It’s a slate-black night, the streets sopped, hard rain pounding, as several dozen men gather in a spacious backroom at a Miller Road church. The members of this little-known clan are clad in white pants and primary-color shirts adorned with fish. The leader summons three of his compatriots to the…

Jackfruit might be the coolest fruit there is. First, that great name — like Jack Frost without the chilling effect. Second, the tasty jacks grow huge, perhaps as big as 150 pounds. Third, they grow here. That last fact is thanks to, naturally, David Fairchild, the legendary plant man whose…

As any half-assed ascetic can tell you, there’s nothing in life that must be done. You do not have to eat. Or sleep. Or even breathe. If you allow yourself to suffer because you lack food or sleep or air, it is only because you desire to live in the…

Time does not exist. It’s simply a human concept, completely invalid in terms of reality and Truth (in the Kantian, transcendent sense of Truth). You are being born, you are living in the moment you’re in, you are dying. You always have been and always will be. You are part…

For all its claims of sophistication and open-mindedness, Miami continues to be, in many ways, about as cosmopolitan as Podunk. “We were inspired by the fact that other places have been doing this for a long time,” says Robert Rosenberg, a noted filmmaker and director of the first annual Miami…

David Haskin shows off his renaissance. It’s a building first, a two-story former office complex in the murky shadows of downtown’s federal courthouse. Outside the streets are busy with the business of making money and deploying power, the proverbial hustle and bustle of the gray-flannel herds. Upstairs inside is culture…

Q: What do veterinarians call a newborn cat with a three-inch tail, black stripes, and tufted ears? A: A kitten. Cats have a sense of humor, so maybe they’ll laugh at that bad joke. Cat showing, however, is serious business, full of pointed talk about dominant and recessive genes, melanin…

Eight decades ago, while he was seeding a vision that would eventually grow into Opa-locka, developer Glenn Curtiss imagined “the most perfect city that planning and engineering could achieve, and the most beautiful that the art of man could conceive.” That dream was deferred by the hurricane of 1926 and…

The director of the Deering Estate at Cutler, Miami-Dade Parks’ Ivan A. Rodriguez, chokes on construction dust, wipes his eyes beneath his shades, and says, “You are seeing the drama unfold.” He means the latest in a series of dramas. There were times when this verdant area along Biscayne Bay…

Roses are everywhere: in nine out of ten poems ever written, in pop songs, all over TV. Ah, but those orchids. They’re more elusive, yet just as beautiful, aromatic, and symbolic as roses, and frankly, damn sexier. This weekend orchids get their due via the 54th annual Miami International Orchid…

Until an effective time machine is invented, posters (plus a touch of imagination) might be the best medium through which to visit bygone eras. Unlike fine art, posters tend to be populist rather than elitist. The International Vintage Poster Fair, an exhibition arriving in Miami Beach this weekend, will fill…

Ellie Schneiderman surveys her sanctuary, which sprawls across the third floor of one of South Florida’s most aberrantly designed malls and proclaims that “architecture is the mother of all art.” In this scenario it should be added that paradox is the mother of all human endeavor. The black-clad, black-haired artist…

Why are years more important than moments? As any Buddhist will tell you, there is no molecular reality in time. It’s just a way our species sorts and measures — a feeble grasp at the intangible. The calendar in use by modern society is arbitrary, random, borderline nonsensical. Leap year?…

Satan’s Enchanted Forest wreaks all the horrors of the holiday on unsuspecting innocents, tormenting young and old alike with vicious wild animals poised to attack and more neon than downtown Vegas. What? Not Halloween? Christmas, you say? Oh, sorry. You might understand our confusion. We are naive to the point…

Dogs can do so many things: perform tricks, guide blind people, sniff out anything from dope to death, pull sleds, catch plastic flying discs, hunt, provide security, rescue people, write stimulating articles for major metropolitan newspapers and national magazines. And if they should do something else — well, rest assured…

Imagine the results of a collaboration between Federico Fellini and Woody Allen? Let’s say it was years ago, before Fellini died and Woody stopped making funny movies. Hilarious, right? And how bizarre would it be if there were any justice for the oppressed of this sorry world? Would we all…

Promoters promise burning, throbbing excitement as top local chefs hungrily lust to score the award for Most Passionate Chili. Steaming, dripping hot. Yes, yes, yes, oh yes! The sixth annual Hot Pursuit Chili Cook-Off, which benefits Planned Parenthood of Greater Miami, is a blend of seemingly unrelated elements — the…

What Miami needs is a real professional sports team. The Dolphins are paper tigers; watching their playoff hopes fade doesn’t qualify as high-grade sports entertainment. The Marlins are, of course, the worst team in the major leagues and possibly in the minor leagues as well. The Heat has no players…

Sounds a bit like a script for a superfreaky porn flick: idol with breasts on its head; idol with breast on its belly; tube or pipe with incised decoration. But the really obscene thing about the legacy of Bolivia’s archeological past is the fact that the civilizations themselves have disappeared…

You look in any direction and encounter a stillness, a quiet placidity that makes vistas in this chunk of Florida appear much like photographs, beautiful and moving ones. In fact, you are looking at a drenched hotbed of fertility. Bugs and birds, snakes and gators, flowers and weeds. “This place…

James Randi is the sort of guy who has to have the biggest asteroid in the room. Without him, we might do something ridiculous like walk into Sharper Image and buy a laundry ball, a great leap forward in alchemy that purports to eliminate the need for Tide. Without him,…

Now that punk rock is dead and all so-called independent record labels are actually controlled by international supercorporations, underground music is as uncool as mainstream. Next big thing: underwater music. Okay, maybe not. And frankly, the music itself is somewhat beside the point. The fact that it’s being broadcast beneath…