Money changes everything. When Leslie Bowe finally returned to the office that Monday, after he had recovered from the chicken pox and made a quick trip to Tallahassee, he was a different man. For starters he was rich, having cashed in a lottery ticket worth $17 million. And he seemed…
It’s high noon in Cuban Miami. Knives and forks are clanging on the plates at the Rancho Luna restaurant and waitresses are bustling around ferrying loads of pollo asado and moros to hungry diners. Owner Jorge Rabelo describes his Little Havana restaurant as “un pedazo de Cuba bajo el cielo…
Five years ago Ivonne Lamazares decided to learn how to ride a bicycle. As a girl growing up in Cuba, she didn’t have a bike, and the couple of times she’d had a chance to ride didn’t go well. “I’ve felt inadequate about physical things all my life,” she says…
As Joe Wasilewski pulls on his wading boots, sprays some Deep Woods Off on his bare arms and neck, and begins to haul his supplies — spotlights, cloth sacks, a notebook, and scales and a ruler for taking measurements — down to the dock, he tries to explain the appeal…
Info: Playing With Fire That roaring inferno you see was started intentionally, and if it can be kept under control, it’ll do more good than harm By Mike Clary The wind is variable, blowing from the southeast at about six to eight miles per hour, when the state Department of…
In a freshening breeze somewhere south of the Marquesas Keys, the yacht veers due west, baring its starboard side to the rolling swells, and suddenly a voyage that had started out so serenely at the docks in Key West turns foul. “We should have a very pleasant ride out there,”…
Francisco Aruca sits alone in a wood-paneled room in a small, blue-gray building a few blocks off north Biscayne Boulevard. On the table before him are a few notes written out on a sheet of yellow paper torn from a legal pad and a clipping cut from the morning paper…
Radio personalities Armando Perez Roura and Tomas Garcia Fuste would seem to have much in common. Both were rising young celebrities in their native Cuba during the 1950s, friendly rivals in the lively, competitive news business that thrived in Havana during the days when the casinos were open all night,…
Tomas Garcia Fuste is not running for office, and he’s no pop star. Still, when he goes to lunch at Victor’s Cafe, it takes him about twenty minutes to make the journey from valet parking to his table. So many people, so much homage. Fuste, ¨c centsmo andas? Oye, Fuste,…
Raul Martinez’s office in exile is about three blocks from Hialeah City Hall, on the ground floor of a pink-hued building on East First Avenue. He’s got a glass-topped desk here, and a leather couch. The scattershot decor includes maps of Dade, Broward, and Palm Beach counties, a Haitian painting…
It’s the busiest place in South Florida, a $500-million-per-year business that every twelve months sees more than 26 million people come to call. But the roof leaks, some of the walls are collapsing, and the carpets are filthy. Even the man who runs Miami International Airport admits that in many…
On a Tuesday-morning drive to Miami International Airport, Cesar Trasobares is rolling up the ramp from Le Jeune Road as he begins to describe the terrain around him. “What you have to imagine is a progression from light to dark to light,” he says. “Here we’re going through a dark,…
