefer Sutherland. Mansion is probably, overall, South Beach's finest nightclub.

One is entitled to ask, therefore: "How did we get to the place where an employee of our finest nightclub is murdered in cold blood, protecting a club disc jockey from aggressors over a parking space?"

I submit to our readers that there were general conditions, sociological patterns, that provide the answer as to how South Beach has become more dangerous. Think large. Think back to before the 9/11/2001 attack on our country. Before 9/11, with all our beautiful people and international visitors, specifically Central and South American tourists, there was so little crime. I told my passengers: "The only crime on South Beach is how beautiful the women are."

I submit to all our community that the unnecessary prolongation of the post-9/11 tourism/immigration/commerce restrictions and the war in Iraq have made it difficult for Latin Americans to come here. Resolving our immigration/tourism affairs would solve and end the tragic conditions that gave rise to the murder of the bouncer in front of South Beach's Mansion.

Let our Latins back in, and instead of the Mansion bouncer murder, South Beach will once again return to being a place where "the only crime is how beautiful the women are."

Jackson Rip Holmes
Via the Internet

This Redskin went down: In reference to Robert Andrew Powell's article "Four Wheels, No Breaks" (May 25): I think Sean Taylor is misunderstood more then he is bad. Remember, in this country he is innocent until proven guilty. He's a smart guy, by the way! You can't be an idiot and go to the University of Miami. Sean will be proven innocent and be a great pro.

Zach Watkins
Garland, Texas

Editor's note: Sorry, Zach. This past week, Taylor pleaded no contest and accepted a plea agreement in the case.

The revolution wronged: Today I read the review Michael Atkinson wrote about the film The Lost City (May 11). He might know about films and filmmaking, but when it comes to Cuban history, he doesn't know jack. The Cuban Revolution was a popular, not a peasant, revolt. The people who led and financed the revolution were from the upper and middle classes. The usurpation that occurred in Cuba had nothing to do with property; it was the betrayal of revolutionary ideals by one man, Fidel Castro. The revolution was fought to rid the country of a corrupt dictator, and here we are in the 48th year of a much more corrupt and tyrannical dictatorship. I'll grant Atkinson this: The Cuban Revolution eventually did become a peasant revolution, because Castro converted all Cubans on the island into serfs.

Perhaps The Lost City is not the perfect film, but Atkinson's blathering about a subject he doesn't thoroughly understand is a far worse gaffe.

Henry Gomez
Miami

La revolución con vergüenza: Michael Atkinson's review of The Lost City demonstrates a total lack of knowledge and understanding of the "unfortunate" Cuban Revolution. The revolution was supported by the middle and upper classes of the Cuban people, not by peasants, as Atkinson expressed. Good journalism requires serious research, which apparently was not done by Atkinson. Shame on him!

Julian E. Perez
Miami

Take it up with the owner, Maggie: I've noticed in the "Menu Guide" section of your Website that you've included the menu for The Daily Creative Food Co., a restaurant on Biscayne Boulevard. The café is not too far from your offices, and it happens to be right across the street from where I live. I am not an evil person, and I love to support local business owners, but that place is a joke. I have had the worst experiences there, and I am simply at my wits' end.

Every time I have gone there, I have been given horrible service (and all they are doing is taking your order at the counter, so you wouldn't think bad service would be possible). I've had to repeat my order ten times to the gaping-mouth student behind the counter. Furthermore, they have consistently been out of things — chai, avocado, even lettuce. What is the point of opening if you don't have lettuce?

Plus, the food is overpriced: almost three dollars for a slice of banana bread that has been sitting on the counter. Our growing neighborhood just north of the Omni deserves a real café, one where we can sit for brunch on leisurely weekends and relax without having the waitstaff shoo us away.

Meagan Tyler
Miami

Pity the reader: It was pure torture reading Forrest Norman's article "Key Issue" (May 11). But I endured this gruesome task so I could respond properly: The article is boring and, frankly, nothing new — which makes me wonder why this is a "Key Issue" at all. This is Key Biscayne, where President Richard Nixon kept a summer home some 40 years ago, for Pete's sake! (And whether he was America's most infamous president can be debated until the cows come home when you stack him up against Clinton and Bush!) This place is no different from the rest of South Florida.

I'm amazed residents are complaining. Their property value has rocketed to the realms of Planet X, and they are isolated from the rising number of crackheads, bicycle thieves, and derelicts who lurk in Key Biscayne's immediate neighborhoods such as the Roads, Coconut Grove, Little Whatever, and Downtown Miami. If any resident of Key Biscayne is wondering "where their children will live," I recommend they send them to college by taking out an improvement loan on their property.

Estrella Eguino
Coconut Grove