On December 14, Sofia Mauri and her husband let their dog out into the fenced backyard of their Coconut Grove home. By the time they realized a side gate had accidentally been left open, Milo was gone.
This was the year when Miami politics went full drunken circus. Donald Trump repeatedly gave prime seats to a notorious former Miami cult member who once stood trial for murder. His top adviser had a secret South Florida history tied to drug dealers and mystery apartments. And Marco Rubio continued to be a spineless embarrassment.
The best journalism gets results, and in 2017, Miami New Times staff raised serious hell and changed the city for the better.
Life in 2017 means grappling with the knowledge that manmade climate change is, at most, a few decades away from flooding Miami. Wedged between a threatened Everglades and a warming Atlantic Ocean and jeopardized by rising seas, salty water tables, and strengthening hurricanes, the Magic City is at the center of environmental news that’s impossible to ignore.
To walk along Ocean Drive is to be transported into an alternate reality. There are street brawls, $80 margarita “specials,” and some of the most beautiful art deco buildings in Florida. If you are lucky, you will see pet monkeys wearing jean shorts, shots served for breakfast, and bikini-clad women twerking atop Lamborghinis.
Last year, Miami Beach began working on a new dock at Purdy Avenue and tested an expanded water taxi service that took riders to downtown Miami and the Miami Beach Marina. Commissioners hoped offering more transportation options on water might help ease persistently maddening traffic problems on land.
This year was a hell of a lot better than 2016. Alabama Democrat Doug Jones overcame a child molester to win a spot in the U.S. Senate. Harvey Weinstein and his misogynist colleagues from Hollywood to Miami are on the run. The stock market is surging. And the new Star…
The Miami Dolphins have officially been eliminated from the NFL playoffs — Merry Christmas! You’ve already known for weeks what the Dolphins were going to get you, though. They aren’t very good at surprises. One of the least likable, most useless, totally unmemorable Dolphins teams will mercifully be laid to rest…
Ever since Republican Miami Rep. Carlos Curbelo voted this year for the so-called “Tax Cuts and Jobs Act,” the much-maligned tax overhaul that cuts taxes for the country’s wealthiest people while doing relatively squat for the poor (and undermining the Affordable Care Act), he has repeatedly called the bill a…
Besiki Luka Kutateladze couldn’t believe the statistics: Between 2015 and 2016, the Miami-Dade Police Department — the country’s eighth-largest force — reported just one hate crime. Kutateladze’s interest in the numbers was both professional and personal. For years, he has led research on criminal justice issues. But he and his husband were considering moving from New York to Miami, and just months removed from the Pulse shootings, they wanted to know that they and their four young children would be accepted.
Despite his laundry list of complaints and lawsuits from civilians, City of Miami Police union vice president Javier Ortiz received a big promotion at the department in October, getting a bump from lieutenant to captain.
Miami Beach Commissioner Kristen Rosen Gonzalez, who is running for U.S. Congress, sent the Miami Beach Police chief a flurry emails demanding a major donor to her campaign not be arrested for an alleged spree of machete destruction, according to text messages and emails New Times obtained this week.
The GOP tax bill passed today! And it repeals the “individual mandate” written into the Affordable Care Act, AKA the Obamacare provision that mandated that all people buy health insurance. Though Obamacare was far from a perfect program, the mandate repeal that’s sneakily included in the draconian, monstrous “Tax Cuts and Jobs Act” today is expected to destabilize all sorts of insurance markets and ultimately force millions of people off of their health plans.
It was early morning in the Florida Capitol, and Sen. Jack Latvala — among the most powerful men in the Senate — was furious. He wanted doughnuts, and there were no doughnuts to be found. He was so angry he berated a junior staffer for the Senate majority leader, who then called in Rachel Perrin Rogers, a high-ranking aide.
It’s been a tough year for fans of South Florida sports teams. From Dwyane Wade taking his talents to Cleveland, to the Marlins selling off everything of value, to the Dolphins’ season doomed from the get-go after they lost Ryan Tannehill before training camp even began, it’s been a rough 12 months. If not for the resurgent Miami Hurricanes, this year would have been a total loss.
You would be forgiven if you assumed New Times was a staunchly anti-mosquito news outlet, what with all the stories its reporters have written about battling tropical diseases such as Zika, chikungunya, and dengue. But as of today, New Times is now ardently pro-mosquito: According to Yale researchers, a group of Aedes aegypti mosquitoes somehow migrated all the way to Washington, D.C., and has been biting residents “near Capitol Hill” for the past six years.
In the early-morning hours of December 7, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials in Louisiana woke up 92 Somali detainees and shackled them by their wrists, waists, and ankles. The Somalis were then loaded onto a chartered airplane that was supposed to return them to Somalia. But then, for reasons the government has not yet explained, the plane landed in Dakar, Senegal. It sat on the ground for 23 hours and then headed back to the United States, landing in Miami.
The concept of Christmas is strange in Miami. Children are fed baffling images of a heavily clothed, bearded man pulling large deer-like creatures through some sort of white substance on the ground while listening to hours of music celebrating mysterious concepts such as “cold weather” and “fireplaces.”
From long-lost cocaine lords found hiding in Orlando to steroid-slinging gym owners to a truly Satanic plot to robocall millions of phones with spam messages, 2017 ended up as a 1. FCC Fines Miami Man $120 Million for Making 96 Million Robocalls in Three Months Yesterday the Federal Communications Commission…
For the better part of a year, a group of more than 50 residents in the Glenvar Heights area of Miami-Dade County say they’ve been trapped living next to off-campus dormitories and frat houses illegally housing trash-spewing, beer-chugging University of Miami students. As New Times reported last week, the predicament in which these residents find themselves bears an extremely striking resemblance to the 2014 Seth Rogen comedy Neighbors.
For the umpteenth time in recent years, a Miami-area officer has been cited for mishandling a domestic dispute and endangering a woman who asked police for protection from stalking and harassment.
Last week, a Georgia inmate sued Florida Department of Corrections officials for permanently damaging his stomach and intestines. For about a month during the summer of 2016, Peach State native Marc Caesar worked at a car wash in Doral as part of a work-release program.
