Even a novelist reaching for a heavy-handed metaphor about Miami’s tendency toward unsafe overdevelopment would have winced at a Tuesday press release sent by the city. Because it seems the dozens of cranes towering over the new luxury condo towers rising over Brickell and Downtown could literally kill you if…
Store shelves were running low across South Florida by Tuesday morning as locals hurried to prepare for Hurricane Irma, which is already one of the strongest Atlantic hurricanes in history.
As of 11 a.m., Hurricane Irma drifted toward the Leeward Islands with winds churning at 180 mph, which makes the storm the strongest ever recorded outside the Caribbean or Gulf of Mexico, according to the National Hurricane Center.
Miami got lucky during last year’s hurricane season — the Category 5 Hurricane Matthew barely missed the city and wound up making landfall on the north end of Florida. But things don’t quite look as good right now: The Category 5 Hurricane Irma is rapidly approaching the Caribbean, and is…
Just one short month ago, Tropical Storm Emily — a weak tropical cyclone that didn’t even cross over South Florida — dumped enough water in South Beach to ruin dozens of cars and flood several restaurants. After Tuesday’s announcement that Hurricane Irma is now a Category 5 storm, Miami Beach officials are trying to keep residents calm while making preparations for a worst-case scenario.
A few Miami politicians are trying to make it safer to ride a bike here. Miami City Commissioner Ken Russell has pushed for painted bike lanes downtown, which cyclists love but drivers now blame for screwing up traffic patterns in the area. But anyone who’s ever ridden a bike here…
Boca Raton’s GEO Group is one of the most powerful private-prison companies in America — and a major player in state and federal politics. GEO throws campaign money at Florida lawmakers from both parties: Sens. Marco Rubio and Bill Nelson, Gov. Rick Scott, Reps. Carlos Curbelo and Mario Diaz-Balart,…
In just a few months, Miami will finally be rid of Jeffrey Loria. Whenever he finalizes his deal to offload the Marlins to a new ownership team including Derek Jeter, Loria’s big, dumb, taxpayer-cheating face will presumably never appear on this news site again. We can all hold a big party.
There is an increasing chance of seeing some impacts from Irma in the Florida Peninsula and the Florida Keys later this week.
Last Thursday, Monroe County officially shut down the Card Sound Bridge toll booth in favor of an automated SunPass system. As the remaining five toll workers packed up for their last day, New Times visited the station to ask for some of their craziest stories of manning one of Florida’s last human-staffed toll booths.
At a dilapidated Knights Inn in Homestead, Almlak Benitez stood in front of a camera with a black mask covering his hazel eyes and a long robe obscuring his tattooed biceps. Cockroach carcasses lined the worn-out carpet of the $69 room, which he and his friend Mohammad Skaik had pooled…
Officer Kenia Fallat, a spokesperson for the Miami Police Department, was driving an unmarked cop car yesterday when she hit 19-year-old Jimmy John’s sandwich-delivery bicyclist Mason Morales. Yet somehow it was Morales who eventually ended up in jail on criminal mischief charges.
Yuri Star was working as an Uber driver when he met Morgan O’Connor, a dreadlocked former Ralph Lauren Polo model and reportedly one-third of a love triangle with Lindsay Lohan and Miley Cyrus. Soon after carting the aspiring musician around West Palm Beach for a night, Star became his full-time caretaker.
After Miami Beach Commissioner Michael Grieco dropped his bid for mayor following a scathing Miami Herald report on his sketchy campaign finances, Beach residents were left with just four candidates to choose from. Two of them haven’t raised any money, while former federal prosecutor Dan Gelber has pulled in close to a half-million bucks.
There is simply no reason to repeal the federal Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program unless brown people bother you. DACA prevents children brought here by their parents from being deported. It’s a program that helps kids who did not choose to grow up in America but did anyway. Even if you think, incorrectly, that immigrants are predisposed to crime, you can’t even apply for DACA if you have a criminal record.
Miami-Dade County Police officers pulled over 27-year-old Anthony Ford last night in Liberty City. According to a departmental news release, Ford and another man fled from their red Nissan, and then “confrontation ensued and shots were fired.” Ford died last night. Investigators have reportedly learned he was unarmed.
From giant African snails to tegus to peacocks, Florida is crawling with all kinds of things that aren’t supposed to be here. Probably none inspires as much fear as the Burmese python, which for years has been ravaging the Everglades and pretty much everything that lives there.
There are two types of people who get food delivered: those who want it immediately and don’t feel like going out, and those who basically don’t have another option for eating.
Another year in Florida means another wave of clearly unconstitutional attempts to crack down on brown people. State legislators this month began filing their first bills of the 2018 session, and North Florida state Sen. Greg Steube, a man who simply cannot stop himself from filing insane laws designed to hurt people, has already begun flinging anti-immigrant crackdowns at the wall to see what sticks.
Hollywood commissioners will vote today on whether to rename three streets that honor Confederate generals — John Hood, Robert E. Lee, and Nathan Bedford Forrest, a Ku Klux Klan grand wizard. In the leadup to today’s vote, local civil rights activists said they feared that in a post-Charlottesville world, white supremacists might harass or try to hurt the people protesting for equality.
Corruption and bribery are as central to Miami Beach’s history as art deco hotels and poolside mojitos. This is a town where a former mayor was convicted on 41 counts of bribery and where hotels and restaurants have always known that the solution to bureaucratic red tape is an envelop stuffed with cash.
Earlier this year, Florida House Speaker Richard Corcoran was one of only two state-level politicians who attended the infamous Koch brothers-hosted summit in Colorado. Corcoran promptly flew home and announced a plan to kill Florida’s public-election-financing laws, which help elect candidates who don’t want donations from the corporations, utility companies, real-estate magnates, and billionaires who effectively control state politics.
