The most noticeable thing about Francisco Ferreras is his chest. He is otherwise an imposing presence — tall, muscular arms, broad back, shaved head bronzed by the sun. But it is the chest that impresses. It is prodigiously expansive, but not in the way bodybuilders become musclebound with bulk. Ferreras’s…
In his February 19 “state of the port” speech, Port of Miami director Chuck Towsley ignored the ravenous billion-ton Gorilla 100 miles away, namely the Cuban economy. A few years ago, that omission would have been unremarkable in a county where the craving to starve out Fidel Castro has been…
The European gentleman, midforties, a slim, bespectacled fellow in a business suit, stands at the lip of the curb just outside the Royal Palm Crowne Plaza Resort in Miami Beach on a gorgeous winter afternoon. He’s just checked out of his room and asked a concierge to call him a…
Maybe it’s his youthful exuberance. Maybe it’s his sharp, lawyerly style, or his devilish good looks. Maybe it’s his naiveté, which seeps through like the sweat under his freshly pressed olive shirt. Maybe people forgive him because he’s half Peruvian and half German and speaks Spanish with a slightly flat…
A world away from South Beach’s glam dance spots, kids — teenagers mostly — crouch in a parking lot in Allapattah, drinking beer out of paper bags and smoking cigarettes. Many wear clothes that could have come from a time capsule buried in London 25 years ago: Sneers flicker under…
The friendly guy at the coffee table in South Miami’s Trattoria Solé bar could have been any 39-year-old, educated, self-assured millionaire from Pinecrest talking politics. But it was Jorge Mas Santos, chairman of MasTec and of the Cuban American National Foundation (CANF), basking in the amber evening light of this…
Just when you thought airports couldn’t get any more dangerous — all the metal detectors breached, all the surveillance cameras broken, suitcases rigged with C-4 — even your mild-mannered fellow passengers readying their nail clippers for God-knows-what … along came the bunny rabbits. Well, black-tailed jackrabbits to be exact. As…
It all started one balmy September evening, when four teenagers cruising back to Kendall from a night out in Coconut Grove got pulled over by a county police officer. The kids, two each in matching SUVs, were spotted by a cop swerving and looping around each other, goofing off, in…
Sammy Figueroa didn’t imagine it would be so hard to find a pair of congas in Havana. To avoid the hassle and expense, he decided not to bring his own drums with him on the flight from Miami. But the master percussionist is having a hell of a time getting…
Despite the efforts of Miami-Dade Aviation director Angela Gittens to reform Miami International Airport, the brewing set-to over a prepaid phone card vending contract shows that it’s business as usual at MIA. Contracts get awarded to individuals with the most political juice; prominent among the rewardees is big-time lawyer/lobbyist Chris…
Never mind more than 50 years of economic domination. Nor the role played in the Seventies by the U.S. government supporting the last military dictatorship (blamed for the disappearance of more than 30,000 people in Argentina). Never mind U.S. cooperation with the British military operation in the Falkland/Malvinas War of…
On a Thursday afternoon a few weeks before Christmas, real estate developer R. Donahue Peebles sat at his desk in the Coral Gables office of his firm, Peebles Atlantic Development Corp. Linen drapes softened the sunlight entering his spacious windows, but obscured the view of the lush green skyline. “Don,”…
Pop morality quiz: An organization with offices in the United States has assassinated a foreign spy in that agent’s homeland, or tried to do so. This is: A) right, B) wrong, C) legal, D) illegal, E) the kind of activity U.S. and Cuban authorities should be investigating. If you live…
On a recent Friday, Tony Winton and Cathy Wilson skipped lunch and headed down to the monstrous word factory on Biscayne Bay known as the Miami Herald. The two veteran Associated Press reporters took with them a stack of flyers they intended to hand to as many Herald employees as…
This is a distressing time for Camilo Padreda. It’s the end of an era. Possibly his. The self-proclaimed best friend of the Miami Police Department is mourning the recent departure of Chief Raul Martinez. Padreda has known Martinez for nearly three decades and could count on the chief to open…
At noon on South Beach, with the tourist season well under way, balmy breezes toss the palm fronds along Ocean Drive. Pale Midwesterners in flip-flops and brand-new swimming trunks gawk at the menus on sidewalk display. Between the foreign entrée items and the aggressive hostesses who hustle passersby like Bourbon…
1. Preliminaries I got an e-mail from a potential editor early one morning a couple of months ago. It gave me the okay to preach my particular brand of smack via an article on gambling for New Times. The editor didn’t come right out and say so, but I gleaned…
Kingsley Barham seems an unlikely candidate for king of crass. The once-handsome, now-haggard 56-year-old sleeps on a sofa bed in a ramshackle Delray Beach home from which he barely escaped eviction in 2001. The State of California is after him for more than $75,000 in back taxes. And creditors have…
Does John Renfrow suffer from a severely impaired memory? Or does Renfrow, director of Miami-Dade County’s Department of Environmental Resources Management (DERM), just want people to believe his memory is shot? Either way, it wouldn’t be good news for the complex and fragile ecosystem he is supposed to be protecting…
Chris and Robin DiFranco operate a small contracting business from a worn second-story suite in North Miami. A couple of blocks from Dixie Highway, their cream-colored building is surrounded by a hodgepodge of auto-body and machine shops. The deadbolted first-floor door opens to a long flight of bare-wood steps. Their…
Every weekday morning for two years Becky Wyatt’s monotone voice radiated from thousands of South Florida clock radios tuned to WLRN-FM (91.3), repeating a condensed version of the local news. Twice an hour between 6:00 and 10:00 a.m. (during Morning Edition), she would read to public-radio fans stuck in rush-hour…
Thomas R. Spencer, Jr., sighs gently into the phone and tries again to explain what his group, the Association of Former Intelligence Officers (AFIO), actually does. “We’re about educating the public about what the intelligence community does and doesn’t do,” he says. Yes, I grant, but what you mainly do…
