It takes about an hour to walk to Carmen’s apartment from Havana’s Vedado neighborhood, where I’d been searching for secondhand books about the idealized, revolutionary Cuba. As usual I had lingered longer than anticipated and would probably be late for dinner. The darkness began to catch up to me somewhere…
More than four months have passed since the Dade State Attorney’s Office began an investigation to determine whether certain county commissioners violated Florida’s Sunshine Law by meeting secretly to discuss — and presumably to influence — the selection of a new county manager last December. Violation of the law, one…
With the destruction of the federal building in Oklahoma City, public-service employees everywhere have become a bit jittery at the mention of bombs. So when a suspicious-looking box was left outside the Metro-Dade Justice Building one morning last month, a predictable chain reaction of confusion was unleashed. Anxious occupants (including…
It’s boom time for Brickell Avenue condos. After several lean years, occupancy is up. The volatile population of foreign owners that ebbed and flowed with the South American economy is being replaced by a stable corps of young Miami families who like to live in a secure luxury home close…
When you’re standing on the South Beach sand amid the sounds of the tumbling surf and frolicking tourists and the cacophonous blend of music wafting from the bars along Ocean Drive, it’s easy to forget that two and a half years ago a not-so-little storm blew into Dade County and…
In the world of UFOs, there’s no such thing as a claim so wild or crazy that no one believes it. Because mainstream science has — at least for public consumption — rejected the notion that flying saucers abduct people for experiments or that we’ve been visited by UFOs, the…
“You’re a genius!” the voice boomed over John Callahan’s telephone as soon as the Portland, Oregon, cartoonist answered it. “And you’ve just been hired by the Miami Herald!” That was six years ago, when then-Tropic editor Gene Weingarten was calling with the news that Callahan would begin running each week…
In a rare second chance, the judge who defined the rights of Miami’s homeless community was given an opportunity to do it again. So he did. Last month U.S. District Judge C. Clyde Atkins reaffirmed Pottinger, his landmark 1992 ruling that prevented City of Miami police officers from arresting homeless…
Surfside police officers who say they were told to downplay criminal activity in the seaside town appear to be backed up by at least two incidents. The allegations, which were made anonymously by the patrolmen, were outlined in last week’s New Times in a story entitled “Wipeout!” Among them were…
B.B. was fourteen and Tito nineteen when they were shot on the road west of the Bargain Town flea market just outside Homestead. The youths were part of a group that confronted two young men, their wives, and their children leaving the bazaar on a sunny December afternoon in 1993…
They are all adherents here in this small park in Kendall, getting ready for the spaceships that may arrive soon. There are seven people, mostly middle-age Hispanic women, standing in a semicircle under a tree, eyes closed and holding hands, listening to Estela Ardila, a short, dark-haired woman who claims…
A group of Surfside police officers say they have been ordered to alter police reports, destroy evidence, downplay violent incidents, and, in some cases, to overlook criminal activity — all in an effort to maintain the town’s image as a peaceful hamlet by the sea. “They don’t want a police…
This past Wednesday, as the devastating Oklahoma City bomb blast sent the nation’s news media into a tizzy, the Miami Herald’s management was frantically conferring about a calamity far closer to home. Hands were wrung, teeth were gnashed. Fingers were pointed. It was an event that Tom Shroder, executive editor…
He’s tried that several times before, of course, and it hasn’t stuck. Tonight, though, will be different. Tonight will be the end of the bad and the beginning of the good. “Your last memory must be your most beautiful,” he murmurs, his decorum flawless despite the tortured symptoms of withdrawal…
Reporters love stories about bad cops. Cops on the take. Cops on the make. Cops who beat up civilians and then lie about it. Because cops are supposed to protect us from evil, not succumb to it, a bad cop story packs a heavy payload of irony. And because reporters…
Meet Roy Young, the patron saint of anyone who has ever turned down a job and lived to regret it. “Every night before I go to bed, I go into my bathroom and hit my head against the wall ten times,” sighs the congenial midfiftyish Englishman with the sand-colored beard…
Steve Clark never really wanted to stop being mayor of Dade County. Though the post was largely ceremonial, Clark relished the kingly role, whether it was a photo op with retiring employees, or a ribbon cutting for a new community center, or a closed-door meeting with Dade’s most influential power…
Rock stars do the darnedest things After nearly four decades in the music business, much of it at the upper levels of the rock and roll stratosphere, Roy Young has met, toured, recorded, or partied with just about every British rock star of consequence, and quite a few important American…
Scant empirical documentation remains of the February 27 brawl between police and students at Coral Gables High School. The blood that spilled on the ground from the forehead of Ofcr. Peter Cuervo has since dried and washed away. Cuervo’s injury, which required eight stitches, has nearly healed, as have the…
A local physician who stands accused of molesting patients under his care has agreed to voluntarily relinquish his license to practice medicine in Florida. Allegations against Dr. Homer L. Kirkpatrick, Jr., first surfaced this past July in the form of an open letter that appeared in a newsletter published by…
Doubtless, Miami Beach Assistant City Manager Myra Diaz-Buttacavoli has seen her share of irate citizens over the years, but rarely has anyone devoted as much energy to criticizing her and her family as Miami resident Scott Curry. Since last August, infuriated about what he says was the vicious beating of…
If Dade County Commissioners hope for VIP treatment in the air, they virtually demand it on the ground at Miami International Airport. In fact, a fully staffed office is dedicated to ensuring that commissioners and senior county bureaucrats feel good about themselves. It’s called “protocol.” The aviation department’s protocol office…
