On a frigid night in January, blue and purple lights strobed onto hundreds of amped-up faces in a dark club in downtown Miami. As an EDM version of “Don’t Stop Believin'” pulsated from the speakers at E11even, burlesque dancers in flapper costumes shimmied on two stages. Men dressed in tailored…
For those trying to find affordable housing in Miami Beach, it’s been a long wait: More than 500 households have been on the city’s waitlist since 2015, while the Beach’s nonprofit affordable-housing provider has 1,200 people in its backlog.
Two days before Hurricane Irma lashed Florida, Bernika Blocker packed up her home in Miami, took some cash out of the bank, and evacuated north to Atlanta with her father. The storm followed them to her brother-in-law’s home in Georgia, and on Monday, September 11, Blocker called work to say she wouldn’t be able to make it to her job as a City of Miami Beach recreation leader.
With Miami-Dade rents skyrocketing, the county has repeatedly acknowledged the area’s affordable-housing problem. But so far, most attempts to solve the crisis have been futile.
Each time someone books a $200 hotel room in Broward, the county collects 12 bucks in the form of a tourism tax. But for years, if you rented a house or apartment through online services such as Airbnb, you could pretty much skip out on paying.
In his 15 years with the Florida East Coast Railway (FERC), Natale Sacco performed many jobs. From 1986 to 2001, he fueled and maintained trains at the Hialeah yard and along the railway from Miami to Jacksonville, working as a switchman, engineer, conductor, hostler, and trainman.
A Cat 5 PR shitstorm hit Miami’s Tri-Source Pharma late last year after the Wall Street Journal published a story showing the company had raised the price of a cancer drug more than 1,400 percent. Some internet commenters were quick to compare Tri-Source CEO Robert DiCrisci to Martin Shkreli, the now-convicted “pharma bro” who in 2015 jacked up the price of Daraprim, a drug used by HIV patients. One particularly angry Twitter user went as far as to call DiCrisci “the human equivalent of a loaded cat litter box.”
Smart and Holmes, who are both black, are two employees among roughly a dozen who accuse the city’s parks and rec department of racial discrimination and toxic dysfunction. In December, Smart grew so frustrated that she started a petition on Change.org called “Blatant Discrimination Against Blacks.” As of this week, 75 people have cosigned.
What the family didn’t know is that Owen had already been dead — and in the county medical examiner’s office — for seven days. Despite the fact that officers had recovered Owen’s body from beneath a Metrorail overpass May 31, his sister Kathy Kavalin says Miami Police never notified relatives to let them know.
In February 2016, a tipster reported a septic truck driver for dumping liquid waste next to a Kmart off Biscayne Boulevard. Sure enough, when county investigators set up surveillance in the parking lot, they quickly spotted the driver pumping waste directly into a drainage manhole.
In September 2014, Miami-Dade Police Sgt. James Edwards submitted a two-sentence letter resigning from the department with a “heavy heart” because of personal circumstances. But those circumstances also happened to involve two other people: a 15-year-old boy and his 16-year-old brother.
On November 26, Fort Lauderdale Police found Bob Karpinen slumped over dead on a bench at Colee Hammock Park. Identifying the body wasn’t difficult — the 58-year-old had an ID in his wallet and a pill bottle with his name and his doctor’s name listed on the side. Officers Jesus Gonzalez and Scott Bellinger filled out a report, jotting down contact information for Karpinen’s 77-year-old mother in Delray Beach.But for some reason, neither officer bothered contacting her or anyone else in the family. Within hours, Karpinen’s body was hauled off, his property seized, and the report closed out.
At her home in the tiny village of Palm Springs, just outside Lake Worth, Anna Mae Kiger started each morning the same way. After rising around 7, she walked down the driveway to pick up her newspaper. Then the 75-year-old Air Force veteran hoisted an American flag high up a…
Environmentalists and health advocates say the proposed rule change would be devastating for Floridians, especially children and people who eat a lot of seafood. Yesterday, Miami-Dade’s government operations committee unanimously voted in favor of having the county join a lawsuit challenging the proposed rule, which has not yet gone into effect.
When FX’s American Crime Story premieres tonight, Miamians will be familiar with much of the landscape. Season 2 of the hit series explores the assassination of Gianni Versace, who was gunned down on the front steps of his Ocean Drive mansion in 1997. The death of the iconic Italian fashion designer stunned South Beach and sent police scrambling to find the murderer.
Hopping on a bike in Miami takes guts. Even for experienced cyclists, navigating aggressive drivers and oblivious pedestrians is a skill in and of itself. Picking a safe path is essential, which is why the Venetian Causeway has become one of Miami’s most used bike routes. And the Venetian just got an upgrade making it even more bicycle-friendly.
This past Tuesday, when volunteers were preparing to open for their normal 6-to-9 p.m. shift, they discovered thieves had been broken into the collective’s modified shipping container. Someone had hauled away three new bikes, expensive tools, and a generator the nonprofit group uses to keep the lights on. The total value was $4,000. It is the fourth time the bicycle collective has been targeted since it moved to Omni Park last February, according to Ruben van Hooidonk, the group’s vice president.
In September 2015, Lisa was working as a pier attendant at the Deerfield Beach Fishing Pier when her boss, public works director Charles DaBrusco, called her into the bathroom to check out a broken toilet. Once the two were inside, however, it became clear he hadn’t summoned her for a maintenance issue.
A few days after Christmas in 2015, a woman working on Royal Caribbean’s Majesty of the Seas was pinned down by another crew member and violently raped, a lawsuit says. The attack, which lasted around 45 minutes, was so brutal the woman was left with bite marks and bruises.
On the morning of Christmas Eve 2014, a home healthcare worker arrived for his shift at the home of an 82-year-old Hallandale Beach woman. But when he entered the condo, he found Florence Wagner dead on her bed.
For nearly five decades, the law in North Miami Beach has been clear: If you want to open a gun store, you must set up shop in the industrial areas of the city.
On a Thursday in November 2007, Sherkendra Burch breastfed and burped her 6-week-old daughter, S’marri, and laid her down for the night on a queen-size bed. At midnight, Burch crawled in beside the girl and fell asleep gently holding her, the same way she did every night. But when the…
