This week, New Times plays the role of the roadie in a story about a bus full of jiggling ladies called the Stripper Mobile. Part obnoxious stunt, part genius advertising gimmick, the contraption was booted from Las Vegas and shut down in New Orleans. Inside is a hotbox of sex,…
Jesse Bull, a surfer with a tidy goatee, rides a four-foot wave to shore on a blustery South Beach day. In his black wetsuit, he gazes toward the crashing waves and then furrows his brow. “The ocean is important,” he says. “Drilling would mess up our beaches.”Jesse is one of…
Once upon a time there was a romantically bankrupt city called Miami, where chivalry meant holding the door for your hooker, and true love was something you felt for your Mini-Hummer. Once a year, the citizens of this strange land would do their best to seem normal. They would buy…
Last May, New Times ran a story about a Barry University technician who found a noose in his work shed and was fired after reporting it to cops. The incident, it turned out, was a symbol of a larger problem: Stacks of lawsuits showed the private Catholic university had a…
The letter arrived at the judge’s chambers in 2003, signed by a public defender-turned-convict named Anthony Genova. He had been busted for drunk driving, was a self-described Xanax addict, and did time for bankruptcy fraud. It was addressed to his old courthouse buddies — judges and attorneys — explaining he had found Jesus behind bars. His…
Coral Gables Police bought a $16,420 robot and other high-tech gadgets
Deep in the caves of Afghanistan, soldiers use hidden robots the size of children to detect enemy movement. The rolling hunks of metal have less personality than a garbage can — you won’t find them drinking beer with George Jetson — but in the realm of high-tech battlefield tools, they…
It sounds like a reality TV show in the making: A see-through bus full of babes on a cross-country roadtrip through the Bible belt, pole-dancing as they drive. You future producers can expect little old ladies to crap in their diapers, grown men to — literally — lick the side…
The Delano’s Florida Room snubs two gays without women
Not long ago, New Times ran a story titled “Escape From South Beach,” which makes the case that the epicenter of the gay community is no longer in South Beach. Miami Beach’s gay paper, Wire Magazine, apparently took it personally. This week, editor Thomas Barker dedicated an entire issue to “a rebuttal.”His…
Brian Hope, a 36-year-old attorney, moved into a Brickell condo at Quantum on the Bay in October. He signed a one-year lease for unit 3701, which has one bedroom and a sweeping view of Biscayne Bay. He was quite pleased. But then, a couple of days after moving in, he noticed…
When navigating the most elitist nooks of South Beach clubland, it helps to have breasts. Not necessarily on your own body. Just in your presence, nearby — bouncing against your arm if possible — and the chances of getting past the doorman officially quadruple. Blair Russell, a gay 47-year-old, long…
Fidgeting in his gray suit coat, disgraced priest David Dueppen told a judge this morning he wants custody of his 1-year-old daughter. He claims the baby’s mother — a former Porky’s stripper named Beatrice Hernandez — has a criminal record and “ambushed” him using the media. Now, he says, she…
Haitian housekeepers say the Ritz-Carlton South Beach is sweeping them away
Elegant Elliot Offen had the bustier, Holiday Inn gave him the boot
For dozens of inmates, Miami-Dade County jail has become a permanent home
Not long ago, Riptide implied — via a Moron of the Week post — that Miami rapper Bow Wow isn’t very smart. Sure, maybe he did announce his own drunk driving — in a “Lambo” — via Twitter. And, yeah, maybe Miami Beach cops did slap him with a DUI two seconds…
In this county, the criminal court system functions like an old bicycle: It works — just much too slowly. This week, New Times will feature a story about the inmates who have stayed longest in Miami-Dade county jail, a place that’s supposed to be temporary. What we found: Eight men…
Howard Stern sidekick and self-described “topnotch, prime-time, center-stage celebrity” Elegant Elliot Offen runs 14 miles a day in ladies’ lingerie. In New York, he swears, people on the street cheer and salivate over his bodacious curves. “You won’t see a sexy, sexy statuesque physique like mine on any real woman,”…
Inside the lobby of the Ritz-Carlton South Beach, businessmen sip mint-infused lime water next to a display of diamond rings. Four-foot-tall vases of wild orchids vie with the flat-screen TVs for attention, and the ocean crashes just yards from the entrance. Behind the scenes, things are not as pretty. Haitian-born chambermaids…
If you see grown men dressed in elephant costumes on Biscayne Boulevard today, it’s not conceptual art. Nor are they practicing for Burning Man or coming from a really good rave. Activists from the Animal Rights Foundation of Florida (ARFF) plan to dress as ringmasters, clowns, and tigers to protest …
