He leaned against a wall backstage, shifting from one foot to the other, listening. It was early October, opening night at Miami’s $450 million Carnival Center for the Performing Arts. More than 2000 tuxedo- and evening-gown-wearing patrons, including the mayor and governor, had paid $500 apiece to be there. A…
If We Did It Filed under: News Rupert Murdoch, moral avatar? Well, not quite, but the News Corp. chairman did his best to extinguish the volcano of criticism that erupted over If I Did It, the O.J. Simpson book that almost was. Just when you thought Western civilization couldn’t get…
Guillermo Diaz lives in a small medieval town with a cobblestone square, an ancient castle, and a Gothic church. He works in another one. But before he explains, let him tell you about the weather. “I can’t go out — it’s too cold,” he says, visibly shuddering. “Hits me in…
I can’t come to the phone right now… With O.J. Simpson yet again begging for attention, White Dade recalls the December evening when he and a friend looked up The Juice’s Miami-Dade address and headed on over. “As luck would have it, the Juice’s Navigator was missing from the driveway,…
Gongora’s own mailing (left), and Weithorn’s (right). What a difference a photograph makes. Over the weekend, Miami Beach residents found two political flyers in their mailboxes with two very different images of Michael Gongora, candidate for beach commission. Gongora will face Deede Weithorn in today’s runoff election, making this the…
Brrrrrr! Steve Klotz hates cold weather. “Passionately,” he writes today on his blog, “Klotz” as in “Blood.” And he has a few choice words for you Northerners who relish a good cold snap: Inevitably, when the first cold snap strikes south Florida, people will beam with pleasure. “Isn’t this terrific?”…
Deadspin Wait for me! A’mod Ned, the injured FIU football player who was photographed walking onto the field on crutches to try to join the notorious brawl between UM and FIU players a couple weeks ago, is becoming the stuff of legend. The bloggers at Deadspin began Photoshopping the be-crutched…
Ring-a-ding ding If only Marc Sarnoff had decisively won the election for the Miami City Commission District 2 seat… The longtime Coconut Grove-based attorney had spent years building a reputation as a solid, fair-minded community activist who was well-liked as a person as well as a public citizen in his…
Keila Lopez has three adorable mixed-race kids. Unfortunately, the Tropical Resort Condo Association has decided they just don’t gel with the pink pastel walls and stubby palms of their little slice of heaven up on Bay Drive. Lopez, a Puerto Rican Homeland Security agent, arrived at her second viewing of…
The following email went out to Miami Herald newsroom employees this morning. It looks likely that Executive Editor Tom Fiedler is going to take blame for the misjudgments in the reporting on the case of El Nuevo Herald employees who were fired and then rehired for their entanglements with Radio…
Have you caught this video for the Miami Herald’s classified section? You’d never know that Craig’s List is eating their lunch — and that revenues for that hurtin’ part of the paper are down 4.6 percent this year company-wide…. Florida advertising is down 2.5 percent overall — a significant drop…
Most blogs are authored buy young, tech savvy, cutting-edge types. Some Cranky Guy is, well, rather old school. I was born in Miami over fifty years ago, back when bilingual meant you could speak in a southern accent and English too. I have language issues since I was raised by…
Pure egg-noggy goodness People often wonder what dogs are looking at when they seem to be staring intently at a certain middle-distance point where nothing, at least to the human eye, appears to be of interest. The Bitch can’t solve this age-old mystery as it pertains to all canines, but…
Risky Business Filed under: News When the corrections counselor tells what it’s like to walk past the cell blocks at the Miami-Dade County Stockade, she could almost be describing Clarice Starling’s walk down the corridor of a maximum-security prison in The Silence of the Lambs: “As a female, you get…
A minipark marks the center of an East Allapattah neighborhood, just off NW Twelfth Avenue. Gray wooden stumps, a few oak trees, and a small sandy playground dot the grassy square. On languid summer afternoons, local kids swing and slide on a blue and yellow jungle gym. Cars are parked…
Thanks, guys! On October 12, the Miami Herald editorial board endorsed Linda Haskins for Miami city commissioner. The editors touted her as the best prepared candidate from a field of seven due to Haskins’ “integrity, experience and knowledge of the city and job.” They lauded Haskins for advocating a moratorium…
This past Veterans Day weekend, volunteers from grassroots groups Democracy for America Miami and Veterans for Peace put up 2500 markers — white plastic boards on metal posts — in Lummus Park on Ocean Drive Between 8th and 10th streets. Most of the boards were handwritten with the names of…
I’ll have the alcoholic one, please British comedian John Cleese, in his role on the zany TV series Fawlty Towers, once said: “I can certainly see that you know your wine. Most of the guests who stay here wouldn’t know the difference between Bordeaux and Claret.” I’m guessing that some…
Old Grover Watch that hand, Mister Some voters in Miami Commission District Two awoke Saturday to find a political message in their inboxes that just may confirm longstanding charges that candidate Linda Haskins is a puppet of Mayor Manny Diaz. It is not known exactly when the above photograph was…
One endangered species we won’t miss During a 2004 public hearing concerning manatee protection, county Commissioner Natacha Seijas complained about a herd that kept popping up in the canal behind her Miami Lakes residence. “And as dumb as they always are they keep floating back and forth and I need…
On November 4, the Carnival Center’s Knight Concert Hall was converted into a YMCA dance — literally. The YMCA of Greater Miami celebrated 90 years in the Magic City. The gala raised $350,000 and honored some of our most illustrious individuals. The star honoree was county commissioner and YMCA vice-president…
Now he’ll have some time to find those WMDs himself Bush sat down to lunch with the San Francisco woman who’ll have his nuts in a legislative vise for the next two years. Donald Rumsfeld waved a pouty goodbye. Dick Cheney was described as “glum” in the New York Times…
