Garden of the Poets

It’s 10:00 on a Saturday night, and Yaron Yemini is live on the air with Ashraf, in Cairo, Egypt. The guy has been almost shouting for twenty minutes now, his Arabic accelerating to such a furious pace that it seems impossible the host will let him continue. But Yemini just…

Booted

Lucy Delgado’s American Dream is about to die. The petite, talkative mother of four, together with her husband, Ervin, moved to Miami from Managua, Nicaragua, in 1990. After two years of saving, the family bought a home — an $8000 trailer at Blue Lake Mobile Home Ranch on West Flagler…

Web Candy: StreetWorks and Style Soldiers

This week the New Times kicks off our gallery of graffiti and other street art from around the city, StreetWorks. Each week we’ll comb the area for new samples of urban art. View the first StreetWorks slideshow here…

Chaos on the Rickenbacker! Part Three

Well, it’s been about two weeks since the Great Rickenbacker Fiasco made landfall, and it shows no signs of letting up. Last week, the Bike Blog reported on a number – we still don’t know how many — of accidents on the Rickenbacker as a result of repaving that left…

Welcome to the Neighborhood, Pizzafiore!

Damn pizza thieves! In case you were wondering, the Midtown Miami welcome wagon is in business. And Pizzafiore, server of amazing Italian food and just one of many new fast-food joints that has popped up near the New Times offices, has received the first dose of reality that often comes…

Padilla Trial Gets Under Way With a Focus on History

Padilla Recently, the Herald bemoaned the many things the Padilla trial won’t be about. Indeed, the government has dropped from its indictments a good bit of the juicy stuff: gone are the dirty bombs, the meetings with top Al-Quaeda operatives, the attempted bombing of buildings in New York. But yesterday,…

Shaq and Shaunie Spray for a Good Cause

Shaquille O’Neal’s penchant for the law has reared its weird head once again. This time, Shaq and his wife Shaunie have put their names on a diamond-encrusted pepper spray canister. The auction is being organized by pepperface.com, an online boutique pepper spray distributor that is promoting the O’Neals’ entry as…

Amy and Rhett Dispense Green Advice with Common Sense

Sometimes, being environmentally conscious just seems so daunting. Where to start? Change the light bulbs, or risk a cockroach invasion by composting rotting table scraps in your humid Florida kitchen? Ride a bike and risk death on the Miami streets or buy a Prius?…

Booby Tube Trapper is Exonerated

This past March 8, Riptide reported on Miami Police Commander William Alvarez arresting a homeless man for loitering and prowling (“The Booby Tube Trap”). Alvarez apprehended Steven McLLain, who was walking across the Venetian Causeway with a discarded television. According to a police officer who requested anonymity, Alvarez allegedly lied…

Rickenbacker Bike Crashes Continue

Earlier this week, the Bike Blog spoke with several people who saw a phenomenal number of bicycle accidents on the Rickenbacker Causeway last weekend, as a result of repaving by the Miami-Dade Department of Public Works that left the bike lane uneven with the road. The Bike Blog took action:…

Happy Food Allergy Awareness Week

Did you know that ninety percent of all allergic reactions in the U.S. are caused by just eight foods (milk, eggs, wheat, soy, fish, shellfish, peanuts, and tree nuts such as walnuts, almonds, cashews, pistachios, pecans, etc.)? Neither did I. Nor did I realize that twelve million Americans, or one…

KRS One Brings a Posse to Studio A

Photo by Tovin Lapan It was a long night of hip hop at Studio A Wednesday. DJ Maneuvers and Wreckonize hosted the show which opened with local groups Famous, Major League, Artificial, Garcia and Mayday. The place was packed by the time KRS One made it on stage at 2:30…

Diaz Spanks Sarnoff

Sarnoff (left) and Diaz: Meeee-ow! This past May 7, Miami Mayor Manny Diaz pulled down Marc Sarnoff’s pants and spanked him silly. Via official memo distributed all over his district, Sarnoff had asked Diaz to veto the city commission’s approval of a proposed condo project near Vizcaya Museum and Gardens…

In Honor of Mr. Gold, We Hereby End His Career…

LA Weekly If you see this guy, feed him well Restaurant critic Jonathan Gold (LA Weekly, a sister publication of Miami New Times) recently became the first restaurant critic to ever get honored with a Pulitzer Prize. His newspaper, in honor of the well-deserved feat (Gold is one of the…

Let’s Talk Corruption

This morning Parrot Jungle was swarming with anti-corruption law enforcers and ethics watchdogs. Alas, they weren’t there to blow the lid off another public scandal involving Miami-Dade taxpayer money. In fact, no crimes were being committed at the publicly subsidized bird park. Parrot Jungle was hosting the Florida International University…

Reports of S & S Diners’ Demise Are Greatly Exaggerated

Critical Miami Hello! Still here! With deadline for Flapjack Flip-Off VII:Bananarama (coming soon!) rapidly approaching, I found myself frantically researching the subject matter at hand: Banana pancakes. As in, who the hell in Miami serves them? As it turns out, just about nobody, which is disturbing enough. But then I…

Hecho en Miami

Juan Penton stands amid the debris of his ruined shop, seething with anger. Hunks of ceiling are strewn about the floor, deck chairs lie turned on end, and piles of furniture rot in the corners. The air reeks of mold, and the dust has grown so thick that Penton’s feet…

Park and Politics

There are two protagonists in Rolando Llanes’ soon-to-be released documentary, White Elephant: There’s the man, Jose Aleman Jr., and his venue, Miami Stadium. Both spent 51 years on this Earth. Both were once handsome displays of wealth. Both are associated with some of the biggest players of the Twentieth Century…

Iron Boy

Iron Boy Filed Under: Flotsam In the early Twentieth Century, a slender Shaolin master named Gu Yee Cheung dazzled audiences in Guanzhou, China, by stacking sixteen bricks, without spacers, and shattering them with a flick of his Iron Palm. Today Gus Rubio, who runs an expansive Kung Fu studio on…

As Jury is Selected for Padilla, Race Matters

Osama’s thug? The trial of Jose Padilla is off and crawling: yesterday, after three weeks of legal wrangling (the whole process usually takes a day), lawyers from both sides sat down and agreed on a jury. It took them a while to do that, as well. The rules were as…