Sticky Lingers Filed under: Flotsam Tired of dodging — or stepping in — those ubiquitous black lumps of desiccated chewing gum that pepper every urban landscape? A new invention out of Germany uses a high-pressure apparatus to vaporize the once-indelible clumps through steam and eco-friendly detergent. And there’s only one…

Pay Fray Filed under: Scanner As the zero hour approached this past Friday, Shawn Beightol sat in his classroom at Michael Krop Senior High School, pondering the end. Then the hallway outside Beightol’s door began to fill with fellow teachers. They weren’t going to allow a meeting scheduled for that…

What would you do if a stranger called you constantly, ringing you up as often as once every eighteen seconds, calling as late as 1:45 in the morning? What would you do if that caller were a cop? A troubled seventeen-year-old runaway from Bay Harbor Islands recently found himself in…

No Wham! No Bam! Thank You, MAM Filed under: Culture Local politicos sighed with relief this past week as years of delays, cost overruns, and questionable judgment calls came to an end with the raising of the curtain at the Carnival Center for the Performing Arts, north of downtown. While…

They rolled up in stretch limousines and chromed-out Hummers, tinted windows reflecting the neighborhood’s discount furniture stores, auto-body shops, and abandoned shopping carts. The party — a $150,000 bash — would be off the hook, they had been told. So dozens of porn industry bigwigs in town for last summer’s…

When Miami hired Lisa Mazique as director of the city’s economic development department, there were a few gasps — in New Orleans. Brought on in June at $135,000 per year, Mazique was tasked with, among other things, coordinating the purchase, development, management, and disposition of city-owned properties. Miami, recently ranked…

It was supposed to be a beacon to the world, a symbol of Miami’s role as gateway to Latin America and the Caribbean. Later it was rededicated as a tribute to a fallen president. Over the years, it became a gathering place for civic demonstrations and protests. The Torch of…

On a recent Tuesday evening, as traffic cut through steady rain on SW Seventh Street, about two dozen graying Cuban émigrés gathered in a nondescript room near the airport to plot a new crusade in their eternal war against the ailing Fidel Castro. Their plan — to pull a children’s…

As midnight approached this past Monday, Radio Mambí host Ninoska Pérez Castellón cautioned against speculation of Fidel Castro’s death. But on Calle Ocho, no one seemed to be listening. Block after block teemed with revelers waving Cuban flags, leaning on car horns, dancing on SUV roofs. From the sidewalks, onlookers…

Old Blue Eyes was there. He was chatting with boxing promoter Nuno Cam as legendary Cuban slugger Kid Gavilan stood by on a recent Tuesday night. Luis “El Feo” Rodriguez, Benny “Kid” Paret, and Kid Chocolate, fighters from Miami’s halcyon ring days, were all there, too, in black-and-white photos pasted…

6:15 a.m. Creeping silently through the bedroom window, dawn shatters with a mechanical bleating. The alarm clock will not be ignored. It is Saturday, May 6, just another morning in Menes Daniel’s ten-hour-a-day, six-day work week, or so Daniel thinks. He can look forward to the rest Sunday will bring…

As drizzling rain coats her Pontiac on the patchy lawn, Helena Roundtree sits at a glass-top table in her rented Miami Gardens ranch house, jabbing the air as she speaks. The 47-year-old condominium security guard and single mother of three is dressed in baggy shorts and a sleeveless T-shirt despite…

My ass is burning. I’m putting on an awesome display of ineptitude, running back and forth, flailing my racket at the birdie or bird or shuttlecock or whatever it is. My 53-year-old opponent, Dave Zarco, has a slight paunch and wears spectacles. He seems quite relaxed, returning every drop shot,…

In the distance, Miami’s glass towers twinkle faintly, hovering above the opalescent waters of Biscayne Bay. Here, at a closely guarded azimuth, slight waves slap against a 25-foot Boston Whaler. “Look closely,” Brenda Lanzendorf says as she points from the bow, her grin spreading wide the crow’s feet around her…

As she laid her head on her big sister’s chest and listened to the heartbeats slow, Harolyn Frazier thought of opportunities lost. In the wake of a seizure, 38-year-old Lola Davis was brain dead, and Frazier had given hospital staff permission to turn off life support. A guard sat on…

For Marino Martínez, it began 44 years ago on the streets of Guira de Melena, a small city ringed by tobacco fields south of Havana. Martínez was eight years old, playing stickball with friends, their shouts echoing off the faded buildings, when a passerby took notice of the boy’s prodigious…

As a boy, Mikey Butders dreamed of distant galaxies. From the window of his family’s apartment in Queens, the night sky was a hazy fantasy swirling above the fluorescent wash of street lights. Butders would go there someday, he told himself, and float untethered through the blackness. The astronaut reverie…

In Coral Gables, the City Beautiful, toeing the line is a way of life. Mildewed roofs and sidewalks are forbidden by law, peeling house paint is verboten, and trucks are outlawed from driveways after dark. It’s here in the square capital of Miami-Dade County that a small band of independent…

At Jimbo’s bar on Virginia Key, it was just another morning, another chance to sit under the pine boughs, stoke a smoldering log fire, and ease open another cold Schlitz. In the nearby lagoon, reflected sunlight undulated against a worn dock’s wood planks, and pelicans stood sentinel on faded fishing…

Christmas came early for Miami-Dade County Manager George Burgess when the county commission gave him a $54,000 raise at its December 21 meeting. Citing Burgess’s management of hurricanes and other events, commissioners bumped the third-year employee’s salary from $257,000 to $311,000. With a benefits package thrown in, the total comes…

Don’t be fooled by the hoarse rustle of palm fronds or the gentle lapping of waves against the beach. Miami is a noisy city. Most people don’t give it much thought until sirens slice through REM sleep at three in the morning, a boom car or glass-pack-mufflered chopper rattles house…