Three days before Christmas 1979, Angel “Sammy” Toro, Angel Diaz, and another man entered the Velvet Swing, a dimly lit, sparsely populated lounge on SW Eighth Street and 43rd Avenue. They sat at a table in the back, the ideal vantage point for gazing at the topless dancers writhing onstage…
The Bitch was recently put in touch with Will Johnson after a brief email exchange with Coconut Grove community activist Sue McConnell about criminal activity in the McMansion-happy hood. Specifically, the hound had asked, “What’s the suggested course of action when .. drug dealing is going on at the home…
As police study the grainy video recorded by security cameras during the North Miami Beach shooting of former University of Miami basketball player Bradley Timpf, one has to marvel at the black cloud that has descended over the University of Miami sports community this year. First, in July, junior safety…
What would He do? Sweet baby Jesus would be so proud of the people running Family New Life Center in Wynwood. The homeless family shelter is run by Catholic Charities, a non-profit social service division of the Archdiocese of Miami. The wrought-iron gated 15-room facility provides downtrodden families rooms for…
indiewire.com Old friends Busted! The U.S. Government has fined director Oliver Stone for illegally traveling to Cuba. According to a tersely-worded Department of Treasury document released Dec. 1, the IXTLAN Corp. of Santa Monica, Ca. — Stone’s production company — will pay $6,322.20 to “resolve allegations of violations of the…
There’s something seductive about new condo projects. The slick marketing, the efficient floor plans, the free booze at the launch party. New condos promise a new life, an organized life, a tidy, clean, no-pet-furballs-rolling-across-the-floor life. Maybe that’s why, one night last week, I tried to convince my boyfriend that a…
Crumbling no more Lisa Mazique, head of Miami’s economic development department since June, had her New Orleans home razed this past weekend. New Times wrote about Mazique’s legal wrangling over the rundown Victorian house in September. She came to our fair city from flood-ravaged New Orleans, where she had run…
This past Tuesday, Miami-Dade County commissioners took up the issue of the strong mayor ballot. At first they wanted to cut the salary, but then they chickened out. Indeed, it seems every time they discuss this issue, they act loopier than Reverend Jim Ignatowski rampaging through a political convention. Consider…
If early incarnations of Art Basel Miami Beach stunned the masses via glittery lineups, high-volume sales, and veneers of exclusivity, this year’s version has left seasoned locals agog over the exponential growth rate of the ancillary events the fair has spawned. “Last year we had the NADA, Scope, Aqua, Design,…
When David Lombardi first chugged into Wynwood six years ago, the real estate broker/developer had no idea the rundown warehouse district was about to take off like a runaway freight train. “When I came to the area, the Rubell Collection and Dorsch and Locust were the only spaces open, and…
Pulse, NADA, Aqua — suckling art fairs gather around Art Basel like pilot fish around a great white. Artwork exhibited at these piggyback fairs is often energetic and experimental, although content changes minimally from one show to the next. It’s fun to visit a few, but don’t fret about those…
You know fine art has become mainstream when an ad agency picks up on it, the way the Airwalk commercials made monks cool and signified a larger arrival of Buddhism in the pop consciousness. This year Art Basel, with its many satellite fairs and citywide happenings, shamelessly joins the vulgar…
The oft-apocalyptic, always-critical pop-culture-inspired art movement known as Lowbrow is ready to shed its misnomer — and the fast-peddling, South Florida-based artist/curator Francesco LoCastro is partially to thank. LoCastro’s “We’ll Make a Lover of You,” an outgrowth of his annual “Parallel Universe” exhibit, trades the grungy warehouses of Wynwood for…
Ever wonder about those funny-looking, colorful creatures painted on the concrete posts that shoulder I-395 and I-95 through downtown Miami? Well, wonder no more: They’re mangrove seedlings. In 2004 artist Xavier Cortada led volunteers from Hands on Miami in painting them on more than 30 columns. The fact that we…
When Baselites first parachuted into the Magic City five winters ago, Julie Lara Kahn gave them a crash course on the local scene via OPEN SEASON miami, a set of bubblegum trading cards profiling 88 hometown artists, collectors, curators, critics, and museum directors. This year Kahn will introduce locals and…
For some rogue boho types, catching the eye of the culturati during Art Basel doesn’t necessarily mean conjuring novel ways to sell the soul. “I think that street art is the most immediate and effective medium to express one’s point of view,” says spinmeister DJ CNTRL, who has hatched a…
The sounds are spectral. They drift into the cavernous courtyard of Vizcaya as though borne aloft by lumbering ghosts. Each note is a product of the South Miami Avenue estate’s 1917 organ, but some sound like deep, rumbling gongs, others like delicate, trilling flutes. Organic Pipes is a sound installation…
Shanty Talk Filed under: News One should always be wary when city officials declare they are “listening” to the people’s problems. Activist Max Rameau knew this on Wednesday, when Miami City Manager Pedro Hernandez journeyed out to Umoja, Rameau’s five-week-old shantytown for the homeless in Liberty City. “I’m here to…
Just be glad you can’t smell it. Apparently, the kids at William A. Chapman Elementary School in Homestead aren’t exactly getting the “supportive and healthy environment” their school’s website promises. A Chapman source who requested anonymity claims raw sewage has been bubbling up under a “portable” classroom for almost a…
Miami’s own Mikey Butders has ridden his porn dreams all the way to L.A. and Platinum Blue Productions, which recently announced his signing. Butders was found by Nick Manning, star, director and producer of more than 200 adult films, including Sick Girls Need Sick Boys and Lust in Leather. The…
Alex at Stuck on the Palmetto writes about the improbably fond memories he and others share about “la escuela al campo, the program in which every Cuban kid between 7th and 12th grade goes to do agricultural work for a period of 30 or 45 days.” Despite the fact that…
They came by the thousands, young women wearing their tightest Venezuelan flag tank tops and young men wearing t-shirts that read “Si, se va” (Yes, he goes), “Atrevete a cambiar” (dare yourself to change), and “Lo mio es Venezuela,” (mine is Venezuela). Outside of the Orange Bowl on Sunday the…
