It sure looked like a political deal made the old-fashioned way, in the proverbial smoke-filled back room. But instead of a cabal of good old boys swapping favors, the culprits were a grandmotherly political legend and her son. On July 7 Rep. Carrie Meek announced her retirement from Congress after…
Swedish exec Peter Tsounis deals in yachts for a living. He wears expensive suits, flies first class, and carries hundreds of dollars in cash as well as twenty credit cards. So he was surprised recently when a cop slapped handcuffs on him and six lawmen surrounded him as he was…
If only the endangered Cape Sable seaside sparrow were a panda. Or had big mournful eyes, like Bambi. Or could project just a little more personality. “It’s not like they’re gorgeous,” concedes field biologist Julie Lockwood. “And they are not easy to see anyway, since they hardly come [up] above…
Johnny Winton hasn’t solved many of the mysteries inside Miami government in his two and a half years as city commissioner, but the little man with a quick tongue and a big vision has at least started to unravel a few. Like that of the city’s grimy, tattered old downtown,…
One day last month Jesus Portelles, stripped naked and convinced that demons had entered his body, used the broken edge of a plastic spoon to carve open his stomach. By the time the guards could unlock his cell door and grab him, his guts were spilling out. But the demons…
Luis Castillo is all alone again. Almost two weeks after his impressive run of registering at least one hit in thirty-five consecutive games came to an end, and less than a week before his first All-Star Game appearance, he sits quietly in front of his locker at Pro Player Stadium…
The Tequesta Indian burial mound has smoothed itself over centuries into a grassy rise sitting perpetually in the gray shadow of giant oak trees. The hillock is circled by a narrow asphalt road and watched by the shuttered windows of bougainvillea-covered bungalows and tile-roofed mission-style homes in the Village of…
Two days before the Miami-Dade County school board met to decide whether to extend superintendent Merrett Stierheim’s contract or cobble together a national search before the contract ran out in October, a local real estate developer sent an e-mail to a colleague, assessing the situation. “I don’t believe it is…
By the time Colleen Martin got to the house, it was too late. Driving across the 41st Street Causeway on April 25, Martin — a Miami Beach attorney who relocated from Oklahoma six years ago — couldn’t believe her eyes. As a member of the city’s historic preservation board, she…
Former Miami New Times columnist Jim DeFede tells me that the main difference to his opining on the foibles of this wicked town from his considerably more comfortable ($$) seat down the street at the Miami Herald is that he won’t be able to use the word “fuck” in a…
Leroy Jones does not have a college degree. He never graduated high school. He’s got a criminal record, and he’s black. Hell, he could stand to lose a few pounds. Tough shakes, all, in this unforgiving world. Obviously the system was built to underestimate a man like Jones. And there’s…
Balancing your own film career with that of your husband isn’t easy. Just ask up-and-coming actress Lesley Zen. “I have jealousy issues,” Zen admits during a break in the shooting of her latest picture. She sprawls in the back-yard hammock of the waterfront Miami Beach home of a local hotelier…
Billy Hardemon wants to get over. “I know I can make it,” he says, his eyes constantly shifting between the two men directly across the way and the traffic light at the corner of NW 62nd Street and 7th Avenue, where he has an office at the Martin Luther King,…
The police practice of blowing away suspects is under heightened scrutiny in the city where cronies often rule and the dead sometimes vote. Two weeks ago the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of Florida, Guy Lewis, announced that federal investigators have begun a lengthy review of the Miami Police…
Commissioner Art Teele’s appointees: Nathaniel Wilcox, executive director, PULSE (People United to Lead the Struggle to Equality), Miami Bess L. McElroy, president, PULSE, Miami Commissioner Tomas Regalado’s appointees: Colonel Roger Rojas Lavernia, CAMACOL (Latin Chamber of Commerce), Miami Sam Feldman, forensic case manager and Community Relations Board member, Miami (resides…
“I don’t care what others say/Boca, I’m with you.” The chant, produced by a sea of blue-and-gold-clad fútbol fans and aimed at a smaller contingent of red-and-white-garbed fans, reverberates throughout the Orange Bowl on this, the third Saturday night in June. Buenos Aires, or at least Little Buenos Aires, the…
Ratman & Zarco On the last stormy night of winter, a man with a flashlight went looking for the notorious Eby Loveland, the homeless “champion” who — legend has it — taught all the bums on South Beach how to use an ordinary Spam can key to open parking meters…
For now the notion of creating a civilian review panel with subpoena power to investigate the conduct of Miami-Dade County police is in the same condition as Eddie Lee Macklin. Dead. The twenty-year-old black man was driving through Liberty City at the wheel of a 1999 Lincoln Continental last January…
On the night Tony Gonzalez comes home with the body of his grandmother, Bayamo’s dusty main street is lit only by the dim glow of the funeraria sign. The time is 9:30 p.m., well past the usual Thursday bedtime in this rural Cuban town. Yet more than 200 people are…
In Miami, two unpleasantries in addition to death and taxes have been inevitable for the past four decades: violent intimidation of various people and enterprises perceived to be pro-Cuba or communist, and a near-total failure of authorities to find the perpetrators. Just last month a Calle Ocho art gallery, Maxoly…
The five-day Memorial hip-hop weekend on Miami Beach began with a gang fight and a stabbing. So how surprising would it have been if city officials, including rookie police Chief Don De Lucca, were the first to get freaky? After all, the cops were caught unprepared last year, and the…
Five or six mornings a week, Marvin wakes up about six o’clock and drags his tall, bony frame out of bed. He’s almost 40 years old, and his back, shoulders, and knees have begun to rebel against these early hours and the rough work he’s been doing for close to…
