A week before Christmas, as Peter Dolara, a senior vice president for American Airlines, was hosting a party for friends and business associates at his Coral Gables home, a parking valet pulled him aside. There was a man outside asking a lot of questions and offering money for information about…
The denizens of a vacant lot in Overtown, as is their style, pulled up an old couch and a few milk crates, popped open some cold ones, and warmed their chilling digits over a fire that smoldered in a soot-stained trash barrel. Timothy Young of the Miami Police Department, as…
Mighty Mighty Bosstones vocalist Dicky Barrett has just one thing to say to all those music critics who once wrote off his Boston-based ska-punk band as a novelty act destined for obscurity: “Thank you.” Huh? “Seriously. I always felt it was a good thing when we got that kind of…
In the spring of 1968, just after the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr., photographer Jill Freedman hit the freedom trail with King’s Poor People’s Campaign, marching from New York City to a plywood lean-to on the mall in Washington, D.C., chanting “No More Hunger” and “Give Peace a Chance”…
Four years have passed since Laura Russell, an off-duty Metro-Dade police officer, shot and killed Andrew Morello while the sixteen-year-old and his friends were trying to steal stereo speakers from a Jeep Cherokee belonging to Russell’s neighbors. Russell claimed she shot the teen in self-defense as Morello was about to…
Back in the late Eighties, when Miami’s Brickell Avenue corridor hadn’t yet hit its stride as an eating, drinking, and entertainment destination, Firehouse Four was a hot spot. With beaucoups ferny furnishings, an unrivaled free happy hour spread, live jazz tunes, and a genuine brass fire pole (a holdover from…
For refugees seeking political asylum in the United States, a bureaucratic event called the “individual merits asylum hearing” is a defining moment. At the hearing refugees are invited to appear in small, sparsely furnished courtrooms located in one of downtown Miami’s federal buildings and to recount, under oath, tales of…
Heidi Mason will try to tell you she isn’t a morning person. Don’t believe her. The sun has yet to rise on a cold and rainy Saturday morning in late December when the freckle-faced, long-blond-haired, wholesome-looking seventeen-year-old and her father Don arrive at the Crandon Park Marina on Key Biscayne…
Just another audition: On a Sunday afternoon Omar Caraballo shows up at a windowless North Miami warehouse to read for a part in a potential TV series called 2-100 Ocean Drive. Like a few other actors who have arrived before him, he finds a place to wait and reads through…
Victor Van Gilst appeared in Dade County Court this past November 30 to answer charges of disorderly conduct and obstructing an emergency vehicle. But he never actually had to answer; the arresting officer got the case thrown out for him. Last October, Van Gilst, a native of the Netherlands who…
On a warm Monday afternoon, the members of Miami’s alternative rock foursome Muse are packing up for a road trip. They’re bringing along more than their music equipment and a few changes of clothing, though. After all, their upcoming trek isn’t just a two-week shuffle across the national nightclub circuit:…
At four o’clock in the morning, County Commissioner Bruce Kaplan looked beat. He got up to stretch his legs and walked along the makeshift dais set up in the gymnasium at Southridge High School in Cutler Ridge. As he passed his commission colleagues, he tapped several of them on the…
It takes two staffers to carry the table into the back room of Books & Books. Though it’s the same spindly-legged piece of wood at which scores of other writers have sat and autographed copies of their books, owner Mitchell Kaplan carefully inspects the location, which today is of crucial…
The Salvation Army building just north of Homestead still sports a “For Sale” sign, but the place is as good as sold. The warehouse, which served as the nerve center for crews rebuilding homes damaged by Hurricane Andrew, is shut down. The 26 pastel-painted cabins, which only months ago provided…
It’s a beautiful word to say, capsaicin. A beautiful thing, too, the oil in hot peppers that makes them hot. Say it: cap-say-ih-sin. Cures arthritis, gives life to an impossibly scrumptious seafood soup, makes the world go round. Or, actually, the world going round makes the capsaicin: dirt, water, air,…
Mount Trashmore looms fifteen stories over a mangrove marsh to form the highest point of land in the flattest place on Earth.
Essential Hot Sauce 1 jar or bottle (re-use store-bought sauce bottles) 1 jarful water 1/2 jarful distilled white vinegar A bunch of fresh hot peppers (any variety, as long as they’re hot) Boil water and pour into jar. Let it sit there while you boil vinegar, and mince, chop, and…
Deadly chemicals leaking from South Florida’s sewage system have spawned mysterious, meat-eating “biological freaks” that have attacked visitors to the Everglades and wrought harrowing destruction on property and wildlife. But in an apparent attempt to avert widespread panic at the height of the tourist season, government and tourism officials are…
The nature lovers were out in force, as were others who have made the environment their business. More than 150 environmental activists, scientists, regulators, engineers, lawyers, and consultants packed the conference rooms and corridors of a hotel in Broward County. Like moths to a light bulb, they came from all…
Times are tough over at One Herald Plaza, home to both the Miami Herald and its corporate parent, Knight-Ridder, Inc. A sense of gloom pervades the Bunker on the Bay, as the obsession to increase profits has led to layoffs and an unprecedented exodus of some of the paper’s best…
Inside 40 was a spoof of purported New Year’s resolutions of local personages and consisted predominantly of graphics. The text is not meaningful without the visuals. See actual issue…
It’s good to manage the City of Miami. The pay, for one thing, is topnotch at $117,000 per year. The benefits are also stellar, including a splendid pension and a brand-new, top-of-the-line Jeep Cherokee with leather interior. Free gas. Free insurance. A generous expense account. There’s even the occasional trip…
