Late afternoon on May 5 in a windowless, wood-paneled North Miami office, Stephen Brooks feeds his family and friends. His grandparents sit on a low pleather couch, chewing on pieces of dried mango. His father and business partners look up from a topographical map of a hill in Costa Rica…
Two weeks ago Eric Lesch, a connoisseur of extremely cheap travel, pointed across the parking lot of the Publix store on Marathon Key toward his prize discovery. There, choking up black smoke, directly in front of the Brass Monkey liquor store, was a gray bus with JGT scrawled on its…
On a recent spring evening, after a day of knocking on doors, Ben Stevens and Clinton Dowse settle in for a Haitian dinner at the North Miami Beach apartment of 49-year-old Flora Rulles. The two young, fresh-faced Anglos, at first glance, seem to share few traits with their host. Yet…
So Israel is killing civilians — by mistake, of course. Palestinians are feuding among themselves on the West Bank. And Hamas has called an end to a long-held truce with the Jewish state. Call it a meltdown in the Middle East. But shortly before tip-off of Game 1 of the…
Miami has been good to Nicole Waters and Viviana Villagra. The young couple — Waters is 30 years old, Villagra 31 — met here, fell in love here, and, only four months into their courtship, decided to spend the rest of their lives together here. Miami has also been a…
East Caravella. It sounds like a meadow in Narnia but looks like a suburb of Phoenix. East Caravella is a complex of townhouses situated along a curved road. The streets look newly paved, but the lawns are uniformly dead. Fifteen dollars a night here gets you a two-level apartment to…
At 2:00 p.m. Saturday, May 27, the atmosphere in South Beach was thick with tattooed flesh, rattling bass boom, and the mad, intoxicating energy of people sweating, driving, eating, drinking, and spending in every nook of America’s consumer Eden. Miami New Times dispatched to the scene a Universal Complaint Department…
Former U.S. Congresswoman Carrie Meek, the first African American from Florida elected to Congress since Reconstruction, retired from political office four years ago, saying she no longer had the physical stamina to keep up with the doings on Capitol Hill. Last year she jokingly told reporters she was enjoying her…
Thursday, April 21, 2006, appeared to be the last day of the Reign of Ratner. It began ordinarily enough and without great expectations. At 9:15 a.m., Marty Arostegui, a 59-year-old retired physician, loaded some gear into his Chevy Avalanche and headed for the Snake Pit — the heart of snakehead…
As drizzling rain coats her Pontiac on the patchy lawn, Helena Roundtree sits at a glass-top table in her rented Miami Gardens ranch house, jabbing the air as she speaks. The 47-year-old condominium security guard and single mother of three is dressed in baggy shorts and a sleeveless T-shirt despite…
Things are bleak in the subtropics. China owns us, we’re losing the War on Terror, summer’s sticky misery is here, alligators are treating the suburbs like a human smorgasbord, and the sun will burn out in a scant five billion years. So on a hot gray Tuesday afternoon, a Miami…
Sean Taylor is a football player. He’s a good football player. No, let’s get this right: He’s a great football player, a star. Taylor grew up on the dusty gridirons south of Miami. He won a state championship at Gulliver Prep and then a national championship at the University of…
Just before dawn on May 13 — a full-moon Saturday — John Williams, a popular 31-year-old bouncer at the Washington Avenue nightclub Mansion, was stabbed in the heart while trying to break up a fight. He died at 5:26 a.m. on the sidewalk — the sidewalk where he had stood…
There is a lot of trash on Lexus Boulevard. Heading south on the nascent byway in West Kendall, you pass rotting sofas, abandoned furniture, and a fridge oozing flies. A rusty spool of chicken wire partially obstructs the road. “The county’s in charge of cleaning that up,” says Miami-Dade Commission…
Summer is the season of high expectations and profound disappointments. That suntan looks more like sunburn, your beer stays ice-cold till the moment it’s opened, and fat guys are the only ones hanging by the pool in bikini briefs. So it goes with summer movies: Sequels to beloved faves have…
Iván Dominguez was bound to offend el exilio when he pitched his tent at the foot the Monument of Martyrs at SW Eighth Street and Thirteenth Avenue. In Cuban Miami, the area around the obelisk is hallowed ground. The six-sided marble edifice, topped with a lit torch, is a memorial…
Romário de Souza Faria is soccer’s answer to the Greek demagogue. Since being named MVP of the World Cup in 1994, the stout Brazilian striker has astounded mortals with his curious mix of the mercurial and bacchanalian. He partied while others slept, froze his seed with the intention of farming…
Sunlight gently filters through the royal palms lining Key Biscayne’s Village Green and then settles softly on the tanned and healthy shoulders of small children who dart and squeal like piglets at play. Jaguar and Mercedes sedans fill the parking spots lining the lush community park, and sunglassed moms and…
Miami Dade College and Harvard University do not often compete. But last December, four local men sat across a table from four Cambridge men. They played chess. The MDC Sharks, who have had a club for four years, beat Harvard, which has been playing competitive chess since 1874. Fluke? The…
My ass is burning. I’m putting on an awesome display of ineptitude, running back and forth, flailing my racket at the birdie or bird or shuttlecock or whatever it is. My 53-year-old opponent, Dave Zarco, has a slight paunch and wears spectacles. He seems quite relaxed, returning every drop shot,…
One day this past October, filmmaker Aaron Salgado found inspiration while shacking up in a motel room on SW Eighth Street. “I was hosting a female friend,” the 24-year-old son of Peruvian parents recollects, “when the seed was planted: Do a movie about the motels on Calle Ocho.” Within a…
In the distance, Miami’s glass towers twinkle faintly, hovering above the opalescent waters of Biscayne Bay. Here, at a closely guarded azimuth, slight waves slap against a 25-foot Boston Whaler. “Look closely,” Brenda Lanzendorf says as she points from the bow, her grin spreading wide the crow’s feet around her…
