Sunday, 3:00 a.m.: Tommy Pooch, South Beach nightlife promoter, wades through the teeming Washington Avenue club, appropriately called Chaos, accepting tribute from his fans. Everywhere he turns, bright red female lips pucker and land on his cheeks or the corner of his mouth. Ample young breasts, overflowing their bodices, press…
Luz Parras, phone operator for the nonprofit Leiv Eiriksson Seamen’s Center at the Port of Miami, makes all kinds of connections for international mariners. “One woman crew member from Peru was going to marry a guy who worked on her ship, but she didn’t have a wedding dress,” Parras recalls…
You’d think Alberto Gutman would have been more focused. Federal prosecutors alleged in June that the state senator, his wife Marcie, and his business associate Maricela Maury conspired to defraud the government of more than two million dollars in false Medicare claims. Though the case isn’t expected to go to…
New Times cover story that described a season with an inner-city Pop Warner football team will appear in The Best American Sportswriting 1998, the series’ publisher announced last week. The anthologies have appeared annually since 1991. “Coming of Age on the 50-Yard Line” (November 27, 1997), by staff writer Robert…
What’s in a name?” Shakespeare asked. Not a whole hell of a lot, he decided. Today’s twist on the old query: “What’s in a signature?” For two Cuban-American artists — one prominent, the other not so much — the answer is money and reputation. The two are involved in a…
You probably don’t have the $65 million that Evergreen Media spent in 1996 to buy WEDR-FM (99.1), one of the most popular radio stations in the Miami area. And even if you have money, why waste it? For less than $1000, you can bypass the humdrum commercial mainstream and broadcast…
In early spring a stranger showed up at “Touchdown” Tony Martin’s home in Escondido, California. No doubt the wide receiver, a Pro Bowl veteran and Miami native who started his career with the Dolphins, is accustomed to occasional visits from strangers. That’s the price of fame. But Michael Medrano was…
When the U.S. government’s war on illegal radio hit the Pure Funk Playhouse in Liberty City on July 28, Diamond Perkins was lounging on a black leather couch next to a row of huge speakers. After greeting a pack of law enforcement officers in the entrance of the one-story concrete…
Mary Williams remembers the day Ed Williamson told her he intended to purchase the vacant lot near her Kendall home and move his Cadillac dealership there. It was a June day in 1997. Williams says her recollection is clear because she was dumbfounded by the prominent businessman’s pronouncement. First, she…
It’s Friday night at Churchill’s Hideaway and two guitarists stand onstage tearing into their strings; amplified moans and wails burst from the speakers. Behind them the drum, bass, and keyboard swell in a towering crescendo, then fall away to massage a quieter passage. One guitarist leans into a microphone and…
When a proposal to erect a memorial to the late Cuban exile leader Jorge Mas Canosa surfaced late last year, the Miami Beach City Commission collectively winced. The powerful former head of the Cuban American National Foundation, who died last November, was both beloved and reviled. If the commission voted…
These are confusing times for affairs of the heart. Men are sleazy jerks; women are fickle teases. For years now, the lonely and lovelorn have resorted to dating services and romance sections of weekly newspapers. Romantics, however, hold out for miraculous chance meetings in laundromats, discount stores, airports, and gas…
It’s the fall season, a time when television networks prove their freshness and creativity. Fox offers That ’70s Show, a drug-laced, coming-of-age story set in suburban Wisconsin. The WB network gives us Felicity, a coming-of-age story set in New York City. ABC, in a bit of contrarian programming, invites us…
Chucho Valdes had figured that on the afternoon of Tuesday, August 25, he would be doing a sound check at the Miami Beach Convention Center. Instead he was at home in Havana sitting by the phone, a vigil that he and the thirteen members of Grupo Irakere had been keeping…
Night and day a tall white candle flickers like a holy flame on top of the big television and VCR in Maria Gonzalez’s den. A black doll in a lacy white dress — representing la Virgen de la Caridad, the mulatta patroness of Cuba — sits propped between the candle…
Coral Gables photographer George Alexander is out of town. His attorney says he’s probably on one of his regular photography expeditions to other continents. But the lights are definitely on at Alexander’s studio on Alhambra Circle, and not the kind of lights that appeal to the leaders of this sedate,…
A recently released report commissioned by Miami Beach police and development officials that addresses disorder on the streets of South Beach contains a section titled “Whining.” It refers to owners and managers of SoBe nightclubs, whom the author — a Washington, D.C. consultant — characterizes as chronic complainers unwilling to…
Richard Bronson hasn’t had much time for soirees lately. He’s been too busy launching a glossy fashion magazine called Channel.
Thanks to Bonnie and Danielle, Bryan Norcross, South Florida’s favorite weatherman-in-a-catastrophe, once again managed to muscle his way to center stage. And once there, he greedily hogged airtime like an emphysema patient in an oxygen tent. As his hurricane coverage showed, Norcross still hasn’t lost his special talent for breathless,…
County jailers sometimes deal with strange cases. Take the matter of 38-year-old Jeffrey Allen, convicted of burglary in 1991 and sentenced to seven years of confinement. He has an interesting background. His 80-year-old wife Margaret (they’ve been married eleven years — her hairdresser introduced them) says Allen sold her television,…
At Wet Willie’s bar on Ocean Drive, a cheery Mike Goodwin, age 28, holds a big strawberry daiquiri in one hand and snakes the other through the air to imitate a drunk driver weaving through traffic. “If a guy’s doing this down the road, take him to jail!” he exclaims…
Like many other property owners in South Beach, ArtCenter/South Florida has a problem with people parking illegally in its lot. For years ArtCenter had used Beach Towing, Inc., one of two towing companies operating in Miami Beach, to tow away offending vehicles from behind the artists’ exhibition and work spaces…
