Xavier Suarez’s first incarnation as Miami mayor didn’t go that well. The Harvard-educated lawyer came into office in 1985 with a host of proposals and a promise to control the city commission’s notoriously circuslike meetings. But he neglected to bring along the ability (or perhaps the willingness) to patch together…
Melanie Morningstar arrived in Tegucigalpa, Honduras, one Saturday afternoon this past September toting a backpack full of books and speaking the fractured Spanish one might expect from a blond gringa tourist. Little did the clerk checking her into the Honduras Maya Hotel imagine that the slightly ditsy visitor from Miami…
Info: Coming of Age on the 50-Yard Line Most of the boys who play in Gwen Cherry Park’s pop warner football program live in the Scott Projects, but they do their growing up on the gridiron By Robert Andrew Powell What politics is to the Cuban community, football is to…
James and Emma Somerset say they were just trying to help their son and his girlfriend escape the dangers of Liberty City and begin a new life in Columbus, Ohio. Their August excursion to Miami to pick up the girlfriend and her children began as an errand of mercy, but…
Miami Beach’s South Pointe neighborhood, the area below Fifth Street, has really taken off. The Portofino group of companies headed by German bad boy Thomas Kramer is fulfilling its vision of towering condominium projects lining some of the most pricey waterfront real estate in Florida. Renowned architect Helmut Jahn has…
In the darkness the warehouses along Opa-locka Boulevard all look alike. Flat, one-story boxes strung in a line, they offer no welcoming fluorescent signs, no explanatory billboards. Rarely are people seen on the sidewalk. Parking lots stretch out like vast asphalt plains. But six nights a week interior lights illuminate…
As laundromats go, My Dream Coin Laundry is spectacular. Row after row of shiny front-loading washing machines hum along to reggae tunes on the sound system. The white tile floor is spotless; dryers along the walls work for free. Men and women fold clothes in air-conditioned comfort while kids skip…
Three weeks after withdrawing his name from consideration for the job of Miami Beach Police Department public information officer, Jack Sullivan still feels betrayed. When he first submitted his application for the newly civilianized post in September, he knew he was walking into something of a war zone: Relations between…
The morning light draws glistening stripes along the metal gates that open into Manolo Garcia’s South Dade stable and feed store. The aroma of grain and seed sweetens the air as a laborer emerges from the door of a storage building wheeling a dolly laden with two 50-pound bags of…
At a little after 8:00 a.m. on Sunday, September 7, more than half a dozen City of Miami police cars are parked in front of an abandoned building on a quiet corner in Overtown. Boxed in by a Florida Power & Light substation, the structure at 470 NW Eleventh St…
Five years ago Ivonne Lamazares decided to learn how to ride a bicycle. As a girl growing up in Cuba, she didn’t have a bike, and the couple of times she’d had a chance to ride didn’t go well. “I’ve felt inadequate about physical things all my life,” she says…
A product of three generations of northern Italian restaurateurs, Maurizio Farinelli came to the United States in 1989 with the dream of opening his own eatery. First he toiled as a busboy to raise enough money for English classes. Having learned the language, he worked his way up through the…
Humberto Hernandez is A) a former attorney for the City of Miami fired in 1994 by his boss for allegedly conducting outside legal work on city time. B) an attorney who the Florida Bar determined should have his license suspended following charges that he violated Bar regulations by soliciting family…
In recent days French and Canadian warships have begun conducting hostile maneuvers in the Bay of Fundy in support of the fledgling secession movement in northern Maine. Meanwhile, talk of statehood for Los Angeles once again dominates the California political debate. Though these developments might lead one to expect a…
February 27, 1968, was Carnival Tuesday in Trinidad, and 22-year-old Claude Clement was rushing to join a band of masqueraders gathered in downtown Port of Spain. Led by a group of parading steel pan players, Clement and the other revelers danced. They jumped. They gyrated. Just as they reached Charlotte…
For such a tiny theater, the Calusa Playhouse boasts a long history. The 100-seat former coconut plantation dormitory, erected in 1917, is the second-oldest structure on Key Biscayne, after the Cape Florida Lighthouse. It has seen incarnations as a church, a hurricane shelter, and a school. For the past four…
It is unlikely that Simpson v. the City of Miami will turn into the trial of the century. Yet in the same way O.J. Simpson’s case helped place the issue of domestic violence before the public, so a recent court decision on behalf of another Simpson could change the way…
The 1997 Hialeah mayoral race is already moving along at a brisk clip by this Saturday morning in mid-October, but everyone knows the ride’s going to get a lot rougher very soon. This is a landmark election in Hialeah, and in Dade County too, although right now the scene at…
The savvy politicos’ approach to next Tuesday’s Miami Beach elections has been relatively simple: Position yourself as a staunch advocate of “controlled growth” and tar your opponent — by any means necessary — with the Portofino brush. With the passage in June of a charter amendment calling for a citywide…
The windows of Shelby and Ira’s Tavern are painted black to thwart snoops. Inside, the jukebox is the bar’s prime source of light. Five bikers clad in sweaty leather stare mesmerized at the lava-lampish orange blobs drifting through the machine’s bright-pink and gold tubing. An empty stage swathed in inky…
Last month the City of Miami’s Nuisance Abatement Board declared the dingy pink Stardust Motel at 6730 Biscayne Blvd. a public nuisance and shut it down until February 1998. The fraying, funky motel, like many others on the boulevard, has been closed by the NAB in the past, always because…
New Times has won eight awards in the Florida Press Club’s annual Excellence in Journalism contest. Competing against daily newspapers and alternative weeklies with circulations of more than 75,000, the paper took honors in seven categories. Among them: *For Excellence in Environmental News Writing, a package of stories by former…
