Maybe Riptide has been watching too much CNN, but we can’t help feeling like we’re headed for an apocalyptic crash-and-burn not seen since Hoover began building shacks in Central Park. Thousands of homes in South Florida are in foreclosure, squatters are taking up residence, and when said squatters get booted,…
They’re out there: hoity-toity connoisseurs just waiting to tell you that fashion photographers aren’t real artists. They’ll say, “Bla, bla, bla isn’t fine art. Bla, bla, bla isn’t thought-provoking… Bla.” Then they’ll take a sip of free champgne from a plastic cup and check their Blackberries when it’s your turn…
In movies, Miami gets a bad rap. It’s always cocaine smuggler this, and mafia murderer that. It’s like come on, Hollywood. You’re making us look bad. So when Riptide heard Dade County got a cameo in Gus Van Sant’s new film Milk, we bought some trans fat-soaked popcorn and got…
If the Kramer vs. Kramer movie script had been written in finger paint and then dunked in a vile of LSD, it would be a lot like Victor-Hugo Vaca’s online graphic novel Crackhead Jesus. In the story, the Miami artist satirizes his own courtroom experiences to point out the nastiness of…
Last week, New Times brought you the story of Cassy the squatter, the homeless Haitian mother who moved into a blue, bank-owned foreclosed house in Buena Vista with her young daughter. Her tale included a tribe of activists, a couple broken laws, and a mortgage lender none the wiser.Cassy, whose…
In Miami, Save Dade aims to protect gay people from discrimination. So you’d think, on a day like today, the group would tally one point for themselves on the old civil rights scoreboard. A Miami-Dade Court ruled there’s “no rational basis” for prohibiting gay adoption this morning and, yeah, at…
Nestor Arenas doesn’t aim to please. The baby-faced, bespectacled 43-year-old Miami photographer likes to show us what we’d rather not see. Like, say, a once-adorable black cat smashed on the side of the road. Or a raccoon’s guts spilling onto the asphalt. In his latest work, which is on display…
Hauling a fishing rod and bait, Orlando Maytin and his 12-year-old son trudged through a vacant parking lot just past Mile Marker 31 on Alligator Alley. It was 7:45 a.m. March 21, 1999, when they came to a quaint public fishing nook on the edge of a vast, swampy stretch…
Her knee-length dreadlocks wrapped in a green cloth, Cassy hoists her two-year-old daughter up on a hip and shuffles in her socks into her big, clean bedroom. “This house is a castle,” says the slender, soft-skinned former university teaching assistant, shaking her head in disbelief. “I’ve never had a walk-in…
Living in the city can get to you. There are too many people and not enough trees. So this past weekend, in the dark, windy pre-dawn morning, I drove to an eerily quiet, woodsy patch of the everglades to meet two wild boar hunters. These guys – both named Mark…
Photo via Coconut Grove Grapevine Yesterday somebody plunked what looks like a ten-by-eight-foot wooden box down in the middle of CocoWalk, with a sign on it that says, “Open December 9.” Like a bunch of kids at Christmas, Grovites were placing bets on the contents of the mystery package last…
Former state Sen. Gwen Margolis, age 74, is one unhappy politician. And she’ll tell you why: A runoff is on the way for the position of Miami-Dade’s first elected property appraiser, despite her 72,000-vote lead over Pedro Garcia. “It’s one of the weirdest situations I’ve ever seen,” she says. “It’s…
Barack Obama cranked on Tuesday, so we’re cranked. And he took Florida too. Wow! It’s history, baby! But then we looked more closely at the results and, well, the Diaz-Balart brothers proved that while negative campaigning didn’t work across the nation, South Florida lapped it up. Miami Dade College lost…
It’s late, so I’ll save the rant on Amendment 2. (Dear Florida, we are not friends anymore…) No, really, it’s only CIVIL RIGHTS we’re talking about, no need to get upset or anything. Numbers are still sketchy, but CNN and The Miami Herald have already projected Florida’s Ammendment 2 will…
Standing in a civilized, orderly voting line isn’t all it’s cracked up to be. The downside: There’s no talk-show-style drama to keep you entertained while you wait. Fortunately for Riptide 2.0 — and the nearly 100 voters at the Miami Beach fire station on Jefferson Avenue around noon — one…
Logan Fazio Anime SuperCon, where being normal isn’t appreciated. Click here to view the full slideshow. If you’re sixteen years old, and have been brutally socially rejected from your respective small-town Florida high school; have no fear. There’s a place you can go. And, we promise, you won’t be the…
Come voting time, we don’t hear much from the so-called “quiet minority.” You pretty much have to break out the bullhorn to get some attention in this melt, melt, melting pot of a municipality. So we’ll use the squeaky-wheel-gets-the-grease theory to explain why Florida is the last state in the…
Barack Obama cranked on Tuesday, so we’re cranked. And he took Florida too. Wowsa! It’s history, baby! But then we looked more closely at the results and, well, the Diaz-Balart brothers proved that while negative campaigning didn’t work across the nation, South Florida lapped it up. Miami Dade College lost…
Melissa Dazquez is one ballsy Obama-lover. Two days ago, the twenty- three-year-old parked her car across from Versailles Cuban restaurant –Miami’s political equivalent of western Texas — and took out a “Change ‘08” yard sign. Bracing herself, she turned on her video camera. (Footage is on the way.) On a…
Brad Beckerman, 28, wasn’t always the “wheatgrass-drinking, meditating vegan” he is today. The former escort service-running, gun-toting, DEA-bribing party boy from Miami Beach just launched his own homemade, holistic blend of tonic, made of — among ingredients we can’t pronounce — West Indian sea moss. His PR girl calls the…
His MySpace page reads like a eulogy. “R.I.P., Toro. I always thought you was next to blow. Only death could have stopped you,” a fellow artist writes. Underneath, a pretty girl laments, “It’s still not sinking in.” The shooting of up-and-coming Opa-locka rapper Toro — made big through his collaborations…
On the way to the slot machines at Seminole Hard Rock last weekend, a little old lady was surrounded by a circle of seven-foot-tall women. Overwhelmed, she stopped and stared up from well below their bust lines. Her eyes got wide. “She looks scared!” shouted Bunny Glamazon, a hulking strawberry-blond…
