“You’re sniffing up the wrong tree,” sighs an annoyed Ted Eldredge, station manager at WLRN-FM (91.3), Miami’s National Public Radio affiliate. “There’s nothing going on.” Well, a few might argue that something in fact did go on this past February 28, when radio program manager and 26-year WLRN veteran Joseph…
On December 10, 1999, at 2:47 p.m., a call came into the Miami-Dade County 911 dispatcher: “Yeah, I got an emergency over at Mays Middle School,” the deep, sonorous voice of a black man crackled from the mouthpiece of a gas station pay phone. “My name is Mr. Bradley.” “What’s…
This humble geopolitical region, which last year transformed a child-custody dispute over a boy named Elian into an international crisis, is now slowly making a unique contribution to the annals of espionage law. The lawyers of five men standing trial for spying for the Cuban government have embarked on a…
As revelers inside Krave Nightclub frolicked away a Friday evening two weeks ago, the party was crashed by agents with the state’s Division of Alcoholic Beverages and Tobacco (ABT) and Department of Revenue, who filed in stern-faced and fully uniformed. They weren’t there to dance. That same evening they checked…
The horses at Hialeah Park are running effortlessly this morning. From the grandstand they resemble a merry-go-round, seemingly rising, then dipping, as they move along the far rail. Coming out of the last turn, they reach for one final burst to carry them to the finish. Seven weeks before the…
Jack Giralt hoped he’d have his mother’s luck. She’d lived to be 84 without so much as a day’s illness. But any chance of that evaporated one afternoon two years ago, when he came to the aid of a young woman in distress. On January 18, 1999, Giralt, then 70…
The week before county Manager Merrett Stierheim left office, he picked up the phone in an effort to right a wrong that has festered for nearly three years. He called Lee Martin, who in April 1998, following a scandalous controversy, was suspended without pay from his post as Miami-Dade County’s…
Sitting in his third-floor office at the Miami Beach Police Department’s sleek curves-and-glass headquarters on Washington Avenue, the ocean twinkling a few city blocks away, Charles Press is the very model of a modern major. His computer station contains a laptop that fits into a desktop port. His Palm Pilot…
In mid-1998 a handful of federal agents and Miami detectives filed into a room at the FBI’s Miami field office for their regular morning briefing. The news awaiting this hand-picked team of cops was enough to make them spit up their coffee. Those assembled were members of a joint FBI…
Before a nerve disease stole his independence, Martin Marcus lived a richly diverse life. He trained thoroughbred horses, manufactured hot tubs, sold units in a Colorado time-share project, and worked as an executive at a film company. He met success and tasted failure, but he always sprang back with a…
Keith Ivory has some advice for Roger Cuevas, superintendent of Miami-Dade County public schools: “You know when you see a black and a Latin together, you’d better run.” Ivory is one of a hundred or so black and Hispanic parents from Overtown and East Little Havana who are organizing to…
To his neighbors in the high-rise at 18100 Atlantic Blvd. in North Miami Beach, the balding 31-year-old single guy who lived in apartment 305 and drove a 1988 maroon Pontiac sedan was Manuel Viramontez. The FBI agents who arrived just before 6:00 a.m. on September 12, 1998, also called him…
By late fall of last year, Michelle was becoming suicidal. Depressed and desperate to kick her alcohol addiction of many years, the Orlando resident picked up the Yellow Pages hoping to find a rehab program that would work this time. One of the first listings was something called “Aaron Alcohol…
On Friday, January 26, shortly after New Times published a second story detailing problems at Carlyle on the Bay, a Miami assisted-living facility, a team of state officials imposed a freeze on admissions. Citing multiple violations of state regulations, inspectors from Florida’s Agency for Health Care Administration (AHCA) hand-delivered an…
There comes a point in every Miami-Dade school board meeting when its nine members are free to depart from the agenda and hold forth on just about any subject. They can lavish praise on a particular school, program, or individual. They can raise substantive issues. They can, and often do,…
At a crucial moment in the Cuban movie Alicia in the Land of Wonders, a communist government bureaucrat looks into the camera and shouts at the top of his lungs: “¡Yo soy un hijo de puta!” (“I’m a son of a bitch!”) The 1991 film, a surreal, nightmarish satire of…
Ah, Miami — wide-open sky, sparkling bay, balmy breezes caressing the palms, poincianas, billboards. Yes, the city’s tree canopy may be pathetic, but not to worry. Miami is poised to nourish a canopy of a different sort: It is on the verge of becoming one of the most billboard-friendly cities…
Victor Igwe’s job used to be a joke. Just the idea of taking his job cracked him up. Igwe runs the City of Miami’s Office of Internal Audits, a leadership position that was forever advertised, to many chuckles and very few takers, in the trade magazines circulated among certified public…
We at New Times do not put out a “magazine,” as some people mistakenly believe. We produce a weekly newspaper. We are in the news business. We know, for instance, that news is afoot when two vans from WSVN-TV (Channel 7) pull into our parking lot and telescope their antennas…
Lucinda and I reached the Santiago bus terminal at about six o’clock Sunday morning, December 17, San Lazaro’s Day. The predawn darkness was moist and warm. We had walked the few miles from Lucinda’s half-brother’s house, wending our way downhill through narrow streets. At that still hour some store windows,…
When a beloved mural of Martin Luther King, Jr., vanished from the corner of NW Seventh Avenue and 62nd Street in early November, it jolted a group of black artists and civic leaders. They bombarded the Martin Luther King Economic Development Corporation (MLK) by telephone and in person to ask…
Southside Elementary is one of those little neighborhood schools that used to be common in Miami. Situated on less than two acres and with an enrollment of fewer than 420 students, it is tiny by today’s standards. But that’s what parents, students, and teachers like about Southside. The school, which…
