On a damp September morning in 2006 at the edge of a sleepy Japanese fishing town, an orchestra of screaming voices echoed off the glistening rock walls of a hidden sea cove. Men in navy blue raincoats bobbed on 40-foot boats, hoisting spears nearly twice their height. One by one,…

Florida businessman-turned-inventor Doug Sturlingh just filed patent papers for a product he believes will “change the world.” It’s called the Genital Shield, and — though the name is a bit of a boner-shrinker — he believes it will eventually rid the planet of STDs. His target consumer: responsible gentlemen with…

Donnie was sick of waiting. Dolled-up like a Southern beauty queen, she wore Barbie-blond hair and a pink collagen pout as she sat in the parking lot of a Miramar condo. The five-foot-ten 32-year-old eyed the clock from the passenger seat of a rented green Chevy van just after 7…

 When death row inmate Michael Lambrix applied to be a Florida Supreme Court Justice in January, the nominating committee had a good laugh. “It’s tongue-in-cheek,” said Chair Robert Hackleman – and it probably was. (Lambrix wrote: “My biggest qualification…is that I’m the only applicant that has been totally screwed by…

South Florida’s latest claim to fame hasn’t even gone through puberty yet. But he has “healed” the crippled, studied university-level theology, and preached to a packed Broward church. In case you missed the story, buried in yesterday’s New York Times: Meet 11-year-old ordained minister Terry Durham. The Miami-Dade elementary schooler…

Big time animal lover Anthony Marasia lives in Hawaii, but he’s got beef with Miami. The 35-year old, media savy former zookeeper launched a national campaign Thursday to free Seaquarium’s Lolita the killer whale. The plan: broadcast footage of the captive orca in her kiddie pool of a tank on…

Riptide heard a rumor there’s a smidgen of a rivalry between the campy old-school drag queens and the glammed-out young divas on the Miami scene. So we stopped by the Shelley Novak Awards — the gay community’s parody of the Oscars — last night at Score, but found more ass…

Florida businessman-turned-inventor Doug Sturlingh just filed patent papers for a product he believes will “change the world.” It’s called the Genital Shield, and — though the name is a bit of a boner-shrinker — he believes it will eventually rid the planet of STDs. His target consumer: responsible gentlemen with…

In an attempt to fix a broken system, Judge Steve Leifman announced plans this morning for a first-of-its-kind “pilot facility” to house mentally ill individuals with criminal charges in Miami-Dade. Leifman — an articulate, bespectacled advisor to the Supreme Court on mental health issues — explained to TV reporters, policymakers,…

Miami’s colony of sex offenders is a lot like a big, stubborn pimple on the nose of the city: Nobody likes it, yet it just keeps growing. So it’s no surprise that after nearly two years of policymakers ignoring the problem, it has gotten uglier. The number of men living…

The good state of Florida wants gay people to know something: You sure as hell can’t adopt here, but we’ve been counting on your child-free-in-a-recession vacation dollars. (Expensive SoFla hotel? Check. Poolside margarita? Check. Civil rights? Umm, about that…) Along with insanely wealthy folks, gay people are up there with…

Miami’s colony of sex offenders is a lot like a big, stubborn pimple on the nose of the city: Nobody likes it and yet it just keeps growing. So it’s no surprise that after nearly two years of policymakers ignoring the problem, it’s gotten uglier. In response, Miami city commissioners…

It has been almost two years since New Times exposed a disturbing, state-mandated colony of sex offenders living under the Julia Tuttle Causeway. Since then, city commissioners have received dozens of angry letters, international news programs have aired footage, and the amount of banished men under the bridge has doubled…

Besides going to the DMV, doing taxes is the part of being a grownup that Riptide hates most. So we usually wouldn’t be thinking about it this early, but it seems some good folks in Coconut Grove have an extra-special reason to hate April 15 this year. They’re paying more…

News buffs might remember a split-second appearance by Tessa Boudreaux — unemployed marketing extraordinaire — on Channel 10 this past Thursday. It came during the obligatory Economy Sucks story and the recap goes like this: Despite her constant efforts, the articulate, 40 year-old recent University of Miami grad student hasn’t…

Who says the electric chair should stand in the way of your dream job? Not Michael Lambrix. Sure, the 48-year-old is on death row for fatally bludgeoning and strangling two people outside Fort Myers in 1983. But that hasn’t stopped the articulate, overachieving inmate from applying to be Florida’s newest…

After a conflict with Miami Police, the sex offenders who have been sent by the state to live under the Julia Tuttle Causeway are getting some help from the American Civil Liberties Union. Yesterday the Florida branch of the ACLU delivered a letter to Miami Chief of Police John Timoney…

Yesterday, Riptide visited Juan Martin, a registered sex offender who lives under the Julia Tuttle Causeway. The compact, bushy-haired thirty year-old lives in state-mandated colony of offenders under the bridge – a story New Times broke in March 2007. Now, he says, Miami Police are threatening to charge them with…

Who says the electric chair should stand in the way of your dream job? Not Michael Lambrix. Sure, the 48-year-old waits on death row for fatally bludgeoning and strangling two people outside Fort Myers in 1983. But that hasn’t stopped the articulate, overachieving inmate from applying to be Florida’s newest…

When it comes to breaking the law in Miami, no place is sacred. The greasy claw of crime will dig its fingernails in anywhere. Churches and synagogues? Be damned. Schools and hospitals? Fair game. That apparently doesn’t stop at the bathroom door. Our classy city’s latest claim to fame: The…

Teenage girls in Liberty City might be the least llikely demographic you’d expect build kick-ass, soccer-playing robots. (Think shrunken R2d2.) But at Northwestern Senior High School, business teacher Kathy Lyden has gotten a group of ten young ladies totally jazzed about robotics. She excitedly points out: “Miami is the world…