Every morning for the past year, readers of the Miami Herald have awakened to the smiling faces of former Miami-Dade Community College (MDCC) students. “Everywhere you turn,” the ad copy reads, “successful alumni.” These image advertisements — depicting professionals in respected fields such as law enforcement, health care, and journalism…
From Miami-Dade’s far western reaches to the downtown corridors of the Stephen P. Clark Government Center, people are talking about a peculiar municipal incorporation proposal wending its way through the county’s bureaucracy. The oddly configured boundaries for the proposed new city form the shape of a pistol. Its handle runs…
Tattoo is sitting in his patrol car under a tree, watching small groups of kids crawling to class as slowly as ants across Douglas MacArthur South High School’s parklike campus. Seventeen acres of near-pastoral charm slapped into a lower-middle-class slice of Kendall Lakes West: “Mac South” is what the self-deprecating…
Joe Rose is on the verge of tears. From laughing. The former Miami Dolphin and current cohost of The First Team, the weekday morning sportstalk show on WQAM-AM (560), is listening to two of the program’s regular callers debate the likely outcome of the weekend’s Dolphins-New York Jets game at…
Ratner, schmatner, the kid lives in Ingrid Bergman’s old joint! So here’s Brett Ratner sitting next to his mom in a clean suit and a white-boy haircut at Miami Beach Senior High’s Hall of Fame alumni lunch at the Radisson Deauville. He’s kvelling. He doesn’t have an Oscar yet, but…
When South Beach kicks out the last of its unwashed weekend masses into the graying light of dawn, they often drift across the causeways to that downtown Miami warehouse district known as Park West. They queue up in lines of 50, 100, or 200, eager to join the gyrating throngs…
Y tres, dos — cue the band, cue the host, canned applause up, and Rolando Barral strides onto the set and over to his desk, arms raised in greeting. Dressed in a gray suit and pale lavender shirt, the trim 62-year-old Barral carries himself with the low-key sureness of a…
“Lord, thank you for Angel. Thank you for this family that stood beside him every moment and suffered so much, Lord. The will of God has manifested itself in the face of so many immoral things that have occurred. Let us say blessed is the Lord.” Thus spoke Rev. Guillermo…
The five Cuban spies convicted by a federal jury in Miami this past June have insinuated themselves among the local prison population, according to two of the agents’ mothers. Among the operatives’ revolutionary work: helping semiliterate inmates write letters to their girlfriends. “The other prisoners seek them out for all…
Mayor Machiavelli: From 2-shot distance, Alex Penelas seemed pretty lame in the Nov. 13 runoff elections in Miami Beach & the City of Miami. He endorsed both Elaine Bloom and Maurice Ferré. Further evidence that P is still laboring under the Elian curse from when he declared war on the…
Tony Mena remembers the exact moment he discovered his home and family were being poisoned. “It was the perfect day to be outside,” he recalls, the kind of beautiful January afternoon that compels snowbirds from around the nation to flock to South Florida. This was Mena’s first winter in his…
Everyone’s seen him. Everyone knows him. A friendly, middle-age man with classic Latin good looks, the type of gentleman who inspires instant trust. You’ve seen him on television, just being a family man: sitting around the dinner table with an equally attractive wife and children, laughing with old friends at…
The title of Mambo King is hotly disputed, with any number of pretenders vying for the crown. “After Perez Prado died, everybody else said they invented the mambo,” observes Paquito Hechavarria, “but how come no one made that claim while he was still alive?” The memory of another of the…
The name Otto Reich has popped up in the press again over the past several months. But who is this controversial former Miamian who still enjoys strong ties to South Florida? You should know, if only as a way to assess the health of our humble geopolitical region’s clout in…
Five years ago Walter “Dan” Cadman left South Florida in disgrace. The former director of Florida operations for the Immigration and Naturalization Service had been caught deceiving a congressional task force and then trying to cover up his actions. The U.S. Justice Department, after an investigation into what became known…
En el trece de Agosto, a hidden relative? Let’s hear it for Dan Christensen at the Daily Business Review! He’s been the only reporter to shine a consistent light on the Brooks Brothers sleaziness of U.S. Rep. Lincoln Diaz-Balart’s campaign financing practices. This past July, when the Federal Election Commission…
I had been told a lot of different things about Sylvia Worrell before I ever met her, and I still don’t know after meeting her which ones are true. I’ve heard she is a celebrated teacher, a published author, a former nun (“That’s just gossip,” she protests), a native of…
Exactly how does one become mayor of Miami these days? To find out New Times recently polled some well-known political junkies. The consensus seems to be that unless your name is Maurice Ferré, Joe Carollo, or Manny Diaz, you may as well forget about claiming that bay-view office on Dinner…
“I don’t know how far they want to go, but I’ll go 300 yards farther,” vows Mario Miranda as he sits at a table in Little Havana’s El Pub. Outside on this Saturday afternoon, marchers mass on Calle Ocho for the beginning of a “God Bless America” rally. Miranda is…
Deep bow to the reader. Haven’t seen you since August 24, 2000, but now we’re back — slightly altered, updating you on the lows and highs of Miami-Dade and points south, all the way to Cuba, in politics, civic matters, culture, jokes — the news and texture of this fine…
Look at Manny Diaz’s smile. Isn’t it sweet? And those clean-shaven, baby-soft cheeks. Now observe the eyes. They are the color of sorghum, compactly framed by delicate webs on each side and lightly shadowed crescents below. His widow’s peak hairline accentuates a black mane so pomade smooth it glistens like…
The news, coming as it did just days after the terrorist attacks on the United States, outraged the nation: Three Miami-Dade County firefighters — Muslims — refused, because of their political beliefs, to fly the flag of the United States on their fire truck. This item was first aired on…
