If I keep this up, in a year I will have spent one whole month of my life on I-95. I commute about 120 miles a day to Miami New Times from my home in southern Palm Beach County. I know: It’s a misery many of you share. That’s the…
Since launching www.dontedatehimgirl.com this past September, Miami-resident Tasha Joseph has catapulted herself into the international media spotlight. Her immensely popular Website, a so-called “cheap weapon in the war on cheating men,” has amassed more than 700,000 registered users and some 17,000 profiles that berate men from around the world. In…
After Julie met Guido one evening earlier this summer, he plied her with alcohol and then forcefully sodomized her. “The whole time the greasy Italian piece of shit raped me, he kept on saying he had genital warts and that I deserved to have them, too, because I was a…
Waterfront Access Is for Commies Filed under: Scanner When the Miami City Commission met this past week to discuss waterfront zoning, the exchanges went from surly to surreal. Fortunately Riptide was there to chronicle the, er, “conversation.” Pedro Martin’s lawyers and supporters came calling first, asking for a zoning change…
When Miami hired Lisa Mazique as director of the city’s economic development department, there were a few gasps — in New Orleans. Brought on in June at $135,000 per year, Mazique was tasked with, among other things, coordinating the purchase, development, management, and disposition of city-owned properties. Miami, recently ranked…
Though reports of parapsychological phenomena can mostly be relegated to the Looney Tunes museum, The Bitch has nonetheless has been fascinated and occasionally plagued by the minor X-Files manifestation known as Street Light Interference. Basically, SLIding happens when an internal power surge in a person (or a dog) creates an…
It’s the academic version of a pump-and-dump scheme. When St. Thomas University in Miami Gardens wanted to better the image of its law school, it brought in former Florida Attorney General Bob Butterworth in 2003. Butterworth had an ambitious plan to increase the size of the student body and the…
Poor Alex. With his baby face and soul patch, the sensitive heir to a successful Napa Valley vineyard is alone in a world of malevolent usurpers and ambitious liars. He is a dreamy optimist, the Candide of Telemundo’s 8:00 p.m. soap opera Tierra de Pasiones (Land of Passions). What he…
The fate of Miami’s brain center is on the line. At a special meeting September 7, city commissioners will decide whether to transform Miami Herald headquarters and surrounding property into three huge condos and a shopping mall. Along with the midtown Miami juggernaut, it’s perhaps the most extravagant development scheme…
Mark Mitnick, a portly, even-tempered 43-year-old bachelor, had worked as a grocery clerk, card dealer, bartender, factory worker, airman first class, and assistant manager at Pizza Hut. In October 2001 he spotted an ad in the newspaper for a job as a Wackenhut security guard. He had the necessary experience…
Breasts. Boobs. Tits. Heaving cleavage. Plunging décolletage. If you think there might be more of this in Miami-Dade than any other place, you might be right. And it’s not because Miamians are naturally endowed. It’s thanks to the genius of saline and silicone. To be sure, breast implants are on…
Next Tuesday’s election is particularly critical to Miami-Dade County Commission District 2, which stretches from the City of Miami to North Miami Beach. The 102,000 inhabitants suffer from too much violent crime, too little business, and squalid homes. It’s currently represented by Commissioner Dorrin Rolle, who was appointed by Gov…
The Shoemaster, a wiry man with a shaved head, white T-shirt, and black leather loafers, holds what looks like the innards of a broken slipper. It’s weeks before the shoe season begins in earnest, and he’s patiently explaining, in a thick Spanish accent, how to counter some of his biggest…
The chase is on. Juan “Iron Twin” Urango, a Colombian-born fighter hunting for a world championship, marches forward and swings at his opponent, Naoufel “Chocolata” Ben Rabah, with a huge left arm. Rabah jukes him and pops off a pitty-pat of punches. Urango lashes out again; Rabah ducks and leans…
News of the shooting came as a shock in Hialeah Gardens. One of the city’s veteran police officers, 41-year-old Robert Gomez, and his fiancée, 33-year-old Martha Bernet, were killed June 26 in their home on NW 126th Terrace. It was a murder-suicide, according to the Miami-Dade Police Department, which was…
Feces is not usually a topic discussed during dinner. But at two South Beach restaurants, turd-related discourse is practically impossible to avoid; poop is a key ingredient in one of the most prestigious menu items. Vix at Hotel Victor, located in the heart of Ocean Drive, and Barton G, the…
It isn’t the rabbit living in his bathroom, the videotape he sent to Pamela Anderson and Tommy Lee, the three shots of Jägermeister he had as a lunch appetizer, the Eighties hair band pictures carpeting his walls, or his habit of making Marlboro Lights vanish in midsmoke. It isn’t even,…
Last summer, Miami-Dade Police Sgt. Mauricio “Mo” Smith, a veteran of the cocaine cowboy Eighties and an expert on heroin, was shocked to discover a Kendall house where four men were raising more than 30 five- to six-foot-tall marijuana plants. A suburban hydroponics lab — that’s routine. But this was…
For a young writer, publishing a story in The New Yorker’s Début Fiction issue and locking down a book deal are the first steps toward literary Valhalla. Karen Russell, a 25-year-old Miami native, has accomplished both. Last year a story she penned, “Haunting Olivia,” was awarded with Début status. Next…
It was supposed to be a beacon to the world, a symbol of Miami’s role as gateway to Latin America and the Caribbean. Later it was rededicated as a tribute to a fallen president. Over the years, it became a gathering place for civic demonstrations and protests. The Torch of…
On a recent Tuesday evening, as traffic cut through steady rain on SW Seventh Street, about two dozen graying Cuban émigrés gathered in a nondescript room near the airport to plot a new crusade in their eternal war against the ailing Fidel Castro. Their plan — to pull a children’s…
At St. Thomas University School of Law in Miami Gardens, felons can teach criminal law. They just can’t study it. On July 13, Miami New Times reported that St. Thomas had hired its criminal law professor, Steve Clark, a former Arkansas attorney general, despite a 1990 felony theft conviction for…
