Letters from the Issue of February 3-9, 2005

How Unbalanced Was It? So unbalanced it fell right into the union’s lap: The picture painted of Pan American Hospital in Forrest Norman’s article “Blunt Trauma” (January 20) was distorted. Pan American is a 146-bed general acute-care medical center and one of the few remaining not-for-profit hospitals in Miami-Dade County…

Letters from the Issue of January 27-February 2,2005

Dead Ducks: Murder May the guilty humans meet the same gruesome fate: Francisco Alvarado’s article about the Muscovy ducks being murdered in Doral made me sick (“Foul Duck Death,” January 13). And yes, it is murder. I sincerely hope the bastards who poisoned and gassed those defenseless animals, and the…

The Bitch

The Bitch normally can’t imagine leaving the house on a Saturday morning to spend time in bleary, tan-inducing sunlight, but this past weekend was different. The chills of football fever goaded the canine to pry her eyes from the DVD of Underworld and drive past the cow fields and tribal…

Letters from the Issue of January 20-26,2005

If That Was a Flack Attack… …then we need more of them: It is most unfortunate that, while castigating the Artécity condominium project and DindyCo PR for throwing a great party around an art-show opening, The Bitch neglected to address the real news in her “Condoflage” piece (January 13). The…

The Bitch

If it is nighttime when you read this, go outside and look at the sky. Saturn is the closest it gets to Earth all year — only 750 million miles away, and hangs enormous and golden over the ocean just after sunset. Also, an unexpected, unexplained celestial phenomenon has caused…

The Camelot Legacy

“My whole life I was introduced as someone else,” Anthony Kennedy Shriver quipped to the well-heeled crowd before him at a Toronto benefit dinner this past fall for his Best Buddies foundation. “I grew up the nephew of President Kennedy. Then I was the nephew of Senator Kennedy. Then I…

The Bitch

Now that the deluxe edition of Napoleon Dynamite is out on DVD, there is absolutely no reason to do anything but remain indoors indefinitely, memorizing every line of the uniquely hilarious, eminently quotable film about a clan of unselfconscious Idaho nerds and their junk-food-eating llama. To help readers get started…

Letters from the Issue of January 13-19, 2005

My Daughter, Bad and Good With help she went from one to the other: Rebecca Wakefield did a great job with her article about my daughter Laurie Lichtman (“Tow Head,” January 6). She truly captured the real Laurie. Laurie and I are not proud of her drug years, but I…

Miami’s Most Incredible, Fantastic, Amazing Year in Music!

“Don’t get me wrong, it’s really flattering that so many people have wanted to write about us,” explains Adam Zimmon, guitarist for the Spam Allstars, while furrowing his brow over the barrels of ink that have been expended on his band. The New York Times, the Washington Post, and countless…

The Bitch

For the first time in more than twenty years, the 24 hours of Christmas ticked by without a single note of Caribbean or reggae music broadcast by public radio station WLRN-FM (91.3). Instead listeners deprived of even the regular NPR news feed were exposed to the sounds of choirs from…

Letters from the Issue of January 6-12, 2005

Not Just Nail-Pounders Navy Seabees can handle bullets as well as bulldozers: First allow me to congratulate Eric Alan Barton on a very well-written and touching portrait of the realities of war in his article “The Deadliest Day” (December 30). However, I feel he failed to do his homework, and…

Letters from the Issue of , 2002

Open That Laptop! Nobody boards the plane till we’ve scrolled through every last file: After reading the delightful “Your Safety, Their Punch Line” by Adam Baum (December 16), allow me to add a few comments: As an aviation consultant, I travel thousands of miles every year to international destinations, hired…

The Art of Investing in Art

If you spent much time at this year’s Art Basel Miami Beach art fair, you heard plenty of talk about truth and beauty, of how a painting could be so transcendent as to be priceless, its value incapable of being measured in mere dollars and cents. Save it, sister, at…

Letters from the Issue of December 16-22, 2004

Karl Marx: Alive and Well in Miami Shamelessly pandering free weekly is plainly pinko: Why do you writers and editors at New Times assume all your readers are left-wing radicals? Example: Tristram Korten’s mean-spirited column about Leslie Rothenberg (“Judge Not,” December 9) was not a piece of journalism, it was…

The Bitch

One Ninety, the bistro on NE Second Avenue and 46th Street that was both ultra-chill alternative to South Beach and neighborhood hangout, will hang up the “Closed” sign for good this week after a three-year run. Owners Alan and Donna Lee Hughes, who cannot resolve a dispute over a proposed…

It Isn’t Easy Being Fabulous

Don’t hate Fabian Basabe because he’s beautiful. “I don’t work, and a lot of people just don’t understand that,” the 26-year-old Basabe says, sounding genuinely hurt by the less-than-sympathetic response his poor-little-rich-boy persona often inspires. Pausing for a sip of his margarita, he continues: “People focus mainly on the glamour…

Letters from the Issue of December 9-15, 2004

Art Basel Transformed My Life In three short years I went from vulgarian to sophisticate: Reading through the New Times guide to Art Basel Miami Beach (“Artquake,” December 2) reminded me that three years ago I knew next to nothing about art. I had a Marlins poster on my wall…

Effloresce and Deliquesce

Jessica Dorsee endured not a moment of that whole teenage self-loathing thing. “I’d be sitting in my high school classroom and I’d see myself, instead of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., addressing crowds. I had visions of myself as a great leader. If you went back and talked to the…

Musical Mecca

They aren’t nearly as morbid as the tourists who swarm to the entryway of Gianni Versace’s South Beach mansion, taking snapshots of each other on the very spot where the fashion designer was gunned down in 1997. But then the steady stream of pilgrims arriving at 461 Ocean Boulevard in…

Letters from the Issue of November 25-December 1

Only a Fool Would Say People Were Duped Voters knew perfectly well that $275 million would go to two museums in a waterfront park: It is ludicrous to suggest, as Kirk Nielsen did in “Vote for Culture” (November 18), that Miami-Dade County voters were “lured” into passing bond issue #8…

Thou Art a Villain

Temblors above, business continues below; such is the topography of Miami’s burgeoning artscape. But just as our city’s established and emerging serious artists get ready to snatch the limelight from the poseurs — at least for a few days, during Art Basel — tectonic plates grind to create a little…

Miami’s Blessed Airwaves

“Why are people wondering why the Republicans won the election?” asks Ruthie J with a touch of annoyance. During the course of Kulchur’s conversation with the midday host of Miami’s Christian radio station WMCU-FM (89.7), this is the only subject that ruffles her eminently patient demeanor. “Why is this such…