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Bruno Carnesella holds a cigar and a cell phone in one hand and a fat billfold in the other as he exits the Neighborhood Enhancement Team office in Coconut Grove, a sort of mini-city hall located in Peacock Park. The tall, debonair Italian, who left Genoa 25 years ago and…

In ancient Rome the festival was called Lupercalia. It was held on February 15 and was designed to protect the populace from wolves. This was accomplished by dispatching young men to whack their beloved with animal hides. Women were said to encourage the whipping, which they believed made them more…

Obviously Hialeah isn’t the only municipality in Dade where ardor precedes murder. This county routinely tops Florida in domestic homicide stats, and, as might be expected, the emphasis is on the bizarre. In the spirit of Valentine’s Day (or Lupercalia, anyway), consider the following: In 1961 a South Dade man…

Back in 1978 violence and enmity were ripping Jamaica in two. On one side were supporters of socialist prime minister Michael Manley, on the other were backers of Manley’s conservative rival Edward P.G. Seaga. In the middle was bloodshed and rioting. That was the year someone tried to assassinate legendary…

A new real estate developer comes to a town already congested with new developers and wants to make a name for himself. So what does he do? He throws a party. A really big party, under a lavishly decorated 15,000-square-foot tent shipped in from Tennessee. He invites more than 1000…

(*NOTE: THERE WAS A CHART ACCOMPANYING THIS STORY) You think you’re sick of O.J.? Imagine how the news directors at our local television stations feel. For the past two weeks, they’ve been chin-deep in Simpsonalia, trying to find some new angle on the most overhyped story in the history of…

The shafts of light formed a luminous triangle above the darkened beach, drawing curious onlookers from the terrace of the Cardozo Hotel and stirring the population of senior citizens from ancient contemplations. As a crowd gathered, light artist Sidney Smith set his work in motion. Beams ricocheted off mirrors angled…

Since this past summer’s Cuban exodus, Miami’s exile leaders have been biding their time, waiting for the right moment to exert their influence in delivering the nearly 30,000 refugees from the limbo of Guantanamo Naval Base and the safe-haven camps in Panama. Obviously, no massive immigration effort would be announced…

Playground banter about Hank Aaron’s batting average and Joe Namath’s pass-completion stats could soon be a thing of the past, replaced by talk of Claudia Schiffer’s bust size and the career implications of an appearance on the cover of Vogue. At least it could if Penelope Friedland has her way…

Stripped to a pair of boxer shorts, the obese man leaped to the edge of the plastic tub. With his toes curled around the rim like a treed possum, he howled and beat his chest. Ripples of fat rolled across the expanse of his round belly. The tub beneath him…

Conspicuous white spaces and thick strands of loose picture wire evidence the absence of some of the artworks that usually hang in the high-walled, sunlit living room of Carlos and Rosa de la Cruz’s spacious Key Biscayne home. Two paintings — Star Gazer, by the Mexican modernist Rufino Tamayo, and…

After decades of precarious voyages across the Florida Straits, madcap raids against Cuba, and relentless lobbying in Washington, D.C., Cuban exiles have gradually become known as a people that puts its money where its mouth is. The depth of el exilio’s passion for freedom and a liberated Cuba has cowed…

After ten successful years in the Miami city attorney’s office — first as an assistant city attorney, then as the chief deputy, followed by four years as the city attorney — Jorge Fernandez abruptly quit in 1991. He and his wife pulled their three children out of school, packed up…

On Tuesday, February 7, Miami-Dade Water and Sewer Department director Anthony Clemente will stand before the Dade County Commission and present this good news: County negotiators have settled the nineteen-month-old federal lawsuit concerning Dade’s decrepit sewer system. But before the commissioners leap up, join arms, and dance merrily, they may…

Richard Zeeman is scowling again. He’s been doing that a lot recently. Business is bad. Three days a week (down from six when demand for Zeeman’s services peaked in 1989) he leaves his North Miami office at noon (Zeeman used to leave an hour or two earlier) and piles into…

A City of Miami police officer is under investigation following a complaint filed by an assistant city attorney. The charge against the officer: lobbying on behalf of a Miami businessman. No one would have thought twice about it except that the businessman, Orlando Mesa, also happens to be the officer’s…

The U.S. Supreme Court might have had someone like Greg Scharf in mind when it made this observation regarding the First Amendment: “The problem of drawing the line between a purely commercial activity and a religious one will at times be difficult.” Indeed the controversy Scharf brought to Coconut Grove…

Fredgie is colorful and funny like a clown; profound and pure like Chaplin! And as both of them Fredgie is a melancholic character — a poem by Martha Gonzalez, personal assistant to Fredgie Fredgie would like the world to know how the whole Fredgie thing began. This requires slipping a…

This past December 4, the Miami Herald published a front-page story declaring South Florida “America’s Crime Capital.” “Dade County ranked first in total crime among the nation’s large metropolitan areas in 1993, according to FBI statistics released today,” reporters Dan Keating and Charles Strouse noted. Next to the article, a…

Forget about that oceanfront condominium on Collins Avenue your real estate agent assures you is a steal. Toss away the floor plan for that new split-level out west. The true real estate values in Dade lie in a more humble section of the county: Little Haiti. That’s where a select…