The intermittent morning drizzle slicking the City of Miami’s palm fronds against its glass and concrete buildings is burnt out of the air by a strengthening sun as a deep yellow cab rounds the curve of the MacArthur Causeway, heading toward Watson Island. A Flamingo taxi, still sporting an “Aristide…
Key Biscayne’s municipal officials really want their new civic-center complex, which, when finished, will include a fire station, the police department, an administration building, and a recreation facility. But critics charge that village fathers want the project so desperately they’ve circumvented the law and ignored the protests of their own…
When Merrett Stierheim announced his interest in seeking the interim post at the helm of the Miami-Dade County Public Schools, all hell broke loose behind the scenes. “Stierheim!” gasped a collection of lobbyists and political insiders who had enjoyed years of lucrative relationships with the district under former superintendent Roger…
Terror is nothing new to Walid Phares. The 43-year-old Florida Atlantic University associate professor grew up in Beirut and survived the Lebanese civil war of 1975 to 1990. A Maronite Christian, he recalls witnessing the detonation of the first car bomb in his hometown in 1977. Indeed he’s lucky to…
The Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) had terror ringleader Mohamed Atta in its grasp before the September 11 attacks. Then the agency, which stands at the domestic frontline in the war on terrorism, let him go. The 34-year-old Egyptian arrived at Miami International Airport earlier this year on a flight…
For years questions about finances and philosophy have plagued the Miami Caribbean Carnival that annually attracts roughly 100,000 revelers. Some support staff claim not to have been paid for their services, and differences over the festival’s direction led this year to the creation of a competing Carnival. But the biggest…
The sun is setting in Islamorada. At the Lor-e-lei, a bar and marina popular with locals and tourists alike, a television set carries the evening telecast of ESPN’s Sportscenter. “Hey, Timmy,” yells a middle-age man wearing a cap, sunglasses, and a deep tan. “The Yankees looked good today, huh?” The…
The column read like a whodunit. Penned by Pulitzer Prize winner Liz Balmaseda, it appeared in the Herald on October 1. In the story ace reporter Balmaseda ferreted out the truth behind a dastardly deception staged by one Waldo Fernandez, a nefarious Cuban “video peddler.” Only this time, instead of…
On September 14, amid the nonstop Attack on America! news coverage, at least two of Miami’s TV stations paused long enough to report the results of Hialeah’s municipal elections earlier that Friday: Mayor Raul Martinez and four incumbent city councilmen had been returned to office without opposition. Hialeah city clerk…
It was the day after planes crashed into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, and I stood on a sidewalk in North Miami staring at FBI headquarters. Newsweek magazine had called that morning and asked me to help track the terrorists who lived in South Florida in the months…
It’s a tropical summer night in the North Beach neighborhood of Little Buenos Aires. Silvina, a statuesque 34-year-old single mom in spandex and a navy blue sports bra, stands outside her kitchen door, sipping California white wine from a plastic cup. The humidity is total, true Miami, but Silvina doesn’t…
It had been nearly a month since Florida’s Agency for Health Care Administration (AHCA) imposed a freeze on admissions at Carlyle on the Bay, an assisted-living facility in the Miami subdivision of Miramar, just north of the former Omni Mall. Yet despite the moratorium placed on the facility by state…
It happened in the waning days of one of the greatest orgies of conspicuous consumption in American history, an era when investors threw millions at baby-faced dot-commers, where the stock market reached stratospheric heights, and boomers saw their retirement nests get supersized to Jurassic proportions. It happened with terrifying ease…
“Ay, que cómico,” observes an elderly Cuban woman watching the man on the sidewalk spin and twirl a life-size rag doll above his head. The doll, with her straggly blond wig, grotesquely painted face, and limp limbs, is the man’s dance partner. Holding her around the waist and balancing her…
Close to HomeThey met at Victory Hospital back in August 1962. My mother had just given birth to me, but owing to problems during the delivery, she needed to be hospitalized for more than a week after I was born. One of her roommates was Rita Grady, who was expecting…
The future hopes and aspirations of thousands of South Miami-Dade residents will come down to one county commission meeting likely to be held next week. On Tuesday, September 25, commissioners are scheduled to decide whether the residents of the area known as the Redland can hold a vote to incorporate…
Rev. Marilyn Hardy sinks into her couch with an exhausted sigh on a recent Friday. She has just returned home after what seems like a week of endless meetings and emergencies. Exhaustion is nothing new to the spirited minister who has the unenviable task of solving life-and-death dilemmas as the…
The prime minister of Trinidad and Tobago was just putting onto the green of the tenth hole at the Doral Country Club when the fever Secret Service agent Patrick Cruise had been fighting all day finally overtook him. He felt chills, then the sweats soaked his dark suit as he…
Miami has been feeling cheap. Seduced for years by political sweet-talkers, the city knows it has a reputation. The recent past has been particularly shameful. A city commissioner sent to prison. A city manager sent to prison. A financial meltdown. An election subverted by fraud. One mayor gone loco. Another…
Don Chinquina insists he’s grateful to Miami’s Tropical Audubon Society as he explains why he recently quit his job as the group’s executive director. He’s grateful for an opportunity that propelled him from a lowly department-store job to a major role as one of South Florida’s leading environmental advocates. Chinquina…
Late one Sunday night at the restaurant Azul in the Mandarin Oriental hotel on Brickell Key, rumors circulate faster than the jerk scallops and sugar cane passed on silver trays. The invitation-only party is in honor of multiplatinum Mexican balladeer Cristian Castro, who has just kicked off a tour for…
The mime who painted himself green and performed near the Nexxt Café on Lincoln Road was truly silenced by Miami Beach police for posing without a permit. The baby-faced clown lady no longer ambles around the Euclid Oval on her stilts, twisting balloons into animal shapes for kids. The disco…
