When you think of a city that is a hotbed of radical activism, Miami doesn’t automatically come to mind. After all, Birkenstocks, ratty cutoffs and patchouli oil don’t really, uh, go with the fake boobs-stiletto heels-consumerist-mentality so popular around these parts. Still. A fashion aesthetic sure isn’t going to stop…
The protest on Brickell Avenue is hard to miss. Not because there are a couple of dozen red-shirted folks chanting in unison over the din of nearby high-rise construction. Not because of the person on the bullhorn exhorting drivers to honk. And not because someone’s passing out flyers that include…
The good old days He fled faster than Anastasio Somoza the night the Sandinistas stormed Managua in the summer of 1979. And I say good riddance to Nick Saban. I’m not going to rant endlessly about the treacherous sucker punch he landed on the franchise. In an interview with Dan…
Not so super Who’s playing in the Super Bowl again? This week’s issue of Miami Today, that venerable civic cheerleader, has a half-page ad sure to puzzle football fans. The ad promotes the paper’s upcoming Super Bowl special section (stories about the game’s economic impact, etc.) Only problem — aside…
It’s not often that I get to stand on a street corner in Old Havana and talk to an 81-year-old man (who is selling Granma, the state-run newspaper, no less) about Fidel Castro’s asshole. “What do you think happened to him?” I ask. “Well, it’s not his rectum,” my new…
Crime does not have to be awful. It can be a delightful diversion — that is, if you’re not the victim. And in Miami there’s plenty. Police document it every day — in methodical yet desultory snippets of doggerel that can make the timid blanch and the jaded rage. Though…
This past October, television cameramen gathered at the gates of Miami Edison Senior High, a Zone school in hard-pressed Little Haiti. The news crews trained their lenses on Shawn Beightol, a slender, bearded man waving a piece of paper and wiping sweat from his brow. A veteran chemistry teacher at…
Have badge, will travel? With a mind-boggling 406 homicides in 2006, Philadelphia appears to have a serious crime problem on its hands. Now mayoral candidate Dwight Evans is pushing one solution: Bring Miami Police Chief John Timoney back to the City of Brotherly Love, where he served as police commissioner…
Always hungry Barton G. Weiss of Barton G. The Restaurant is South Florida’s most ambitious restauranteur, constantly working with his chefs to develop outrageously clever menus and eye-popping presentations, only to revamp and start again the next season with newly brilliant concepts and concoctions. So it seemed like a perfect…
New Year’s Eve on South Beach sucks. Consider the soiree held at the Setai. For $300, they offered admission to the swanky chateau and an open bar all night. Luckily, we scored free tickets. If not, we would have celebrated the end of 2006 with a bottle of Night Train…
My three wishes for 2007: – The construction on Biscayne Boulevard will come to an end; – My local post office will hire extra employees, thus reducing the usual, maddening, 20-minute wait for service; – No more landmark restaurants will be razed for ugly condo projects. What are your Miami…
Happy New Year: Homicides are on the rise in Miami-Dade County! According to Metro Dade and city police statistics through Dec. 28, 165 people were killed in 2006. Compare that with 2005 – when 120 people were killed – and you have a 37 percent increase in homicides. (These numbers…
“You will believe…” Thetans, rejoice: A Scientology conference is coming to a beach near you. For two days in March — and for $200 — you can learn about the ins and outs of Scientology, the religion/self-help group/Tom Cruise thingy. Flyers were sent to potential Thetans (that’s the rough equivalent…
Quick: What’s the third largest import to the Port of Miami? Silicone? Yay-yo? Booze, of course. Last year, 155,664 tons of the stuff — about the weight of the world’s largest cruise ship, which coincidentally docks in Miami — washed up at the port. By comparison, only 12,191 tons of…
A car speeds down a forest road, only to be surrounded in an instant by armed crazies who materialize from the nearby woods. In the visual grammar of big-budget action films, the sequence that ensues should be a scattergun barrage of images: Wheels! Guns! Blood! Shriek! Fireball! Crash! Add a…
James Longley’s Iraq in Fragments is a one-man production of startling audacity and aesthetic provocation. It isn’t just that Longley (Gaza Strip) worked unembedded in Iraq for two years after the war began, gaining access to Sunnis, Shiites, and Kurds in wartime and risking his life at almost every turn…
Dashiell Hammett goes to high school — the perfect studio pitch. Yet after wowing ’em at the film fests, Rian Johnson’s knockout debut as writer and director, Brick, languished in theaters and on DVD. It took a bunk, as Hammett mighta said, and wound up wearing a wooden kimono. Johnson,…
Room with a View Filed under: Scene “Kramer. Thomas Kramer. I have told you zis zree times already!” bellowed a voice that instantly drowned out any conversation previously enjoyed by the ten people waiting politely inside the elevator car. “You are just too slow viz ze list!” And with that,…
A local Website has become ground zero for hate in South Florida. It’s loaded, on an almost daily basis, with racist stereotypes, slurs, and sentimental references to slavery and lynchings. You can see it at this address: www.sun-sentinel.com. That’s right, the oh-so-proper daily newspaper of record in Fort Lauderdale, the…
It’s official: Hollywood has run out of ideas. If you thought 2006 was bad, just wait. In 2007 the studios will give up on birthing blockbusters and instead concentrate on cloning them, with sequel after sequel after sequel. Familiar titles will be followed by so many numbers that filmgoers looking…
On an early December afternoon at the offices of Malpaso Productions, Clint Eastwood’s four Academy Awards have been placed into thick velvet carrying bags, while that famous poncho — the one Eastwood donned for the entirety of Sergio Leone’s Dollars trilogy — is being carefully loaded into a large shipping…
Hustlin’ marshmellows? Wikipedia.org has once again fallen victim to human error. Rick Ross, Miami’s prodigal hip-hop son, was briefly defamed this afternoon on the site. The first line describes him as such: Rick Ross, born ‘dick sucker’ 1977, is an white American rapper from coral gabels (sic), in northern Miami-Dade…
