“What the hell is this?” asked a woman standing outside the chainlink fence that separated her and her date from Lincoln Road Mall. Answer: the closing blowout party of Pow Wow 1999, a convention of international travel professionals held three weeks ago at the Miami Beach Convention Center. The conclave…
For the past hour or so Andres Orta has been trying to persuade the listeners of radio station La Poderosa (WWFE-AM 670) that the reason for Cuba’s suffering isn’t communism. Instead it’s something called the “new world order.” He explains the island’s leaders are entangled in an international conspiracy led…
Just south of the rainbow-color storefronts that compose Miami’s Fashion District stands an empty L-shaped edifice. Its 30-foot-tall, concrete walls were erected a year ago to store tens of thousands of boxes. These days they hold only a folding table and a white, plastic lawn chair. Security cameras perched above…
The lights on the telephone silently flash red. The phone rests on a table in a soundproof room inside the radio station La Poderosa (WWFE-AM 670). Until recently, five days a week, Col. Matias Farias sat hunched over the table before an extended microphone. The retired U.S. Air Force intelligence…
On a cool night on Miami Beach’s Twelfth Street. A chill wind blows off the ocean, subduing the nocturnal revelers along Washington Avenue’s nightclub strip. But in the second-floor suite of Luke Records, things are downright steamy. While a posse of young bucks stands around stone-faced, three Jamaican chicks shimmy…
If you think Bill Clinton has suffered for his marital indiscretions, you haven’t heard about Miami City Commissioner Tomas Regalado’s problems. Four years after he obtained a criminal restraining order against his former lover, Regalado is still dealing with the fallout from an extramarital affair. In April Elba Miriam Mor…
You might have seen the story in the Herald a few weeks ago about $2000 in phone calls from Miami city offices to Cuba. Forget about it. That’s pocket change. The city has been vastly overpaying on all its long-distance bills for years — to the tune of about $10,000…
“Don’t rip off a cop” may be the moral of this story. Not if you want to get away with it. Accountant Ronald Stern stole $1.3 million from a fund that provides aid to the families of injured and slain police officers, according to a lawsuit filed May 12 in…
After two years of litigation, Sunnie Ewing and Gladys Rickey’s lawsuit against Florida International University came to an unspectacular end on May 19. The two women, who alleged that an assistant athletic director sexually harassed them, dropped their case and accepted a $50,000 settlement. The Miami Herald reported this story…
The struggle of living with HIV overwhelmed Miguel Pacheco on April 4, 1999. About 9:00 that evening, he called his sister Margarita Welling to announce his intention to commit suicide. Welling, worried because Pacheco had attempted twice before to kill himself, raced from her South Miami-Dade home near Metrozoo to…
Future anthropologists chronicling the evolution of America’s consumer culture will remember April 1, 1999, as the end of an era. For on that day, in the Los Angeles suburb of Sherman Oaks, the Galleria closed forever. This mall not only starred in the movies Valley Girl and Fast Times at…
Miami-Dade County taxpayers have already shelled out more than one million dollars to settle two women’s claims that ex-Miami Northwestern High School principal William E. Clarke III sexually harassed them. And Clarke continues to draw a $91,000 annual salary while working in an attendance office. Now William Clarke wants even…
These are perplexing times for the hip, at least in Coral Gables. New is old, old is chic, and, to paraphrase that hepcat Bob Dylan, when you think you’re at top of the heap, you just might be on the bottom. Then again Dylan is over 50 now. In a…
Purvis Young’s studio could not fail to make an impression on anyone the artist allowed to enter it. Until recently the vast, musty space was filled with thousands of his expressive paintings. As visitors blinked to adjust their eyes to the dimness, their feet searching for a place to step…
It was late February when Madeline Norgan received social studies textbooks for her first-grade class at Henry E.S. Reeves Elementary School. Until then the 26-year-old teacher had been using “trade books,” including biographies of historical figures. She supplemented these books with some $300 worth of exercises, worksheets, and other supplies…
It’s almost midday and Miami-Dade County Commissioner Javier Souto zig-zags his shiny new purple mountain bike down a sidewalk past a telephone pole, a trash can, a bus bench, and a street sign. Clad in dark-green slacks, a crisp, navy-blue shirt with red and white pinstripes, and a light-green baseball…
Deborah Ramey had already written her column for the May edition of Hotline when she heard about the April 20 bloodbath at Columbine High School in Littleton, Colorado. As she stared with morbid fascination at the horrific TV coverage, what was most striking to her were the misguided attempts by…
The last of 35 suburban-style houses flashed by as we cruised west through the Everglades. The two lanes of pavement plastered over swamp were still pretty smooth, though miles of gravel lay ahead. On my left I glimpsed a dozen very big, white birds perched in a stand of cypress…
Imagine Biscayne National Park in 2019. Dozens of planes from an airport at the former Homestead Air Force Base rumble overhead each day. On weekends an ever-growing flotilla of fishing boats, Jet Skis, and racing craft whine and roar through the emerald-green water. Festive music blares and partiers shout. This…
Jesus Cantu, an autistic seven-year-old boy, wraps his arms loosely around a marble statue of the Virgin carrying baby Jesus. Then, after circling it in a dizzying dance of affection, he stops and kisses Mary’s stone-cold face. Nearby, 80-year-old Maria Vasallo sits quietly waiting for three o’clock and a miracle…
Miami-Dade County’s Eleventh Circuit Court Judge Eleanor Schockett grew testier by the minute. At the request of the Miami-Dade County Elections Department, she scheduled what she thought would be a two-hour emergency hearing at 3:00 on a Friday afternoon. As the hearing passed its fourth hour and barreled toward a…
An aspiring bail bondsman must take an 80-hour certification course and a 20-hour correspondence course, and pass a state examination to become licensed by the State of Florida. Even then he or she can’t open for business until signing a contract with an insurance company, which gives the bondsman authority…
