Maria Genero isn’t this town’s best-known weathercaster. But when Hollywood came a-knocking, top stormdogs Bryan Norcross and Don Noe were nowhere to be seen; it was the perky WTVJ-TV (Channel 6) weekend fill-in who answered the door. Genero landed a bit part in Striptease, the Demi Moore vehicle that was…
The Boston Market people can’t decide which booth they want,” says Ann Sterling as she surveys a large blueprint of Miami’s Bayfront Park. Dozens of small rectangles cover the blueprint, each representing a stand where a food vendor will sell arepas or hot dogs or, in this case, roast chicken…
By Kirk Semple It is a disturbing fact of urban life that we while away a good deal of our time packed into vertically moving boxes, forced to endure the awkward rituals and mind-numbing boredom of confinement. We speak, of course, of elevators. Blessed be the elevator passenger who has…
Heading north out of the Hialeah yard, the engineer and conductor slump into position for the nine-hour haul to Jacksonville. Glenn Wade — jeaned legs akimbo, one hand holding half of a peanut-butter-and-jelly-on-white-bread sandwich, the other hand on the throttle lever — sits in the right corner; in the left…
The WTVJ-TV (Channel 6) transmission tower soars exactly 1767 feet into the sky over South Dade. That’s 313 feet higher than the Sears Tower, the hemisphere’s tallest building. Nearly one-and-a-half times the height of the Empire State Building. Or, to apply local architectural measuring sticks, two First Union Financial Centers…
Richard doesn’t have the ten-dollar cover charge, so he’s crashing the party behind an invited guest. “I’m with him,” he blurts, lifting his chin toward the stranger. The doorman unhooks the gold velvet rope. It’s been a while since Richard has been in this cavernous nightclub. In 1987, as Club…
Hundreds of off-road bicycling enthusiasts got a shock not long ago when they showed up at their favorite woodsy riding trail in South Dade. Someone had built a chainlink fence through the heart of the winding track, bisecting enough of the hairpin curves to render the rest useless. “The track…
Miguel Haddad’s Auto Diesel Service Plaza, way out on West Okeechobee Road in Hialeah Gardens, has been the trucker’s friend for 28 years now. The Citgo fuel pumps are open 24 hours a day. Drivers can take showers and naps, dine at the Mamma Mia restaurant, and have that oil…
Info: Home Truths After decades of living month to month in trailer parks, some South Dade migrant workers have found a permanent address By Judy Cantor A burly man cradling a black-haired baby strides across the empty shuffleboard courts at the Royal Colonial Mobile Home Park in Naranja and walks…
In competition with other weekly newspapers throughout the state, New Times and its staff have won a half-dozen awards in the Florida Press Association’s Better Weekly Newspaper Contest for work published in 1995. Staff writer Elise Ackerman’s feature “Land of Opportunity,” an examination of Dade’s flawed system for evaluating property…
Last year so many Dade residents forgot or refused or otherwise failed to pay their property taxes that the sum total of delinquency — $73 million — outweighed the entire property tax revenue of most North Florida counties. This year looks like a repeat. Instead of twiddling their thumbs and…
Info:Correction Date: 07/04/1996 Info: Hour Town Six months after its debut, the county’s scheme to keep teens out of nighttime trouble gets mixed reviews By Ray Martinez The numbers were typical: The weekend of June 7, Miami Beach police charged ten youths with a misdemeanor for violating Dade County’s curfew,…
It’s not easy being Bob Holley. Though slowed by a clubfoot, the 55-year-old Perrine resident keeps buckets of paint, brushes, rollers and extensions, and a change of clothes in his van so he can stop and paint over graffiti on his way home from work. A full-time technical writer at…
On October 3, 1994, the The New Republic magazine published an article titled “Our Man in Miami,” written by freelance journalist Ann Louise Bardach. The story purported to be a sweeping compendium of facts about the life of Cuban exile leader Jorge Mas Canosa, Miami’s multimillionaire business executive and chairman…
It’s that time again, when local politicians crank up the rhetoric, express their profound concern, promise the impossible. And regardless of whether they’ve officially declared their candidacies, Dade’s mayoral hopefuls are at the vanguard, plumbing the depths of credibility with their pretty come-ons to potential voters. Among their talking points:…
Like most residents of the Roads neighborhood in Miami, northwest of Brickell Avenue and the Rickenbacker Causeway, Lorraine Albury didn’t take to the high-rise idea. When developers proposed a nine-story apartment tower on a tiny swatch of property four blocks from the house where she has spent the past 56…
Now that a special election has been announced to fill the Miami mayor’s seat, a searchlight scans the terrain for leaders who are able and willing to lead the city. Many names have been bandied about, but so far the only people who have actually stepped forward are losers from…
Lorenzo Simmons can be forgiven the confidence with which he strode into the Miami City Commission chambers on July 26, 1994. The president of the Tacolcy Economic Development Corp. was a man with a plan to revitalize a key corridor of Liberty City, one of Miami’s poorest neighborhoods, to replace…
Carload by carload they come, judges and politicians and attorneys and cops, some enthusiastically, others ambivalently, to toast a man who just a week earlier was the most powerful law enforcement official in South Florida but is now an unemployed lawyer most famous for an alleged taste for nude dancers…
Steven Almond’s story “The Canyon” has won this year’s Sigma Delta Chi Award for newspaper feature reporting. One of the most prestigious competitions in journalism, the Sigma Delta Chi Awards are presented each year by the Society of Professional Journalists, the nation’s largest and most broad-based journalism organization, with upward…
The sun bores into your back as you trudge along the winding path to the gorilla cage at Monkey Jungle. Macaques scamper on wire mesh overhead, and the sweaty, almost human odor of gorilla wafts out among the whirling flies and gnats. And then you see three women lined up…
Uwe Krupp’s slap shot slid between the pads of goalie John Vanbiesbrouck early Tuesday morning, putting an end to an extraordinary triple-overtime game, claiming the 1996 Stanley Cup for the Colorado Avalanche, and etching a big pout on the puss of Florida Panthers fans all over Miami. Then giddy Denverites…
