Another sunny day in downtown Miami. A playful eight-year-old tags along with her mother on a shopping trip. When Mother stops to take a closer look at something, bored daughter wanders off. By the time Mom realizes her little girl is no longer at her side, it’s too late. As…
Like the rest of the industrial world, Dade County is smothering itself with trash: three million tons of solid waste per year. In the late 1980s, after the Florida legislature passed a statewide waste-reduction act, county officials set about developing one of the nation’s most comprehensive recycling programs. Today an…
Chris Drennan was getting some bad energy from back home in the Sunshine State. Having temporarily relocated to Chicago to care for her dying father, she was concerned about her little red house in Coconut Grove. When she placed a long-distance call to her next-door neighbor, Drennan says, he refused…
Tomas Garcia Fuste is not running for office, and he’s no pop star. Still, when he goes to lunch at Victor’s Cafe, it takes him about twenty minutes to make the journey from valet parking to his table. So many people, so much homage. Fuste, ¨c centsmo andas? Oye, Fuste,…
Late last month the National Association of Black Journalists Awards committee announced the winners of this year’s 1994 NABJ competition for outstanding coverage of African Americans and issues of special concern to the African-American community. New Times staff writer Kathy Glasgow won second place in the features category, for her…
Radio personalities Armando Perez Roura and Tomas Garcia Fuste would seem to have much in common. Both were rising young celebrities in their native Cuba during the 1950s, friendly rivals in the lively, competitive news business that thrived in Havana during the days when the casinos were open all night,…
Twice each year the Dade County Grand Jury releases its report in much the same way as a sailor would cast overboard a message in a bottle, albeit with a little more fanfare. While the jury’s primary function is to review prosecutable offenses (in particular first-degree murder cases) and decide…
A few short years ago Steve Simon was fretting over the sudden expansion of his new business venture. The Miami Beach entrepreneur had just launched a company specializing in a unique investment opportunity A buying life insurance policies at a discount from the terminally ill, then cashing in the policies…
In the Greater Miami Convention and Visitors Bureau conference room high above Brickell Avenue, staff members sometimes display an oversized flow chart that shows how the public-relations catastrophes of the early 1980s nearly ruined tourism before the dramatic recovery in recent years. Still, despite its reminders of such bad news…
In the early weeks of the fall semester a ceremony unfolded within the University Center complex at UM’s campus in Coral Gables. Upstairs in the Flamingo Ballroom the media circled like vultures, determined to capture this monumental moment: a celebration of the boost in power of WVUM’s signal. On hand…
Of all the people gadding about in the fire-hot sun baking the steps of the Dade County Courthouse, this guy is the most easily pegged as a narc. The others gathering around the display tables are a mix of Pearl Jam concert refugees, hippie-heyday leftovers, old ladies. Aside from those…
Assistant U.S. Attorney Patrick White manages to overcome all the starch stiffening his dress shirt, lean back in his chair, and actually appear relaxed for one moment, however brief, of this long April day. He is startled back into bolt-upright position by his own voice, recorded ten months earlier, talking…
Does South Beach have a parking problem? Dade County Court Judge Raphael Steinhardt would probably say so. According to an incident report filed by two Miami Beach bicycle cops, the judge became irate after his green Corvette acquired a twenty-dollar handwritten hood ornament for parking in a no-parking zone across…
Rosaries dangling from their hands, a clutch of women stands on the sidewalk that circles Ermita de la Caridad church. Daylight is fading on a southerly wind from Cuba, breathing wisps of clouds over the tepee-shaped church, which overlooks Biscayne Bay just south of downtown Miami. The women, the majority…
When it happened, the first thing he noticed was the sound A or rather, the absence of sound. No more bleeping. No more whirring, no more of that other clatter you got in even the most expensive hospital. God knows he’d heard enough such noise to know when it was…
As hosts of a hugely popular radio talk show, Ron Diaz and Ron Bennington spend most mornings trying to be funny. Which to them tends to mean poking fun at the world in general, with particular emphasis on gays, blacks, and female genitalia. But the Rons, whose Ron and Ron…
Every year Dade County is required by law to publish the names of all business-and land-owners who haven’t paid their county property taxes on time. Dade publishes two lists: one for local businesses’ unpaid personal property taxes (i.e., those that relate to an enterprise’s equipment and furniture) and one for…
To passersby, it might have looked like just another traffic altercation, the sort of roadside scuffling that has made Miami a famously dangerous place to drive. But the incident staged this past Wednesday morning on a rain-slicked Interstate 95, in which two motorists allegedly came to blows, was no random…
On a hot afternoon this past January, Herbert Siguenza, Richard Montoya, and Ric Salinas were driving south on I-95 in a white Alamo rent-a-car, looking for a dead cat. For the members of the Los Angeles-based comedy theater troupe Culture Clash, on a two-week visit to Miami to acquire firsthand…
In the South Beach drag scene, where lip-synching is a talent and “dressing up” is murmured in the reverent tones you might employ to say “composing music” or “writing poetry,” Shawn Palacious is on to something a little bit different. “Some people don’t have a grasp of what I’m interested…
Two weeks ago today, County Commission Chairman Art Teele and Commissioner Pedro Reboredo convoyed north to the West Palm Beach headquarters of the South Florida Water Management District, along with Aviation Department Director Gary Dellapa and Department of Environmental Resources Management Director John Renfrow. When the future of your county’s…
When Pan American World Airways slid into bankruptcy in December 1991, the Dade County Aviation Department inherited the airline’s sprawling network of underground tanks and pipes that supplies jet fuel to hundreds of passenger and cargo planes at Miami International Airport. The department also inherited a critical problem: the need…
