For 60 days, beginning the first week in November and lasting through the first week of January, a thicket of towering pine trees along the Palmetto Expressway at Bird Road comes alive with the dazzling sparkle of some five million Christmas lights. It’s Santa’s Enchanted Forest, the holiday-themed amusement park,…

Life could hardly get any worse for Mario Barcia. He’s unemployed and broke. He and his wife have crammed themselves into the home of a relative. A court order prevents him from physically setting foot outside that home. His wife is expecting a baby within weeks. And he is facing…

In the front yard of his salmon-colored, single-story house across the street from Brownsville Middle School, mechanic Lorenzo Jones, 49, slouches on a white lawn chair, holding a cup in his right hand filled with Coca-Cola and Jim Beam. Jones’s bloodshot gaze is focused on the apartment buildings next door…

Taimira Perez eases herself onto the navy sofa in the living room of her townhouse in Miramar Gardens, a private residential community of predominantly low-income property owners in the city of Miami Gardens, near the border of Miami-Dade and Broward counties. Leaning back wearily, the 41-year-old rubs the back of…

Depending on your point of view, Fane Lozman, during the scant thirteen months he’s lived in North Bay Village, has either wreaked havoc on the town or single-handedly saved it from its worst demons. First was Lozman’s confrontation with Adolph “Al” Coletta, one of the city’s most prominent and influential…

After an acrimonious North Miami City Council meeting last October, the rancor spilled into the parking lot of city hall at 776 NE 125th St. Mayor Josaphat “Joe” Celestin accused David Burns and other community activists of being racists. “He also had the audacity to say that he was going…

When it comes to protecting his business interests at Miami International Airport, local entrepreneur Pedro Pelaez counters threats with the ferocity of a Lennox Lewis left hook. In 2001 Pelaez lost a bout with the Miami-Dade Aviation Department when his now-defunct company, Quick Packing, Inc., failed to gain a lucrative…

In the past few years the Miami-Dade Fire Rescue Department has been battered by charges of discrimination and harassment — an embarrassment for a county system that prides itself on striving for diversity. Now three black men claim that racism kept them from making it through the department’s training academy…

On the morning of November 26, Taimira Perez was on a stakeout in front of the Miami-Dade State Attorney’s Office on NW Twelfth Avenue. The plucky, Cuban-born street vendor had gotten word that North Bay Village Commissioner Bob Dugger was turning himself in to law enforcement authorities. State prosecutors had…

Miami Police Chief John Timoney seems to have concluded that the best way to get the media at his side is by having the media by his side. During his four years as Philadelphia’s police commissioner, Timoney became a national celebrity. During the 2000 Republican National Convention, he granted reporters…

Andean Region On the great-grandfather clock of time, 500 years is about a second. And in that second, European mestizos have managed to plunder this region of nearly all its mineral wealth, subjugate the Indian populations, and force on them Western laws and the Catholic Church. But if the recent…

Miami is known for its combustible mix of people from all points on the sociopolitical spectrum. At Home Depot the wealthy former somocista bumps into the Sandinista commander who appropriated his Managua mansion. The retired Medellín cocaine kingpin lives in the same Key Biscayne condo as the attorney general who…

Efforts to build a new stadium for the Florida Marlins are moving ahead with the speed of a Josh Beckett fastball. Details of the financial arrangements may not be in place for several months, and a site has not been selected, though Miami Commissioner Johnny Winton says a plan is…

North Bay Village Commissioner Bob Dugger must dream of a day when he won’t be hounded by criminal investigators, state regulators, the Internal Revenue Service, irate business clients, and his own police department. Not only is the State Attorney’s Office investigating Dugger for possible violations of public-corruption laws, but his…

It’s not every day that an entire municipal police force publicly castigates an elected official, but that’s exactly what happened last week when 25 officers from the North Bay Village Police Department signed a petition demanding the resignation of city Commissioner Bob Dugger. Petition signatory Sgt. Roland Pandolfi says the…

Fane Lozman moved back to South Florida early this year to rock on a houseboat in the warm waters of Biscayne Bay and let the stress of his Chicago software business drift in and out with the tides. Unfortunately for him, he chose to moor his floating home along one…

Maybe nightclub promoter Tommy Pooch should have stuck with the pizza business, having once owned three successful pizzerias in Miami and Miami Beach. But who wants to knead dough when you’re one of the major players in South Beach clubland, when your parties regularly pop up on E! the Entertainment…

A majority of Miami Beach residents, the city manager, a former mayor, and business owners and the commuters they employ all want to pursue an ambitious proposal to bring mass transit to the Beach. The plan calls for a modern electric trolley that would run on tracks, draw power from…

In early January employees of the Miami-Dade State Attorney’s Office found a plain white envelope in their mailboxes. No return address. Inside was something that looked like a newsletter, amateurishly produced and printed on both sides of a single sheet of paper. It bore the name SAO underground. Employees immediately…

Jack Penrod knows how to throw a party. In the mid-Eighties his Fort Lauderdale nightclubs were magnets for thousands of college kids on spring break. But his formula for success — loads of beer, loud music, and wet T-shirt contests — proved to be his undoing. In response to residents…

1. Dusk on May 13. Mayor Manny Diaz is aboard the Island Lady, an executive yacht that sails from the Miami River behind the Hyatt Regency in downtown Miami. Hizzoner is playing host to several dozen high-ranking officials from the international consulates, like Finland’s then-Consul General William Spohrer; Germany’s Consul…

Reina Morgan, a 43-year-old janitor who earns $11.55 an hour cleaning airplane cabins at Miami International Airport, lives paycheck to paycheck. After she pays her share to the federal government, including her contributions to Medicare and Social Security, Morgan clears about $899 every two weeks, just enough to cover her…