MySpace Latino Connecting or Segregating?

Earlier this month, MySpace Latino officially launched in yet another corporate bid to milk a bilingual market. MySpace Latino is teaming up with South Florida based Spanish Broadcasting System to add people in a project, “We Want a Million Friends,” and SBS will offer users access to its radio and…

Corporation Spying on Activists? Downright Creepy.

Student activists suspect a fast food giant could be behind a woman who posed as a student to spy on the organization. For months, the Student/Farmworker Alliance and the Coalition of Immokalee Workers have been pressuring Miami-based Burger King to give tomato pickers a needed raise. The Home of the…

Support the Arts or They will Die

I’ve heard countless times — mostly from former New Yorkers and Chicagoans — that Miami and its Beach are cultural deserts, black holes for new expression. In fact, MIA can feel like that some weekends when the best theater option is something the East Coast saw years ago and the…

MTV Should Let Fear Speak

Courtesy of MTV A placid Patricia Hernandez, a.k.a, Patti Her., starts with plastic wrap. She ties it around her eyes. She continues until her face is coated and her chest heaves in suffocation. The uneasy, uncomfortable moments flash on a flat TV screen. On an adjacent screen, potent images flutter…

Tharp and Costello’s NIGHTSPOT: Shocked and Awed

It seems fitting that Miami would be the city to host the world premiere of Twyla Tharp’s NIGHTSPOT, an energetic work that fit together in a discordant yet stunningly compelling way. Splashes of classical ballet, Broadway, Cirque du Soleil, fight clubs and Latin dance percolated constant curiosity throughout this highly…

Knightly Rescue from Miami Beach Road Rage

I’m ashamed to tell you this Mr. Construction Worker with an East Coast accent and sandy hair but, I usually cross the street when I see a group of hard hats clustered. I won’t again. You were near last week when, after 25 minutes of circling for a parking spot,…

DJs Go Bald for World Peace

Joe Ferrero says goodbye to his locks on the radio. Yesterday the entire cast of El Show de Enrique y Joe on La Kalle 98.3 FM shaved their heads on-air to promote world peace. “With the violence reigning in Colombia and Venezuela, the war in Iraq and the fact that…

A Haitian farmer, Race and Obama

I had not been bewitched by Barack Obama. But a Haitian farmer I recently interviewed was. The husband and father in his late thirties and I spoke through a translator. He’d only been working in South Florida a few months. The conversation turned to politics and he told me that…

Latin American F***ability Index

It’s nearly the weekend. Choose wisely. Blogger Gabriel Caro ranks the sexual accolades of countries in this “Latin American Fuckability Index.” An excerpt: “no doubt about it, there’s an implicit hierarchy among countries that influences whether legs will open or close in your proximity.” Big surprise. Argentina and Brazil are…

Latino Haters on the Rise, group says

Thanks a load, Minutemen. The Southern Poverty Law Center, a well-known civil rights group, released a report Monday that links a 48 percent spike in hate groups since 2000 to anti-immigrant rhetoric that fuels headlines and hours of cable TV. The center counted 888 organizations it considers hate groups nationwide…

DQ Trumps blissberry on the Beach

Spots like blissberry, a new highfalutin frozen yogurt place on Alton Road off Lincoln Road on South Beach, seem to be the dairy world’s stab at Starbucks formula. That is, overpricing products and trying to get customers not to care by making you feel trendy and special by merely ingesting…

DQ Trumps blissberry on the Beach

Spots like blissberry, a new highfalutin frozen yogurt place on Alton Road off Lincoln Road on South Beach, seem to be the dairy world’s stab at Starbucks formula. That is, overpricing products and trying to get customers not to care by making you feel trendy and special by merely ingesting…

Massacre Victims Finally Win: $37 Million

A few weeks ago, I met Teófila Ochoa and Cirila Pulido for breakfast in Miami. The women had made their first trip from Peru to testify in a trial of Telmo Hurtado, a Peruvian army major who led a 1985 massacre near their village that killed nearly 70 innocents. The…

Chávez cut the lights? Conspiracies Abound.

So now that Fidel is bedridden or beyond, conspiracy theorists may have new targets on which to blame all things shitty in Miami. In explanation for today’s blackout affecting as many as four million South Floridians, a Caracol 1260 AM announcer retorted, “Hugo Chávez cut the lights.” He laughed, though…

Models + Volleyball = Boredom?

Click here to see a slide show of the volleyball tournament. Walking by Nikki Beach on Saturday, most would have assumed that nothing was going on. There was no one at the door, no waiters to greet you, and only a couple of girls in bikinis basking in the sun…

Last Night: Jose El Rey at Poplife

Click here to see a slide show of the Jose El Rey’s performance. Jose El Rey at Poplife February 24, 2008 White Room Better Than: Shopping at Flamingo Plaza Local musician Jose El Rey is the embodiment of the Cuban stereotype. He is flirtatiously misogynistic, unbelievably crass and sports a…

Over the Weekend – Models, Cheerleaders, and Jose El Rey.

So Castro resigned earlier in the week and guess who was named president of Cuba on Sunday? Yep, the other Castro. Surprise. The Academy Awards also took place on Sunday, you know that ceremony were they give away the highly coveted statuette called the Oscar. But on to what people…

Pretty in the City – Interview with James Vincent

Professional artists, product creators, and cosmetics mavens all over the city are so psyched for this weekend. Why, you ask? Because The Makeup Show, New York’s famous trade show/artists’ wonderland, is coming to Miami for the very first time! On Sunday from 10:30 a.m. to 1:15 p.m., artist par excellence…

Combine Talk: A Trade With Atlanta?

Armando Salguero has a conference call with Mel Kiper posted on his blog. But that’s not important. What is important is that he wrote about a rumor making the rounds in Indy that the Falcons are reportedly so in love with BC quarterback Matt Ryan that they might consider trading…

StreetWorks – NE 28th Street and NE 2nd Ave

Photos by Elvis Ramirez On my way to lunch one day, I passed by this piece on NE 28th Street and NE 2nd Avenue. I didn’t think much of it because it looked like it was part of the buildings décor. I decided to take a closer look and I…

Combine Talk: Are The Fins Thinking Quarterback?

It’s NFL Combine time! It’s that time of year when old men with clipboards and stopwatches poke, prod, ogle and feel-up young men wearing nothing but their underwear. It’s gonna be great! It’s also the time of year we talk possible draft scenarios and who’ll go where and when and…