Basketball Jones

Today’s the day to Febreze the spicy scent of mothballs out of your charmed number 23 jersey and pull your lucky sweatband out of its frosted glass case. Burger King’s Kings of the Court 3-on-3 Basketball Tournament is coming to Miami. Forget American Idol — you’ve been waiting all your…

Dancehall Devastation

Is it just us, or does the Gold Coast Skating Rink seem like a pretty wacky location for this year’s Reggae Explosion? The event was originally scheduled for outdoorsy bar/massive Caribbean mecca Bayside Hut, but things have changed for the venerable venue. And fret not thyselves, nonskaters – the only…

Moon over Miami Beach

If you pay attention to pop culture’s portrayal of love in Miami Beach, you would think it’s all about sex, drugs, and models. It isn’t? Apparently not, because the Miami Design Preservation League has been screening a whole film series, called Square Pegs in Round Holes, that focuses on characters…

Back in Bloom

Northeast 79th Street was kind of a dump before it suddenly became an up-and-coming area for fine food, art, and culture. Way back in 2003, the only artsy place-to-be was the Flower Bar – a funky flower shop and gallery that aimed to bring beauty to the rapidly gentrifying neighborhood…

Hey, Yogi, What’s Your Sign?

People who are really into astrology set their calendars by the stars — planning where they’ll go and what they’ll do according to moon phases, planets in retrograde, and so on. Others look at the 12 symbols printed weekly in that little corner of the newspaper and think of that…

Melodies from His Motherland

Even when Senegalese singer Youssou N’Dour is off globetrotting, he doesn’t forget his peeps. Take for example a 2002 performance at a Madrid amphitheater, where he noticed that a group of poor Senegalese immigrants was trying to catch a glimpse of the show atop a dumpster outside. He sent them…

You Might Be a French Redneck If …

Cash your welfare check. Fix your car in the yard. Make fun of the one Arab family in town. Then sneak off to a cow pasture with your girlfriend. Life in West Virginia? Non. Actually that’s the depiction of life in northern France, specifically the Flanders region, where director Bruno…

Forever the Greatest

Back in the day, he was Cassius Clay, a handsome and sharp young boxer with a smart mouth and a knack for showmanship. He had won the light-heavyweight gold medal at the 1960 Rome Olympics, but he hungered for a new title — Sonny Liston’s world heavyweight championship, to be…

Fast as You Can

People of Appalachia have long had an, uh, independent streak — the area remains a top pot-growing region – and that independence is perhaps manifested by extreme poverty. In decades past, these hillbillies brewed moonshine and then distributed it in souped-up cars. It got to be where the chase was…

Don’t Stop Till You Get Enough

In the years leading up to your senior prom, you imagined it would be a magical night of balloon arches and corsage/cummerbund coalescence. Instead it was a Cisco-induced blur that ended with your mom’s station wagon reeking of vomit. But tonight at Sweat Records’ Eighties Prom, you’ll have a chance…

Ann Louise Bardach Goes to Prison with Fidel

“Rarely has one man been blessed with such an auspicious destiny. Few have been endowed with so many gifts, opportunity and the good will of so many. That he squandered it so makes Cuba’s tragedy all the more wrenching.” That man, of course, is Miami’s nemesis: Fidel Castro. The woman…

Govind Armstrong: Spill Food on this Book

Govind Armstrong has never been a prissy, stick-to-the-rules kind of chef. Even his culinary background is unconventional – instead of culinary school, he gathered his knowledge working with Wolfgang Puck at Spago at age 13, then working amidst a crowd of young, innovative chefs in acclaimed restaurants in California and…

Molly O’Neill and Food: the Straight Q&A

Molly O’Neill will appear at the Miami Book Fair tomorrow, November 10, at 1:30 p.m. Her book, American Food Writing: An Anthology with Classic Recipes, cooks up a look at America’s history via over 100 concise and distinctive stories concerning food. O’Neill, the New York Times food columnist for a…

The Dog Whisperer isn’t Feeling Miami’s Pit Bull Ban

Miami-Dade county commissioners and Animal Services Director Dr. Sara Pizano could learn a thing or two from Cesar Millan. The Dog Whisperer recently chatted with Riptide about his take on the county’s ban on pit bulls, arguably the most maligned dog breed in the universe. Since 1988, it has been…

Art Capsules

Goya: The Engravings of the Caixanova Collection: The Spanish master’s skull-staving series of etchings created during the later stages of his career is on view for the first time in the United States in this must-see exhibit. The four series include Los Caprichos (The Caprices), 1799; Los Desastres de la…

Façades of Fear

Between 1976 and 1983, Argentina’s military dictatorship systematically tortured, killed, and “disappeared” 30,000 people suspected of opposing the government. During the so-called Dirty War, many citizens were dragged from their homes in the middle of the night and never seen again. The military junta deployed terror tactics, torturing victims at…

The Kids Were Alright

Sesame Street: Old School Volume 2 (Genius) On the heels of the Electric Company box sets, which were at once educational and groovy as all get-out, comes the latest in greatest hits from Sesame Street before the neighborhood was gentrified for Elmo’s protection. Chief among the copious highlights in this…

You’ve Got to Bee Kidding

After making a mint off a series about nothing, Jerry Seinfeld apparently decided his first feature film ought to be about something — in the case of Bee Movie, the enslavement and torture of bees for the pleasure and profit of humans, which is, like, hilarious. It’s rather tempting to…

Dull Roar

Less a war drama than a set of dueling position papers, Robert Redford’s Lions for Lambs might be the gabbiest movie ever made about American foreign policy — and it wasn’t even written by Aaron Sorkin. Hot young screenwriter Matthew Michael Carnahan is fresh off his alpha-male script for The…

Saw IV

In keeping with the series’ preference for the literal over the mythic, Saw IV offers no miraculous, Michael Myers-style resurrection for torture artiste John “Jigsaw” Kramer (Tobin Bell), who went out with a bang at the end of Saw III and makes his first appearance here as the toe-tagged specimen…

A Little Sucky-Sucky

Castlevania, the vampire-hunting series that spans 20 years and as many games, has basically two kinds of fans. There are the traditionalists, who’ve followed the games since they were straight-up action titles with thumb-busting combat and infamously steep difficulty curves. Most agree that the best old-school Castlevania is 1993’s Rondo…