As anyone who works there knows, the Juvenile Justice Center is a locale in dire need of distractions. Morale at the cozy complex of courtrooms on NW 33rd Street is running low these days, thanks to a rash of highly publicized crimes against tourists. While prosecutors ship more and more…
It looked like the beginning of the end for Temple Beth El. Here it was, the first night of the Jewish High Holidays in September, and the temple’s last-ditch appeal for new members in the North Bay Village News seemed to have fallen rather flat. “Dig deep into your hearts…
Earlier this year Octavio Visiedo and I exchanged thank-you notes. Mine was more than a little disingenuous. I suspect his was, too. Visiedo, of course, is superintendent of the Dade County Public Schools. I’m a parent of a child at Springview Elementary, about a mile north of Miami International Airport…
Lionel Goldbart is an unlikely hero. Working the Lotto hardware at Art Barker’s News on a Saturday afternoon, he’s somewhat forgettable in his worn T-shirt and shorts buoyed by suspenders, stubbly of chin and thinned out on top, bespectacled, round and a little bit droopy. To anybody who asks, he…
As Metro commission meetings go, this one was running relatively smoothly. Commissioners had agreed to ask voters to consider a new property tax, with the money to be earmarked to fight juvenile crime. They passed an anti-graffiti ordinance and a measure urging the federal government to build a new commissary…
Yosemite Valley, California, September 25: During a weekend layover in San Francisco, Gersten found time for some adventure at Yosemite’s famed Half Dome. Park rangers briefly detained him for climbing without a permit. Bristol, England, October 11: Billing himself “Joey the Magnificent,” Gersten joined his cousin Gertrude for several days…
From the condos of Aventura to the trailer parks of Homestead, there is a growing realization that Dade County just isn’t the same without Joe Gersten. Life in the tropics is definitely less interesting without his cherubic smile, his bullyboy personality, his knack for making great headlines. Miriam Alonso did…
Ever since Smith chose his moniker in a preseason contest, the Heat and the Miami Herald, which sponsored the nickname game, have attempted — somewhat unsuccessfully — to imprint it on the local consciousness. “Tricky,” observed a nine-year-old fan who watched Smith pile in 24 points this past Thursday in…
Clearly, Steve Clark’s security detail was nervous. Having finished his victory speech, the newly elected Miami mayor was in the midst of a series of television interviews when the throng of well-wishers began pressing closer, surrounding the television cameramen on their two-foot-high platform. “Get back, get back!” one plainclothes detective…
“Everything goes on in this world, until you get caught.” — Marty Abrams It didn’t matter that Marty Abrams was the smart one. That didn’t mean you could turn your back on him. Hell, you didn’t turn your back on anyone while the Price Wars were raging. Not your partner…
A little more than 50 years ago, in the Sevillano neighborhood of Havana, Mirta Valdes was living a parent’s worst nightmare. Her one-year-old daughter Lazara was dying of pneumonia and there was nothing Mirta or her husband Ulises could do to save her. A doctor had come and gone; his…
Mario Gonzalez was confident he would never be caught. Indicted in 1989 on federal charges of drug trafficking and weapons violations, he knew the cops were looking for him. He’d even seen his own picture on television, where he was described as a violent fugitive. But the 28-year-old Gonzalez never…
On the question of whether the recently opened Federal Justice Building downtown should be named after Senior U.S. District Judge James Lawrence King, the jury is still out. But even as bigwigs on the judicial district’s Civil Justice Advisory Group ponder the possibility of honoring the jurist for his 23…
The last two hours of October 28 sounded like death. Anyone listening that night to 88.3 FM (home of pirate Radio X) heard a grueling, cacophonous dirge — as if someone had locked a gang of Gregorian chanters on acid in a room with a symphony of drunks, recorded every…
On July 23, after nearly four years of legal wrangling, the family of Drs. Lisette and Andres Nogues was finally reunited. In September 1989 state child-protection workers had removed the seven minor Nogues children from their Kendall home after Aimee, who was fifteen years old at the time, accused them…
Mattel’s new Ken doll is on the market. New Ken is getting almost as much press as New Coke did. Since his introduction at a toy convention in New York City in February, Ken’s been everywhere, including the front page of the New York Times’s Arts and Leisure section. Why…
Miami commissioner Miriam Alonso has suffered some recent setbacks in her bid to become the city’s first female mayor. Considered a strong front-runner just weeks ago, polls now indicate Alonso will have to scramble if she is to overcome rival Steve Clark in a runoff. (New Times went to press…
No use lying about it, the game was ugly, a final blemish on the frowning face of the Miami Heat’s 1992-93 season. The Knicks were in town, the swaggering, trash-talking Knicks, tuning up for their playoff date with Air Jordan’s Bulls and embarrassing the Heat without much effort. In one…
It was all in honor of Dan Quayle, back in February 1991, when he was still vice president. Drivers down Biscayne Boulevard slowed to an irritated halt while a few dozen people crossed the street, back and forth from the I-395 overpass to Bicentennial Park, like a disoriented trail of…
Miami’ll drink to that! Having won the Southeast regional semifinals of the Tanqueray Rocks talent contest at the Stephen Talkhouse on South Beach (after a technicality disqualified top vote getter Nil Lara and Beluga Blue), Natural Causes jetted to New York City last week and came back with something fine,…
Raul Martinez’s office in exile is about three blocks from Hialeah City Hall, on the ground floor of a pink-hued building on East First Avenue. He’s got a glass-topped desk here, and a leather couch. The scattershot decor includes maps of Dade, Broward, and Palm Beach counties, a Haitian painting…
At certain moments the bodega on NW 21st Street near 20th Avenue looks deceptively still, a forgotten concrete low-rise next door to a men’s underwear company, amid a scraggly topography of small warehouses, factories, and workshops just north of the Miami River. The sign above the bodega is straightforward: Yaber…
