A Coconut Grove restaurateur faces life in the slammer for serving a certain illegal appetizer, one not featured on his menu. A real special. Let’s call it cocaine primavera. And you had to know just how to ask for it. Giovanni Tummolillo owned Cafe Sci Sci, a high-end Italian restaurant…
Steve Smith liked his old job. In fact he loved his old job, and his boss, and his colleagues. An investigator at the Miami office of the state Division of Insurance Fraud, he did his work well, earning consistently good evaluations during his seven-and-a-half-year career. He had no intention of…
Black and Hispanic environmentalists are scarcer than Florida panthers. If that doesn’t change soon, the whole movement faces extinction. This was the Everglades brain trust, people who cared so much about the dying River of Grass that they were actually doing something about it. Activists, government regulators, scientists, lawyers, engineers,…
One chunk of the Florida Statutes was created with the notion that all public-policy making should be conducted not behind closed doors but in the open. It’s known as the Government-in-the-Sunshine Law, and it prohibits two or more members of the same elected or appointed board from discussing a matter…
This past week Circuit Judge Juan Ramirez, Jr., granted a motion for summary judgment in favor of New Times Newspapers of Florida, Inc., thereby ending a two-year-old libel lawsuit filed by a prominent nursery owner against the newspaper company, which owns Miami New Times. The lawsuit was filed February 14,…
By most appearances, the area around Lincoln Road and the Miami Beach Convention Center was in the ascendant in 1993. Galleries, boutiques, restaurants, and bistros were proliferating along the pedestrian mall. The New World Symphony and the Miami City Ballet had made it their home. Condo conversions and world-class hotel…
Dick Ring, superintendent of Everglades National Park, wanted to go on a camp-out. He invited several colleagues to join him for a long weekend at Fort Jefferson National Monument in the Dry Tortugas, an archipelago of coral reefs 70 miles west of Key West. Staffers from the U.S. Army Corps…
It takes two staffers to carry the table into the back room of Books & Books. Though it’s the same spindly-legged piece of wood at which scores of other writers have sat and autographed copies of their books, owner Mitchell Kaplan carefully inspects the location, which today is of crucial…
The nature lovers were out in force, as were others who have made the environment their business. More than 150 environmental activists, scientists, regulators, engineers, lawyers, and consultants packed the conference rooms and corridors of a hotel in Broward County. Like moths to a light bulb, they came from all…
Deadly chemicals leaking from South Florida’s sewage system have spawned mysterious, meat-eating “biological freaks” that have attacked visitors to the Everglades and wrought harrowing destruction on property and wildlife. But in an apparent attempt to avert widespread panic at the height of the tourist season, government and tourism officials are…
From afar, Miami Beach’s Art Deco aficionados seem to be a unified bunch, waging a common struggle against forces that threaten the architectural and artistic legacy of that bygone era. Recently, however, a most uncivil feud has broken out amid the pastels, pitting Art Deco exponents against one another. And…
The Humane Society’s four drivers aren’t the only animal-rescue personnel plying the county’s streets. The Dade County pound, officially known as the Metro-Dade Animal Care & Control Division, has its own crew of about fifteen drivers. Though the Humane Society and Animal Care & Control are regularly confused, and their…
The day, as usual, begins with death, or at least its threats. A dog strays into the early-morning rush hour traffic on Miller Road, gets hit by a car, stumbles over to the swale, and collapses. By the time Jorge Yera arrives 45 minutes later, the dog, a Dalmatian, has…
Doing a little house hunting? Consider this nearly completed beauty: two stories, 2500 square feet, barrel-tile roof, three bedrooms, two and a half bathrooms, spacious living room, dining room, kitchen, and Florida room, cathedral ceilings, patio, garage, waterfront views, adjoining never-to-be-developed land in a quiet, upscale residential neighborhood. Approximate asking…
The two insurance-fraud investigators had stopped by unannounced. It was just after 6:30 on the evening of January 12, 1995, and Steven Smith and Maureen Murphy had some questions for the petite woman with long, dark hair who answered the door wearing a T-shirt emblazoned with the words “U.S. Attorney’s…
Two weeks ago we invited readers to help make public policy. We did it because we believe most Americans have more to contribute to the democratic process than simply punching a voting ballot every once in a while. The average citizen, we feel, has something important to say about the…
It was a picture-perfect scene of festiveness, family, and sport. The sun shone and the happy crowd roared as multicolored bullets of fiberglass and steel hurtled around the 1.5-mile oval of the freshly christened Homestead Motorsports Complex. Er, make that the 1.5-mile oval of the freshly christened Metro-Dade Homestead Motorsports…
Legendary bad neighbors: Egypt and Israel. The Hatfields and the McCoys. Dennis the Menace and George Wilson. Let’s add a new twosome to the list: Homestead Air Force Base and Biscayne National Park. Separated by a scant two miles, the sites are linked by a drainage canal that has become…
While other municipal governing bodies are more ethnically representative of their constituents, the Miami Beach City Commission has been dominated by Anglo Jewish males.
For new listeners, WLRN-FM (91.3) can be a bewildering place. One minute the public radio station may be broadcasting a symphony from Royal Festival Hall in London, then in the next minute, a New Orleans Mardi Gras brass band. Or a percussion ensemble from Zaire. Or synthesized music from outer…
You might think the manatee, that lovable blob of seagoing tranquility, would be the creature least likely to provoke adults to fits of rage. Susan Markley, Dade’s top biologist, knows otherwise. Four and a half years ago, when Metro-Dade drafted new speed limits designed to reduce the number of manatees…
In the already humid hours before dawn on June 7, 1993, a heavily armed, bulletproof-vested task force of federal, state, and local law enforcement agents fanned out across northern Dade County. Their quarry: eleven men believed to be members of one of South Florida’s most lucrative, murderous, bad-ass drug rings…
