Back in April 2003, Miami-Dade County Commissioner José “Pepe” Diaz attended an anti-cancer charity shoot at the Trail Glades Gun Range. It was a balmy, sunny day just east of the Miccosukee casino on the Tamiami Trail, and several dozen recreational shooters hurried through 200 target competitions. Most were members…

Whore Hounds, Unite Filed under: Culture Thank God for the Internet. Should all of South Florida be swallowed up by the sea, scientists 50 years from now will still be able to create a digital map of where to get the best handjobs in Miami. You don’t need a white…

See the World, One Couch at a Time Filed under: Flotsam Want to cross oceans, continents, and cultures, but lack the necessary scratch for a room in a sleazy hostel, let alone a tony hotel? Thousands of financially challenged would-be voyagers have found a way. Enter the Couchsurfing Project: an…

Early one afternoon in June 2003, a bushy-haired, 28-year-old sergeant from Miami sat down on the hard floor of a steamy, furniture-less room in Ar Ramadi, one of the most dangerous locations in Iraq’s Sunni Triangle. The space, on the second floor of the city’s government center, had been previously…

Miami-Dade County Commission Chairman Bruno Barreiro is holding court at a Little Havana library. It’s still early and his audience consists of about two dozen three- and four-year-old students from nearby Lincoln Marti School and Pin Pon Nursery School. The photogenic 41-year-old Cuban American is narrating We’ve All Got Belly…

While You Were Out Filed Under: News While you were out partying, doing hallucinogenic drugs, and having hedonistic (and maybe unprotected) sex during the recent Winter Music Conference, the University of Miami’s medical school provided New Times with some astonishing, sobering facts: The AIDS rate among young people in Miami-Dade…

For 35 years Diane O’Quinn Williams has been a fixture at County Hall. She climbed the ranks from clerk to top administrator with a quiet, efficient style that calmed angry applicants and pleased nervous supervisors. In 2001 then-County Manager Steve Shiver made her planning and zoning director, one of the…

Take Us to the Bridge Filed Under: News Following revelations by New Times that a parking lot under the State Road 836 bridge was being used by probation officers as a dumping ground for homeless sex offenders — and that the lot was located within 2500 feet of eight schools,…

Just four blocks from Ocean Drive and haute high-priced South Beach eateries China Grill and Tuscan Steak, a rail-thin homeless man sat in the trash-strewn parking lot of a Walgreens this past December 28. Reynaldo “Flaco” Martin took a swig of vodka, then noticed Carlos Bustamante, a fellow Cuban-American in…

Booby Tube Trap Filed Under: News Steven McLLain was lugging a discarded Toshiba television across the Venetian Bridge on a breezy evening this past February 12, when Miami City Police NET Cmdr. William Alvarez stopped him. When Alvarez asked McLLain, a lanky 56-year-old homeless man, where he got the boob…

Payfront Park Filed Under: Culture First-run movies every night on a 60-foot-high screen in a beautiful grassy spot by the water? Excellent idea. Fencing off about 40,000 square feet of prime downtown Miami green space 24 hours a day, seven days a week? Maybe not so excellent. Since it set…

His Satanic Majesty’s Request Filed Under: Flotsam Sixty-year-old José Luis de Jesús Miranda has called himself the reincarnation of the apostle Paul; “the Other,” a spiritual super-being who would pave the way for Jesus Christ’s second coming; and, eventually, God’s son incarnate. “My purpose,” he explained to New Times last…

The Hilliard’s Alive … Filed under: News Gabrielle Nash Tessler is on a mission to rid North Bay Village of the devilish influence of the Conch Republic’s Beelzebub. For the past year, the 85-year-old activist has railed against her town’s agreement to pay a guy named Randy Hilliard $2000 per…

Miami-Dade Commissioner Natacha Seijas earns $52,499 a year as vice president of public policy and government/community relations for the YMCA of Greater Miami. That’s a handsome salary and a lengthy title for someone who doesn’t have to put in a 40-hour work week. In fact Seijas’s duties and responsibilities are…

The directions were easy enough. Head west on Tamiami Trail. Two miles past the Miccosukee Indian water tower, make a left onto Loop Road, the scenic 23-mile stretch in the southernmost portion of Big Cypress National Preserve where Miami-Dade, Collier, and Monroe counties converge. Continue west for another seven miles…

America, the Test Filed under: Flotsam The feds are going to pilot a new citizenship test (less history trivia, more focus on “fundamental concepts” and “basic values”) in ten cities, including Miami. How would the average American Joe perform as an aspiring citizen? A preliminary sidewalk quiz of a few…

Lincoln-Douglas It Wasn’t Filed under: News Some words of advice to Mayor Carlos Alvarez and his supporters: Don’t let state Sen. Gwen Margolis do any more debating for the strong mayor ballot proposal. On January 4, Margolis and county Commissioner Sally Heyman debated the potential increase in Alvarez’s powers, including…

Moldy Christmas Filed under: News Sweet baby Jesus would be so proud of the people running New Life Shelter for Homeless Families, which is operated by Catholic Charities, a nonprofit social service division of the Archdiocese of Miami. The fifteen-room facility in Wynwood provides downtrodden families with rooms for $200…

By Christmas, Miami-Dade County Commissioner Natacha Seijas’s reign could be over. A band of rebels threatens her imperial grip. Last month the anti-Seijas commandos set up a bunker in the heart of her Hialeah stronghold. From inside a warehouse near Okeechobee Road, they plot ways to convince voters to recall…

Shanty Talk Filed under: News One should always be wary when city officials declare they are “listening” to the people’s problems. Activist Max Rameau knew this on Wednesday, when Miami City Manager Pedro Hernandez journeyed out to Umoja, Rameau’s five-week-old shantytown for the homeless in Liberty City. “I’m here to…

Boom Goes Bust (Again) Filed under: News For sale: land, permits, and plans for Onyx 2, a failed 50-story, 125-unit condo project by the bay on NE 28th Street. For good measure, the owners will throw in the dilapidated sales center at no extra charge. Originally conceived to augment sister…

Risky Business Filed under: News When the corrections counselor tells what it’s like to walk past the cell blocks at the Miami-Dade County Stockade, she could almost be describing Clarice Starling’s walk down the corridor of a maximum-security prison in The Silence of the Lambs: “As a female, you get…