About 1:30 a.m. on June 29 Daniel Walker, Jr., says he was driving through South Miami-Dade when a man in a burgundy sedan forced him to stop, pointed a pistol at him, and growled, “Don’t move, nigger.” Before the 27-year-old baker could comply, the stranger smashed him in the face…
This past January the world’s first all-titanium guns debuted at the annual SHOT (Shooting, Hunting, and Outdoor Trade) show in Atlanta. The dramatic unveiling of the line of ultralightweight snub-nosed revolvers caused something of a sensation. “Jaws dropped across the floor of the exhibit hall,” is how technical editor Dick…
At almost one o’clock on the dank, starless early morning of May 18, 1999, a half-dozen people are gathered at the studios of WOCN-AM (1450), a fenced-in box of a building along an unlighted stretch of warehouses on NE 71st Street near Third Avenue. The next four hours will see…
On a steamy Thursday at noon, animal-rights activist Howard Garrett prepares to walk into forbidden territory. He holds a camera and hides behind the flora of a blue Hawaiian shirt and black, hit-man-style shades — tourist camouflage. Garrett scans his ticket and pushes against the turnstile. It’s been more than…
It was a sight that would make any hotel manager blanch, especially one at Miami Beach’s tony Four Points Sheraton Hotel on New Year’s Eve. Seven security guards from the neighboring Fontainebleau Hilton sprinted past the front desk. They were chasing two people who had allegedly stiffed the Fontainebleau’s bar…
Life and death have played some excellent tricks on Jan Mapou. Of course, in Haiti, Mapou’s homeland, that isn’t so unusual: The trickster spirits of vodou go to and fro among the living, and zombies are dead and alive at the same time. Haitian art and music celebrate the capricious…
Miami New Times made national news this past week when investigators accused Miami Beach Police Ofcr. Gregg Priest of running two brothels. The cops discovered Priest’s alleged sideline, it seems, by calling a number listed in a classified advertisement in this very publication. It read “VERY BUSTY YOUNGEST GIRLS …..
The airboat zips along channels that weave their way across miles of saw grass. The destination is a tree island in the distance jutting from the water like a desert mirage. Onboard are two groups of scientists intimately involved in an ambitious and costly plan to fix the ailing Everglades…
Now that it’s hurricane season again, homeowners should keep in mind that 150-mile-per-hour gusts could flatten Miami like a palmetto bug. Also remember that windstorms generate a windfall for needy local businesses, especially television stations. Only WPLG-TV (Channel 10) failed to publish an ad-filled hurricane guide this year, leaving head…
Bill Ahern maneuvers his truck around the sand dunes of the Miami Beach shoreline. He’s rolling through North Shore Open Space Park on 79th Street just after 6:00 a.m. The orange sun peeks over the horizon. Shadowy lavenders tinge the columns of clouds. When the still-sleepy 49-year-old looks at the…
As his duties frequently require, Cuban Minister of Culture Abel Prieto Jimenez was recently called on to preside over a meeting of artists in Havana. The 260 constituents gathered that afternoon in May wore fashionable short dresses or baggy jeans, sneakers, and baseball caps. With hair styled in fades and…
On June 30, 1961, Fidel Castro uttered these words: “Within the revolution everything, against the revolution nothing.” Seldom quoted in its full context, the phrase was part of a speech Castro made to Cuban intellectuals at a meeting of the young government’s Cultural Council, convened to discuss the limits of…
In 1992 Congress passed the Cuban Democracy Act, a complicated piece of legislation that attempted to tighten the U.S. commercial embargo against Cuba while liberalizing “people-to-people” contacts. The measure was introduced by New Jersey Democrat Rep. Robert Torricelli (now a senator), whose aide Richard Nuccio was largely responsible for its…
Despite a dizzying sequence of balancing acts, minor and major debacles, and one near-disaster, the grand opening of the Miccosukee Resort and Convention Center ended quietly for tribal chairman Billy Cypress. Just past midnight on June 15 the 48-year-old was sitting comfortably in a cozy lounge chair on the carpeted…
Home-run king Tony Oliva’s Minnesota Twins jersey is there. So is the glove that Kansas City Royals great Cookie Rojas used in 1967, when he played all nine positions. Then there are the shoes Oakland A’s speedster Bert Campaneris wore to steal 62 bases in 1968, the home-run ball Phillies…
“I’m asked ten times a day, ‘What are you going to do when the multiplex opens?'” sighs an exasperated Joanne Butcher, director of Miami Beach’s Alliance Cinema, located on Lincoln Road two blocks west of the eighteen-screen Regal Cinemas, which opens Friday. “Well, we’re going to continue showing the films…
It is Sunday evening in the Happy Room, the bar at the Miami Outboard Club on Watson Island. Clemente Gonzalez, a talkative 38-year-old with a goatee, is recapping the aquatic equivalent of war, which broke out on the MOC grounds a few hours earlier. Armed with bilge pumps, dozens of…
Tell him to go fuck himself!” shouts Eddie Garcia, manager of the strip club on Biscayne Boulevard formerly known as Club Madonna. Garcia is responding to a reporter’s question about Frank Pinter, owner of the neighboring Madonna’s Restaurant. “Tell him and his little friend to go fuck themselves, alright? I’ve…
The Ritz is getting an early start as an all-night juke joint in Coconut Grove. After recent rains, hotel builders started working around-the-clock to remove water that gathered in the foundation on SW 27th Avenue near Biscayne Bay. Neighbor David Ralph complained and Ofcr. Tom Braga checked it out. Then,…
The fourth hole at Crandon Golf at Key Biscayne is particularly treacherous. There are brackish ponds surrounded by mangroves on both sides of the tee. An errant drive can send a ball flying into muddy oblivion. But it’s not just water that presents a threat. A duffer who recently hooked…
A member of Miami-Dade Mayor Alex Penelas’s staff has admitted bilking the county out of at least $5000 during the past several years. The employee, Joseph Jean-Baptiste, who is chief of protocol for the mayor’s office, gave his wife and another relative passes that allowed them to park for free…
Ana Lucrecia Peters, a full-time substitute teacher at Ethel Beckham Elementary School, is listed in Miami-Dade County Public Schools’ personnel records as a Hispanic woman. But, like most teachers in the system, she knew that she didn’t have to stay that way. In the bureaucratic blink of an eye, she…
