With all the time we spend these days at Riptide getting ready for the full onslaught of the Great Depression 2.0 — planning which soup kitchen we’ll be patronizing, picking the perfect tent city for our new home, etc., etc. — we don’t have all that much time for finger-pointing…
As his young administration stomps frantically on the flaming bag of crap formerly known as the global economy left smoldering on the White House doorstep by a snickering Dubya on his way out, President Obama is about to throw around a cool $787 billion in stimulus funds to try to…
Two years ago, when Darrel Vandeveld flew to Guantánamo Bay to work as a prosecutor, no one else believed more in the detention camps and all they stood for in the War on Terror.”I was totally gung ho,” Vandeveld tells Riptide. “I was convinced that we actually had the ‘worst…
Just after 6 p.m. on a warm December Tuesday, two unseasoned cops cruised up to a dark videogame arcade on NW Third Avenue in Overtown. After they swaggered through the front door, one of them, a brash Cuban-American with a thick mustache, noticed the telltale bulge of a .22-caliber pistol…
Change may have come to Washington but the Bush era in all its absurd, truth-defying glory is alive and well in Miami’s federal courthouse.This morning, the third case kicked off against six Miami men who are accused of plotting to blow up the Sears Tower and FBI offices. When they…
It was a damn good weekend for the vanguard of the Bolivarian Revolution, Fidel Castro’s BFF Hugo Chavez.About 54 percent of Venezuelans on Sunday voted to remove term limits so that Chavez can run again for president in 2012 — and presumably well beyond, if Castro is really the role…
This can’t come as a shock to anyone, can it? Surely even the most passionate Marlins fans in South Florida — all 500 of them — probably spit out some coffee on their Miami Herald this morning when they read the latest details on how much the new Fish stadium…
With all the hullaballo and hubbub over the giant tax-pit … um … new Marlins Stadium proposal, it’s easy to forget that the Fish are still a baseball team and the new season is almost upon us. It’s a shame, really. For true baseball fans, Spring Training is the best…
A few months ago, the New Times brought you the story of De Hull, a world-renowned palm expert with an incredible garden teeming with rare plants on the fringes of South Dade. Hull’s way of life was as endangered as his plants, thanks to a string of hurricanes, break-ins and…
Michael Burnstine may be comically underfunded and critically late to the game, but he’s not lacking in passion. He hates the $515 million Marlins Stadium deal. And he’s not alone.”It’s horrendous. It’s one of the worst deals I’ve seen in my life,” Burnstine tells Riptide. The insurance salesman and Miami…
So you’re a 16-year-old girl, and you desperately want to break off the illicit internet romance you’ve sparked with a 44-year-old vampire. What do you do? The only logical thing you can do: tell him that you’re secretly a member of an elite vampire-hunting unit and that staying together would…
Up until last night, the ’09 edition of the University of Miami basketball team had been acting more like a UM football squad circa the 1990s, in all its cocaine-fueled, felonious glory. Except without all the victories. Best of both worlds, really. The school tossed point guard Eddie Rios off the team last month…
A brushed-chrome-and-wood elevator rises through a Sunny Isles tower just off Collins Avenue, lifting Jenny Huertas toward an 11th-floor condo with an eye-popping balcony view: the barrier island stretching green and leafy to the north, slicing between a sailboat-speckled slate-colored bay and a placid aquamarine ocean. “We’re getting this place…
Two months ago, the New Times brought you the story of the “Black October” legal case in Miami’s federal court, where a handful of poor Bolivians are suing Gonzalo “Goni” Sanchez de Lozada and Carlos Sanchez Berzain — Bolivia’s former president and defense minister — for allegedly leading the massacre…
A few miles north of Miami, on the swampy edges of Lake Okeechobee, there are a couple of impoverished little towns called Pahokee and Belle Glade where they churn out gasp-inducing football talent like a cash crop. Without much else to do, the kids chase and skin rabbits and play pigskin in the…
Last night, the Miami-Dade Ethics Commission voted 4-0 to send a letter to Miami Beach City officials with a simple message: No shady business behind closed doors in regard to local strip joint Club Madonna. Club Madonna owner Leroy Griffith has a long-simmering feud with Miami Beach over a refusal to grant him a liquor…
Tibor Hollo has seen it all before. In fact, the building boom that preceded this bust would never have happened without the extraordinary vision of the Holocaust survivor.
Past the scowling Puerto Rico National Guard sentries and razor-wire fences, down a rutted gravel road into the heart of Guantánamo Bay’s Camp Delta detention facility, Army Col. Bruce Vargo bursts with gusto into an air-conditioned double-wide trailer. In Washington, the ink has barely dried on President Obama’s order officially…
Past the scowling Puerto Rican National Guard sentries and razor-wire fences, down a rutted gravel road into the heart of Guantánamo Bay’s Camp Delta detention facility, Army Col. Bruce Vargo bursts with gusto into an air-conditioned double-wide trailer. In Washington, the ink has barely dried on President Obama’s order officially…
Imagine that you’re an accountant or a software engineer for ING and the terrible news reached you first thing this morning: You’ve been laid off.In fact, that’s just what happened to 7,000 employees of the financial services giant today. Now imagine: you’re grief-stricken, scared, wondering what the future holds. You…
Now that it’s official — Obama is closing the prison camp at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba — and we’ve all given ourselves a hearty slap on the back, the tough questions are really starting to rear their ugly heads: What do we do with the 245 guys left in Gitmo? Especially…
Hey, have you heard? Fidel Castro might totally be dying! Seriously, some guy who served Riptide a café cubano on Calle Ocho says his brother in Matanzas is tight with Fidel’s chauffeur’s third cousin who told him that Fidel is ALREADY DEAD.Hey, it’s as reliable a source as any on…
