Elizabeth Lanteigne sucks at a straw in a plastic cup. “Jim Beam and ginger ale,” she says. “It’s for my arthritis. My doctor says it’s okay.” Every blood vessel and bone in her pale right hand is visible through her skin. She is 86 years old, but since retiring from…
Francisco Diaz is smiling mischievously as he winds his way between several dozen men and women dressed in business suits, who have jammed into a banquet room at the Fontainebleau Hilton on Miami Beach. It is a Thursday evening, and for the past two hours the guests have been milling…
A Riptidian quandary: If imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, what do you call plagiarism? In a February 24 Miami Herald obituary of a long-time civil rights activist titled “Clennon King, Dauntless Activist,” staff writer Anabelle de Gale described a frightening sequence of events that followed King’s 1958 attempt…
Andrea Loring is fighting against the tide. Marching toward the cafeteria, she looks in the eyes of every student still lingering in the hallway. “Hugo, you’re heading the wrong way,” she says to a boy strolling past her. “Eddie, you too,” she calls out to a second boy, a sheepish-looking…
There’s no way the game should be this close. The Florida International University Golden Panthers men’s basketball team is head and shoulders above the visiting Broncs of the University of Texas-Pan American — literally. The Panthers’ frontline consists of forwards Sylbrin Robinson (six feet eight) and Jabahri Brown (six feet…
When the season began, the Florida International University men’s basketball team had twelve players. In December Sylbrin Robinson joined the team. And yet at season’s end, the Golden Panthers are suiting up only eight warm bodies. With so many troubled players, Shakey Rodriguez is beginning to look like a dime-store…
Because he is watching a soccer game, Juan Carlos Michia is happy. No matter that the Florida sun has turned the playing field into brittle brown straw. No matter that the teams are composed of awkward, leggy boys. Michia is happy. As the players race the dusty pitch, Michia stakes…
Back in 1989, when Rolando Bolaños, Jr., was seventeen years old, he was arrested and convicted of trying to break into a Fort Lauderdale Cadillac dealership. To reduce his sentence, Rollie, as he is known, cooperated with a police task force investigating a ring of car thieves. He met with…
Georges William, a Little Haiti businessman and property owner, received a $500 ticket from the City of Miami this past September. William was being fined, the ticket stated, for illegally dumping trash in front of a building he owned on NE 46th Street in Little Haiti. He was ordered to…
Miami’s most xenophobic, small-minded law may finally go down. The board of the American Civil Liberties Union recently voted to support the efforts of Debbie Ohanian, the Starfish owner and famous masochist who set up last year’s riotous Los Van Van concert, in her effort to bring three Cuban bands…
A round of golf is usually just a round of golf. Of course a guy like Tiger Woods can make a lot of money at it. But for most players it’s just a pleasant, if rather expensive, pastime. Once in a great while, though, a game of golf becomes an…
The state of the Magic City’s finances is downright dismal. Administrators are so desperate for cash that they are trying to lease open land to developers. Mayor Joe Carollo is shaking down people who park in the urban core with a twenty percent tax on private lots. And the municipality’s…
Can I see your tickets?” asks the woman, dressed head to toe in red and blue, the colors of the Haitian flag. She stands in an aisle at the Orange Bowl with two similarly festooned friends. They hold tickets entitling them to sit in seats occupied by three men rooting…
Editor’s note: Nowhere has the battle over the fate of Elian Gonzalez been waged with more ferocity than in Cuba. And no Cuban media outlet has been more persistent than Granma, the official newspaper of Cuba’s Communist Party. Since Elian’s rescue at sea on Thanksgiving, the paper has published more…
On a clear hot afternoon this past July, Chris Paciello, né Ludwigsen, loaded his 50-foot yacht with friends and aimed the bow north up the Intracoastal. Then he gunned the engine and sped off into a day filled with promise as bright as the subtropical sun overhead. The 28-year-old had…
The ancient YAK-42 Cubana de Aviación jet lumbered loudly through heavy gray clouds on its way from Nassau to Havana. Belted into a worn seat in the chilly cabin, Fred Baldasare was already planning the press conference he would call when he arrived in Cuba late one afternoon this past…
The premise of the meeting on the evening of January 13 seemed simple enough. Miami officials hoped the gathering on the second floor of the Coconut Grove Convention Center would provide a forum for Grove residents and board members of the Land Trust of Dade County to share information. But…
The saga of Elian Gonzalez, the Cuban boy plucked from the sea at the end of the Twentieth Century, continues to transfix the United States and Cuba. Today, following their honeymoon in Acapulco, Elian and his new bride moved into the married-students’ apartments at UCLA, which has awarded him a…
“Herald Retreats from Spotlight” could have been the headline for a story that appeared on the Miami Herald’s Website February 6, disappeared for a week, then reappeared in the print edition February 13. The lengthy weekend piece by staff writer Tyler Bridges described Miami Mayor Joe Carollo’s “hunkering down” and…
A thin man with a round, weathered face and a pair of gold, oval, wire-rimmed glasses resting precariously on the tip of his nose prepares to speak before the Miami-Dade County Commission. Because he is more than six feet tall, he towers above the microphone, and his words come across…
At the entrance to the Little Havana street where kindergartner Elian Gonzalez currently resides, two Porta Pottis stand ready to accommodate the press and crowds that regularly throng the block. On one an enterprising media member has tacked a sign that reads, “Welcome to Camp Elian.” Almost anyone watching television…
In 1997 the Hialeah Police Department hired as officers a convicted car thief and a man rejected by the City of Miami Police Department as a result of admitted steroid use. Somehow the background checks Hialeah conducted did not uncover this information. In a sworn statement, Hialeah Police Chief Rolando…
