A few months ago members of the Dade County Attorney’s Office were given a tour of several large hangars at Miami International Airport. Their guide, Buddy Klein, is a veteran contractor whose firm is a well-respected asbestos-removal company that does millions of dollars’ worth of work each year from Miami…
A white custom Cadillac sits on the bleached lawn at the side entrance of the Conni Gordon School of Art, whose screen door has been posted with a note instructing visitors to “ring bell or yell.” The long, low, white building, formerly Bill Jordan’s Bar of Music, an old Miami…
The scene was, as Mike Wallace would later recall, “most bizarre.” The legendary newsman had come to Miami Beach this past June to work on a 60 Minutes segment about David Acer, the Jensen Beach dentist widely believed to have infected six of his patients with HIV before he died…
Lionel Resnick’s appearance on 60 Minutes this past June was a high point in his career. The piece, narrated by Mike Wallace, examined the case of Dr. David Acer, the dentist thought to have transmitted the HIV virus to six of his patients in Jensen Beach. In his interview with…
Arcs of water crash over the sea wall protecting the Cuban coast and splash onto the asphalt roadway, endangering cyclists and the stray Soviet-built Lada. On any other Thursday night, the nocturnal denizens of Havana’s Malec centsn would have already staked their claims. Lovers, hustlers, adolescent rockers, hippies, penniless professionals,…
The massive tattooed wrists tighten around the New Times correspondent’s neck, constricting both his windpipe and the flow of blood to his brain as effectively as giant human pliers. The reporter begins to second-guess his decision to make journalism his career, and, more specifically, the folly of sitting in on…
The residents of the Venetian Gardens public housing project face a bigger enemy than Newt Gingrich and his anti-welfare schemes. It is a mysterious force that has put them into debt, threatened them with eviction, and forced them into battle against Metro-Dade’s Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD). Now…
JoJo hasn’t seen another bear since he was separated from his mother as a cub. Never having hunted or fished, he subsists instead on dog food, fruit, and table scraps. When he’s not swinging on the tire that hangs from a chain attached to the ceiling of his 12-by-25-foot cage,…
As silently as lead seeps into drinking water, warning signs have appeared all over Miami International Airport in recent weeks. Their caution: Don’t drink the water. Lead contamination. Posted above each of the airport’s water fountains is a notice that reads, in part: “SOME BUILDINGS IN THIS COMMUNITY HAVE ELEVATED…
Mimosa: $30,620 –Mad Max: $26,554 –The Spot: $19,975 –Mickey’s: $12,236 Charles Hotel: $8291 –Cassis: $6000 –La Madrague: $3512 Sushi Hana: $3171 The Palace: $3000 Fellini: $2324 –Pancho’s Mexican Restaurant: $2092 –Broadway Pizza: $2000 –Paranoia Cafe & Bar: $2000 –Fratello: $1500 On the Rocks Sports Bar: $1500 Society Hill Cafe: $1500…
Touted as a national model, Dade County’s ambitious $15-million-per-year plan to combat homelessness has come under the hardest public scrutiny since its inception in 1993. During hearings last month before U.S. District Judge C. Clyde Atkins, old antagonists argued the effectiveness of the plan and its implementation. The debate arose…
Perhaps you heard a chorus of whoops emanating from the City of Miami Beach’s finance department late last month. That was the sound of giddy bean counters celebrating a milestone in the annals of local taxation. For the first time ever, city officials broke the $900,000 barrier in their monthly…
With Chairman Art Teele temporarily out of the chambers, Alex Penelas was running the October 20 county commission meeting, and doing his best to keep the agenda moving. “There are some items here that perhaps we can dispense with rather quickly,” he told his colleagues. Turning to Commissioner Javier Souto,…
Talk about hot. Jerry Powers had yet to unveil his magazine and already he was getting good ink. “Powers, the man behind Ocean Drive magazine, must have more credibility than most new publishers,” gushed Miami Herald columnist Gail Meadows in November 1992. “Without even a prototype to show potential customers,…
It’s a little after dark on Ocean Drive: A man in tight Lycra shorts and a black tank top is lumbering down the sidewalk, a video camera on his shoulder. He’s carrying a strange-looking aluminum pack on his back, which makes him look like a potbellied astronaut who has just…
Nudists of the world unite! That, in fact, is exactly what happened when Miami Shores resident Richard Mason, president of South Florida Free Beaches, sounded the alarm over a bill to restrict public nudity that’s being considered by the House Criminal Justice Committee in Tallahassee. “This is more than a…
In San Antonio seven-foot Spurs center David Robinson glowers from an assortment of billboards. The image that towers over Seattle’s highways is that of fierce all-star forward Shawn Kemp. The Houston Rockets decorate their boards with a battery of NBA champions — Hakeem Olajuwon, Vernon Maxwell, Otis Thorpe. Here in…
When it comes to bedside manner, “suicide doctor” Jack Kevorkian really missed the boat. At least that’s the opinion of a rival assisted-suicide advocate who claims to operate secret “euthanasia cruises” A suicide voyages for which terminally ill passengers from around the nation pay $500 for the privilege of being…
Inside a cramped studio apartment on South Beach, a tiny 95-year-old woman in white polyester pants and a white jacket is watching some of the preliminary skirmishings in the O.J. Simpson trial on TV. Hunched over in her rocking chair, peering intently at the screen, Charlotte Leibel, like millions of…
Celebs mind their p’s and q’s What’s pop star Jon Secada really like? One person who says she knows the answer to that burning question is graphologist Charlotte Leibel, who was asked by New Times to analyze anonymous handwriting samples from Secada, singer Albita Rodriguez, and other lesser-knowns, including one…
This isn’t the way it was supposed to turn out. The vast space on NW 54th Street in Liberty City once teemed with colorful merchandise that stretched from the clothing and shoe departments on one side, through sporting goods and electronics, to housewares, toys, and health-and-beauty aids half a city…
I didn’t know quite what to expect from 95-year-old Charlotte Leibel, master graphologist, when I visited her at her Rebecca Towers efficiency apartment on South Beach. Frail-looking, soft-spoken, and wearing a magnifying glass around her neck, she didn’t appear to be someone who could penetrate to the depths of my…
