In search of cash for his Bicentennial Park boondoggle, Florida Marlins owner John Henry is readying a political trench war that may be the biggest in Florida history. He has hired at least ten lobbyists including former Secretary of State Jim Smith, former State Representative Miguel DeGrandy, former Alex Penelas…
Welcome to mid-afternoon at Miami’s only inner-city mall, Omni International, during the height of the holiday season. While other shopping centers like Dadeland and Aventura offer a cornucopia of the latest goods and teem with buyers, the Omni has cornered the market on holiday irony, subtropical style. Meet 68-year-old James…
UPDATE: In 2013, director Michael Bay released an adaptation of this three-part series. That same year, New Times revisited Pain & Gain and tracked down what’s become of the Sun Gym Gang two decades later. Miami businessman Marc Schiller disappeared from his Schlotzsky’s Deli franchise in mid-November 1994. A month…
Michael Quinn never saw the blow coming. The five-foot eight-inch, 270-pound former Mr. Universe was sitting in the nightclub Liquid with a young couple the night of June 25, 1996. After the woman, who was white, borrowed a hat from a black man, Quinn told her to “give the nigger…
Hattie Lee is one of those people who takes Christmas decorations very seriously. “Oh, I just love the way the lights twinkle in the windows,” she says in a warm New Orleans drawl. The 64-year-old great-grandmother also loves the look of the giant plastic angels perched on her roof, and…
It was just a few months ago that a couple of small-town mayors and one of Florida’s most influential families found an innovative way to greenwash their plan for a commercial airport sandwiched between two national parks in South Miami-Dade. In a letter to Attorney General Janet Reno, they asserted…
UPDATE: In 2013, director Michael Bay released an adaptation of this three-part series. That same year, New Times revisited Pain & Gain and tracked down what’s become of the Sun Gym Gang two decades later. In the summer of 1994, the Sun Gym featured a juice bar; aerobic workouts; free-weights;…
The models stride up the catwalk, fabulously filling out the best Burdines has to offer. They advance from, and retreat to, the shelter of interlocking white walls set up on the south side of the Eden Roc’s vast pool. The department-store sponsor’s name whispers in raised letters on the two…
I drank cool water from a clear plastic bottle and tried to get down some trail mix. It was probably 2:30 in the afternoon, and I hadn’t had anything to eat all day, so I should have been hungry. But it’s amazing how the stomach takes to itself at the…
Talk about a mixed message. Last month, when students at Ludlam Elementary were asked to raise money for their school’s new music department, they were offered an incentive: Pokémon cards, the current absolute, most necessary must-have. But tacked on to a flyer distributed by Parent, Teacher, & Student Association president…
The Herald’s November 28 “lunch with …” column about Lee Brian Schrager was typically fawning. This guy’s cool, right? Director of catering at the Hotel Inter-Continental. A South Beach “supercaterer” and “party king,” whom staff writer Lydia Martin obsequiously compared to a “rock star.” One thing the newspaper left out:…
In Miami one man’s art is another’s politics. To wit: In 1988 city fathers attempted to evict the Cuban Museum of Art and Culture after an auction of works by painters sympathetic to Fidel Castro. Someone even detonated a bomb there. Then this past October, the city attempted to cancel…
In Chicago, on the North Side, they used to refer to the strip of Division Street between Ashland and Western as “Polish Broadway.” From the 1940s through the late 1960s, polka soloists, trios, and quartets performed nightly in gin joints up and down the strip. In the hot summer months,…
One Sunday night in October, Porsche Williams met with old friends from the Opa-locka neighborhood where she grew up. About twenty teens were partying together that evening at Platinum nightclub, toasting a friend’s graduation. But it was also Porsche’s first outing since she split with her boyfriend, Jonas Baptiste, and…
When the Historical Museum of Southern Florida offered limousine broker Jesus Prieto the job of rounding up more than 30 luxury vehicles for the museum’s annual road rally last month, he was ecstatic. This was the grand prix of local limousine-rental jobs. The museum fundraiser is a swank affair, and…
It’s 7:30 p.m. and Johnny Winton just wants a nap. After a thirteen-hour mad dash from precinct to precinct on election day, his thirteen-year-old daughter Julie greets the Miami City Commission candidate at the door with a hug. His wife, Vickie, carrying the couple’s toddler, Addison Hunter, follows with a…
The sisserou parrot will never make it as the poster child for endangered species. Nobody would pay one million dollars-plus to exhibit a sisserou in a U.S. zoo, as is occasionally the case with those cuddly giant panda bears from China. Nor does the sisserou have the exotic appeal of…
Nestled among the warehouses and auto body shops on a desolate stretch in Miami’s inner city is a steel-plated door behind an iron gate. If you want to pass through that portal, don’t even think of making contact with five knuckles. “No, no,” says Red, a ghetto philosopher. “Don’t knock…
It’s Tuesday night, a good time to catch a foreign film on the Beach. Hmm, isn’t the Alliance Cinema tucked away in this alcove on Lincoln Road? Can’t see a sign. Looks like a lot of tourists dining here…. Maybe it’s the next block down. Used to be able to…
Two of Miami-Dade County’s top high school football teams — Northwestern and Jackson — are stocked with ineligible players who employ dubious addresses in order to attend and play for their schools. Numerous student athletes on both teams, which are among the best in the nation, claim to live within…
On a Friday evening Lawrence Moore is standing on Fourteenth Street in Overtown behind the open back door of his big white delivery truck, which is parked next to his grocery store. It’s about 5:00 p.m., the time some people crave Moore’s conch salad and drive by for a cup…
Debra Flynn sits in the cool night air on the covered wooden porch that encircles her historic home. She is taking stock of her surroundings. Three cats perched on wicker furniture watch her. On the side of the house, a horse named Rocky happily munches hay. In a corner of…
