On a recent night, I was out on the beach, pickling my ginger a bit with an oversized bottle of High Life, when I saw two men walking towards me across the sand. I had just stashed the bubbly when they got to me and asked for a cigarette in…
No trans-fatty fries allowed The Miami Dade School Board voted last night to become the first district in the nation to ban trans fats in food – not that you would know it by reading this morning’s Herald, which buried the news in the last graf of a story on…
According to Miami Police Department public information offier Robert Williams, the metal detector New Times recently wrote about being non-functioning and unattended is now working and manned at all times. According to Williams, in the past, “during a certain period of alert, it was manned and activated.” Now it’s fully…
Mmm, frothy! For ten years, the Miami Area Society of Homebrewers (MASH) has battled the Ft. Lauderdale Area Brewers (FLAB) in an epic annual contest of brewing mastery: the Coconut Cup. And, after three nights of tasting and sampling in private homes, the battle will spill out onto the beery…
I met Venezuelan blogger Luis Carlos D�az at a media conference at University of Miami last week. He told me that he had just published a post about my article on Patricia Poleo. It seems he thought it was pretty skewed. A rough translation of his comment: “The press in…
Holy environmental building, Batman! Miami remains one of the last places on earth to disdain pretty much any form of environmentalism. There seems to be an unspoken equation here that goes something like this: alternative energy + recycling = Fidel. The equation may be changing. Plans are underway to build…
Miami, like the human body, is mostly made up of water. Still, many of us never get further than the occasional dunk in a few yards of shark-infested surf. Simply put, none of the 53,290 boats currently registered with Miami-Dade County belong to my friends. Poor, boatless bastards like me…
The Seminole Sun Sets on Anna Nicole Filed Under: Scene The day Anna Nicole Smith’s corpse was wheeled from the Seminole Hard Rock Hotel & Casino, tribe members were setting up for their annual powwow. The 36th gathering, which began last Thursday, is a celebration of Seminole culture that includes…
Inside the Krispy Kreme store on NE 167th Street, hundreds of donuts chug along conveyor belts, waiting to be filled, glazed, and eaten. A few dozen finished ones fill several metal racks, sprinkled with sparkly sugars and lacquered with thick chocolate. During a ten-minute interval at midday last Wednesday, three…
When the air is wine and the wind is free and the morning sits on the lovely lea and sunlight ripples on every tree Then love-in-air is the thing for me I’m a bee — from Song of the Queen Bee, by E.B. White In the stillness before dawn, Lee…
Couey The media frenzy surrounding the trial of John Evander Couey — the five-foot-four-inch man charged with kidnapping, raping, and killing nine-year-old Jessica Lunsford in 2005 — continued yesterday. During a break in jury selection Monday, Circuit Judge Ric Howard rejected a motion filed by the Miami Herald that sought…
Pucker up Due to the damp weather, the outdoor wall of stuffed animals at Rios Flowers has been under a tarp for most of the week. The street in front of the store has been reduced to a sand pit, a perilous habitat of orange and white traffic barriers and…
Attention, Miami: This is what a bike lane looks like At about 1:30 late one night this past weekend, I was leaning on my bike, staring tipsily at my plastic Streetwise Miami map, trying to figure out how to get onto the Venetian Causeway. I’m new in town. I have…
For 17 years, Tony Wayne Dixon worked for the Miami-Dade school district, monitoring computer systems and ensuring no inappropriate material made it through web filters to impressionable kids. This past Friday, Dixon was sentenced to five years probation, having been convicted on 17 counts of possession of child pornography and…
Last fall, Florida employees of BellSouth were told they would have to submit to fingerprinting or be terminated. That’s because a state law called the Jessica Lunsford Act, passed in 2005, mandates that all “noninstructional school district employees or contractual personnel” must have criminal background checks before being allowed to…
Welcome to my world This past Friday night, the imposing gates of Star Island stood open to the rich, the famous, and the lowly media — all invited to the splendiferous casa de la Gloria Estefan to attend a fundraising gala. Three hundred guests were expected; tickets cost $5,000 a…
That’s one way to do it The Florida International Bankers Association, better known by the acronym FIBA (and unrelated to an international basketball league with the same initials), has its annual Anti Money Laundering Conference today and tomorrow at the Radisson Hotel downtown. Expecting Scarface-inspired crime narratives, New Times attended…
palm this tree For decades, Biscayne Boulevard was a regal stretch of road, a tropical gateway to paradise. Visitors were greeted with smooth asphalt, clean family-friendly motels and towering palm trees. Today, of course, it’s mostly commuters that flow into Miami via Biscayne, and they are assaulted daily by never…
“We’re paying for their exorbitant rent!” my uncle Al bellows whenever I take him to dine in a pricey South Beach restaurant. Obnoxious, yes, but he’s got a point. The Ghetto Gourmet is a counterpoint. The Oakland-based group is, in essence, an underground supper club, meaning they find hip spaces…
Eeek! When I moved into my dee-luxe Miami Beach apartment in the sky, I figured that the most I would have to worry about would be prudish neighbors complaining about the hard bass lines pounding through the walls. But recently, when I heard a scratching noise in my cabinet, I…
Producers pf the uber-popular reality TV show Top Chef were in town recently looking for a few good cooks to compete for a $100,000 grand prize in their next season. And one local chef looks like he could be a prime candidate. Mike Sabin, 36, executive chef of South Beach’s…
Superman retires Tom Fiedler may not be Ben Bradlee, but he remains a newspaper warrior, nonetheless. Earlier today, the Miami Herald’s soon-to-be-former executive editor received two standing ovations from the crowd attending the Miami Herald Media Co.’s annual meeting at the Radisson Hotel in the old Omni International Mall. “No…
