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Few black South Floridians enjoy the name recognition and high profile of Miami attorney H.T. Smith.

This was not going to be a particularly pleasant holiday season for Simon Steckel. Just two days before Christmas 1992, the prominent Coral Gables attorney had injured his back badly enough that he would later need surgery. Adding to his discomfort was the sorry state of his marriage, which appeared…

Increasingly, stern voices are shouting at those brave enough to walk the streets of Miami. And when we turn to respond, we are ashamed to discover we are being chewed out — by a car. “Warning! You are too close to the vehicle,” proclaims the voice. “Step back!” “Oh, yeah?”…

A few months back, during one of his regular Wednesday night jazz jams at Tobacco Road, flautist Mark Krumich was approached by a tense man who wanted to know when Krumich’s Roadkill Jazz Orchestra was going to take a break. Krumich, who has run the jam session at the venerable…

On Tuesday, October 5, the Florida Press Club announced the winners of its annual Excellence in Journalism Awards. New Times and its writers won six awards in competition with other weekly newspapers throughout the state. The work of staff writer Jim DeFede topped two categories. DeFede earned a first place…

Evenings, when the sidewalks of South Beach become a pedestrian mall of boozing and buying, Michael Hernandez’s pitch might be mistaken for just another commodity among the burgeoning itinerant marketplace of flower vendors, parrot photographers, and craftspeople. But Hernandez’s merchandise is singular. And he’s unloading it for free. The 23-year-old…

Lisa Cox and Caroline Clone’s positions as Miami’s top lesbian club promoters make them two of the most well-known members of an increasingly visible community. Gay women’s prominence in the media, both nationally and locally, has raised public awareness of lesbianism and, in turn, has prompted in the lesbian community…

A Prelude Nineteen floors above the gum-stained sidewalks of downtown Miami, in a private room within the First Union Financial Center’s exclusive Miami Club, an assembly of South Florida’s most important but least known individuals gathered recently for their monthly luncheon. Between them they represented some 40 nations, and each…

With the City of Miami’s mayoral election less than a month away, the Miriam Alonso campaign has shifted into high gear. And no one can deny that Leonel Alonso, Miriam’s husband and chief advisor, has been hard at work plying his own unique form of public relations — all while…

After only a week in South Florida, Minh Nguyen was pretty much ready to pack it all in and move back to Washington, D.C. On September 20 a thief broke into his friend Darryl Strawser’s South Beach apartment and stole all of Nguyen’s belongings and nearly $5000 worth of camera…

The 1991 federal corruption indictment of Miami Beach Mayor Alex Daoud shocked many upon its release, if only for the scope of its charges.

Steve Showen kneels in the sand, lost in a trance. A youthful-looking man in his mid-40s, his shoulder-length blond hair tied in a bandanna, he tilts his head to the sky, looking at the full moon that gazes down on the 50 or so people gathered here on the beach…

In the three frantic weeks since German tourist Uwe-Wilhelm Rakebrand was gunned down on the Dolphin Expressway, America’s finest pack journalists have choked the airwaves with reports on our city’s crime epidemic. Connie Chung. Ted Koppel. David Brinkley. Even Oprah paid a visit. And where Oprah goes, Geraldo is sure…

When the Metro-Dade Police Department orders a car to be towed, the circumstances are likely to be unpleasant. The driver has been pulled over for a traffic violation, or he has been involved in an accident, or his car has been stolen, stripped, and abandoned. Metro-Dade police currently rely on…

Punching out an arrhythmic battery of beeps on his horn, Lu Castillo swings the well-worn white van off Biscayne Boulevard and into a paved parking area at Bicentennial Park. He stops the truck a short grassy stretch from the street, along the deep-water slip that leads to Biscayne Bay. A…

Imagine the subject of this article, a woman in her late fifties or early sixties, five feet ten inches tall, with long white hair that falls onto a page exactly like this one as she examines each sentence with an unforgiving eye. A red pen is poised, ready to strike…

More than ever in these waning days of Fidel Castro, the air between Miami and Cuba is electric with intrigue, upheaval, and the schemes of all types of would-be revolutionaries. There are the militarists, who would wage war against Communism. There are the politicians, who would bring democracy to the…

Not that anyone outwardly disliked the proprietor of the Americana Bookshop in Coral Gables. (No one we at New Times know of, anyway.) It’s just that Detrick, founder of the Miami River Yeti Watch and chairman of the West Zion Primitive Neo-Dionysian Church of Elvis Slim and Triumphant, was a…

Part 2: Miriam Alonso knows how to put votes together, but she can’t seem to separate dirty tricks from politics By Steven Almond Miriam Alonso wanted to make the point crystal clear: She was not responsible for the “Miriam Alonso for Mayor” banner that flew overhead during the recent burial…

A letter arrives in the mail, addressed to you, from something called the American AIDS Alert Association (AAAA). “Ref: Possible HIV Infection,” it says at the top, which makes you feel a bit short of breath. “We regret to inform you that someone who claims to have been intimate with…

In these last weeks, they all come to pay their respects to Mom: J.J. the Boxer, Tomato Man, Sapphire. If Alan the Crazy Towel Vendor hasn’t been by yet, it’s only because he’s still explaining to the authorities why he tried to visit the President of the United States with…