Ernesto Mejia sits in a cramped visitation room at the Krome Service Processing Center, dressed in the orange jumpsuit of a detainee. After almost a year in the custody of the Immigration and Naturalization Service, the 33-year-old is now a more subdued version of the outgoing, energetic young man family…
The swath of grass is some 50 feet across, about the width NE 88th Street would be if it continued right up to the water’s edge along Biscayne Bay. Walk the 130 or so feet from the pavement to the sea wall and take in the sweeping vista: the Intracoastal,…
Hustling down a dirt road surrounded by miles of farmland, Leslie Fernandez struggles to keep a rifle balanced on her shoulder. Dressed in bell-bottom jeans and a white T-shirt, she catches up with her fellow commandos — five men dressed in military fatigues and also toting weapons. “What kind of…
“You take dismemberment, body parts hacked off and dumped all over the county, even the eating of someone’s liver. But worse than that,” says Ed Whittaker, “is charging an innocent person with a crime, taking him to trial, convicting him, then electrocuting him. To me that’s the worst crime that…
State Sen. Bill Turner sat on the stage in Liberty City’s Caleb Center for two hours last month holding a sign that called for unity among Democrats. He hoped to say a few words to the crowd. After all, he was — and is — the incumbent in the September…
Good thing all that vote-fraud nonsense is behind us, right? Now we can look forward to an election in which everybody votes legitimately and no candidates recruit voters from out of town, out of state, or even the Great Beyond. Given recent results of voting shenanigans — Xavier Suarez was…
Omar Hernandez doesn’t know what he’s singing. Standing in a soundproof room at North Miami’s Criteria Recording Studios, he clutches a handwritten crib sheet, laboring over the English lyrics to “Be Careful, It’s My Heart,” written in 1942 by Irving Berlin. Recognized in Cuba as a bassist with the groundbreaking…
Dante Fascell remembers that cold, rainy night in North Africa more than a half-century ago when he slept under a jeep and decided the course of his life. As a lieutenant leading a truck company under the command of Gen. George Patton, Fascell transported supplies and troops to the front,…
In competition with other large-circulation weekly newspapers throughout the state, New Times and its staff recently won ten awards in the Florida Press Association’s annual Better Weekly Newspaper Contest for work published in 1997. Staff writer Robert Andrew Powell’s “They Owe It All to Odio,” which exposed the off-the-books hiring…
The slogan of the Miami Matadors, the new hockey team that will replace the Florida Panthers at Miami Arena this fall, is “Pro Pucks, Less Bucks!” This may not be the best place for the team to hang its helmet, promotion-wise. While the Matadors will charge less for tickets than…
Henry Fraind could not have made his point any more forcefully. When it first became apparent that Miami High recruiting infractions would cost the school its 1998 boys’ basketball title, the deputy superintendent of Miami-Dade Public Schools assured reporters that violators would be punished. “We’re not going to tolerate any…
In the not-so-distant future, swarms of new satellites will join the scores that today float above the globe. The high priests of the communications industry prophesy marvels: laptop computers that connect to the Internet through space rather than phone lines, e-mail by wristwatch, and maybe even celestial advertising. (Picture the…
The story goes like this: Immediately after Xavier Suarez defeated Joe Carollo in the November 1997 Miami mayoral election, a long-time city worker named Caridad Rios was brought in to remove any evil spirits in the mayor’s Dinner Key office. Accounts vary. One person says she came at night, only…
It’s 9:30 a.m. on a recent Friday. Sunlight slants across Ocean Drive. Jason DiBiaso, his partner John, and another friend are shirtless and eating breakfast. Heaps of eggs, toast, bagels, and bacon will fuel Jason’s and John’s daily late-morning weightlifting session. All three men are, to use the vernacular, ripped…
It’s over for Miami High. The Florida High School Activities Association ruled Tuesday the Stingarees must forfeit every victory earned during 1997-98 in boys soccer, basketball, and baseball. In addition, the basketball team must surrender its state championship. The FHSAA investigation was prompted by a New Times cover story, (“Dream…
Some members of Miami’s literati were sorry to hear about Fashion Spectrum magazine’s recent demise. Not because there will be a void left by the monthly’s disappearance from newsstands — a start-up publication called Channel promises the same menu of models, bikinis, and party shots. In fact, Channel will absorb…
For six months South Beach’s ElectroWave shuttle service has been a hit. Its seven brightly painted, 22-seat electric buses have moved about 750,000 riders up and down the neighborhood’s streets without spewing carbon monoxide or charging a fare. Yet the system has not been flawless. It’s pricey, costing $3.5 million…
David Garten could scarcely believe the Treasury Department letter on the table before him. Dated October 17, 1997, it was written to inform the Vermont photographer of a $117,500 fine that had been levied against him for traveling to Cuba. The penalty seemed outrageous — an astronomical sum for twelve…
When the bronze-color Lincoln Continental nosed into the intersection of NW Sixth Avenue and 75th Street on May 19, 1994, Danny Felton was one of the Miami Police Department’s most promising young cops — officer of the month, repeatedly praised by supervisors. But soon after the 23-year-old Felton swung his…
On a sweltering morning last month, a tall, balding man in overalls peddled colored-pencil caricatures for five dollars each on a downtown Miami sidewalk. His goal: sell enough to buy a $250 plane ticket home to Germany. In three days Erwin Hollecker had earned $75. But on this Saturday, a…
When Kenny Merker leads a tour of historic homes in his Buena Vista neighborhood, the narration inevitably turns to violations of Miami’s zoning code. “This one has two illegal units,” he says, pointing to a weathered-looking bungalow carved from coral. “This one over here also has two illegal units.” A…
It is about midnight on the Intracoastal Waterway and Moises Baez’s baggy blue jeans are flopping as he and a woman in platform tennis shoes gyrate in a merengue on the crowded upper deck of La Rumba. Were it not for the blinding clusters of red, blue, green, and yellow…
