If Thomas Kramer has flaunted anything in his tenure as South Beach’s latest eccentric rich boy, it is a talent for well-publicized charity. While he extinguished his Ocean Drive nightclub, Hell, two weeks ago, and his grandiose plans to convert South Pointe into a faux Italian village remain drawing-board fantasies,…
Among those historians who have made it their business to inspect the tainted archives of Western imperialism, it is widely believed that the first slave ship to return with human cargo from Africa was christened the Jesus Christ. Whether apocryphal or not, the notion that a Christ delivered the first…
The bang of the crash didn’t wake me, but the piercing, high-pitched whir of a revving engine roused me to semiconsciousness. Three o’clock in the morning, Friday, November 20. As the revving stopped, I began to drift back under, victim to the migraine headache that had plagued me for the…
Panchanita Fordham is outside on the front steps of Northwestern Holy High School with the Lord’s tingle in her belly so bad she’s buckling at the knees. From her right hand hangs a borrowed Bible, from her left a Kool cigarette, which she attacks with the ferocity of the ex-junkie…
You are seven feet, two inches tall. You own two dozen pairs of size eighteen high-top sneakers. You are painfully addicted to The Andy Griffith Show. Where are you? If your name is Alan Ogg A and it would almost have to be A you are in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, watching…
Betty Wright is talking about being born again when she’s interrupted by the beeping of her phone, a high-heeled pink pump with pushbuttons. On the other end is a girlfriend, crying and nearly hysterical. “He just did that?” Wright asks in a low voice. “Well, you got to live for…
Late afternoon at Big Q Fish Place: a time when cafe cubano used to flow freely and hungry wage earners, just off work, filled the counter stools looking for a snack. Today, though, the small riverside restaurant is empty, save for one lonely diner hunched over a lunch of black…
These are heady political days in the black communities of South Florida. Last week Carrie Meek, granddaughter of sharecroppers, was sworn in as U.S. Congressional representative for the 17th District. Also among the freshmen congressmen and women was former federal judge Alcee Hastings, who fought back from a 1989 impeachment…
Miami has simply gone mad for Thomas Kramer, that debonair German millionaire who’s gobbled up South Pointe like so much brautwurst during Octoberfest. Everyone’s talking about the man. And since the New Times cover story, “Tycoon Thomas,” appeared on December 16, callers have swamped the paper’s office with Kramer sightings…
Brian LaPointe arrived on Big Pine Key in 1982 with a single change of clothes, a Chevy van full of sophisticated aquatic measuring devices, and a newly awarded Ph.D. Specifically, LaPointe had come to South Florida to open a field station for the prestigious Harbor Branch Oceanographic Institution, a private…
Most of them have moved on by now, to places like Key West, Naples, Orlando. At the very least they’ve gotten real jobs (or tried to), gotten married (or tried to), and hunkered down in Kendall (despite trying not to). Maybe, if they somehow stashed enough dough, they bought a…
Organic farmer Stanley Glaser dreams of a day when farmers markets blanket Dade County. He imagines a bonding of communities at those gatherings — neighbors meeting one another for the first time, children and dogs gamboling among vendors’ stands that overflow with produce and crafts. He envisions every supper table…
Seventy-four-year-old antique dealer Billy Herrero vowed he wouldn’t walk away from his “friends” — his sprawling array of period furniture, Oriental vases, vintage clothing, Art Deco trinkets, and unadulterated junk collected over six decades. And in the end, he didn’t. Early Christmas Eve, a few hours before he was to…
In a matchup the sportswriters are calling the Super Bowl of College Football, the University of Miami Hurricanes, ranked number one in the nation, will battle number-two Alabama in the Sugar Bowl on New Year’s Day. Fans will cram the New Orleans Superdome for the showdown of undefeated teams. Approximately…
John Popejoy stood in a Plantation Key courtroom on November 10 and pleaded guilty to two counts of lewd and lascivious assault on a child. Sixteenth Circuit Court Judge J. Jefferson Overby sentenced Popejoy to seven years in state prison, to be followed by five years probation with mental health…
Dozens of terrified tourists scrambled to shore as vigilant beachcomber Glenn McGahee alerted them to his shocking discovery: hundreds of mysterious sea monsters! “It was horrible!” exclaims the 37-year-old Miami Beach bartender, who adds that he wasn’t sampling his own wares at the time of the troubling encounter. “Some of…
Considering the circumspect tenor of his campaign, Bill Clinton’s first major policy decision ranked as a doozy. Just one week after his triumph over George Bush, the president-elect stunned a phalanx of reporters massed around the State House rotunda in Little Rock, Arkansas, by promising to lift the 48-year-old ban…
When Dennis Whitt returned to Opa-locka from Tampa on December 11, he wore the broad smile of a vindicated man. The reason: barring a minor miracle, police officer Charles Jones would finally lose his badge. Whitt, a vociferous city manager and ex-cop, says the 46-year-old Jones is a “disgrace to…
A panel of three appeals court judges has upheld an order requiring the City of Coral Gables to pay New Times $35,210 in attorney’s fees. Last Tuesday’s decision by Florida’s Third District Court of Appeal brings to $132,152 the amount of taxpayers’ money Coral Gables has spent so far trying…
Legend has it that years ago the engineer who designed I-95’s Golden Glades interchange was hunted down at his modest apartment late at night by a horde of angry citizens carrying torches and sawed-off tailpipes. Roused from his sleep, the man was strapped behind the wheel of a failing VW…
Monday, November 9 was the first day of an unprecedented practice in the 50-year history of Voice of America (VOA), the government agency born of the Cold War to broadcast U.S. news and culture to countries with limited freedom of expression. Between 10:00 and 11:00 p.m. on that Monday last…
The autumn sun filtered through the hurricane-battered branches of Fairchild Tropical Garden, illuminating a scene of ecological and communal merriment below. Thousands of people had turned out for the Ramble, the garden’s annual horticultural festival on December 5 and 6, to celebrate the damaged Eden’s gradual recovery post-Andrew. They bought…
