Two months ago the Northeast Task Force, a 35-member advisory board whose mission is to revitalize Miami’s northeast neighborhoods, was wracked with dissent. A few weeks ago nearly half the city-appointed task force’s membership had resigned. A week from today, the organization more than likely will cease to exist. The…
Comprising more than four years of legal brawling, the Nogues case can stake undisputed claim as the most tortured child-abuse battle in Dade history. The affair stems from a 1989 allegation that Kendall physician Andres Nogues sexually abused his teenage stepdaughter, Aimee; following Aimee’s accusation, child-protection workers removed the seven…
Film festivals are the newest growth industry in South Florida. From Key West to Sarasota, they’re proliferating like melaleuca trees. In Dade and Broward alone we’ve got the Black Film Festival, the Jewish Film Festival, the Queer Flickering Light festival, the Fort Lauderdale Film Festival, the South Beach Film Festival,…
To me it was one of the coolest things I’d seen in 30 years of visiting the Everglades, but Lenny is from Queens. He didn’t even want to stop the Honda for a closer look. I tried to be understanding of my urbanite pal — we had been cruising around…
Paul Withers remembered meeting Greg Blue at a Broward health club. After striking up a conversation in the sauna, Blue had confided that he was questioning his sexual orientation. A gay man himself, Withers listened sympathetically. In subsequent chats Blue would confess his sexual desire for Withers, who demurred, advising…
The last day of 1988 — the last day of Miami as a town with competing daily newspapers — also marked a first: the uniting of Miami News employees, the paper’s readers, other local journalists, the entire community. On this dire day, all Miamians shared the loss that had been…
On this Monday evening at Buena Vista Elementary School, the only public school in Wynwood, the wind outside the open auditorium doors is whistling and banging. It is an apt accompaniment for the restive audience of 200 inside, where Carmen Lunetta, director of the Port of Miami and one of…
Poor Dean Grandin. He was simply trying to do his job. As the City of Miami Beach’s planning and zoning director, he has one of those unglamorous, thankless posts deep inside the gray factory of municipal government. Important? By all means. He is responsible for enforcing the city’s zoning ordinance…
In an ethereal painting by Cuban artist Servando Cabrera Moreno, a nude youth poses in tense prostration, protectively covering his genitals with crossed arms. Cabrera, who died despondent in 1981, was persecuted by the Castro government for his homosexuality, and his sensuous portraits were banned from public display. Still bearing…
Throughout his long and distinguished career, Danish pianist and comedian Victor Borge has strictly avoided the tabloids. Unlike today’s music stars, the onetime Broadway luminary has not been accused of drug abuse, or child abuse, or even keyboard abuse. Despite his advanced age, Borge keeps his 85-year-old fingers nimble with…
This much is certain: On August 27, 1990, Michael Catalano, a Dade County attorney specializing in defending DUI suspects, was in his brown four-door Mercedes driving south on U.S. 1 when a police car drove up behind him and began flashing its lights. When Catalano pulled over and checked his…
There were four shots in all, the first two of which missed, the next two of which whizzed past a hastily shut bathroom door and into the goosebumped flesh of one John G. Bennett, well-to-do perfume salesman, veteran of the Great War, and within minutes, a fresh corpse. The year…
The players who sit facing one another are called partners. They are pitted against the second set of partners. One player deals out all the cards, thirteen to each player. The object of the game is to win as many tricks as possible. A trick consists of each player, in…
On January 30, Sherman Winn will celebrate his 50th wedding anniversary. The veteran county commissioner and his wife, Roslyn, will be joined at their North Miami home by their four children and six grandchildren to toast the couple’s half-century together. And with his family gathered around him, Winn says he…
Christopher Hoffman couldn’t believe his good fortune. The 30-year-old assistant manager of the Pickle Barrel restaurant in the Metropolitan Justice Building had always wanted to open his own establishment, but he knew he’d probably never be able to save enough money for such an investment. Then, while traveling through Germany…
This week, as exiled Haitian President Jean-Bertrand Aristide finalizes plans for a Miami conference addressing his nation’s future, a former bit player in the island drama will watch from a distance, a mere spectator. Not long ago he was center stage, an actor playing an intriguing and mysterious role. “I’m…
At lunchtime most weekdays, Alan Greer walks the few blocks from his law office near the downtown courthouses to the Miami Club or the Bankers Club and, like every other professional who ventures onto the noonday streets, he encounters a good number of panhandlers eager to share his lunch money…
Perhaps if the note had been unsigned and composed of letters cut from a magazine, he may have felt even more threatened. As it was, the scribbled message, which had slipped out of a fax machine in John Reitzammer’s Jacksonville office sometime during the early morning hours of May 12,…
The downstairs dining room at Yuca restaurant in Coral Gables is of a contemporary minimalist design, devoid of references to historical or traditional forms — all matte white tiles, bright white walls, and postmodern artworks. It is a sleek showplace for successful Cuban exiles and their up-and-coming offspring. During the…
Manuel Diaz is testimony to the little-known fact that money does grow on trees. Since the 1960s, Diaz, a Cuban immigrant, has transformed a nursery business he started in his parents’ back yard into one of the largest ornamental plant companies in the world: the 1500-acre Manuel Diaz Farms in…
It wasn’t quite the night before Christmas; the holiday was still eight days off. But there was plenty of stirring in the upper reaches of the Metro-Dade Government Center on Friday, December 17. The bureaucrats were playing host to a most unlikely guest. He appeared on the 27th floor –…
Fairfield, Ohio, could not be called a hotbed of Cuban exile activity, but at least one resident of the Cincinnati suburb has made his home on Windermere Lane a base of operations against the Castro government. From there Victor Garcia-Rivera, a 35-year-old Cuban American, is using shortwave radio to try…
