Andressa is a perky traveling beautician who specializes in Brazilian hair straightening. Sure, she uses formaldehyde — found in embalming fluid — to make curls straight as straw. And, yeah, inhaling the stuff causes nasal cancer in rats, but she’s good at calming skittish new clients. “The fumes actually smell…
The Whole Foods cooperate website lists this as its company motto: “Open books, open doors, and open people.” That’s not the case Miami Beach. A few days ago, Riptide posted a story about an employee who was fired for reporting a sewer spill . Management let the mess sit for…
Miami Beach Whole Foods worker spills the beans on a sewer leak and gets canned
If you believe the Turks and Caicos Sun newspaper, Barry University students from the islands will be in for a complicated next semester. Those who depend on scholarship money are “in danger of having their education abruptly interrupted,” the paper reports. The country’s Ministry of Finance owes the school $300,000,…
On the afternoon of November 1, Whole Foods workers in Miami Beach noticed an unsettling odor. There was no mistaking it, says a marketing specialist who asked to remain anonymous: “It was the smell of poop and pee.” The employee, who we’ll call Janet, did some investigating and found a…
About 200 students are locked inside a gym at University of Miami as we speak, thanks to an alleged BB gun shooter. School President Donna Shalala sent text messages and e-mails around 3 p.m. today asking folks to “stay away from windows.” Students are becoming restless. From inside the gym,…
This week’s feature tells the story of a photographer-turned-pimp, a “mansion” full of prostitutes, and a big (albeit accidental) bust by Miami-Dade police officers.While reporting the story, New Times inherited some unusual files. They included pimp Hugo Gonzalez’s “business” documents, which were as tidy as they were pornographic. (Think naked hooker…
Miami pimp Hugo Gonzalez lavished gifts on his whores to keep them around
This past May, the New York Times quoted the property manager of Parkview Point Condo in Miami Beach. Rosa M. Rodriguez, age 60, told a sad story about being broke. The units around her were foreclosing, Rosa said, and she had to pay for the damages. She explained to the…
Neighbors near Westview Country Club awoke to the sound of gunshots at 3:20 this morning. According to Miami-Dade police, cops responded to a domestic dispute at the small home of a 24-year-old convict named Yves “Carl Love” Guerrier. He was choking his sister and carring a wooden bat. While cops…
Watson Island is the redheaded stepchild of Biscayne Bay. Star Island gets Shaquille O’Neal and Madonna. Fisher Island has its own private ferry. And poor Watson is stuck with a field of dry grass and a theme park full of restless parrots. Sure, it’s home to the Japanese garden and boasts…
Well, this is just delightful. In fact, Riptide would like to nominate this video for Best Unintentionally Funny Clip of the Week.We don’t want to give too much away. No, no. It would spoil the climax. But let’s just say you can count on the following (in chronological order):1. A…
Three-legged dogs and one-eyed cats might want to hobble to the next county. There are few animal shelters with no-kill policies in Miami-Dade, and one of them closed last month. The Human Society has since taken over the family-run Pet Rescue in Miami Gardens. But there’s more to the story,…
Calvin Kingcade is a fit 25-year-old with a black eye, a broken jaw, and a mouth fastened shut with silver wires. He drools while he talks to his mom on Ward D of Jackson Memorial Hospital. One-fourth of his face is paralyzed. Kingcade has been attacked three times in jail…
A few blocks from the ocean on Miami Beach, Robert Roark pops the trunk of a weather-worn station wagon where he’s been sleeping for a week. “I don’t need a motel,” he says. “My last $20,000 is going to a lawyer.” Everything the California builder needs fits in his car:…
The photo of Calvin Kingcade, inmate 09-9975, shows a fit 25-year-old with a black eye, a broken jaw, and a mouth fastened shut with silver wires. He drools while he talks to his mom at Ward D of Jackson Memorial Hospital. After getting jumped at Miami-Dade Pretrial Detention Center, one-fourth…
When it comes to the drug habits of the rich and famous, there’s a thin line between hilarious and disturbing. Championship race car driver Mariusz Malyszczycki’s relationship with ecstasy is something closer to entrepreneurial. The Polish speedster was busted in the middle of a brazen plan to import a boatload…
On the opinion page of the Miami Herald , Patricia Kawaja’s letter begins dramatically. “I am alarmed by Tomas Regalado’s election as mayor of Miami,” she blasts. “Another Cobwebbed politician….”Only that’s not what she actually wrote. When the British-born writer-by-trade sent her letter in earlier this week, it read: “Another…
The 2009 Miami Book Fair offers a strange brew of talent
In Coconut Grove, Peacock Park’s mangroves have become a dump
Riptide has a question for all of those crazy Coconut Grovites. In the past year, what spectacular little spit of land has been used as the dumping ground for a large dead goat, the home of a five-foot-long saltwater crocodile, and a bum fort turned junkyard. The answer: the mangroves…
Miami Gardens residents claim suspicious man swiped their ducks
