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Imagine you own a waterfront mansion that needs some fixing up. One day a friendly fellow knocks on the door and says he wants to rent your house for the summer. He promises to finish repairing the kitchen and build a brand-new garage while you go away on vacation. It…

At Trail Glades Gun Range, you can’t buy food, there’s only a limited selection of ammunition, and not all the lights work. The few wooden buildings that inhabit the flat, grassy fields could use some sprucing up. To save money, Dade officials have cut back on the county-owned facility’s days…

Aubrey Johnson nailed the written test. The City of Miami police patrol officer had studied diligently for the sergeant’s exam, and when the results of the written portion were posted he knew the cramming had paid off. Out of a testing class of 275, he’d finished second. But there remained…

There’s a devil in Eddy Mir’s speakers. Well, maybe not in them. Perhaps it’s underneath, slithering around in the wafer-thin gap between the chassis of the right speaker and the four-legged platform that elevates it to waist height. The demon might have wrapped its evil hands around the steel posts…

Angel Usategui owns a videotape of the good days. He keeps it in a cabinet in his Kendall ranch house, in a Florida room just off the foyer. He likes to play the tape for visitors, to show them the pageantry and grace of paso fino horses while — as…

Expect a crowd at the Miami City Commission meeting today (Thursday). At issue is the controversy that has come to be known as Stallonegate. Commissioners will face this question: Should the city allow a neighborhood of wealthy individuals to block access to their public street? The street under consideration is…

Despite the Clinton administration’s policy of “don’t ask, don’t tell,” which has been in effect since 1994, the actual rules governing the presence of homosexuals in the military haven’t really changed. If you’re out, you’re still out. Miami Coast Guardsman James Dunning is definitely the former, and he has been…

By ten o’clock the migration has begun. Thousands move slowly on foot through the humid night streets. They squeeze into buses or haggle lifts from cab drivers cruising in their compact Ladas and battleship Fifties Chevrolets. At the outdoor dance hall La Tropical, a line forms around the block. Some…

A Discography Most Miami music stores carry CDs by contemporary Cuban bands. (If there’s no section for Cuba, see “Latin,” “tropical,” or “salsa”). But shopping locally for the latest sounds from the island can still be hit-or-miss; stores usually stock only a few copies of each disc, and what’s on…

Next time you think the American working man has lost his hustle, visit Terminal 12 at the Port of Miami. Day and night for six solid weeks, painters, carpenters, and marine electricians have been working like whirling dervishes turning a giant ocean-going tugboat into a luxury yacht. There aren’t any…

The Dade school board elections that took place this past November were marked by two dramatic changes: The number of board members increased from seven to nine, and candidates ran for office from single-member districts. These changes resulted from the settlement of a lawsuit designed to increase the influence of…

This past Saturday at a banquet in Naples, the Florida Press Association announced the winners of its annual Better Weekly Newspaper Awards. In competition with 67 other weeklies around the state, New Times took home honors in twelve categories for work published in 1996, including seven first-place awards. The paper…

A reminder from the ACLU’s Robyn Blumner: That offensive expression she’s been protecting could be your own Shortly before Robyn Blumner arrived in Miami in 1989 to head the American Civil Liberties Union of Florida, bombs shattered the doors to the Cuban Museum of Arts and Culture, which had exhibited…

The morose expression on Julie Romero’s face spoke of vanishing hope, of a woman betrayed. Along with more than two dozen other Homestead residents, she had made the 100-mile haul up to West Palm Beach in the hope that the governing board of the South Florida Water Management District would…

Two naked men paddle canoes through tea-colored water swirled with green ooze, past shores dripping with scarlet blooms as big as babies’ heads. The young men’s canoes come to rest in the pond’s center, then the pair stand up in their boats, arms lifted. Moonlight outlines their taut, firm bodies…

For someone whose diploma from Havana’s Villanueva University was constructed with a photocopy machine, a bottle of Liquid Paper, and a calligraphy pen, former Miami city manager Cesar Odio was a stickler about academic credentials. When he learned in December 1995 that job training supervisor Fred Hobson claimed to have…

Having pulled on his black elastic knee guards, Nick Berger leaps up into the ring where William Gonzalez, his practice opponent and sometime tag-team partner, stands waiting. In one corner, Berger climbs to the middle of the three ropes, facing outward. Then he springs backward, flips and turns in midair,…

Six years ago theater manager and actor Kent Lantaff and lighting designer Tom Salzman sought a sabbatical from the sometimes cutthroat competition in the professional dramatic community. That’s when an advertisement from the University of Miami drama department attracted their attention like the lights on a marquee: Theater-arts teaching jobs…

Forget the Miami Herald’s efforts to whip the Sun-Sentinel on its own turf. That contest involves banal considerations such as market share, pass-along rates, and focus groups. If you’re looking for a good old-fashioned newspaper war, full of vituperation, vengeance, and litigation, cast your gaze southward to Coconut Grove. Earlier…

Two years ago, when a Haitian magazine identified entertainer Michel Martelly as one of the most popular men in Haiti along with then-president Jean-Bertrand Aristide, Martelly responded by unveiling his political platform. “If I am elected president, I will perform nude on top of the National Palace,” he jested in…

Jean Dorce sees it quite clearly: He was laid off from his City of Miami job because he is Haitian. To him, no other explanation makes sense. “They laid off all the Haitians,” says Dorce, referring to himself and two other Creole-speaking job counselors who lost their jobs in December…