Best of Miami 2009 Preview: Best Hamburger

Best Hamburger8 oz. Burger Bar1080 Alton Rd.Miami Beach 33139305-397-82468ozburgerbar.comBurgers are big — as in big across-the-board sales during stressed economic times. There are big profits for burger barons, and big-shot chefs putting ’em on their big-price restaurant menus. Govind Armstrong and the folks at Table 8 took things a step…

Best of Miami 2009 Preview: Best Boy Made Good

(New Times Best of Miami issue hits the streets this week. With this post, Riptide 2.0 provides an appetizer. The main course/entire issue will appear on the website Tuesday afternoon.)Best Boy Made GoodMickey RourkeMickey Rourke’s redemption has been the stuff Hollywood makes movies about. Only an independent filmmaker made it and it…

Best of Miami 2009 Preview: Best New Restaurant

(New Times Best of Miami issue hits the streets this week. With this post, Riptide 2.0 provides an appetizer. The main course/entire issue will appear on the website Tuesday afternoon.) Best New Restaurant Area 31, Gotham Steak, Joey’s, Sra. Martinez, and Meat MarketA five-way tie, testament to Miami’s rapidly expanding universe of…

Best of Miami 2009 Preview: Best Inexpensive Italian Restaurant

Best Inexpensive Italian RestaurantJoey’s2506 NW Second Ave.Miami 33127305-438-0488joeyswynwood.comThe little man felt very bad,One meatball was all he had.And in his dreams, he hears that call:”You gets no bread with one meatball.”Owing to this damn recession, it’s appropriate to drag out Depression-era ditties like the one popularized by Josh White in…

Best of Miami 2009 Preview: Best Street Photographer

Best Street Photographer Carlos Ramos (AKA Miami Fever)miami-fever.comiaminmiami.comWith the advent of the now ubiquitous camera phone and cheap broadband, almost anyone can become a famous photographer overnight. Well, not quite anyone. There’s still this little thing called talent that isn’t quite universally available yet. But Carlos Ramos definitely has it…

Best of Miami 2009 Preview: Best Chefs

(New Times Best of Miami issue hits the streets this week. With this post, Riptide 2.0 provides an appetizer. The main course/entire issue will appear on the website Tuesday afternoon.)   Best ChefsCindy Hutson and Doug RodriguezPast honorees of this lifetime achievement-type award are Norman Van Aken, Mark Militello, Allen Susser, Pascal…

Best of Miami 2009 Preview: Best Politician

New Times Best of Miami issue hits the streets this week. With this post, Riptide 2.0 provides an appetizer. The main course/entire issue will appear on the website Tuesday afternoon. Best Politician Michelle Spence-Jones She was elected in 2005, and not a moment has passed without controversy for Miami Commissioner Michelle Spence-Jones…

Best Of 2009 Preview: Best Music Venue in Broward-Palm Beach

The Talent Farm20911 Johnson St., Ste. 111, Pembroke Pines954-438-3488Look, everyone knows about the Broward/Palm Beach holy trinity of venues for mid-sized touring acts: Revolution Live, Culture Room, and Respectable Street. But what about hyper-local spots that nurture homegrown talent, especially the kind that can’t legally get into most other venues?…

Best Of 2009 Preview: Best Album

Rachel Goodrich, Tinker ToysIt has been a good year for South Florida’s quirky local indie darling Rachel Goodrich, what with a glowing shoutout from the New York Times this past December and her official debut appearance at SXSW this past spring. It was all well-deserved and timed with the October…

Book Fair Bonanza

Miami, literary Shangri-La? A mecca for the bookish? It doesn’t exactly roll off the tongue. But for more than 20 years, autumn has brought a kind of inverse solar eclipse, sending some of us scurrying from the beaches, out of the malls, off the interstate, and into the comforting, ancient…

DJ Rolando

Born in the 1970s in southwest Detroit, Rolando grew up heavily influenced by his Latin rhythms and percussion. When he heard DJ Jeff Mills mix as “The Wizard,” he discovered the sounds of techno. Through a mutual friend, he was introduced to “Mad” Mike Banks and promptly became a member…

Beach Reads

E-mail memo #34: “Miami Book Fair; writer locked himself in bookstore bathroom repeatedly yelling at concerned employees to ‘Go Away!’ When writer emerged an hour later he started to ‘freak out’ again. ‘I have a snake on me!’ writer screamed. ‘It’s biting me! It’s IN MY MOUTH!’ Writer was dragged…

Thrilla in the Hood

Next Tuesday’s election is particularly critical to Miami-Dade County Commission District 2, which stretches from the City of Miami to North Miami Beach. The 102,000 inhabitants suffer from too much violent crime, too little business, and squalid homes. It’s currently represented by Commissioner Dorrin Rolle, who was appointed by Gov…

Adios, Fidelito

Let’s face it. Fidel Castro is either dead or headed that way. So, you wacky exiles, let’s head for la isla, filch el comandante’s body, and bring it home. Here are Miami New Times’s suggestions for the cadaver: 1. Use him in a campaign ad for the strong-mayor initiative. The…

The Return of Johnny Bev

I Rode for Lansky II: Despite Ms. Cynthia Duncan of Miami, who is curiously sensitive about her grandfather Meyer Lansky — “the Syndicate’s Accountant,” who ran Havana under Batista, who perfected the skim at the old Sands and Thunderbird hotels in Vegas when both were cash registers for the Chicago…

Blues for the Fire Department

On Nov. 28 the Progressive Firefighters Association, which looks out for black firemen in Miami-Dade County, showed up in Liberty City at Fire Station #2, in solidarity with Willie Latimore, a seventeen-year veteran of the department, who’s been having the same kinds of problems with some of his co-workers that…

Miami Kid Makes Good

Ratner, schmatner, the kid lives in Ingrid Bergman’s old joint! So here’s Brett Ratner sitting next to his mom in a clean suit and a white-boy haircut at Miami Beach Senior High’s Hall of Fame alumni lunch at the Radisson Deauville. He’s kvelling. He doesn’t have an Oscar yet, but…

Riptide über alles

Mayor Machiavelli: From 2-shot distance, Alex Penelas seemed pretty lame in the Nov. 13 runoff elections in Miami Beach & the City of Miami. He endorsed both Elaine Bloom and Maurice Ferré. Further evidence that P is still laboring under the Elian curse from when he declared war on the…

Down in Miami: The Political Blues

En el trece de Agosto, a hidden relative? Let’s hear it for Dan Christensen at the Daily Business Review! He’s been the only reporter to shine a consistent light on the Brooks Brothers sleaziness of U.S. Rep. Lincoln Diaz-Balart’s campaign financing practices. This past July, when the Federal Election Commission…

Should These Three Firemen Go Back to Work?

Deep bow to the reader. Haven’t seen you since August 24, 2000, but now we’re back — slightly altered, updating you on the lows and highs of Miami-Dade and points south, all the way to Cuba, in politics, civic matters, culture, jokes — the news and texture of this fine…