Opinion & Commentary

Roxana Morales leaps to return a spiked volleyball on the dirty sand court near the ancient band shell on Collins Avenue at 73rd Street. A generator that sputters in the background powers dim lights, so she can barely see. She misses.Even this jury-rigged system won’t last long. The generator is…

​Pity the hapless hipster who wanders into Sweat Records this Saturday night looking for a copy of Vampire Weekend’s Contra. In an unusual but welcome change, the evening’s in-store takes a turn away from the mellow indie and towards the grimy, in a four-band show organized by local trio Green…

The Alabama foursome Thomas Function makes its label home on Fat Possum, that originally Epitaph-spawned label that began as a blues imprint. That family tree indeed tells you a bit about the band’s sound — propelled largely by a punky euphoria, but informed by a bit of a Muscle Shoals…

I’ve said it before, I’ll say it again. You can always expect a little urban drama near and around 29th Street between NE Second Avenue and Biscayne Boulevard to liven up your work day. Earlier this afternoon a black male suspect in a stolen four-door Hyundai with Arkansas plates led…

A federal appeals court Thursday shot down a case that greatly endangered both Miami-Dade’s drinking water and Everglades National Park. The three-judge panel confirmed last year’s decision to side with the Sierra Club and several other groups against the Army Corps of Engineers. In 2002, the Corps issued a ten-year permit…

Normally, I prefer to spend my time and money in clubs that look, feel, and smell like actual garages. But this past Wednesday, I chose instead to spend my time and money in the sex dens of that 21st century disco Sodom, otherwise known as LIV. The night was long,…

These are some of the funnies I’ve compiled for this column over the past year, but either they didn’t fit in thematically or I just wasn’t that crazy about them. Either way, gotta clear out the cupboard.How complicated can ice cream flavors be? How much can you put in there?…

You see it every new year: South Florida’s morons resolve to turn over a new leaf. They promise they will keep their names and mug shots out of news articles with the phrases oddly enough or incredibly idiotic in the headlines. But now, during the third week in January, our…

Watch the video above, because words really fail to describe the true essence of Oxygen’s orchestrated train wreck of a reality show Bad Girls Club.Essentially, seven women with personal, behavioral, and even psychological problems are forced to live in a house together for four months with cameras rolling. For the…

If bouts of casual pyromania are your idea of a perfect night out, then consider the hairy, sweaty, and certifiably dangerous members of Monotonix your Israeli tour guides to paradise. Like IDF explosive experts or any troglodyte teen with a Zippo, the Monotonix men — singer Ami Shalev, guitarist Yonatan…

We don’t advocate theft, but when our little buddy stole a II Live Crew tape from the Spec’s by what’s now Sunset Place sometime in the ’90s it changed our life. Luke taught our eight year old self to cuss out politicians (“Fuck Martinez, Fuck Fuck Martinez”), and told us…

A two-year investigation by the Miami-Dade Inspector General found that the former principal of John A. Ferguson Senior High School in West Kendall deliberately diverted over $200,000 in taxpayer money to pay for hotel lodging, booze and grub for school employees, as well as their friends and relatives, who attended…

This Friday and Saturday night at 9 p.m., you can get a last taste of the cabaret at SoBeArts/The Little Theater on South Beach. It was held over because it was so damn popular. The show, next door to the old Carl Fisher clubhouse just north of the convention center,…

Panic Peddling Bad spin: Your main thesis that gay people are leaving Miami Beach “in droves” and heading to Fort Lauderdale is absurd. (“Escape From South Beach,” Natalie O’Neill, January 14.) I don’t know what you intended with your sensationalist headline and poorly spun story, but I think you’ve succeeded…

Florida Renaissance Festival at Virginia Key Beach Park this Saturday

For a story in this week’s Miami New Times, I dialed up a few of the ladies suspended West Miami Mayor Cesar Carasa befriended during his sojourns to the Dominican Republic. This past November 30, Carasa was arrested on two misdemeanor counts of exploiting his public position. The unemployed real…

Do You See Double From Too Many Single Malts?Next Tuesday, January 26, at 6 p.m., Chop House Miami will hold a Glenlivet Scotch Dinner. Outstanding single-malt Scotch whiskies will be paired with appropriately exquisite cuisine and fine Mederos cigars. Bobby Figgs of Chop House will host the festivities with the…

Here’s our footage of Wyclef live from Haiti back in 2006 for a free concert to 50,000 on Jacmel Beach. The show was sponsored by his foundation, Yéle Haiti.Wyclef admits that his Yéle Haiti organization has made mistakes in the past, but denies that he ever personally profited from them…

The folks who set up the Haiti earthquake relief donation site at First Street and Alton Road ​in Miami Beach need to raise $50,000 to send air-conditioning units and generators for the Project Medishare hospital being set up in Port-au-Prince to treat victims. You can make your donation here.What this…

My editor told me about a dinner he’d had at Talula and noted the lack of customers. He thinks it deserves better, while my take is that there is a reason for those empty seats. He wrote down his thoughts, and I responded:Miami New Times editor Chuck Strouse: I love…

Fuck y’all know about ENOUGH!? Probably not enough. Well, there’s not enough Miami punk rock. Not enough people going to shows. Not enough bands, not enough venues, not enough glass to break, levels on the volume knob, beer to drink, fences to jump, bikes to ride, skateboards to thrash, mosh…