Back in the late Eighties, when Miami’s Brickell Avenue corridor hadn’t yet hit its stride as an eating, drinking, and entertainment destination, Firehouse Four was a hot spot. With beaucoups ferny furnishings, an unrivaled free happy hour spread, live jazz tunes, and a genuine brass fire pole (a holdover from…
For refugees seeking political asylum in the United States, a bureaucratic event called the “individual merits asylum hearing” is a defining moment. At the hearing refugees are invited to appear in small, sparsely furnished courtrooms located in one of downtown Miami’s federal buildings and to recount, under oath, tales of…
Heidi Mason will try to tell you she isn’t a morning person. Don’t believe her. The sun has yet to rise on a cold and rainy Saturday morning in late December when the freckle-faced, long-blond-haired, wholesome-looking seventeen-year-old and her father Don arrive at the Crandon Park Marina on Key Biscayne…
Just another audition: On a Sunday afternoon Omar Caraballo shows up at a windowless North Miami warehouse to read for a part in a potential TV series called 2-100 Ocean Drive. Like a few other actors who have arrived before him, he finds a place to wait and reads through…
Victor Van Gilst appeared in Dade County Court this past November 30 to answer charges of disorderly conduct and obstructing an emergency vehicle. But he never actually had to answer; the arresting officer got the case thrown out for him. Last October, Van Gilst, a native of the Netherlands who…
On a warm Monday afternoon, the members of Miami’s alternative rock foursome Muse are packing up for a road trip. They’re bringing along more than their music equipment and a few changes of clothing, though. After all, their upcoming trek isn’t just a two-week shuffle across the national nightclub circuit:…
At four o’clock in the morning, County Commissioner Bruce Kaplan looked beat. He got up to stretch his legs and walked along the makeshift dais set up in the gymnasium at Southridge High School in Cutler Ridge. As he passed his commission colleagues, he tapped several of them on the…
It takes two staffers to carry the table into the back room of Books & Books. Though it’s the same spindly-legged piece of wood at which scores of other writers have sat and autographed copies of their books, owner Mitchell Kaplan carefully inspects the location, which today is of crucial…
The Salvation Army building just north of Homestead still sports a “For Sale” sign, but the place is as good as sold. The warehouse, which served as the nerve center for crews rebuilding homes damaged by Hurricane Andrew, is shut down. The 26 pastel-painted cabins, which only months ago provided…
It’s a beautiful word to say, capsaicin. A beautiful thing, too, the oil in hot peppers that makes them hot. Say it: cap-say-ih-sin. Cures arthritis, gives life to an impossibly scrumptious seafood soup, makes the world go round. Or, actually, the world going round makes the capsaicin: dirt, water, air,…
Mount Trashmore looms fifteen stories over a mangrove marsh to form the highest point of land in the flattest place on Earth.
Essential Hot Sauce 1 jar or bottle (re-use store-bought sauce bottles) 1 jarful water 1/2 jarful distilled white vinegar A bunch of fresh hot peppers (any variety, as long as they’re hot) Boil water and pour into jar. Let it sit there while you boil vinegar, and mince, chop, and…
Deadly chemicals leaking from South Florida’s sewage system have spawned mysterious, meat-eating “biological freaks” that have attacked visitors to the Everglades and wrought harrowing destruction on property and wildlife. But in an apparent attempt to avert widespread panic at the height of the tourist season, government and tourism officials are…
The nature lovers were out in force, as were others who have made the environment their business. More than 150 environmental activists, scientists, regulators, engineers, lawyers, and consultants packed the conference rooms and corridors of a hotel in Broward County. Like moths to a light bulb, they came from all…
Times are tough over at One Herald Plaza, home to both the Miami Herald and its corporate parent, Knight-Ridder, Inc. A sense of gloom pervades the Bunker on the Bay, as the obsession to increase profits has led to layoffs and an unprecedented exodus of some of the paper’s best…
Inside 40 was a spoof of purported New Year’s resolutions of local personages and consisted predominantly of graphics. The text is not meaningful without the visuals. See actual issue…
It’s good to manage the City of Miami. The pay, for one thing, is topnotch at $117,000 per year. The benefits are also stellar, including a splendid pension and a brand-new, top-of-the-line Jeep Cherokee with leather interior. Free gas. Free insurance. A generous expense account. There’s even the occasional trip…
Ooooh yes. Oh yes. Yes. Yes,” moaned a voice deep inside Miami City Hall. No, it wasn’t Mayor Steve Clark having his back scratched (or scratching someone else’s). Nor was it Commissioner Miller Dawkins on the phone with deposed Haitian strongman Raoul Cedras. The aural display of orgasmic pleasure emanated…
The Cuban flag parts down the middle like a curtain, opening onto sunlit scenes of Havana. A bus driver in a spanking red and white uniform sits patiently on a concrete stoop. A man takes a gusty toke from his cigar and a smoky haze envelops the Capitolio, the former…
It’s official: Miami’s own Gabriel Castillo is the one and only Gaby Gabriel. With an assist from entertainment lawyer Richard Wolfe, the 43-year-old percussionist/vocalist induced Sony Discos to back down and change the name of their Gaby Gabriel, a 25-year-old Dominican merenguero named Humberto Gabriel Lantigua. The Cuban-born Castillo, orchestra…
A sense of timelessness pervades the lobby of Teatro Trail, a former movie house located on SW Eighth Street at 37th Avenue, right where the littered sidewalks of Little Havana intersect with the manicured lawns of Coral Gables. Oil paintings of idyllic country landscapes and quaint village scenes of a…
From afar, Miami Beach’s Art Deco aficionados seem to be a unified bunch, waging a common struggle against forces that threaten the architectural and artistic legacy of that bygone era. Recently, however, a most uncivil feud has broken out amid the pastels, pitting Art Deco exponents against one another. And…
