You step from a Metrorail car at the Vizcaya station, descend the escalator, and enter a gleaming 60-foot-high glass cone teeming with kids. You follow them into a huge room where others are climbing all over a virtual cruise ship. Walk farther; more tykes are building a house, while teenagers…
It was a contentious crowd that filed into the Redland Middle School auditorium late in the afternoon of November 13, 1997. By 6:00 p.m. as many as 100 people had arrived for a hearing before Community Council 14. The council is one of fifteen boards created a year and a…
The story of Eduardo Padron is one of the best-known local-boy-makes-good yarns in town. After emigrating from Cuba in 1961, Padron enrolled at Miami-Dade Community College and went on to earn a doctorate in economics from the University of Florida. He then worked his way through the ranks at his…
The phones were ringing furiously during last month’s pledge drive at WLRN-FM (91.3). Volunteers took pledges for $30, $65, $100, and more. In return, supporters of the public radio station would soon receive their thank-you gifts — coffee mugs, T-shirts, CDs, subscriptions to Newsweek, even dinners at some of South…
Harish Gihwala, owner of the controversial Stardust Motel at 6730 Biscayne Blvd., acknowledges that prostitutes habitually grace the sidewalk outside his two-story, hot-pink structure. He also admits his motel rooms have been the scene of drug deals. Police say so much cocaine has moved through the Stardust that its 54…
Coral Gables is not only the City Beautiful, as its motto immodestly proclaims. It is also a “Tree City USA” — meaning it has been recognized by the National Arbor Day Foundation for meticulously tending the poincianas, oaks, black olives, ficus, and banyans that arc over its streets and shade…
It’s high noon in Cuban Miami. Knives and forks are clanging on the plates at the Rancho Luna restaurant and waitresses are bustling around ferrying loads of pollo asado and moros to hungry diners. Owner Jorge Rabelo describes his Little Havana restaurant as “un pedazo de Cuba bajo el cielo…
The morning of Tuesday, January 20, began routinely enough at Health Crisis Network, South Florida’s largest AIDS service agency. If anything, the 100 staffers at the main office on Biscayne Boulevard might have been a bit more relaxed than usual, having had Monday off in celebration of Martin Luther King’s…
Honey, I have got to find me a husband, just for tonight,” Wanda declares as he cuts a swath through the crowd at a party commemorating the first-year anniversary of the Living Room, the popular South Beach nightclub that occupies the space where the Strand restaurant used to be. Dressed…
It’s unlikely that on a Sunday afternoon in early March, as David Ettman drove a U-Haul truck full of debris deep into Chapman Field Park, he could have imagined the excursion would land him in jail. Yet little more than a month later, Metro-Dade police officers arrived at his doorstep…
The doorbell of the modest waterfront house on Biscayne Point plays an electronic jingle beginning “My Country ‘Tis of Thee.” High camp, but not for Mel Richard. And not because he’s been a politician most of his life, but because he’s never lost the idealism of his youth. I’ve been…
During the six-week breeding season of the endangered Cape Sable seaside sparrow, the male bird stakes out his territory (roughly 120 square yards of Everglades wetlands) and begins chirping a song that he hopes will attract a female while warding off other males. If he’s lucky, a female will drop…
Old news: Joe Carollo was reinstated as Miami’s mayor last month by a panel of judges at the Third District Court of Appeal. Old tradition: Any change in power in the mayor’s office causes companies with an interest in city contracts to scramble to hire lobbyists who have the new…
Rickey Brownlee’s future will rely on which portrait – violent drug dealer or philanthropic local hero – emerges at his trial.
After the January indictment of Dade County Commissioner James Burke, Miami’s civic-hype artists could be heard gnashing their teeth and noisily decrying the latest “black eye” to our image, an especially touchy subject after months of unrelenting allegations of massive voter fraud, a scandal-plagued seaport, corrupt county bureaucrats, and the…
Glen Wilsey is knee-deep in a slough three miles south of the Tamiami Trail. Dressed in khaki shorts and shirt, sunlight glinting off his sunglasses, the airboat guide is inviting the six tourists he has just transported into the heart of the Everglades to join him. He wants them to…
Among Florida’s 40 specialty license plates, the top dollar-producer has been the Florida panther tag (not to be confused with the comparative dud that celebrates the Florida Panthers hockey team). The panther plate pictures the snarling head of a big dun-color cat and bears the phrase “Protect the Panther.” Since…
No property in South Florida attracts more dreamers than Watson Island. The 86-acre pile of gravel and weeds sits tantalizingly close to downtown Miami. Surrounded by the blue waters of Biscayne Bay and traversed every day by nearly 76,000 cars, Watson Island has long been a powerful magnet for people…
White-haired Gerardo Lastra is behind the counter at his business, the raucous Riviera Botanica in the Allapattah section of Miami, when an unusual pair of customers cruises in. One is a portly Santeria priest in a flowered shirt, an elderly man Lastra knows as Vicente. The client with the santero,…
On a recent sunny Saturday afternoon, a lively crowd of senior citizens, young couples, lone men, flirting teenagers, and mothers shepherding groups of children in immaculate party clothes forms a meandering line that stretches around the corner of a busy intersection in the Cayo Hueso neighborhood of central Havana. For…
In the fierce struggle to derail a proposed $275 million shopping mall that promises to transform a Coral Gables neighborhood, opponents have tried just about everything. They attacked the developer, the Rouse Company, charging that the upscale mall would have a negative impact on local businesses, traffic, and even the…
A drama of biblical flavor is unfolding in Surfside. In a key role is Eduardo Rodriguez, city manager of that town, who plays David. His Goliath is the manager of Indian Creek Village, Leonard Matarese. This is type casting. Matarese is six-foot-seven, 240 pounds, and has a reputation for being…
