New Year’s Eve on South Beach sucks. Consider the soiree held at the Setai. For $300, they offered admission to the swanky chateau and an open bar all night. Luckily, we scored free tickets. If not, we would have celebrated the end of 2006 with a bottle of Night Train…

My three wishes for 2007: – The construction on Biscayne Boulevard will come to an end; – My local post office will hire extra employees, thus reducing the usual, maddening, 20-minute wait for service; – No more landmark restaurants will be razed for ugly condo projects. What are your Miami…

Happy New Year: Homicides are on the rise in Miami-Dade County! According to Metro Dade and city police statistics through Dec. 28, 165 people were killed in 2006. Compare that with 2005 – when 120 people were killed – and you have a 37 percent increase in homicides. (These numbers…

“You will believe…” Thetans, rejoice: A Scientology conference is coming to a beach near you. For two days in March — and for $200 — you can learn about the ins and outs of Scientology, the religion/self-help group/Tom Cruise thingy. Flyers were sent to potential Thetans (that’s the rough equivalent…

Quick: What’s the third largest import to the Port of Miami? Silicone? Yay-yo? Booze, of course. Last year, 155,664 tons of the stuff — about the weight of the world’s largest cruise ship, which coincidentally docks in Miami — washed up at the port. By comparison, only 12,191 tons of…

Hustlin’ marshmellows? Wikipedia.org has once again fallen victim to human error. Rick Ross, Miami’s prodigal hip-hop son, was briefly defamed this afternoon on the site. The first line describes him as such: Rick Ross, born ‘dick sucker’ 1977, is an white American rapper from coral gabels (sic), in northern Miami-Dade…

Deal, or no deal? Babalu, “an island on the net without a bearded dictator,” issues a send-off to the recently departed Gerald Ford. After decrying Ford’s pardon of Nixon and a lackluster 1976 presidential campaign that “led directly to Jimmy Carter’s victory and the subsequent disastrous four years of his…

Local government rags can be pretty damn amusing. Take the latest issue of the Miami Beach city government magazine. A recreation department guide in the glossy drops a dubious bombshell: sumo wrestlers are actually from China, not Japan. Under the heading “Miami Beach Goes ‘Around the World,'” a chirpy paragraph…

Christmas day started out well. I watched D-Wade drop 40 points on the Lakers and my buddy Norman invited me to the Dolphins-Jets game. Sorry futbol fans, but growing up in Miami, you kind of get sucked into the Fins euphoria. After all, we boast the only team to go…

A viewing of The Pursuit of Happyness prompted James Burnett to reflect on his race with candor and grace: I have an occasional paranoia that I will come across someone who doesn’t want to take me seriously because I’m young and black. Some of you may think it’s a silly…

Woof. Bad dog. In a http://www.hsus.org/furfree/news/sean_john_diddy_combs_mislabeled_fur.html”>report issued today, the Humane Society of the United States says a fur collar on a jacket sold by Miami resident Sean “Diddy” Combs’s “Sean John” clothing line is that of a dog. The HSUS tested the fur on a Sean John Hooded Snorkel Jacket,…

Where’s the beef going? “I didn’t want to change it,” Isaac Starkman told me a few years back when asked about his strategy for renovating Wolfie Cohen’s Rascal House. “I wanted to perpetuate it.” And for good reason, as during one thirteen-year period alone the landmark delicatessen in Sunny Isles…

Good to the last drop About fifteen members of the Miami Area Society of Homebrewers (MASH) and their kin gathered this weekend to celebrate the birth of Bacchus — er, Jesus — on a screened-in patio on Mark and Diane Kelley’s lush 5 acre compound in Homestead. The sun eased…

All is quiet in Natacha Seijas country. Today district 13 voters are turning out to the polls to say yea or nay to recall the four-term county commissioner. As of this afternoon, there are no reports of Seijas’s chief of staff Terry Murphy haranguing anti-Seijas campaigners at the Miami Lakes…

“I’ll get you, my Patty… And your little dog, too!” This past weekend, Terry Murphy, chief of staff of Miami-Dade County Commissioner Natacha Seijas (subject of this week’scover story), was busy protecting his cushy government post. For the past two months, a political action committee has been busy campaigning for…

Table 8 Coming to a plate near you David Bouley Evolution, the South Beach outpost of one of New York’s finest chefs, and Table 8, the South Beach outpost of one of Los Angeles’ finest chefs, have opened their doors, almost simultaneously, less than two blocks apart from each other…