Perhaps nothing unites Miamians more than our shared hatred for I-95. A simple morning commute on the godforsaken stretch of highway almost always means dodging drivers diving through the plastic poles to get to the express lanes, narrowly avoiding horrific crashes, and sitting in traffic jams that last long enough to allow for an impromptu yoga session.
Since white people moved to Florida, the Everglades has been under almost relentless assault. After being drained and developed, polluted with fertilizers, and overrun by invasive species, it’s no secret that today the vast wetland is on life support.
One look, and Ken Fusco knew his son was gone. Lying on his childhood bed in dark-washed jeans and a Western-style belt, the garrulous 24-year-old almost looked asleep. But Jason’s skin was ashen, and he wasn’t breathing. Ken’s older son, Michael, carefully moved Jason to the floor and began CPR…
When disaster strikes, health care is often one of the first things to slip through the cracks as unexpected expenses pile up. That’s especially true for sexual and reproductive health care.
Authorities say aspiring local rapper Darrish Bernard Martin, AKA Young Bernie, was part of a crime ring that broke into dozens of pharmacies across South Florida and made off with bottles of prescription-strength cough syrup that were then sold to Lil Wayne and other “purple drank” aficionados. In a letter…
Stephanie Myers was onstage at a Democratic unity rally at the Knight Center, giving a speech about answering the call to get involved, when a voice rang out from the crowd. “Run for office!” a woman yelled. Myers, a lead organizer of the filled-to-capacity Women’s Rally of South Florida, laughed…
Today, Orangetheory Fitness is the fastest-growing women-owned company in the U.S., an exercise phenomenon with 750 studios and half a million members. But it started much more humbly, when Ellen Latham began offering Pilates classes in a spare room at her Pembroke Pines house. The year was 1996, and Latham,…
In March 2014, David Velasquez called police to report the theft of his work tools. But when Broward Sheriff’s deputies arrived, he says, the cops were more concerned about his immigration status than the crime. They ended up placing him under arrest, Velasquez says — and breaking his leg while taking him into custody.
Melanie Lustig walked out of her job at Monkey Jungle in mid-September. The last straw, she says, was scooping up piles of rotten fruit and feces inside an enclosure where the park’s orangutan, Mei, had been kept for days. The New Jersey native had been dismayed for months by the…
Monkey Jungle got its start in the ’30s when Joseph DuMond released a troop of monkeys into a dense patch of South Dade wilderness and then opened it as a one-of-a-kind attraction “where humans are caged and monkeys run wild.” More than seven decades later, the 30-acre roadside park — which allows some monkeys to roam freely while visitors gaze at them from an enclosed path — still makes that promise.
For six years, Ocean 9 Liquor has sold beer, wine, and spirits from its Collins Avenue store, which boasts free delivery and an onsite DJ. That all changed on a Friday last month, a new lawsuit claims, after code enforcement showed up with police and threatened to take store operator Doron Doar to jail if he didn’t immediately shut the whole thing down…
After leaving Indiana for a nursing job at Miami’s Nicklaus Children’s Hospital, Daniele Hoffman says she never fit in because she’s white and doesn’t speak Spanish. In a federal lawsuit against the hospital, Hoffman says staff discriminated against her, called her “gringa” and “skinny white girl,” and insisted on speaking Spanish around her.
Steve Dutton and Tom Lang fell in love with downtown Miami almost at first sight, after taking a cruise that ended here in 2012. When they retired to Miami from Fort Worth, Texas, that year, the couple came to especially love the eclectic mix of restaurants along the two blocks…
The videos were aired on repeat on local cable news channels as Hurricane Irma battered South Florida: small groups of people breaking into shoe stores and leaving with boxes of stolen sneakers. As WPLG and WSVN replayed the incidents, the footage quickly made its way into the national news cycle.
By the time George Miyares was hired as a police officer for the Village of Biscayne Park in March 2013, he’d been rejected by nine other law enforcement agencies across South Florida, a recently filed federal lawsuit alleges.
After getting a call from someone about trash piling up in a Miami canal, environmentalist Dave Doebler turned to Google Maps to get the GPS coordinates. What showed up on the screen shocked him: The massive clump of trash could be seen in satellite images.
For months, Miami Beach commissioners have been waging war against a crime wave they insist is sweeping the city. They’ve voted to curb alcohol sales and close the beach earlier, and agreed to let voters decide whether last call on Ocean Drive should come at 2 instead of 5 a.m.
In the Magic City, Spanish is so prevalent that even Donald Trump, who once chided Jeb Bush for being bilingual, attempted to speak three words of it while campaigning here last year. Nearly 77 percent of Miamians speak a language other than English at home, with Spanish being the most common, according to U.S. Census figures. Forty-three percent of people said they spoke English “less than well.”
Coral Gables takes its image seriously. The city once battled Orlando for the rights to the nickname “the City Beautiful” and this past summer sued Instagram and Facebook to uncover the identity of whoever is running a handful of social media accounts critical of the town.
In early 2016, Hialeah Police Officer Louis Herrera applied for a promotion to sergeant, feeling confident about his chances. He was excited about the job, which promised a raise and a bigger role at the department. But despite scoring well on the required exam, he was wasn’t chosen. The same thing happened when he applied again a year later.
Plenty of South Florida walls are covered with eye-catching murals, but the developers behind one Miami Beach project have another idea for filling the blank space: ginormous LED screens — one of them nearly 91 feet wide and 38 feet tall. The two screens proposed for “1212 Lincoln Road,” a Crescent Heights…
With so much #FakeNews floating around on Facebook and Twitter, the Florida-based PolitiFact has become an invaluable tool for parsing out what’s true and what’s not. The social media giant itself has acknowledged that truth, joining forces with the national fact-checking site late last year in an effort to identify…
