The little green wooden cottage near Biscayne Bay survived thrashings from the mighty hurricanes of 1926, 1935, and 1992. But starting in fall 1997, human forces accomplished what the storms could not: A construction crew up and moved the one-story, pitch-roofed bungalow a few hundred feet to a new resting…
“Come around eleven o’clock. It starts gettin’ thick ‘n’ chunky around then,” Bo the Lover growls into his cell phone. Bo, a.k.a. Brindley Marshall, has promptly returned a page. It’s Friday night and the caller is inquiring about a hip-hop dance party that Marshall’s Pure Funk DJs are throwing at…
It was just a few weeks ago that the Clinton administration nominated a new chairman for the board that oversees Radio Marti. The president also announced increased efforts to make the shortwave U.S. government station more widely heard. But the news is not all good. New Times has obtained a…
Not so long ago the international rock star Marilyn Manson played local dives such as the now-defunct Plus Five in Davie. Launched in 1990 as Marilyn Manson and the Spooky Kids, the band evolved from an obscure novelty act with adolescent stage names to a wildly popular novelty act with…
Saturday nights usually start off low-key at the Elks Lodge on SW Eleventh Avenue in Homestead; members check in a few at a time at the front door, then find seats at cloth-covered tables in the cavernous banquet room. A disc jockey spins soul selections from the Seventies and Eighties,…
Eunice Liberty is describing her recent police-assisted move to a nursing home: “They came and picked me up like a piece of lumber and threw me in the van. They tied me up like a young girl. Now do I look like I could run away?” It is not the…
Ronald Hayes likes to refer to it as “my third war.” There was World War II, Korea, and now there’s Miami Beach’s North Shore Open Space Park. Tall, thin, and slightly stooped, Hayes strides along a paved park trail that winds through sea grapes and pines toward the beachfront dunes…
Despite the trophies mounted on the wall nearby, Juana Moraes is bemoaning the one that got away. “This man came in and he grabbed one of the double dildos, the big ones, and he ran out like he saw the devil,” recalls Moraes, assistant manager of South Beach’s Pleasure Emporium…
Monday. A work day. Sonya is up at 6:00 as usual, strolling toward the pool. Her toes curl on a cool, pebbly patio as she strips down to a black bikini. Her belly is flat and the cut of her swimsuit shows off her youthful legs. The single mother swims…
On August 23, 1992, the day after Hurricane Andrew decimated parts of South Florida, Robert Hammel arrived at Matheson Hammock County Marina, where he works as a park attendant. He found twisted metal piers and 40-foot boats marooned in parking lots more than 100 feet from the shore. Some craft…
Alan Diaz is a senior at Florida International University. He has served as the editor of the college newspaper, and he was our most recent editorial intern. He’s also one of the nicest people you’ll ever meet. He turned 21 years old this past November, which made him old enough…
The Delano’s Beach Village is fabulous. The cluster of structures — the yellow-and-white wood-slat lighthouse, the shade and massage tents, the cabanas — offer spa services, food, and towels to a hyperhip clientele. This extension of the hotel’s magic to the water’s edge has garnered universal acclaim from national and…
In some Miami neighborhoods, Pop Warner football is a community rallying point. Weekend games for kids age eight to fifteen draw thousands of spectators. Families gather to barbecue chicken and watch with passionate interest as tiny players wobble down the field in oversize helmets. The events are “therapy,” says one…
For the football players at Jackson High School, the game was a ticket to the state championship. For the thousands of Generals fans dancing in the Orange Bowl, it was bragging rights over their arch rivals, Northwestern, for the first time in twelve long years. For athletic director Jake Caldwell,…
As Okeechobee Road winds north through the city of Hialeah it offers a hectic panorama: neon hotels, boxy stucco houses, car repair shops, and cavernous discount stores. But just a bit further on, past Hialeah Gardens toward the Broward County line, the landscape suddenly calms. The sky grows wide and…
In early 1998 the United States Attorney’s Office in Miami announced it would more than double the size of its anticorruption unit, from six to twelve attorneys. Just in time, too. Federal and state prosecutors have been busy over the last twelve months following trails of money in the form…
The first edition of a new Miami magazine hit the streets in December. Literally. Homeless people are selling the monthly publication, called StreetSmarts, and pocketing 60 cents on the dollar price. The cover features a derelict Santa with a cigarette dangling from his mouth; inside are articles about poverty and…
Sometimes murderers turn out to be the nicest guys. Or those accused of murder, anyway. Really. And you know what? Carjackers, armed traffickers, and stickup men aren’t as bad as I expected, either. Especially up close. And I should know. I spent last season locked up in the Miami-Dade County…
On April 7 Ralph Devito finished a nighttime game of racquetball at a University of Miami gym. On the way to his car he clutched his chest, made a gurgling noise, and fell to the ground. Someone frantically called 911. An emergency dispatcher called Coral Gables medics, the city’s police…
The meeting had been raucous. Tempers flared. Many participants clutched placards. Tears were shed. Activists and residents painted the issues as starkly as possible. One side argued that nothing less than the multi-billion dollar restoration of the Everglades was at risk, along with South Florida’s future water supply. Others asserted…
To get from downtown Miami to the federal detention camp officially known as the Krome Service Processing Center, one must drive west to where the Tamiami Trail meets the Everglades. The road parallels the C-4 canal, where the scaly back of an alligator occasionally pokes through the water or a…
Tonight’s waning half-moon doesn’t soften the darkness enveloping the warehouses and abandoned factories in Allapattah’s produce district. This darkness is a flat ambient gloom that settles over moldering industrial areas where streetlights are burned out or dismantled by crack addicts in search of metal parts to use or sell. The…
