If the very thought that you might be able to escape the insularity of the modern American lifestyle makes you want to rush out and put your condo on the market, a group of like-minded Dade residents might be looking for you. They’re the Miami Cohousing Project and they’re trying…
Guillermo Vargas Martinez, a reporter for the WSCV-TV news program Ocurri cents Asi, met with prisoner Alicia De Jesus L centspez in the library of the Dade County Jail on April 7. As Vargas listened in rapt silence, L centspez, a 38-year-old Honduran immigrant awaiting trial for first-degree murder, described…
On April 15 and 16, Matthew Block sat almost invisible at the burnished mahogany defense table in U.S. District Judge James W. Kehoe’s dim courtroom in Miami. A slight man in wire-rimmed glasses and a dark suit, surrounded by the dark suits of his lawyers, Block sounded younger than his…
This past Thursday the newly sworn-in Metro-Dade County Commission took the field against the seasoned Florida Marlins at Joe Robbie Stadium, in the county’s first-ever professional baseball game. On a glorious and sunny April afternoon, the Metro Movers defeated the major league Marlins 8-6, in front of a sellout crowd…
You see him on South Beach, svelte and silent, loping past the News Cafe, Mango’s, the Clevelander. Turning heads. Drawing hungry hands that want to touch, to pet, to hold. On another night you catch a glimpse of those sapphire eyes through the crowd at CocoWalk. He’s never alone. Someone…
Well, it finally happened. An unnerving milestone was reached on February 26: a major terrorist strike on U.S. soil. The bombing of a high-profile public building is no longer something that only happens in faraway countries. The faaade of invulnerability has been irrevocably shattered. Addressing the World Trade Center bombing,…
The men huddled closer together on the apartment floor as another blast of rain and wind shook the two-story building. The roof quivered and creaked overhead. Water streamed from cracks in the ceiling down the bare walls, forming puddles around the men’s calloused feet and soaking the mattresses they had…
This past Easter weekend delivered just about everything one would expect from South Florida: blue skies, perfect weather, warm beaches, plenty of tourists. The only thing markedly unusual was the water. On Good Friday, a high-pressure sewage pipe ruptured on North River Drive in downtown Miami and spewed a geyser…
Editor’s note: The following essay was composed by Joe Gersten during his incarceration at the Turner Guilford Knight Correctional Center. It is printed here unedited. Much has been said about the “Gersten Case,” yet it surprises me when my own friends fail to understand why I am sitting here in…
The nation ringing in the Clinton administration is, by several measures, a healthier and more health-conscious nation than it was when Ronald Reagan took office. Americans exercise more, eat less fat, drink less alcohol, and smoke less tobacco than they did a dozen years ago. Public awareness campaigns, strong leadership…
Preservationists in Dade are a determined but weary bunch. For years they have raged A often in vain A at the demise of historic building after historic building, their valiant appeals drowned out by the crash of the wrecking ball. This past month they again mustered their strength in an…
Last Monday, April 5, the Florida Marlins baseball team played its first regular-season major league game. The contest took place at Joe Robbie Stadium in North Dade, home of the Marlins and the Miami Dolphins. The Marlins were victorious, defeating Los Angeles Dodgers by a score of 6-3. Before the…
In Clint Clark’s neighborhood, they call it “jacking a tourist.” The J-T for short. The media have branded the crime a “smash-and-grab.” It boils down to the same thing: detaining a car full of tourists and then robbing them. To fourteen-year-old Clark the J-T is an everyday occurrence, something friends…
The big jet from Frankfurt, Germany, dropped gently through vaporous clouds to the runway at Miami International Airport, and Kurt Schafer’s heart raced for a few seconds as he wondered, again, if the threats had been serious. Somebody was going to pocket $10,000 for shooting him as he disembarked; at…
In late 1991, when Metro-Dade Police Sgt. David Simmons was assigned to investigate the latest child abuse allegations lodged against physicians Lisette and Andres Nogues, his colleague Det. Ellen Christopher issued an ambivalent sigh. On the one hand, she was thrilled an officer as competent as Simmons had inherited the…
Take a look at the new MacArthur Causeway now. It’s fast and smooth, for sure. Plenty of room to maneuver through rush hour at velocities well over the 30 mph speed limit. It’s also about as boring as a stretch of asphalt can get: all road with just a strip…
People still ask me about my car, the little red Sentra that was totaled as it sat parked outside my apartment in the rain one early morning in November. An off-duty Miami Beach police officer plowed into it. I wrote about the whole experience in the January 20 issue of…
Human beings have, for good reason, spent a considerable amount of their history figuring out ways to hide their excrement. In fact, several good reasons, reasons so small you need high-powered microscopes to see them. Behold, for instance, shigellae. Resembling a tiny ice-cream sprinkle, this bacterium is among scores of…
The airwaves beckon. Yet we are captives on the Venetian Causeway. Locked in traffic and reduced to soothing our frayed nerves straight from a bottle. Our larger half, Jim, is not one to obey gridlock protocol. His faded red Mazda lurches left, then right. Soon we are slaloming through the…
In the arcane world of modern hydraulics and flush toilets, there is one widely held assumption: what goes down will stay down. You answer the call of nature, push the handle, and keep on walking. Few care to dwell on what happens next, and fewer still care to talk about…
Adam Von Furstenberg remembers seeing the hypodermic needle taped to his right arm pop upright like a jack-in-the-box and knowing he was in big trouble. The machine that was supposed to be converting his blood from HIV-positive to HIV-negative had malfunctioned. Rather than returning ozone-treated blood to his body, the…
Inside the minuscule Indian Creek Village Hall, some 30 tense bodies were crammed, and more spilled onto the outdoor walkway. Elderly residents dressed in the fashion of twenty years ago. Lawyers in staid suits. Scruffy reporters and even a television news crew, much to the horror of a community that…
