Nice ink! Wired on my third cup of coffee at Out of the Blue Cafe (2426 NE 2nd Avenue), I noticed a woman sitting a few seats away with a familiar looking image tattooed on her chest, directly over her heart. After a moment, I realized what it was. “Um…excuse…
On Saturday, the Herald reported this shocking bit of bike news: a man found dead in the back of a pickup truck in Little Haiti last Thursday was believed to have been shot by two men riding bicycles. So far, no arrests have been made. It turns out this isn’t…
The evening begins with a cocktail reception, at a fabulous home in Indian Creek, with ten or twelve of your favorite friends. After the requisite mingling with other guests, including Dr. Arthur “South Beach Diet” Agatston, you will pick a number from a hat. This number dictates which of the…
Felix Ellis is alone now. His wife, Genevieve, isn’t around to make his favorite bread pudding. She’s not there to call him in the morning or to put a blanket on his lap so he won’t catch a chill from the unseasonably cold wind that whips through the couple’s tiny,…
The two private Learjets landed at Key West International Airport. Inside, the passengers — ten journalists and three PR execs, packed tightly together — burst into applause, which soon gave way to oohs and aahs. Through the jet windows we could see a line of Volkswagen Eos hard-top convertible coupes,…
With a deafening drone the airboat sped north. The straight-line monotony of the Tamiami Trail had long since disappeared, and the lone watercraft was surrounded by a giant field of muddy brown sawgrass that stretched to the horizon. The deeper into the Everglades it journeyed, the lower the blanket of…
Miami Beach police arrested a city of Miami police officer Tuesday morning, charging him with kidnapping and attempted sexual battery, both felonies. New Times profiled the officer, 31-year-old Michael Ragusa, a little over two weeks ago, in a story about an unusual traffic stop that ended with another officer, Sgt…
Over 500 people packed into the New Birth Baptist Church at last night’s standing-room only meeting of the NAACP’s Miami-Dade branch. They were there to interrogate Miami-Dade schools superintendent Rudy Crew and members of the school board (although only Martin Karp and Robert Ingram showed up), and to hear ousted…
It was a dark and stormy night — or something like that, anyway — when Mark Buckley took a welding torch to the metal before him, gave it a final blast, and stepped back to survey his creation. Cobbled together from the pieces of five bikes, a tricycle, and a…
Free Sparky The two manatees lay inert on a cushion of foam in the back of a truck. Only a few feet away, water lapped at the boat ramp at Black Point Marina. A throng of Miami Seaquarium employees in black shorts and blue t-shirts had assembled to carry the…
Welcome to the Everglades, now pay up! Everglades National Park is coming off its quietest year, in terms of visitation, for a decade. Only 954,022 people came through the gates in 2006, a drop off of almost 280,000 — or 23 percent — from 2005 when 1.2 million visited. What…
Wednesday was an ominous day for three-wheeled taxis. As New York City mayor Michael Bloomberg hesitated over signing a bill which would regulate the Big Apple’s three- to four-hundred strong pedicab industry, the Miami Beach City Commission discussed a possible ordinance which would have established a single-vendor bike taxi business,…
These figures were just released (only to Riptide) regarding the 2007 Food Network South Beach Wine & Food Festival: $2 MILLION (plus) — Record ticket revenue for this year’s festival. $1 MILLION — Amount raised to benefit the students of the Southern Wine & Spirits Beverage Management Center and Teaching…
Technically, Bike to Work Week ended last Saturday — but who’s counting? Not Juan, whom I met biking home from his job at a downtown construction site. Juan declined to give his last name and exact place of work because, he said cheerfully, he has no papers — he’s illegal…
Someone else is throwing around the “third world” moniker in relation to Miami – and this time, it’s a businessman who has extensive dealings with the city. According to Miami Today, Carnival Cruise Lines CEO Bob Dickinson said Miami’s port facilities are “third world” and that construction of the new…
Harvey Houtkin, the self-proclaimed “father of day trading,” is speaking into a microphone. Houtkin, a stout man who won a 1993 federal appeal against the SEC that expanded small-trading access on NASDAQ, wears a black polo shirt and glasses. He and the other eleven men at the table form the…
Take Us to the Bridge Filed Under: News Following revelations by New Times that a parking lot under the State Road 836 bridge was being used by probation officers as a dumping ground for homeless sex offenders — and that the lot was located within 2500 feet of eight schools,…
In mid-December Spanish balladeer and Miami Beach resident Alejandro Sanz suddenly announced to the media that he had an illegitimate three-year-old son. A few days later an apparent motive for the announcement revealed itself when authorities arrested two of Sanz’s former employees for theft and extortion. At first it all…
The e-mails regarding one of the leading 2008 presidential contenders arrive every week or so, and the subject lines aren’t kind. “Obama profits from media cover-up of family ties to slavery.” “Letter to Random House charges Barack Obama book is a fraud.” “The last days of Obama.” “Obama caught in…
Jean: I could feed a nation from this hat Wyclef Jean made a presentation Tuesday before a congressional sub-committee about the need for greater U.S. involvement in Haiti. Jean earned his stripes as a member of the Fugees, and as perhaps the first mainstream American artist to rap in Kreyol…
Remember how the Miami-Dade cops announced last week that they had a MySpace page in hopes of deterring online perverts? It seemed as though Coral Gables had a similar page — until MySpace realized that the page was bogus. The popular networking site this week closed down pages claiming to…
This calls for a celebratory stogie The Super Korean is Super Victorious! American Top team’s mix martial arts fighter Denis Kang successfully defended his Spirit Martial Challenge heavyweight title March 11th in Korea. He won by unanimous decision after a grueling three-round bout. This was the 29-year-old Fort Lauderdale resident’s…
