Florida Grand Opera Looking for a Few Good Swordsmen

The Florida Grand Opera is gearing up for their next show, Don Giovanni, and if you’re comfortable sword fighting then strap on some tights and head over to Doral Center Rehearsal Studio on February 15 for your chance to earn a paying, non speaking, non singing role in the production…

Get Wet at the Weeki Wachee Live Mermaid Show

El Jefe doesn’t give Cultist much time off, but when he does, we like to spend our hard-earned blog money road tripping through Florida, stopping at quirky roadside attractions and buying-up neat little souvenir-stand knickknacks along the way. So much so, we decided to start our own mini-travel series, “Worth…

All Shook Up and Married

What happens when a love-crazed Miami club promoter spends a few days in Las Vegas, hits a small jackpot in a roulette table, and then ties the knot at a kitschy wedding chapel complete with an Elvis-impersonator minister? For Oski Gonzalez, Tobacco Road’s resident DJ and head promoter, that wild…

Help Crossfade Convince Peter, Bjorn and John to Play Miami!

On Monday, we wrote a letter to Fleet Foxes about their upcoming tour. We assured them that Miami’s music scene is on the up-and-come, and promised that if they came down here, we’d willingly fork over the price of admission for a night of culturally relevant indie rock. The band…

An Open Letter to Fleet Foxes, Love Crossfade

Dear Fleet Foxes, Thanks for letting us download “Helplessness Blues,” the title track off your upcoming album dropping on May 3, for free. If the song is any indication as to how the rest of the record’s going to sound, the almost three-year gap between your self-titled debut and Helplessness…

Ricky Martin Pops Studio Tr3s‘ Cherry and Makes Our Ears Bleed

Ricky Martin, Crossfade’s favorite author, recently performed in front of about 200 people at a special mini-concert for an upcoming MTV Tr3s series called Studio Tr3s. We were lucky enough to be at the studio for the production, and saw firsthand how a bicultural, bilingual variety show comes to life…

Sleigh Bells to Play Grand Central April 30

Sleigh Bells, the noise pop duo from Brooklyn whose debut album, Treats, generated a shit-ton of blog buzz last year, including Pitchfork’s “Best New Music” award, and a nearly perfect review in Paste, is hitting the road this spring for a North American tour with CSS. But when Derek Miller…

Florida Grand Opera’s The Tales of Hoffmann Delivers Punch-Drunk Love

Cultist classed it up Saturday night at the Arsht Center for the Florida Grand Opera’s second production of the 2011 season, Jacques Offenbach’s three-act opera, The Tales of Hoffmann. And since it was this correspondent’s first operatic excursion, we took full advantage of FGO’s pre-show lecture conducted by Justin Moss,…

Starbucks Trenta Inspires Taiwanese Animation

Starbucks’ unveiling of Trenta, the 31-ounce iced coffee, iced tea, and iced tea lemonade option that debuted in 14 states yesterday, has generated plenty of buzz. It was a trending topic on Twitter, the envy of 36 states, and the inspiration for Taiwan’s Next Media Animation’s (NMA) “Starbucks Super-sizes its…

Starbucks Introduces 31-Ounce Trenta Cup, Fails Italian Class

Today, suburbia’s corporate crack dealer, Starbucks, is rolling out a 31-ounce option for iced coffee, iced tea, and iced tea lemonade in 14 states, and Florida made the cut. But Short Order isn’t racing to the nearest ‘bucks to order up a super-sized iced latte just yet–we’re still trying to…

Why We’d Rather Smoke Pot in Miami Than in New Jersey

In California, weed cures all. From back pain to panic attacks, epileptic seizures to ingrown hairs, just about any symptom (and $200) merits a doctor’s note allowing you to smoke medical dank without the threat of incarceration. But we live in Miami, a city where bricks of yay and pounds…

Spend the Long Weekend with Skunk Ape Research Center

Martin Luther King, Jr. Day is next Monday, and we want to help you plan the perfect long weekend: Take a trip to the Everglades with Dave Shealy, director of the Skunk Ape Research Headquarters. It’s in Ochopee, a small town just 60 or so miles west of Miami, which…

Golden Voiced Ted Williams Detained by LAPD

Ted Williams, the dude with a voice like Lurch’s from the Adams Family, was “detained” Monday night by the Los Angeles Police Department following an altercation between he and his daughter at Hollywood’s Renaissance Hotel, according to Los Angeles Times. The paper’s sources say the investigation is ongoing, and no…

Most Anticipated January Indie Music Releases

There were a lot of great albums in 2010, and we caught a lot of great shows too. But what’s in store for 2011? Will Katy Goodwin leave the Vivian Girls after La Sera’s full-length drops in February? Will Alex Ebert’s (Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeros) solo debut, Alexander,…

Ian Svenonius Sails Out as Bruise Cruise Director

The Bruise Cruise is a little over a month away and Crossfade’s still begging El Jefe to pony up $1230 for us to secure an interior, two-person cabin on the Carnival Imagination. Maybe the fact that Ian Svenonius will serve as the cruise’s master of ceremonies will convince boss man…

Best parties for New Year’s Eve 2011

Wouldn’t it be great if we were all lucky enough to spend New Year’s Eve snorting an entire uncut key of White Diamond caviar while guzzling ice-cold magnums of Piper Heidsieck 1907 as if it were Gatorade? Unfortunately, you’ve got to be a Kardashian, some guy with a rare and…