Almost 30 years ago, Hialeah passed an ordinance banning animal sacrifice in an attempt to stop a group of Santeria practitioners from building a new place of worship in the city. The church challenged the law all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court, which unanimously agreed that such a…
A few things Tremont Towing is well known for: pissing off South Beach drivers, accusations of shady business practices, tight political connections, and enriching us all with hilariously scripted “windmill roundhouse back flips” on the since-canceled reality show South Beach Tow. Some things Tremont Towing is not particularly well known for: improving…
Uber is a lot of things: Tech disrupter, enemy of taxi unions, godsend after a night of drinking. And according to one new lawsuit in Miami, it’s also the king of spammy text messages. Last week, a Tallahassee-based lawyer filed a proposed class action lawsuit against Uber in federal…
Getting onto the beach in the tiny Miami-Dade town of Golden Beach is, in and of itself, no easy feat. There’s no public access onto the sand, and anyone driving into town has to enter through a gate that snaps their picture. But say, for argument’s sake, you find yourself…
For more than eight years, Don Worth has watched plan after plan to restore the Miami Marine Stadium fall apart. Abandoned after Hurricane Andrew in 1992, the stadium on Virginia Key has taken on a new, graffiti-covered life as a hangout for street artists and skateboarders. Worth dreamed of seeing…
Two candidates running against state Sen. Gwen Margolis in the newly redrawn District 38 are demanding an apology from the 81-year-old senator after she allegedly referred to three of her five opponents as “three Haitians” at a recent campaign event. Don Festge, a North Miami teacher who is running for…
There’s some bad news and some good news for debt-saddled graduates who paid a company called the Student Aid Center to help reduce their student loan debt. The bad news first: the Federal Trade Commission says the business was a scam. The good news? The FTC and Florida’s Attorney General…
Before it was the Flintstones mobile, it was actually the Pimpstones mobile, because this is Florida and a regular Flintstones car still isn’t weird enough. “We were coming to Fantasy Fest, and we decided we were going to be the Flintstones. Actually—” Lisa Bowman stops and corrects herself. “Actually, the pimped-out…
Four years ago, Stefanie Voigt, an underwater cinematographer, moved into a new apartment on a small island called Belle Isle in the Venetians on Miami Beach. Her building overlooked Biscayne Bay, her rent was affordable, and her neighbors were friendly and welcoming. It was pretty much the ideal living situation…
On Wednesday, March 16, at a self-described “strip mall watering hole” out in Doral, someone made a terrible decision to perform a little song called “My Sacrifice.” It wasn’t just the fact that it was a Creed song that made the selection such an awful choice. Instead, it appears someone…
To see it is to love it: On Thursday morning, Key West Police issued a photo of a glorious, real-life Flintstones car, complete with a dinosaur bone-shaped window and zebra upholstery. But this was no silly “Hey, check this out!” type post. The vehicle was parked illegally across from the…
If it seems like you can get almost anything delivered to your house these days, it’s because, for the most part, you can. Need a set of champagne flutes or a can of Fancy Feast or an extra phone charger? Amazon Prime Now can get it to you for free…
Proving complaints against police officers can be nearly impossible — a he-said, she-said situation putting cop versus suspect almost always ends in favor of the police. That’s one reason so many forces are now adopting body cameras. But Miami’s Civilian Investigative Panel, an independent city board that looks into complaints about…
Miami Beach police have finalized their plans for controlling crowds and traffic on Memorial Day weekend, with one major change: This year, cars coming onto the Beach won’t be subject to a DUI checkpoint. Officer Ernesto Rodriguez, the department’s spokesman, said the checkpoint, which has been used for several years,…
On a Sunday afternoon one week before Easter 1999, Mark Williams pulled his SUV into the parking lot outside his estranged wife’s West Palm Beach apartment with his 11-year-old son Lamatra riding shotgun. For most of his life, Lamatra had shuffled between his mother and his grandmother, but this week…
At the end of April, a Miami man returned to his vehicle at the Dadeland North parking garage and found it propped up on concrete barriers and stripped of its wheels and tires. “All four wheels were taken and left on bricks,” Juan Bisbal wrote on Facebook. “The garages have surveillance cameras but…
At the end of a semester-long study abroad program in Genoa, Italy in December 2014, a group of architecture students from Florida International University went out to a celebratory dinner. After the restaurant, many students and a handful of faculty members grabbed drinks at a local bar. At 2 a.m., three…
On Monday, Amy Plotkin and Laura Parsons wed in a small ceremony at Miami Beach City Hall. The two met about four years ago through a women’s bike racing team; Plotkin was an MD/PhD student at the University of Miami and Parsons was manager at a research lab at UM’s marine…
On the second day of a seven-day cruise from New York to Florida and the Bahamas last year, two young children briefly escaped from their mother’s sight and somehow landed in the pool. Within moments, both kids were yanked from the water from opposite ends of the pool. But it…
Ex-Miami Dade mayor Carlos Alvarez, who was recalled from office in 2011 over the disastrous Marlins Stadium deal, has been arrested for domestic violence against his girlfriend of 14 years, according to an arrest affidavit from Coral Gables police. The affidavit says Alvarez’s girlfriend paid him a visit Saturday to…
Two months ago, Miami police union president Javier Ortiz rattled the Beyhive when he called for a boycott of Beyoncé’s upcoming concert at Marlins Park, the first stop on her 40-date Formation World Tour. Ortiz deemed the superstar’s message “anti-police” and suggested City of Miami officers protest by refusing to…
A plant used in both traditional Chinese and Tibetan medicine — one that’s currently available in tablet form on Amazon for 22 cents a pill — could someday be used to help fight HIV in patients infected with the virus. That’s what researchers at Florida International University claim, at least. …
