On June 20 a Cuban Interior Ministry official revealed some startling news on Cuba’s state-run television show Mesa Redonda. Three Miami-Dade residents had been under arrest on the island since April, he reported, for boating to the island from points unknown and going ashore with AK-47 assault rifles, an M-3…
On the night of May 6, the horrible news crackled out of police scanners all along the Tamiami Trail, from Naples to the Big Cypress National Preserve, 50 miles west of Miami. Fatal hit and run on State Road 29 north of Everglades City. Victim: ten months old. Female. Nature…
Will someone from the City of Miami please toss Melissa Meyer a bone? At this point it doesn’t seem likely. Audrey Eckert, a veteran police officer and animal-rights activist who also is the Coconut Grove Neighborhood Resource Officer, isn’t going to do it. Grumbles Eckert: “I have no idea why…
On a stormy Saturday night at the Big Five Club in west Miami-Dade, the Democracy Movement (Movimiento Democracia) revealed its plan for the newest and biggest weapon yet in the war against Fidel Castro. Many distinguished members of el exilio had gathered to lend their moral and financial support. Among…
The darkly comic moment was not lost on Brothers to the Rescue president José Basulto as he sat at his desk in BTTR’s office above Madeira Street in Coral Gables one recent afternoon. Frantically waving both arms and uttering a series of shhhhhhhs! and eeeeeeees!, he was trying to signal…
“I’m all for having a fair hearing before the execution,” Miami Commissioner Art Teele told New Times several days before he and his city hall colleagues were to consider the fate of the local billboard industry. Indeed when he tore into the Outdoor Advertising Review Board at the March 29…
As Miami commissioners and concerned citizens contemplate new proposals to enhance the city’s billboard canopy, they may want to take into account three recent developments related to the Outdoor Advertising Review Board, the advisory committee created by the city commission last September. (Board members and city staffers are scheduled to…
This humble geopolitical region, which last year transformed a child-custody dispute over a boy named Elian into an international crisis, is now slowly making a unique contribution to the annals of espionage law. The lawyers of five men standing trial for spying for the Cuban government have embarked on a…
To his neighbors in the high-rise at 18100 Atlantic Blvd. in North Miami Beach, the balding 31-year-old single guy who lived in apartment 305 and drove a 1988 maroon Pontiac sedan was Manuel Viramontez. The FBI agents who arrived just before 6:00 a.m. on September 12, 1998, also called him…
Ah, Miami — wide-open sky, sparkling bay, balmy breezes caressing the palms, poincianas, billboards. Yes, the city’s tree canopy may be pathetic, but not to worry. Miami is poised to nourish a canopy of a different sort: It is on the verge of becoming one of the most billboard-friendly cities…
They came, they spied, they typed on their computers. But they never intended to make the contents of their floppy disks public. Indeed the idea of that happening was perhaps their worst nightmare, one that came true on September 12, 1998, as they slept in their various apartments in Broward…
Fifteen years from now, part of downtown Miami could look like Times Square. At least that’s what Jacob Sopher believes. And, right or wrong, what he thinks matters because he owns a big chunk of the empty lots in prime locations, including those near the American Airlines Arena and next…
It might be called the Andy Hancock Review Board, even though its official name is the Outdoor Advertising Review Board (OARB). Hancock is the owner of at least three illegal billboards that have gone up along Miami’s expressways over the past three years. He was a high school buddy of…
Skateboarding is a great Miami pastime. For devoted aficionados there is no more idyllic a place for it than the “Rooftops,” a series of concrete peaks and valleys that form the top of the old Miami Marine Stadium on Virginia Key. No cars or pedestrians to spill into here. With…
Hey, kids, guess what? After four years without a home, your Miami Children’s Museum may have found one, in a magical place called Watson Island. The board of directors hopes to begin building it next February with seven million dollars in public and private money it has collected over the…
Just when it seemed the wheels of economic justice in Miami-Dade County had ground to a halt, they began revolving again — at least for thirteen small businesses located in some of the most blighted parts of town. Last year their owners applied for commercial-revitalization grants from the county’s Office…
Development dreams and political schemes have a way of running aground on Watson Island. And they may be heading that way again soon. Since April of last year, Miami officials have been quietly working out a deal to bring a sprawling cruise-terminal operation to one of the city’s most forsaken…
Craig Grossenbacher still can’t believe his eyes when he looks at the aerial photograph and sees a five-acre swath of sea grass gouged out from the floor of Biscayne Bay. The trench is on the south side of the Port of Miami, along Fisherman’s Channel. That is the path by…
With an air of nobility, a dose of hustle, and a boundless desire to save the world from air pollution, Robin Zachary Parker sits down to an elegant lunch at Mezzanotte in Coconut Grove. The tall, blue-eyed, 54-year-old Parker has stopped extolling the insalata frutti di mare and is now…
When the Miami Heat’s latest vision of the American Airlines Arena complex hit the New Times newsroom, the place went bonkers. “I am outraged!” exclaimed editor Jim Mullin. How could there be new plans? The great white wall had already been built. All that remained for construction crews was to…
After fifteen years of myopia, Miami officials are once again protecting your peepers. During the past two months, zoning inspectors have issued dozens of citations to owners of illegal billboards. Among the most prominent are the signs that spoil the skies in Overtown and Wynwood, east of I-95. Still looming…
Mabel is just another member of the fruit-loving resistance. A 54-year-old snowbird who long ago moved south from Greendale, New York, to Allapattah, she has a big smile and, like many of her neighbors, a steely distrust of anyone entering her property. Her small leafy yard is adorned with three…
