SAT 10/4 Soccer is the universal sport. All around the world kids understand that fun and good-natured competition happens when you take a ball and begin kicking it around. The City of Miami kicks off a new soccer program today that is free of charge for disadvantaged inner-city children. The…
SUN 10/5 According to Celtic legend, Stingy Jack was a thieving reprobate, a chap so nasty he tricked the Devil himself on several occasions. Banned from both Heaven and Hell, Jack had nowhere to go when he died and began roaming the night looking for mischief to perform. Because he…
If Sax on the Beach fails, the newly opened music bar will be just another Miami jazz dream deferred, like Arthur’s (which featured big names in the Eighties) and the cozy, if empty, Champagnes on 79th Street that closed months ago. This gin joint in the lobby of the Bay…
Dave Valentin has just walked into his Bronx apartment, arriving home after a gig in Costa Rica, to find himself fielding questions on the phone about the shows he’s done in Miami. “When was that?” asks the reporter, trying to pin down a particular concert. “When was that?” he asks…
If you take good care of your bird, it can fight a very long time,” says a swarthy expert on cockfighting in the 1973 documentary Our Latin Thing (Nuestra Cosa). Introducing the world to the now legendary Fania All-Stars, the film intercuts concert footage of that monster salsa band with…
Whenever Tony Thrown makes his way to Lincoln Road, he takes the back alleys that run behind the tourist boulevard. He emerges into the light at Pennsylvania Avenue, an old refrigerator shelf stacked on his head like an oversize hat ready to be knocked off by the next puff of…
Long before slide-guitarist Ry Cooder helped off-island audiences rediscover Cuban music with the Buena Vista Social Club, U.K.-based label Tumi Music was releasing the best in Cuban and Latin-American styles, both traditional and forward-looking. Neither David Alvarez nor the members of his back-up band Juego de Manos, whose name can…
It has been about a year since vocalist Luis Bofill dropped off the stage of Miami’s Café Nostalgia. Shortly after the establishment relocated from its glory-day Little Havana setting to its swankier Miami Beach digs on 41st Street, the seasoned singer, who once fronted the house band Grupo Nostalgia, fell…
Probably no bus driver at the Metro-Dade Transit Agency knows the official rules and regulations better than Ezell Robinson, who’s been driving county routes for twenty years. And no one has been more outspoken or determined to use any leverage or technicality to ensure that his rights, and those of…
During recent weeks, drivers heading south on South Dixie Highway beheld a man in a chicken suit alongside the road. Often the chicken was holding a sign: “Gore Is Chicken,” “Bush Is Chicken,” or “Open the Debates.” Some drivers honked in appreciation. Others scratched their heads in wonder. Given that…
If you were to look at the Village of Key Biscayne from the air, you’d think open space would be the least of its problems. The town, which incorporated as a city in 1991, is sandwiched between county-owned Crandon Park, with nearly 1000 acres, and the Bill Baggs Cape Florida…
Despite being in business since March 17, Club Space, the nightclub pioneer in downtown Miami, held its “official” grand-opening party five months later, on August 19. In keeping with the grand traditions of hype, the opportunity to capitalize on such a misnomer was not lost on promoters Emi Guerra and…
Sitting at a desk in his office, which is in a strip mall on Collins Avenue, Dave Samson thrusts his large head forward. The palms of his hands press on his desktop, supporting the weight of his squat torso. He wears a white polo shirt. What is left of his…
Until he was recently cast adrift and left artistically homeless, Alberto Sarrain had been a fixture on Little Havana’s cultural scene for two decades. As founder and director of La Má Teodora theater company, he not only brought some of the best Spanish-language drama to South Florida but introduced the…
On June 22, 1999, 150 women, all residents of a Liberty City housing project, turned up at a Miami City Commission meeting to beg for deliverance. After living for years in some of the most poorly maintained buildings ever to curse the inner-city landscape, these tenants wanted out. But the…
A handful of people waited quietly in the sparse community room on the ground floor of the northern building of Rebecca Towers this past March 14. Neil McGuffin, the Miami Beach Housing Authority’s (MBHA) executive director, sat on the far right of a dais, seemingly not sensing his job was…
It was the shot in the foot heard round the world, and it will be replayed for years to come. There stood Miami-Dade County Mayor Alex Penelas at the federal courthouse on March 29, 2000, a day in which the very real threat of civil unrest loomed menacingly. A phalanx…
The day begins early at Hialeah Distributors. The sun has risen a half-hour ago, casting the sky in pastels, while the breeze below smells of cinnamon and fried chicken and rot. The men gathered in the parking lot are luncheros. They drive the lunch trucks known affectionately as “roach coaches,”…
Elizabeth Lanteigne sucks at a straw in a plastic cup. “Jim Beam and ginger ale,” she says. “It’s for my arthritis. My doctor says it’s okay.” Every blood vessel and bone in her pale right hand is visible through her skin. She is 86 years old, but since retiring from…
“Good morning, everyone. Welcome to Miami-Dade Transit’s seventh annual Black History Tours,” begins veteran bus driver Craig Rolle. For now Rolle is sticking to the prepared script, a 21-page tome fashioned by Dorothy Jenkins Fields of the Black Archives History and Research Foundation. In honor of Black History Month, the…
The Miami City Cemetery today is in transition. Located at 1800 NE Second Ave., the landmark covers ten and a half acres, and is the final destination for some 10,000 dearly departed South Floridians, many of whom were members of the area’s pioneer families. The place is bordered to the…
Welcome to mid-afternoon at Miami’s only inner-city mall, Omni International, during the height of the holiday season. While other shopping centers like Dadeland and Aventura offer a cornucopia of the latest goods and teem with buyers, the Omni has cornered the market on holiday irony, subtropical style. Meet 68-year-old James…
