The Kite Is Right

Nothing beats the freeing feeling of flying a kite on a fall day. What’s that you say? You don’t have a kite? No worries: Skyward Kites will give you the hookup at today’s fifteenth annual Kitetoberfest. Event organizer Dan Ward describes the fest as a “family fun day” filled with…

Sand in Your Saxophone

We like freebies. And we like being outside once the humidity and temperature finally drop. So it’s the right time for Surfside’s Jazz on the Beach, a free concert presented by the Town of Surfside Tourist Bureau and KCC productions. Today you can relax to the sounds of the surf…

Dance Between the Dashes

The jazz hands. The sequined costumes. The flags and poorly choreographed, unsynchronized leaps that detract from the main event. Have you ever wondered where those enthusiastic halftime performers come from? They’re found at Boston Market, silly. If you are between the ages of twelve and twenty, you can audition for…

Take the Girls for a Walk

Feeling a bit sluggish lately? Need a reason to slide off the couch, brush the cheesy snack dust off of your shirt, and get moving? How about some grim statistics? This year 211,240 women will develop breast cancer and 40,410 will die from it, while 1690 men will develop it…

Bigger Is Better

Hair got so boring once the Eighties ended. Everyone threw out the Aqua Net and put away the crimping iron. Relive those days of excess and get your tease on at the second annual Big Wig Costume Ball and Silent Auction. “It’s a blast! Some people really tease their own…

Rock On!

Nothing quite girds you for an aural assault like the intense underground imagery of a handmade rock poster announcing that your favorite wailers are in town. By the time the house lights go down and the band strikes up a chord at the honky-tonk, your scalp is itching with anticipation…

Drink from the Boot

Ever since you saw that crappy film starring Piper Perabo, Maria Bello, and — oh yes — Tyra Banks, you have dreamed of dressing like a slutty cowgirl and dancing on a bar for a bunch of hollerin’ construction workers. Well, wake up and smell the cheap tequila, honey, because…

Dance with a Star

It was once said that people dance the tango because they have secrets. It goes beyond technique: The tango is sensual, seductive, and passionate. Watching two people tango is so intimate at times that it can make the audience blush. No one knows this better than Maria Pradilla, a World…

One Singular Sensation

According to the U.S. Census Bureau, there were 89.8 million unmarried and single residents in this country in 2005. That equals 41 percent of all Americans age eighteen and older. And 54 percent of those singles are women. So why in hell is it so difficult to get a date?…

Independent’s Day

The PLUG Independent Music Awards is a beloved celebration of independent musicians held annually in New York. Winners typically go on to become cool new bands. Former victors include Clap Your Hands Say Yeah, Dangerdoom, Mr. Lif, and Gnarls Barkley. “It’s like the opposite of the Grammys; PLUG actually gives…

A Long, Strange Trip

Fill up the gas tank and pack all the, um, supplies you’ll need for a fun car ride down to the Keys. It’s that time of year again, when the southernmost point in the continental United States goes on a ten-day bender of costumes, culture, and debauchery. You won’t want…

Home on the Range

For a city that is just about as far south as you can get in the U.S., Miami is curiously void of Southern drawls, Confederate flags, and square dancing. The only cowboy boots in these parts are diamond-encrusted designer brands. There are plenty of young bucks and pretty fillies ready…

Come Together

In the Seventies and early Eighties there were Last Tango in Paris, Midnight Cowboy, and The Blue Lagoon — all unabashedly sexual films that found mainstream cinematic success. Nowadays violence is the new sex. Moviegoers are typically more comfortable watching some guy’s head being blown away than, well, you know…

Catwalkin’ Babes

While frat guys like the University of Florida’s troubled Pi Kappa Alphas fuel the stereotype of boys who like to paddle each other and ply unsuspecting girls with panty-dropping shooters, there are others who take their philanthropy seriously. Take Delta Lambda Phi, a national social fraternity founded in 1986, which…

National “Make it Work” Day

Bravo TV You know what to do. October 18, not a particularly special day. Two hundred and thirty years ago some drunk guy saw a bird tail decorating the wall of a New York bar and decided to be funny and order a cock tail, thus spawning a cultural phenomenon…

Blog of the Day

Who you calling thin-voiced? Alex at Stuck on the Palmetto wants to “open a window into the culture and the society” of Cuba. In a post called Vamos a Cuba, he links to YouTube video of Silvio Rodriguez, “the most popular singer in Cuba.” Alex rhapsodizes: “His were the songs…

De La Soul? Not Even Close

The Museum of Contemporary Art offered up a gift too good to be true this past Saturday evening in Wynwood: A free live performance by De La Soul to cap off Moca’s e-merce b-boy block party. Unfortunately, it was all just a dream, the kind of stuff you read about…

Marina, I just met a girl named Marina…

The first episode of Telemundo’s newest soap opera, Marina, is available for viewing online, if you simply can’t wait another eight hours for it to air on television (8:30p.m.). The plot revolves around Marina, a virtuous Mexican girl raised in the humble shacks of Acapulco who suddenly finds herself luxuriously…

Black Violin: Hip-Hop and, Yes, Strings

Yes, violins. Yes, hip-hop. Kev Marcus and Wil-B, the hip-hop string-playing duo known as Black Violin, are tired of explaining what they do to the incredulous and sarcastic. It doesn’t look like the 24-year-olds — both former FIU students — will have to do much more explaining. The last few…

Shooting Stars

South Beach is still a mecca for the rich and infamous, but nowadays the stars tend to be more of the “who is that, again?” persuasion. In the 1990’s, our neon-illuminated stretch was the playground for A-listers who partied all night and stumbled home in broad daylight. Photographer Manny Hernandez…

Fine Tuning

Tateo Nakajima’s comments on this week’s Riptide item about sound quality disparities at the Carnival Center Oct. 5 opening came too late to be included in the paper: The hall has a wide range of uses, and finding a balance between those uses is an ongoing challenge. We still have…

Voter Fraud

Barry Levinson hasn’t made a movie of note in almost a decade — since 1997’s Wag the Dog, to be precise, and even that was less a work of substantial relevance than a bit of lucky timing based on someone else’s better novel. Granted, it had its moments — at…