Dennis Britt inspires something bordering on fanaticism among his fellow musicians. “No artist to break out of Miami, past or present, myself included, possesses half the genius of Dennis Britt,” claims pop songwriter-vocalist Tommy Anthony, whose recent independently released CD, Mondial, sold thousands of copies after garnering airplay on Top…
If you guessed that “slack key” is a special guitar tuning technique employed by Generation X poster boy Beck, you’d be half-right. The term does have something to do with alternate guitar tunings but is far removed from the media-hyped slacker tag. Actually, slack key is a rich acoustic guitar-based…
Thick incense spreads throughout the church, pressing against the air-conditioned freshness, pushing it back, away and out of the room, until the coolness is saturated with a smell so thick it has the texture of velvet. It’s a choking aroma, one that will sink into the red carpet and cling…
Coke or Pepsi? Charmin or Cottonelle? Such questions have been asked for years by marketers intent upon gauging consumer preferences regarding everything from sodas and cereals to laundry detergents and long-distance providers. Now the City of Miami Beach is applying the same approach to a less conspicuous item: new planks…
Workers have lined the Venetian Causeway’s dozen bridges with a combination of vehicular guardrails and seven-foot-tall chain-link fences, effectively banning pedestrian use of the 2.5-mile span. The move was undertaken by the Metro-Dade public works department as a sort of weight-watching way of protecting the sidewalks and low railings of…
As Hurricane Erin was moving slowly toward Miami on Tuesday, August 1, two buses and a van were making the rounds of Dade County’s hurricane shelters. It was late afternoon, and 75 anxious people were running out of time to find a refuge from the storm. But despite having been…
They call this block the Slab. Along the eroded sidewalks of North Miami Avenue between Eleventh and Twelfth streets, people are sitting on crates and boxes, a rare lawn chair or lounger, or reclining on makeshift mattresses and ragged bedding. Subdued by drugs, depression, or just the heavy heat, they…
The University of Miami had plenty to be embarrassed about a year ago, when their oceanographic research vessel, the Columbus Iselin, smashed into a fragile reef in the Florida Keys. The accident severely damaged four of the federally protected reef’s delicate spur-and-groove formations, fingerlike coral structures that have taken centuries…
On August 4, Juan Tamayo resigned his post as foreign editor of the Miami Herald to return to reporting duties for the newspaper. An office memo circulated by managing editor Saundra Keyes provided no explanation for Tamayo’s unexpected decision, but his resignation was widely believed to have been the result…
In the bizarre world of Dade County government, it’s not surprising or even irregular for the absurd to become commonplace. It is, in fact, quite routine for some element of the bureaucracy to use its dubious and arcane powers to sublimely complicate some poor schmuck’s life. But sometimes a case…
On Tuesday, July 25, the Dade County Commission convened its regular weekly meeting. But this particular gathering of the county’s elected officials was special. It was the commissioners’ last meeting before they closed up shop for a seven-week summer recess. As such, it was also the last opportunity for commissioners…
The first thing everyone notices is that this is no ordinary doctor’s office. As you step inside the glass doors inscribed with the monogram of Dr. Ernest DiGeronimo, one of Dade County’s most successful and controversial plastic surgeons, you’re greeted by an ornate fantasy of luxury, one that conjures up…
While Dr. Ernest DiGeronimo may have some patients who call him “wonderful” or shower him with gifts ranging from antique drawings to the expensive couch that adorns his waiting room, he isn’t respected by certain leaders in the medical community (who won’t openly criticize him). Additionally he currently faces charges…
Fulano de tal stands on a portable stage in the Hard Rock Cafe at Bayside, framed by a stained glass portrait of Jim Morrison. “Who’s here tonight?” he barks. “Colombia!” “Argentina!” “Venezuela!” “Peru!” shouts the crowd. “No speak English?” goads the singer with an exaggerated Spanish accent. “Yo tampoco, porque…
Broadcast coverage of hurricanes in post-Andrew Miami has become an exercise in journalistic paranoia. No television news executive with any sense of self-preservation is going to risk being caught by surprise, even if it means abandoning sober judgment in favor of hyperbole. As Channel 10 news director Tom Doerr puts…
She is an ordinary three-pound monkey, a brown Java macaque (also known as a crab-eating macaque), languishing in a cage at a veterinary clinic just over the Dade County line in Pembroke Park. She arrived in mid-July after Pedro Diaz, who had stopped with his wife and daughter in Homestead…
By Steven Almond Ruby Breathing deeply the minted smoke of a stove-lit Kool, Ruby stared out at the tree in her front yard, a massive ficus with limbs that grew out instead of up and littered leaves the shape of pursed lips onto the dirt below. Young boys were gathered…
Five years ago, just before a grand jury indicted Hialeah Mayor Raul Martinez on eight federal corruption charges, the charismatic politician infuriated U.S. prosecutors by claiming to a local television station that the government had offered to drop all charges if he would resign. (It was Martinez who made the…
With $26 million on the line, the City of Miami didn’t want to take any chances. So before requesting a generous grant from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, the city spent months of time and more than $10,000 training employees to fill out the complicated grant application…
His first published works appeared in the April 20 edition of New Times, and like many a literary debut, they went virtually unnoticed. Nonetheless, tucked away on page 105, under the “Jewelry” heading, were two texts that read as follows: Thus was the world introduced to William Broder — rogue…
Local preservationists are a persistent lot with a higher frustration threshold than most. For every small triumph — a stay of demolition here, a historic designation there — they suffer several losses, usually delivered by a wrecking ball. Besides widespread apathy toward their cause, they must cope with constraints of…
Once, the two-mile-long stretch of scenic bayfront property along Brickell Avenue was lined with dozens of estates, mansions set in a lush subtropical setting. Jeweler Louis C. Tiffany lived on the street that came to be called Millionaire’s Row; so did lawyer and politician William Jennings Bryan and Miami Beach…
