Wendell Banks slithers along a narrow passage between cars before bursting into the open with as much pseudo-official bravado as his tattered clothing will allow. He wants to look authoritative as he quick-steps across the municipal parking lot at the corner of S.W. First Street and S.W. Second Avenue. When…
Mitch is strutting around, fists clenched above his head, completely in love with himself. “I’m bad,” howls the off-duty postal worker. “I live on Baaaaaad Street. I live all the way down at the end of that street past all the other houses, I’m so bad. There aren’t no other…
Miami is teeming with successful, hard-working businesspeople whose establishments are integral threads in the fabric of our daily lives. Yet at times it seems that unless they throw a decadent, $700,000 coming-out party, nobody pays them any mind. We pass their fiefdoms every day on the way to work, eat…
Anyone interested in a little conversation and a free cup of coffee can find both by strolling through South Pointe Park at the tip of Miami Beach. Here in the picnic area east of the band shell, the grass clings to the sandy earth along Government Cut, the ragged leaves…
There are no truckloads of soldiers. The staggering poverty isn’t here A the ubiquitous beggars and desperation beneath a backdrop of denuded mountains A nor must anyone live with kä sote (the Creole expression for a pervasive climate of fear). Nevertheless, Little Haiti is a strikingly faithful clone of Big…
Until recently Anthony Guadioso and his attorney, Peter Ticktin, were eager to talk about the man they say infected Guadioso with the AIDS virus. Eager to provide copies of a lawsuit outlining their charges, to speak with the press, to name the accused man, to employ provocative rhetoric in contending…
The package arrived with no return address. George and Helen Clarke found inside it a catalogue from Sotheby’s, the fancy New York auction house. Attached was an unsigned note that read, simply, “We suspect the items catalogued #229 will be of interest to you.” The Clarkes thumbed through the glossy…
So you’re one of those pessimists who say the triumphant era of American business has faded. That the great Yankee entrepreneurial spirit, which once burned so brightly, is now barely flickering. Well, take heart. And take a seat at the bar. And buy a round for Steven Kaplan and Steven…
By all accounts, Joaquin Avi*o and Rick Elder never worked well together. The county manager had always resented the way Elder, as Dade County aviation director, insisted on working outside the normal chain of command. Avi*o didn’t mind a certain degree of independence among his key employees, but he was…
What a marvelous spectacle it must have been. A concourse filled with several hundred county bureaucrats, tipsy airline executives, and scotch-swilling local politicians, all rubbing elbows with a select group of well-scrubbed, strapping young men. The date: December 28, 1988. The place: Miami International Airport. The occasion: A party for…
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…
