As Joe Wasilewski pulls on his wading boots, sprays some Deep Woods Off on his bare arms and neck, and begins to haul his supplies — spotlights, cloth sacks, a notebook, and scales and a ruler for taking measurements — down to the dock, he tries to explain the appeal…
The truth behind the misunderstood (and now sadly defunct) Marlins Relocation Search Committee The reviews are in, and they are uniformly positive: “A major league hoax!” — Boston Globe “A major league fish story!” — Associated Press “Yahoos at a weekly newspaper in Miami!” — San Diego Union-Tribune Well, almost…
It’s still early in David Dermer’s campaign for the Miami Beach City Commission. Plenty of flesh still to be pressed, luncheons to be attended, endorsements to be gathered, and issues to be advocated before the November election. For Dermer this is a different game entirely from the single-issue campaign he…
The predawn darkness of Opa-locka Airport teems with ghosts. This is the place where farm boys became fighter pilots in the face of Nazi menace, the site from which exiled Cubans flew out to reclaim their homeland from a bearded despot, and the departure point for covert arms shipments to…
Wayne Huizenga can’t seem to dispose of his baseball team — so New Times stepped up to the plate To the reporters gathered before him, Wayne Huizenga appeared to be not so much a billionaire sports mogul as a man shouldering an enormous burden. Head bowed, palms upturned in a…
Sara Fershko’s clearest memory from 1941 is that the most beautiful morning of her life as a young musician directly preceded a night so horrific she wanted to kill herself with cyanide. The 24-year-old Warsaw Philharmonic violinist and lyric soprano had embarked on a great adventure: The Russians had dispatched…
The name of the place — Stratogen Health — sounds like a high-tech diagnostic center, or maybe a medical consulting firm. Definitely streamlined and corporate. In reality, for the past five years the name was a front of sorts for something quite different: a pioneering HIV/AIDS treatment center, and the…
Hispanics make up some 50 percent of the population of Miami Beach. They currently make up zero percent of the city commission. But not for long. Though they lag behind as a percentage of registered voters — at roughly 35 percent — Hispanics will play a greater role in November’s…
When Nathaniel Williamson was four, he and his twin sister were left for good at the house his grandfather built, a pretty cottage in Perrine with red cement hearts embedded in a white stucco exterior. The reason is still a mystery to him. (“They say my mother had a problem…
Dark clouds loom over Opa-locka, auguring a summer squall that will soak the clothes hanging on the line in Ezequiel Torres’s back yard. But inside the house he shares with his girlfriend, it has already begun to thunder. Clad in plaid shorts and a T-shirt that reveal the rangy build…
It takes more than 27 felony counts to knock Humberto Hernandez out of politics. The former Miami city commissioner, who was removed from office by Governor Chiles last week after his federal indictment for bank fraud and money laundering, immediately went on Spanish-language radio to defend himself and to begin…
Do you love pot? Do you really love pot? Do you love pot so much that you think you just can’t get through the day without a joint or five or six? If you consistently wake-and-bake (and eat-and-bake, and watch-TV-and-bake), then Uncle Sam wants you. No, not to bust you…
On a full moon night preceding the longest day of summer, a casket came to be placed aboard the Alma B., an 85-foot cargo vessel berthed beside the Twelfth Avenue drawbridge on the Miami River. The planked afterdeck of the ship would normally have been crowded with sacks of potatoes,…
Moscow to T. Over.” Larry Turnbow, leader of the Miami chapter of the Guardian Angels, pulls a black walkie-talkie to his goateed lips. “T. Over.” “Yeah, you don’t have an extra beret in your car, do you? Over.” “No, my friend, I do not. Over.” “Okay. I forgot where I…
Miami Beach’s volunteer Art in Public Places committee will not be convening this week. The reason for cancellation of the scheduled meeting is simple to explain but difficult to understand. Simple part: The committee, a panel of experts charged by the Beach’s city commission with overseeing a program to purchase…
Little Debbie Cosmic Snacks: two boxes. Won ton wrappers: a couple of packages. Herbed Italian deli turkey breasts, jumbo bags of potato chips, marshmallows, cartons of nonfat half-and-half, lactose-reduced cottage cheese, gourmet white chocolate chips, refrigerated buttermilk biscuits, sugar cookie dough. All of it stacked in Sharon Diener’s blue plastic…
Nearly a year ago insurance mogul and multimillionaire Jose “Pepe” Alvarez became embroiled in a traffic dispute outside his Miami Beach manse. Things got a little out of hand, and before long he was reaching for his handgun. No one was hurt. Alvarez put away his weapon without firing it…
The Man and His Titles “This is the Order of Cordon Bleu. And that’s the Order of Signum Fidei — run by the Prince of Lippe-Biesterfeld. He is the brother or cousin of Prince Bernhard of the Netherlands. Prince Bernhard was the husband of Queen Juliana, who was a darling.”…
For fifteen years Laura Douglass and her mother made no effort to criminally prosecute the man they claim sexually assaulted Douglass repeatedly during her adolescence. But in 1995, when Douglass learned that Earl Wiggins, who is her uncle, had been hired by the Miami Police Department, she decided she could…
The report below, dated June 10, 1996, is known as a “Sexual Battery Screening Sheet.” It was written by Assistant State Attorney Margaret Bisignani. Information at the top of the report refers to the defendant (Ronald Major, born October 16, 1940; race: black; sex: male) and the victim (name deleted…
Dade County Public Schools Police Case No. B12537 School police Sgt. Harold McKinney received a delicate assignment from a school district administrator early one morning this past April. He was asked to assist in removing an assistant principal from the campus of Hialeah-Miami Lakes High School. Officers often dread calls…
The Dade County school police force’s 147 officers are expected to know when to haul lawbreakers to jail and how to defuse a schoolyard fight before it escalates into a riot. The officers also work as disciplinarians, counselors, and role models for Dade’s 341,000 students. Not only do their jobs…
