In an ethereal painting by Cuban artist Servando Cabrera Moreno, a nude youth poses in tense prostration, protectively covering his genitals with crossed arms. Cabrera, who died despondent in 1981, was persecuted by the Castro government for his homosexuality, and his sensuous portraits were banned from public display. Still bearing…
Throughout his long and distinguished career, Danish pianist and comedian Victor Borge has strictly avoided the tabloids. Unlike today’s music stars, the onetime Broadway luminary has not been accused of drug abuse, or child abuse, or even keyboard abuse. Despite his advanced age, Borge keeps his 85-year-old fingers nimble with…
This much is certain: On August 27, 1990, Michael Catalano, a Dade County attorney specializing in defending DUI suspects, was in his brown four-door Mercedes driving south on U.S. 1 when a police car drove up behind him and began flashing its lights. When Catalano pulled over and checked his…
There were four shots in all, the first two of which missed, the next two of which whizzed past a hastily shut bathroom door and into the goosebumped flesh of one John G. Bennett, well-to-do perfume salesman, veteran of the Great War, and within minutes, a fresh corpse. The year…
The players who sit facing one another are called partners. They are pitted against the second set of partners. One player deals out all the cards, thirteen to each player. The object of the game is to win as many tricks as possible. A trick consists of each player, in…
On January 30, Sherman Winn will celebrate his 50th wedding anniversary. The veteran county commissioner and his wife, Roslyn, will be joined at their North Miami home by their four children and six grandchildren to toast the couple’s half-century together. And with his family gathered around him, Winn says he…
Christopher Hoffman couldn’t believe his good fortune. The 30-year-old assistant manager of the Pickle Barrel restaurant in the Metropolitan Justice Building had always wanted to open his own establishment, but he knew he’d probably never be able to save enough money for such an investment. Then, while traveling through Germany…
This week, as exiled Haitian President Jean-Bertrand Aristide finalizes plans for a Miami conference addressing his nation’s future, a former bit player in the island drama will watch from a distance, a mere spectator. Not long ago he was center stage, an actor playing an intriguing and mysterious role. “I’m…
At lunchtime most weekdays, Alan Greer walks the few blocks from his law office near the downtown courthouses to the Miami Club or the Bankers Club and, like every other professional who ventures onto the noonday streets, he encounters a good number of panhandlers eager to share his lunch money…
Perhaps if the note had been unsigned and composed of letters cut from a magazine, he may have felt even more threatened. As it was, the scribbled message, which had slipped out of a fax machine in John Reitzammer’s Jacksonville office sometime during the early morning hours of May 12,…
The downstairs dining room at Yuca restaurant in Coral Gables is of a contemporary minimalist design, devoid of references to historical or traditional forms — all matte white tiles, bright white walls, and postmodern artworks. It is a sleek showplace for successful Cuban exiles and their up-and-coming offspring. During the…
Manuel Diaz is testimony to the little-known fact that money does grow on trees. Since the 1960s, Diaz, a Cuban immigrant, has transformed a nursery business he started in his parents’ back yard into one of the largest ornamental plant companies in the world: the 1500-acre Manuel Diaz Farms in…
It wasn’t quite the night before Christmas; the holiday was still eight days off. But there was plenty of stirring in the upper reaches of the Metro-Dade Government Center on Friday, December 17. The bureaucrats were playing host to a most unlikely guest. He appeared on the 27th floor –…
Fairfield, Ohio, could not be called a hotbed of Cuban exile activity, but at least one resident of the Cincinnati suburb has made his home on Windermere Lane a base of operations against the Castro government. From there Victor Garcia-Rivera, a 35-year-old Cuban American, is using shortwave radio to try…
Reeling from overexposure, hyped up, played out, intoxicated by its own richness, reeking of humanity, Miami stumbles into the new year. Although this town perpetually seems to be nursing last year’s hangover, the calendar switch provides an invitation to reinvigorated inspiration. So we asked area painters and sculptors, actors and…
Five years ago Carmen Carpentieri thought the front yard of his North Miami home looked a little too drab for Christmas, so he bought several hundred lights to decorate the trees lining his sidewalk. Two doors down the street, Ken DiGenova noticed the modest light display and decided that the…
“You did what with Blaze Starr?” Michael Somberg, the police planner for the Miami Beach Police Department, leans across his desk toward the large man who has wandered into his office. “The stripper? Now isn’t that a little piece of Americana!” The visitor smiles bashfully and recounts, somewhat reluctantly, the…
Tracy’s pink plastic mirror is one of those trinkets you buy at Woolworth’s; one swiveling face reflects normally, the other magnifies. Mounted atop a Deco-ish base of swirly, translucent plastic, the mirror is utterly flimsy and fragile, an extreme of femininity. Late afternoons, when Tracy takes it out to get…
“We’re in stealth mode.” William Negron cruises down a darkened street, lights off, looking for a 1985 white Mercedes. “There it is,” he says. He pulls past it, parks half a block away, jumps out of his tow truck, and walks nonchalantly back toward the car, which is parked in…
Back in 1984 the state legislature’s Criminal Justice Committee drafted a bill calling for all Florida law-enforcement trainees to pass a certification exam before earning a badge. Their purpose was simple: to beef up professionalism within the ranks of Florida’s cops, corrections personnel, and probation officers. But staffers with the…
When Sally Fitz decided to relocate from Miami Beach to Chicago, the veteran WSVN-TV Channel 7 news anchor did what any other red-blooded member of the American bourgeoisie would do: she had a yard sale. And if garage-sale popularity were judged by TV newscast standards (i.e., turnout), hers was a…
Wayman Adkins, a black businessman, is quite popular these days. As president and owner of Consolidated Techniques, Inc., a small construction firm in Hialeah, Adkins has been wooed by some white-owned firms eager to have him join them in their bids for county government contracts. Rivalry over his services, though,…
