A man of his age and girth probably shouldn’t be doing this, but Irv Liss has something to prove. All 66 years and 250-plus pounds of him. He’s standing in the playground of Beacon Hill, a private elementary school in North Dade, holding on to a steel, cactus-shaped climbing structure,…
Poor Dean Grandin. He was simply trying to do his job. As the City of Miami Beach’s planning and zoning director, he has one of those unglamorous, thankless posts deep inside the gray factory of municipal government. Important? By all means. He is responsible for enforcing the city’s zoning ordinance…
Perhaps if the note had been unsigned and composed of letters cut from a magazine, he may have felt even more threatened. As it was, the scribbled message, which had slipped out of a fax machine in John Reitzammer’s Jacksonville office sometime during the early morning hours of May 12,…
Manuel Diaz is testimony to the little-known fact that money does grow on trees. Since the 1960s, Diaz, a Cuban immigrant, has transformed a nursery business he started in his parents’ back yard into one of the largest ornamental plant companies in the world: the 1500-acre Manuel Diaz Farms in…
“You did what with Blaze Starr?” Michael Somberg, the police planner for the Miami Beach Police Department, leans across his desk toward the large man who has wandered into his office. “The stripper? Now isn’t that a little piece of Americana!” The visitor smiles bashfully and recounts, somewhat reluctantly, the…
Joe’s Stone Crab, that hub of Miami Beach hubbub, was crackling with more excitement than usual this past June 16, the opening night of Thomas Kramer’s six-day South Pointe charrette. At his own expense, the German millionaire had brought together ten architectural firms from around the world to create a…
Perhaps no one really believed the issue would lie dormant for long. Too much politics, too many passions. Indeed, the heated debate surrounding a new public law school in Florida — whether one is needed, where it should be located, and who ought to run it — energized the state…
This past September brought bleak news to the parents, students, and teachers at a northeast Dade grade school. Rumor had it that an Oak Grove Elementary staffer had walked off with thousands of dollars in school funds, necessitating a drastic cutback in supplies and the cancellation of all field trips…
Amid the usual cacophony of midday airport sounds, passengers who happened to have heard the explosion probably didn’t think much of it. A brief roar off in the distance barely intruding on the aural blur of arrival information and public announcements, crying children, vehicles loading and unloading travelers. Perhaps the…
Fear and temerity commingle in the voice of Alex Daoud, phoning the New Times offices to announce that he is finally on his way to prison. “Hey buddy, I’m in South Carolina, heading into Estill,” he barks into a mobile speaker phone, in the manner of a radio correspondent filing…
On the question of whether the recently opened Federal Justice Building downtown should be named after Senior U.S. District Judge James Lawrence King, the jury is still out. But even as bigwigs on the judicial district’s Civil Justice Advisory Group ponder the possibility of honoring the jurist for his 23…
Few black South Floridians enjoy the name recognition and high profile of Miami attorney H.T. Smith.
During his long career, Morris Lapidus worked on hundreds of architectural projects, including stores, hotels and motels, apartment buildings and public housing projects, banks, schools, synagogues, hospitals, laboratories, theaters, shopping malls, municipal facilities, office buildings, convention centers, country clubs, private homes, and cruise ships. The architect’s involvement ranged from remodeling…
The old man doesn’t have to wait long to prove his point. Where upward-flaring, stainless-steel columns once graced the grand, sweeping entranceway of the Fontainebleau Hilton Resort and Spa on Miami Beach’s Collins Avenue, spindly shafts now stand. “I hate to go back into these places,” he mutters as he…
Evenings, when the sidewalks of South Beach become a pedestrian mall of boozing and buying, Michael Hernandez’s pitch might be mistaken for just another commodity among the burgeoning itinerant marketplace of flower vendors, parrot photographers, and craftspeople. But Hernandez’s merchandise is singular. And he’s unloading it for free. The 23-year-old…
With prison just around the corner, Miami Beach’s former golden boy looks back at the gravity of his corruption and broods on the sorrow of his fate.
On August 28, when state and local officials discovered that Miami Beach’s drinking water supply was contaminated, they jotted down a notice on a piece of paper, slipped it into a fax machine, and sent it to about 30 local media organizations. Then they went back to what they were…
There’s nothing like the threat of a tourism boycott to rattle a small tropical island dependent on a steady influx of dollar-toting visitors. Just ask Aruba’s government officials, who for the past few weeks have been reviewing a permit application for an aquatic theme park that would include a controversial…
On the day he was scheduled to die, Giuseppe Zangara pushed past prison guards and entered the electrocution chamber of Raiford State Prison. He sat himself squarely in the chair, gave instructions about how to strap himself in properly, and said, “Push the button.” Five weeks earlier, on February 15,…
If you listen carefully as you lie in bed tonight, and if the wind is blowing just right, you may be able to hear an extraordinary chorus of animal noises drifting in from south Broward County. Not the usual nocturnal screeching and caterwauling of the wild, but the joyous sounds…
Does the pantheon of civil rights pioneers have room for an earnest, pasty-faced nurse who wants to work hard and save lives? Will MLK, the Woman Suffragettes, and the Stonewall combatants slide over a little and let Bruce Wheatley in? Two years ago Wheatley changed careers and became a licensed…
What a glorious day to take the kids for a motorcycle ride to the park! The sun was high and the sky clear of the thunderous rain clouds that had darkened and drenched Miami for a day and a half. South Florida’s bikers participating in the “Beach Bash Poker Run”…
