“On tomorrow’s Meet the Press, Green Party leader Ralph Nader will announce whether he will sit out the 2004 election or enter the race and cause George Bush to win by three votes. I think I speak for a lot of people when I say: Stay home, nerd. You’re the…
“When a girl quits here, what does she say? Sexual harassment!” groans Gil Dezer with a dismissive shake of his head. “When a guy quits here, what can he say? Ultimately he’s looking for money too. So he’s going to throw as much at the wall to see what sticks…
“You know what I like about my life?” muses Gil Dezer with an ear-to-ear grin. “How many 29-year-olds do you know who can pick up the phone and get Trump on the other end?” Dezer leans back from the wrap-around desk in his 31st-floor office at Sunny Isles Beach’s $600…
It’s not often that the U.S. military and the music industry go looking for salvation in the same central Texas city — particularly one whose unofficial motto, plastered on bumper stickers and T-shirts, is “Keep Austin Weird.” But there was Maj. Gen. Pete Chiarelli, commander of the U.S. Army First…
Every few years the cultural margins throw up an album that suddenly clears the air, announcing not just a new Zeitgeist but a fresh generation of music consumers coming of age. Critics scramble to evaluate the new sonic terrain while record company executives begin frantically waving contracts in the presumed…
Standing inside Bal Harbour’s Neiman Marcus, Michael Musto was far from his usual downtown Manhattan stomping grounds, and even farther from the usual fodder for his long-running Village Voice nightlife column. There were no Hollywood celebs behaving badly, no catfighting drag queens, not a single club owner with an underage…
Here on South Beach, folks tend to view current affairs through a slightly warped prism. Did presidential hopeful John Kerry smooth away his visible worries via a Botox treatment? Does Kerry, as one Bush administration aide famously quipped, “look French”? Those are questions this city’s body politic is well prepared…
“Havana Suite is sold out?” groused the crestfallen young woman bellying up to the Miami International Film Festival ticket counter. “Are you sure?” Standing nearby, Kulchur tried to offer some words of solace: Don’t worry, I’ve seen it and you’re not missing much. The woman stepped back to re-examine the…
While it’s certainly true that one man’s terrorist is another man’s freedom fighter, with Che Guevara that maxim has become downright surreal. Today the revolutionary icon’s writings are simultaneously admired by teenage Howard Dean volunteers in Burlington and Taliban leaders in the Afghan countryside; they are parsed for strategies by…
Their hours may be different, but Miami’s leading political figures are looking an awful lot like nightclub owners these days. In the looming August race to succeed Alex Penelas as Miami-Dade mayor, no less than in the competitive world of clubland, lining up a steady stream of VIP appearances is…
“There are five different art fairs in South Florida now!” laughed Manhattan gallery owner Claire Oliver as a well-heeled crowd streamed past her exhibition space at last week’s Art Miami show. “That’s a lot of art for anyone to stay on top of.” Actually there are only three sprawling art…
For progressives the jury is still out on Miami-Dade mayoral hopeful José Cancela. Is the Radio Unica president poised to take a much-needed, businesslike approach to overhauling county hall, à la Manny Diaz? Or is he simply Alex Penelas with a firmer handshake and a more convincing smile? Is Cancela…
For the kinder, the Eighties are one long Cyndi Lauper video, all asymmetrical haircuts, striped leg warmers, and fun, fun, fun ’til daddy takes the DeLorean away. For those of us who actually lived through the decade, however, that imaginary nostalgia is leavened with a bit more ambivalence — a…
Memo to Miuccia Prada: Your fall line is just as well suited to a downtown Miami riot scene as a night out in clubland. That was the lesson Kulchur drew after borrowing one of the designer’s military-style black sweaters and heading out to cover the recent Free Trade Area of…
“Oh, you poor deluded leftists,” sighs author Neal Pollack while gazing out at the audience gathered before him at the recent Miami Book Fair International. The crowd, heavy on grad students, self-styled bohemians, and early arrivals for the FTAA protests, is in on the joke and laughs in knowing appreciation…
If South Beach’s fashionistas have a bit less spring in their high-heeled step of late, show some sympathy. After all, Camelot just ended. For the sartorially obsessed, the recent departure of Tom Ford from Gucci is akin to losing both John F. Kennedy and Jackie Onassis in one fell swoop…
The rules were simple. An array of Miami’s leading literati were asked to compile a list of their favorite writing this city has inspired — either from its homegrown talent or from intrigued out-of-towners. As the results came in, there was the expected acclaim for deserving trailblazers like Reinaldo Arenas…
If, as Joan Didion once wrote, “we tell ourselves stories in order to survive,” what does this say about Miamians?
“We’re trying to act as a mediator, but we’re really limited in what we can do,” says Miami Beach Police spokesman Det. Bobby Hernandez with a frustrated sigh. After fielding a week’s worth of calls from angry residents and scoop-seeking reporters, he’s just now coming up for air. The cause…
To the untrained ear, that loud rushing sound in the air last week may have been mistaken for Hurricane Isabel’s final gusts swooping past Miami. Listen more closely. It was actually the turbulence created by two massive press corps passing in the night, a whirl of snapping camera shutters and…
José Cancela has stopped eating. He carefully places knife and fork across his barely touched salad and stares at Kulchur with a wounded expression. When he asked for a lunch meeting, this conversation inside the Beach’s Van Dyke Café was not what he had in mind. “I really thought we’d…
Were the Latin Grammys fixed by President Bush? Based on State Department documents Kulchur has received, that would certainly appear to be the case. Call it an only-in-Miami moment, one in which 2004 presidential politics collided head-on with Cuban music. And Cuba’s musicians, who subsequently found themselves watching the Grammys…
