Even fishing gets old. But this was a new one on me. “Bro, I just caught a 30-pound fish, about three feet long, using a blueberry for bait in the lake by the horse track.” Of course it was Zap talking. I searched my memory. Had I ever fished at…
It’s always a privilege to see a great performer at the peak of his form. Those who have witnessed Baryshnikov dance or Michael Jordan defy gravity on his way to the hoop understand this, and the experience remains permanently etched in their minds. Here in Miami, connoisseurs of another endeavor…
In the Big Time Productions studio space in the old Paris Theater on South Beach, two trendily clad girls are scampering around on a scaffold, lip-synching the backup vocals of “Money Makes the Monkey Dance,” the first track on Nil Lara’s soon-to-be-released four-song CD. The models are accompanied by a…
Nick Carter, a visiting lecturer at Florida International University, extended an unusual invitation this past semester. “Spend the Summer in the Amazon,” read the flyers he distributed to interested students, and they went on to describe a five-week expedition into the “most pristine rain forest left on the planet” with…
When a nine-foot owl creates a flap, people sit up and take notice. Hooters, the restaurant chain/Arena Football League franchise with the towering mascot, is crying foul at the Miami Herald’s noncoverage of the team’s arenaball games. “For fantastic coverage of arena football’s hard-hitting, fast-paced, ’50-yard war on the floor,’…
Even in this age of ultrahigh finance, it’s churchgoers’ blind faith that their contributions to the collection plate will be well spent by others. No receipts requested, no quarterly spreadsheets provided. Among a group of parishioners at Mount Hermon African Methodist Episcopal Church in Opa-locka, however, that trust has eroded…
Marie-Antoinette, a very rich French queen who owned many buildings in Paris, is said to have expressed her contempt for the poor by exclaiming, “Let them eat cake.” Thomas Kramer, a very rich German financier who owns many buildings in South Beach, apparently has devised his own bon mot for…
Two U.S. Customs agents hidden in a trailer office at the Opa-locka Airport captured the scene on blurry black-and-white videotape. The old DC-3 transport plane, its belly underlit and a cargo hold open, waiting on a runway in the dimness of night while five men drift distantly in and out…
South Floridians who are even vaguely familiar with the brief life and eventful times of the City of Sweetwater probably weren’t surprised to see this image played across their television screens last month: Florida Department of Law Enforcement investigators leading Sweetwater City Councilman Ronald Mitro, unshaven, sporting a Flintstones T-shirt,…
Lazaro Albo provides a pointed new meaning to the old term “rugged individualist.” For more than a year now the 62-year-old businessman and close friend of countless politicians has absolutely refused to follow the crowd — the crowd of neighbors, city officials, and even some of those influential close friends,…
Dozens of crudely constructed little sailboats, canoes, rowboats, and rafts were strewn like scattered driftwood on the stone floor of a room in the Spanish Morro castle that overlooks Havana’s harbor. Arranged in the form of a ship with the bow pointing north, the clumsy, crowded armada of toy boats…
Max Orlando Ba*os was a mechanic until he picked up an old Russian camera a few years ago. Before he knew it he’d become a photographer, shooting the streets of Old Havana where he has always lived and where he knows everyone. The roof literally caved in on his family’s…
In the current climate of mounting rancor about the cost of health care, radio-show host Bill Faloon broadcasts a tempting message. “Ladies and gentlemen, I contend that the Food and Drug Administration, along with the pharmaceutical drug cartels they support, are engaged in a conspiracy to commit genocide against the…
Recent years have seen an explosion of promotional giveaway events at baseball parks across the nation. A tradition that once was geared primarily toward kids, one that was limited to a smattering of anxiously awaited dates such as Bat Day, Ball Day, and Helmet Night, has burgeoned into a veritable…
A few months ago, while Walter Reynoso was having a cup of coffee in the federal courthouse downtown, he was approached by a distraught cafeteria worker who recognized the Coconut Grove criminal lawyer. Martha Rodriguez, a Nicaraguan immigrant, began crying as she told Reynoso about her son, who was being…
During Pow Wow, the May 21-25 international tourist trade show sponsored by the Travel Industry Association of America, Miami wasn’t taking any chances. Especially with Germans. When Frankfurt tour operator Doris Treffkon got off the plane at the start of the convention, she was met by two security guards. One…
Blockbuster style: The mother of all memos Legend has it that when H. Wayne Huizenga was first offered the opportunity to buy a small video- rental chain called Blockbuster, he balked. Huizenga had always envisioned the video industry as dingy storefronts that peddled pornography, an unseemly business with which he…
On Miami Beach, especially South Beach, where just about anything goes, the exotic and outlandish usually elicit only yawns. But Elliot Offen A the runner who makes a nightly eighteen-mile trek wearing skimpy, ruffled women’s lingerie, pantyhose, white makeup, red lipstick, and Reeboks A causes heads to turn. “I have…
At 4:30 p.m. on Friday, April 22, the jury empaneled in the case of State of Florida v. Raul Rodriguez returned a verdict. It was nothing like in the movies. The jurors had deliberated just four hours, including lunch, but they looked cranky and out of sorts as they filed…
The irony of the moment appears to be lost on Fabian Seijas. But here he is, a forlorn customer in a corner booth at Denny’s A perhaps the most pedestrian diner in the United States A fondly reminiscing about one of the toniest restaurants on South Beach, a glamorous enterprise…
Another sunny day in downtown Miami. A playful eight-year-old tags along with her mother on a shopping trip. When Mother stops to take a closer look at something, bored daughter wanders off. By the time Mom realizes her little girl is no longer at her side, it’s too late. As…
Like the rest of the industrial world, Dade County is smothering itself with trash: three million tons of solid waste per year. In the late 1980s, after the Florida legislature passed a statewide waste-reduction act, county officials set about developing one of the nation’s most comprehensive recycling programs. Today an…
