BEST POLITICAL CONVICTIONS OF THE PAST TWELVE MONTHS 2005 | Jacques Evens Thermilus and Richard Caride | Best Restaurants, Bars, Clubs, Music and Stores in Miami | Miami New Times
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BEST POLITICAL CONVICTIONS OF THE PAST TWELVE MONTHS

Jacques Evens Thermilus and Richard Caride

BEST POLITICAL CONVICTIONS OF THE PAST TWELVE MONTHS Jacques Evens Thermilus and Richard Caride It didn't start out as a political case. It began as an inquiry into a simple heist -- albeit a long-running one. For years employees of private companies that work at Miami International Airport were stealing the valuable jet fuel by the truckload. When a multiagency team of investigators cracked the case, though, they uncovered a hive of politically connected companies and individuals fraudulently billing the airport for work that was either never done or vastly overpriced. As a result, several defendants pleaded guilty and agreed to cooperate with the State Attorney's Office. Jacques Evens Thermilus took a plea and led investigators to a similar scheme he was working with Miami City Commissioner Arthur Teele, who was then arrested. Another MIA defendant, Richard Caride, pleaded guilty and told investigators about scheming with businessman Antonio Junior to defraud the airport, and also about Junior's close ties to county Commissioner Barbara Carey-Shuler. Consequently authorities have opened another investigation.

BEST KING MANGO STRUTTER

Bill Dobson

BEST KING MANGO STRUTTER Bill Dobson You must be someone special when the grand dame of Miami journalism, Edna Buchanan, comes out of retirement to write your obituary. When Dobson died October 22, 2004, at the tender age of 49, Miami lost a unique gem. Some knew him as a dedicated county employee blessed with the sense of humor needed to navigate county hall's treachery and skullduggery. He served three county commissioners during his tenure, and even old colleagues who parted ways philosophically with Dobson during his last stint working for Commissioner Katy Sorenson admired his generous heart and sharp wit. "He certainly liked his cigarettes and his rum," says a former commission aide. But more people knew Dobson for his true loves -- friends, family members, and the King Mango Strut, the irreverent annual celebration of current events he co-founded 23 years ago.

BEST RADIO STATION

99 Jamz (WEDR-FM 99.1)

BEST RADIO STATION 99 Jamz (WEDR-FM 99.1) www.wedr.com Many debate which is the best urban station: 99 Jamz or The Beat (WMIB-FM 103.5). It's a tough call, but 99 Jamz has a killer mix-show roster (including DJs Khaled, Irie, and KD), as well as several distinctive on-air voices, particularly the morning team of Big Lip Bandit, Supa Cindy, and Benji Brown. Then there's the music itself, which, while sometimes formulaic (this is commercial radio), often includes hot new local artists such as Dirtbag, Jacki-O, and most recently Prettie Rickie and the Maverix.

Readers´ Choice: WLRN-FM (91.3)

BEST ARCHITECTURAL EYESORE

Miami Herald Building

BEST ARCHITECTURAL EYESORE Miami Herald Building 1 Herald Plaza

Miami Plans for construction were announced in 1958, and before you could say Ugh! the views of Biscayne Bay from Overtown and the MacArthur Causeway were obliterated by this squat, hulking orange monument to stifled imagination. Clearly it was at the vanguard of a style (American Utilitarian?) that would inspire for decades to come the builders of high schools and inner-city housing projects. This is no Tribune Tower in Chicago, an Art Deco ode to that city's daily paper. Nor is it the stately neo-gothic 43rd Street headquarters of The New York Times. It's not even the Freedom Tower just down the road, for many years the distinctive home of the Miami News. This is just a generic orange splat gobbling up our precious waterfront. But there's hope on the horizon. This past March the Terra Group bought the building and the property for $190 million. Terra hasn't announced plans to raze the structure, at least not anytime soon. But one can always hope.

BEST HURRICANE PREDICTIONS

Weather Underground

BEST HURRICANE PREDICTIONS Weather Underground www.wunderground.com/tropical This season, when you get tired of phrases such as "this is what the track of the hurricane will look like if it takes a sharp, impossible turn and heads straight into downtown Miami" and you want a reasonable prognostication about where any storm might be heading, the place to go is the Weather Underground. The Website presents some of the same models that the TV forecasters use to make those cone-shaped prediction maps, but without the hours of speculative fodder broadcast alongside them. The site is simple to use and free, providing a bevy of other images, information, and links to similar meteorological sites, all adding to a fuller picture. You might even find out it's sunny outside.

BEST CONVENTION OF THE PAST TWELVE MONTHS

OtakuCon Anime Convention

BEST CONVENTION OF THE PAST TWELVE MONTHS OtakuCon Anime Convention Fontainebleau Hilton Resort

4441 Collins Avenue

Miami Beach

305-538-2000 Hordes of imagination-fired freaks and geeks took over a landmark Miami Beach hotel in late December to celebrate the colorful and expanding world of anime. The three-day gathering was overrun by people, young and old, who find an especially animated pleasure in pretending to be cartoon characters with oversize eyes, mouths, and personality disorders. At OtakuCon, which translates to "hyper-fan convention," anime cultists had a chance to live out their fantasies. Leggy women with waist-length hair paraded around in skimpy homemade costumes, bringing to life their favorite anime pin-up girls. Boys of all ages bopped around in ninja and samurai getups. When they were not busy attending seminars about how to pick up dates or how to destroy Majin Buu (a bubble-gum pink warrior from Dragon Ball Z), OtakuConventioneers took part in "cosplaying," which is the art of playing scenes with other anime characters. Unreal? Surreal? Real cool.

BEST PLACE TO TAKE OUT-OF-TOWNERS

Hoy Como Ayer

BEST PLACE TO TAKE OUT-OF-TOWNERS Hoy Como Ayer 2212 SW Eighth Street

Miami

305-541-2631

www.hoycomoayer.net Your visitors can spend the day basking on Miami's beaches, spending cash in its shops, trekking through the Everglades, catching boat rides from Bayside, or feeding the birds at Parrot Jungle. However, the quintessential Miami experience awaits as you take them through the doors of this magical Little Havana club on a Thursday, Friday, or Saturday night. The nostalgia of old Cuba permeates the air as locals imbibe rum drinks, smoke fine cigars, order platters of Cuban tapas, and dance to live music by some of Cuba's best (exiled) musicians: Albita Rodriguez, Malena Burke, Luis Bofill, Cristina Rebul, Esencia, Sarabanda, Leslie Cartaya, and special guests. Photos of artists from Cuba's cultural past and present decorate the walls, reminding us that today, like yesterday, the island's music is irresistible.

Readers´ Choice: South Beach

BEST POWER FAMILY

Los Valdes-Fauli

BEST POWER FAMILY Los Valdes-Fauli When Raul Ernesto Valdes-Fauli died in 2003 at age 84, evidence of success in this life wasn't measured by the prominence and prosperity he had achieved as a former lawyer who represented banking and sugar interests in pre-Castro Cuba. (He was very prominent and prosperous.) No, it was the prominence and prosperity his children had gone on to achieve. The siblings didn't just sit on their trust funds; they clambered to the top of a variety of fields, mainly leaning toward endeavors connected to money and power. Son Raul J. is the former mayor of Coral Gables and now an attorney at Steel Hector & Davis. Another son, José, is Colonial Bank's South Florida regional president. A third son, Gonzalo, is a director at Knight Ridder who formerly headed Latin American operations for the Barclays banking organization. Daughter Teresa Weintraub is president of Fiduciary Trust International of the South.

BEST STORYTELLER

Jan Mapou

BEST STORYTELLER Jan Mapou It's no surprise Jan Mapou is one of Miami's most well-versed storytellers, for the man possesses a lifetime of rich material. Born in Haiti, Mapou spent time in jail for speaking in Kreyol on a Port-au-Prince radio show, moved to New York in the early Seventies and then to Miami in the mid-Eighties, where he opened the Libreri Mapou in Little Haiti and started the cultural organization Sosyete Koukouy. But for Mapou, who writes plays and poetry as often as most people write grocery lists, it isn't his biography he likes to share with his audiences, but rather the magical stories of Haitian folklore. He told many of these tales on his radio show in Haiti, for which he took the on-air moniker Jan Mapou (his real name is Jean-Marie Willer Denis). The pseudonym translates to "the tree that never falls." Audiences at the many cultural events where he speaks often fall -- in love with his words.

BEST TERROR ALERT

October 26, 2004

Miami International Airport

BEST TERROR ALERT October 26, 2004

Miami International Airport Mizael Cabral and Daniel Correa, two athletic, young kite surfers from Brazil, are heading back to their homeland after spending a couple of years hanging out in Pompano Beach. They check their boards, sails, assorted other gear, and luggage through the x-ray machine at MIA's international terminal. Among the gear is a small belt sander kite surfers use to shape their boards; it is cylindrical and resembles a tank. The Portuguese word for tank is bomba. So when a security agent asks Cabral, who barely speaks English, what's in one of his overstuffed bags, the 29-year-old says bomba. His 27-year-old pal Daniel, who speaks better English (his mom is a U.S. citizen and resides in Davie), comes over and jokes that it might explode -- a reference to the bag being so tightly packed. Of course they're arrested and charged with felonies: willfully or maliciously making false statements "with the intent to cause fear" and "reckless disregard for the safety of human life." Their tourist visas long expired, the surfers are imprisoned for a month at the Federal Detention Center in downtown Miami and then another month at the Krome Detention Center for immigration-law violations. Meanwhile the story hits the front pages in Brazil's national press. The governor from the surfers' province demands that Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva lean on President George W. Bush to intervene. Cabral and Correa's federal public defenders, armed with testimony from TSA officials that the guys should have been spanked and immediately sent home to Brazil, head for trial. Suddenly the U.S. Attorney's Office offers an eleventh-hour plea deal to reduce the charge to a misdemeanor for impeding a federal official in the performance of his duties. U.S. District Judge Federico Moreno sentences Cabral and Correa to time served, but knowing they had been carrying about $8000 in hard-earned cash when the incident occurred, fines them each $2000. "Ridiculous," sighs Marc Seitles, Cabral's public defender.

Best Of Miami®

Best Of Miami®

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