Two years after the attacks on America, the public still doesn’t know the truth about terror ringleader Mohamed Atta’s entry into the country. It was illegal. Immigration agents shouldn’t have admitted the Egyptian national at Miami International Airport on January 10, 2001. Records show he was allowed to enter as…
With all the high-rise condos going up downtown, from NW 36th Street to the southern end of Brickell Avenue, one has to wonder: What stunt is Miami trying to pull? This one: Entice at least 40,000 people to move downtown over the next two to four years and then rely…
Recently it’s been a rough ride for Miami’s street racers. A string of bad accidents resulted in eight deaths since 2001 in Miami-Dade and Broward. That, in turn, led to a new state law that makes drag racing a crime; in fact just watching a race is now illegal. The…
Maybe nightclub promoter Tommy Pooch should have stuck with the pizza business, having once owned three successful pizzerias in Miami and Miami Beach. But who wants to knead dough when you’re one of the major players in South Beach clubland, when your parties regularly pop up on E! the Entertainment…
For those frustrated with the chronic dysfunction of our school district, television images this past April offered a tantalizing promise of change. Newscasts showed federal agents leaving the United Teachers of Dade headquarters with boxes of financial records. Then in July agents descended on one of the homes kept by…
A majority of Miami Beach residents, the city manager, a former mayor, and business owners and the commuters they employ all want to pursue an ambitious proposal to bring mass transit to the Beach. The plan calls for a modern electric trolley that would run on tracks, draw power from…
Eloy Gutierrez-Menoyo stunned his fellow Cuban exiles three weeks ago with an audacious maneuver in the quest for democracy on the island. He traveled from Miami to Havana for a vacation, then announced he was staying permanently and demanded permission from the Cuban government to open an office for his…
After a long week spent fretting over possible blowback from the August 15 Ecstasy raid at Space 34, downtown Miami’s megaclub, we’re happy to report that all is well. For the throngs of moneyed club kids doing their part to transform the city’s dingy urban core, the party continues unabated…
The Bass Museum of Art, Miami Beach’s premiere visual-arts institution, lost three full-time employees last week, a serious blow to an ailing organization. Says museum director Diane Camber: “We only have about eighteen full-time employees, so other staff people will have to pick up the slack.” The personnel cuts are…
The water is flat and calm behind Pipin Ferreras’s home in North Bay Village as we load snorkeling gear into his boat, Olokun III. But by the time the 30-foot craft shoots out of Government Cut into the Atlantic, heavy swells roll the hull, forcing us to run parallel to…
Michael Wohl was in Las Vegas when Reuben La Brado called with the bad news. The owners of a piece of prime real estate the Miami developer wanted to buy had just voted to go with another offer. And not just any offer, but one tendered by a rival developer…
It all begins with a touch on the forearm — two fingers gently reminding me that I’m not alone tonight. Electricity shoots up my spine. She is a short, plump woman inching into her thirties. Her belly pushes out from beneath her red halter top. Chubby legs fill her skin-tight…
On Friday, August 1, Everglades National Park administrators were gearing up for a big meeting to be held the next week. This was an annual event involving the top brass — a brainstorming, looking-ahead session, a sort of “State of the Park” conference. But given the national park’s precarious financial…
Former Miami-Dade teachers union boss Pat Tornillo is up to his python-print pajama tops in a federal investigation into his alleged misuse of union funds, including lavish spending on travel, hotels, and personal items — this despite his hefty $243,000 annual salary, a rent-free residence, and other perks generously provided…
In early January employees of the Miami-Dade State Attorney’s Office found a plain white envelope in their mailboxes. No return address. Inside was something that looked like a newsletter, amateurishly produced and printed on both sides of a single sheet of paper. It bore the name SAO underground. Employees immediately…
A year after 1999’s boisterous World Trade Organization talks in Seattle, where protesters surprised police with their numbers and violence that cost millions in property damage, the Republican Party held its national convention in Philadelphia. Many of the same protesters who took to the streets in Seattle arrived in the…
For the first time on a shoot, documentary filmmaker Frances Negron-Muntaner is afraid. Hundreds of bodies surge against her lean, five-foot two-inch frame at the front gate of what used to be, until earlier that day, Camp Garcia, a U.S. Navy bombing range southeast of Puerto Rico on the little…
Struggling local arts groups started snapping like hungry hyenas last month when they learned the grants they expected to receive from Miami Beach were slated to be cut by $1000 each. Their hackles were raised even higher when they discovered the money would be going to Judy Drucker. Drucker, who…
I was surprised to learn last week that Ed Guevara, head of the newly formed Transportation Security Administration at Miami International Airport, announced his resignation after one year on the job. He and I had a date. Guevara was scheduled to provide me with proof that his previous employer, the…
Ralph Bellman remembers the day he ran into Florida’s future: September 15, 1969. In a way, it was the day he ran into his own future. Bellman is 57 years old now, with a thick horse’s mane of gray-streaked black hair that reaches his shoulders in the back. Okay, it’s…
What if a bagman from a billboard company met with certain City of Miami officials and offered them $350,000 to make a big problem go away? That would be bad, right? Well, two weeks ago city manager Joe Arriola and city attorney Alex Vilarello asked Miami’s five commissioners to do…
In 1999, when the Miami Herald Publishing Company launched the free weekly they called Street Miami, it was promoted as an “entertainment and lifestyle weekly” that promised no long, boring investigative articles. (Unlike some free weeklies in town.) Instead it would concentrate on pop culture and music — but with…
