Hallandale Vice Gets Busy in the Champagne Room

On March 7, just a half-hour past midnight, stormtroopers from the Hallandale Beach Police Department and the Florida Division of Alcoholic Beverages and Tobacco raided the Cheetah gentlemen’s club.The cops busted 16 dancers and two managers, arresting the girls on prostitution charges and the managers for allegedly running a whorehouse…

Letters from the Issue of March 26, 2009

Prison Scared Me Straight Good job: In response to Francisco Alvarado’s “Unequal Justice” on March 19: This is a great article and all true, I’m sure. How do I know this? I turned 18 in jail back in the early ’80s. I was busted with a whole lot of Quaaludes…

Little Havana Doesn’t Trust Miami Marlins

Luis Montealegre poured a café Cubano on Tuesday, paid a delivery guy for croquetas, and peered east a few blocks from his corner cafeteria. There was only blue sky where a $634 million Marlins baseball stadium will soon rise. “This is the poorest part of the city, the one that…

Let me get this straight

So at around the 7:04 p.m. mark of the Miami-Dade County Commission’s nine-hour bull session to approve the Florida Miami Marlins’ new stadium, Commissioner Sally Heyman posed a rather simple business question. She asked what would happen to the ballpark’s projected $1.9 billion cost if the municipal bond interest rates…

Stadium Approved, Good Friggin’ Riddance

My favorite moment in yesterday’s nine-hour discussion of the new $2 billion Marlins Stadium came at 9:27 p.m., when Commissioner “Space Cowboy” Javier Souto began defending himself from concerns that Mayor Carlos Alvarez runs him like an Italian train: “My vote is not for sale, rent, or lease,” Souto said. “Whichever…

Say No to the Stadium

Today the Miami-Dade County Commission will vote to build the Florida Marlins a new stadium. Or not. I hope they don’t. This deal is such a stinker I don’t know how Mayor Carlos Alvarez, the stadium’s chief cheerleader, doesn’t walk around wearing a gas mask every time he is out…

South Florida According to Brooklyn: To My Haters

To read past installments of Miami According to Brooklyn, click here. This week is addressed to my haters. First off, I’d like to thank you for taking the time to read my column. Second, the things that I write and talk about are just one man’s opinion. I just throw…

Forget the Stadium. Joe Sanchez Just Won the Mayor’s Job.

If you weren’t paying attention to any news media in town yesterday, you might have missed that Miami commissioners voted 3 to 2 in favor of the new baseball stadium in Little Havana.But even those who were watching probably failed to notice a salient fact: Joe Sanchez basically locked up…

Letters from the Issue of March 19, 2009

Deserters Get Their Just Deserts You darn crybabies: In response to Megan Feldman’s March 12 story, “Move Out!”: I have no sympathy for people who volunteer for duty and then want to use bullshit excuses like “illegal war” to shirk their responsibility. During Vietnam, many were drafted and in spite…

The Woman Whisperer

It’s an easy, breezy Tuesday evening at Monty’s (2550 S. Bayshore Dr., Coconut Grove) when Chris, a short, 27-year-old Cuban-American with a handlebar mustache, jitters past a circle-jerk of about 15 middle-age shrimpers hunched over the tiki-thatched patio’s main bar. Their necks are the same color as the pink sunset…

Chuck Rules, Bill Bites

Today Bill Cooke at Random Pixels took a shot at New Times and editorial jefe Chuck Strouse. He wrote: I used to love Miami New Times. When I lived in Coconut Grove I knew where the paper was delivered on Wednesday and usually snagged a copy by early afternoon. Since…

Solo Sushi Needs Soy Sauce. Akashi Has Soy Sauce.

9:39 p.m. last night, my friend texted me, “Loving [Lil’] Kim on Dancing With the Stars!” While he was home watching B & C-Listers do the cha-cha – wasabi, crab and fresh-out-the-water tuna was doing the electric boogaloo on my tongue. Akashi’s South Miami outpost is potentially one of the…

BET’s College Hill: South Beach Premiers Next Week

College Hill is basically BET’s answer to the Real World, but with a lot less transsexuals and eye-liner wearing boys from Utah, and a lot more students from historically black universities. Seven students from throughout the country live together for a semester. In the first few seasons I think they…

Organic hipness

When Banana Republican is not out trolling the streets of Miami in search of corrupt politicians, inept bureaucrats, scoundrels, outlaws and other riff-raff that deserve exposing, I like to check out the hipster scene. I’ll roll up a nice fat banana peel, pour a little Macallan’s malt scotch whiskey into my…

The Week That Was

The Herald started out its week on various death lists, cut 175 people (including one on her birthday), and left people questioning whether Miami will even have a daily paper anymore. Meanwhile, one of the paper’s more infamous famous employees landed a job, because there is no justice in the…

The Real Housewives of Various Governor’s Mansions

I was just checking the ol’ RSS reader, and discovered that Naked Politics has a post up alerting readers to outtakes from The Real Housewives of New York City featuring Florida’s First Lady Carole Rome.  I am insanely jealous we did not have this first (btw, anyone notice that the…

South Florida According to Brooklyn: Spring Break Is Here

To read past installments of South Florida According to Brooklyn, click here. Spring break is here, and the streets of South Beach are filled with jackasses. I’ve noticed more and more as I get older and wiser, that the people who come here from out of town care less and…

Shear Genius at D&L Salon

If Dee Adames – Miami’s mohawked winner of  the second season of Sheer Genius – could describe herself as any animal, she’d choose a cat. “They’re mysterious and slightly territorial,” she laughs as muted episodes of the Bravo reality show in which she won plays on a flat screen inside…

The Friday Burrito Weekly Wrap-Up

Last week was crazy. Find out what Gail Shepherd was sayin’ ’bout your mom, why Michy is bent over the kitchen counter, and how to get cheese in a recession. Welcome to the Friday Burrito Weekly Wrap-Up…

Glenn Straub: Too little too late

Hey Glenn Straub. I WANT to watch baseball downtown,. I WANT to TAKE the Metromover to games,But I wish you would just shut up.Straub penned a letter to the public (which you can find on the jump) defending his idea for a downtown stadium. But we’ve moved too far with…