Arts & Culture

From the musings of ancient Greek philosophers to the chain letters of AOL-era email, the question “What would you do if today were your last day?” has been one of our collective favorites. We imagine drug binges with no consequence, life savings spent on one lavish trip, and the Herculean…

For the past 100 years, Tobacco Road (626 S. Miami Ave., Miami) has kept legions of city dwellers drunk, fed, and soaked in music. And given the recent announcement of the property’s sale, you have only three more years to enjoy it in its current state of glorious historic-dive-itude. Before…

What do Euro Disneyland, the film The Cutting Edge, and Jeffrey Dahmer’s life sentence have in common? (Besides the tragedy of their existence, of course.) Each of them turned 20 years old this year. Yup, it was 1992 when Disney poured a fortune into an ill-conceived Paris theme park, we…

Memorial Day, arguably the most somber federal holiday of the calendar year, honors the men and women who’ve lost their lives fighting for our country. Without their heroic efforts, the United States would not be the great nation it is today, a 3,794,101-square-mile global superpower. This country has plenty of…

The Miami Marlins handed shortstop Jose Reyes a six-year, $106-million contract this past winter so he could leave the division rival Mets to play for the Fish in their new digs. It was an expensive gesture to bring Reyes on board, and one that risked alienating the Marlins’ very own…

Maurica (pronounced mo-ree-sa), formerly known as Maurice Rodriguez, is a Puerto Rican transsexual project chick from Manhattan’s Lower East Side whose YouTube channel, song on iTunes, and giant personality have made her a viral sensation on the Interwebs. In high school, she was an all-city basketball player, and she dreams…

For children of the ’80s, nothing brings back the days of playgrounds and juice boxes like Steven Spielberg’s E.T. This epic tale of an unlikely friendship is the quintessential throwback to pre-CGI filmmaking and a pre-rehab Drew Barrymore. Some observers claim the film has a Christian subtext, others argue it’s…

In the mid-’60s, the phrase embedded journalist had likely never been uttered, let alone ignited a controversy over newspaper ethics. But that’s exactly what Jim Nickless was back then: a freelance cameraman for NBC News who lived among Cuban revolutionaries plotting to overthrow Fidel Castro. He documented their daily activities,…

Lao Tzu famously wrote that “the journey of a thousand miles begins with one step.” But then again, the Chinese scholar wasn’t crossing the Colorado Rockies in a beat-up jalopy or fixing flat tires. For Ed Ruscha, a cross-country jaunt from his native Oklahoma to California along Route 66 back…

Stand before one of José Bedia’s enigmatic paintings and you can almost hear the ancestors beating on the resurrection drums centuries ago. “José Bedia’s work has a distinct anthropological quality and is imbued with his rich experience of diverse cultures, religions, and histories,” says Tobias Ostrander, chief curator at Miami…

The Haitian dance company Ayikodans, much like the country in which it resides, teetered on the verge of disintegration after the devastating 2010 earthquake. With so much aid needed for a crumbled nation, saving one of Haiti’s premier dance companies didn’t seem a priority. But the Adrienne Arsht Center for…

When he enters a display window at the ArtCenter/South Florida on June 6, artist David Zalben will reveal how he alters time. For 45 nights straight, he plans to work in view of the public to produce a poem in his preferred medium: thick metal wire. Beginning after nightfall, Zalben,…

Here in Miami, perhaps more than in most other cities, buildings are a pretty big deal.Some represent history, like South Beach’s historic Art Deco towers. Others represent industry, or lack thereof, like the half-finished and barely occupied condo buildings that crowded the downtown skyline just a few years ago. They…