The weight of the moment is getting to Martin Shapiro. The wiry 63-year-old sits uncomfortably in his dark gray suit before the 100-odd residents, candidates, and press seated in rows of aluminum chairs within the whitewashed walls of the public Normandy Isle Golf Course clubhouse. He waits his turn to…
Tiny was late. Not something Sean Erez wanted to hear. The feds were arresting his New York mules left and right, so Erez decided to change the drill for the latest shipment. First he used a couple, a man and a woman, to carry the 80,000 or so Ecstasy pills…
The city hall in Hialeah Gardens is inherently ugly. But the tiny building’s boxy concrete walls also are sullied by a garish, headache-inducing coat of sickly pink paint, with dark turquoise accents adding a further affront to the senses. Even transporting such horrendous colors into the City of Coral Gables…
It’s been ten months since chemistry teacher Charles Boldwyn had to evacuate his Miami Killian Senior High School classroom because of noxious paint fumes, but as far as he’s concerned something still stinks. Smells like a coverup. Smells like retaliation. Smells like the school district is trying to drum him…
On a steamy June evening, as the sun set on acres of avocado trees surrounding Tomas Mestre’s $1.8 million hacienda-style home, the outdoor patio swelled with well-heeled visitors. In this rural section of South Miami-Dade known as the Redland, they mingled by the tiled pool, nibbled on paella, and listened…
The Pat L. Tornillo, Jr., Elementary School. Think that name has a nice ring to it? Florida International University president Modesto “Mitch” Maidique does. In May he wrote a letter to the Miami-Dade County School Board recommending that a new elementary on the FIU campus be named for Tornillo, long-time…
Outfitted in his usual South Beach high-end casual attire — navy T-shirt, brown trousers, clunky black shoes — developer Craig Robins leans against a granite statue of a hoplite in full battle gear. He places one hirsute, toned arm up on the ancient warrior standing sentinel before the Moore Building…
Ana Lucrecia Peters, a full-time substitute teacher at Ethel Beckham Elementary School, is listed in Miami-Dade County Public Schools’ personnel records as a Hispanic woman. But, like most teachers in the system, she knew that she didn’t have to stay that way. In the bureaucratic blink of an eye, she…
After two years of litigation, Sunnie Ewing and Gladys Rickey’s lawsuit against Florida International University came to an unspectacular end on May 19. The two women, who alleged that an assistant athletic director sexually harassed them, dropped their case and accepted a $50,000 settlement. The Miami Herald reported this story…
Miami-Dade County taxpayers have already shelled out more than one million dollars to settle two women’s claims that ex-Miami Northwestern High School principal William E. Clarke III sexually harassed them. And Clarke continues to draw a $91,000 annual salary while working in an attendance office. Now William Clarke wants even…
Deborah Ramey had already written her column for the May edition of Hotline when she heard about the April 20 bloodbath at Columbine High School in Littleton, Colorado. As she stared with morbid fascination at the horrific TV coverage, what was most striking to her were the misguided attempts by…
It was late February when Madeline Norgan received social studies textbooks for her first-grade class at Henry E.S. Reeves Elementary School. Until then the 26-year-old teacher had been using “trade books,” including biographies of historical figures. She supplemented these books with some $300 worth of exercises, worksheets, and other supplies…
In December 1997 Ron Bloomberg strode into Miami Beach City Hall for a predevelopment meeting with city planners. He hoped to construct a four-story office building at 23rd Street and Park Avenue, on the site of a long-abandoned Chevron station. The 33-year-old developer arrived feeling optimistic. He and his partners,…
Edwin H. Garson is girded for battle. With sun visor pulled low and bullhorn held high, the wiry, leathery-skinned 70-year-old wails his slogans at the procession of well-dressed visitors easing their cars up to the entrance of the Eden Roc Hotel in Miami Beach. “Shame!” he hollers, his nasal voice…
The half dozen or so Miami-Dade County bike cops, wearing helmets, tight shorts, and pistols, are doing laps around Miami Norland Senior High School on February 26. But these armed officers are merely the outriders of the beefed-up security patrolling the boxy, gracelessly aging school in this middle- and working-class…
David Fess Walker, a physical education teacher at Parkway Middle School, joined Dade County Public Schools in 1984 as a gym teacher at Charles R. Drew Middle School. A year later the district learned that, in 1983, while an employee of the Fulton County school system in Atlanta, Walker had…
The story of the lost army commandos of Vietnam, as they have come to be known, is harrowing. It’s a tale of death, betrayal, denial, frustration, perseverance, and finally, vindication. Some 450 South Vietnamese citizens were sent to the North to do our dirty work in the early Sixties, then…
Despite the snazzy outfits, boutonnieres, and corsages, everyone knew this vote would be no mere formality. The November 17, 1998, swearing-in ceremony for Miami-Dade County School Board members had proceeded amicably enough, with incumbents Solomon C. Stinson, Manty Sabates Morse, and Perla Tabares Hantman, and newcomers Robert Ingram and Marta…
The Oceanside Promenade seems like your average Ocean Drive hot spot. Friday and Saturday nights, the U-shape courtyard is choked with a drinkin’-and-dancin’ throng grooving to the salsa band on the south stage and tossing back booze. But one former employee of that Miami Beach bar alleges all is not…
Not so long ago the international rock star Marilyn Manson played local dives such as the now-defunct Plus Five in Davie. Launched in 1990 as Marilyn Manson and the Spooky Kids, the band evolved from an obscure novelty act with adolescent stage names to a wildly popular novelty act with…
The Delano’s Beach Village is fabulous. The cluster of structures — the yellow-and-white wood-slat lighthouse, the shade and massage tents, the cabanas — offer spa services, food, and towels to a hyperhip clientele. This extension of the hotel’s magic to the water’s edge has garnered universal acclaim from national and…
John Cunningham, an attenuated beanpole of a fellow in baggy shorts, a faded plaid Levi’s shirt, and a pair of navy-blue Vans, is haunting the front of Sylvester Stallone’s soon-to-be-former Miami mansion, awaiting the odd delivery truck. His Panasonic Palmcorder, as always, is in his right hand. “Afternoons are good…
