DeFede and PenelasPardon me for asking, but could there be some perverse attraction here? I can’t believe I’m writing again about one of Jim DeFede’s routine trashings of Miami-Dade Mayor Alex Penelas, but his cheap shots make it hard to resist. It seems anything that happens in Florida (or the…
Feet scrape against concrete in a solar off San Lazaro Street in Havana. Dish towels, underclothes, and a pair of rubber slippers hang from lines strewn above the open courtyard. Two children stand watching from an open doorway as four women, black skin glistening in the afternoon sun, roll shoulders…
Nobody was happier to hear that Janet Reno was considering a run for governor than Will Ferrell, the Saturday Night Live cast member who parodies Reno on the show. “My first reaction was that this couldn’t be greater news,” he told me last week. “The Dance Party will live now.”…
West Perrine ParadiseA grateful resident extols the benefits of millions in public money: Susan Eastman’s article about Ed Hanna and the West Perrine Economic Development Corporation (“With Enough Money,” May 24) is just what we have been saying for so long to county government or anyone else who would listen…
The histories of Haiti and Cuba run forever parallel. When the going gets tough, Haitian dictators tend to terrorize the populace while the Cuban dictator prefers to throw open the borders. Either way the result is the same: The populace gets going. In 1980 and again in 1994, tandem crises…
Best CitizenHe didn’t come to play; he came to stay: In “Best of Miami” (May 17) you paid homage to pitcher Rene Arocha as Best Cuban Baseball Player (Recently Retired) and noted that he was the first Cuban ballplayer to come to the United States and make it in the…
After spending eight years in Washington as U.S. Attorney General, Janet Reno was telling everyone who would listen that her only plans were to kayak Florida’s waterways and travel around the nation in her pickup truck. And then, two months ago, her friend Hugh A. Westbrook called and invited her…
For more than two months, Miami-Dade County Manager Steve Shiver has assured commissioners that suing the federal government over its refusal to permit Homestead Air Force Base to be developed as a commercial airport would not adversely affect the county’s chances of taking title to the airport even if the…
It was hard to tell who was more annoying: the shirtless, apparently medicated fellow wobbling up and down Lincoln Road as he bellowed out Doobie Brothers tunes, or the officially sanctioned performers, bashing through some generic altrock atop a small stage. And that felt about right. This was, after all,…
There may not be any voting, but Miami musicians know an awful lot about getting kicked off islands. Here in our own little Caribbean outback, this Saturday night the City of Miami Beach will present proclamations to salsa queen Celia Cruz and compas kings Top Vice in honor of Cuban…
If you bought into the advance hype, the MODA in Miami Fashion Week of the Americas should have been a raging success. Here finally was a chance for South Beach to burnish its reputation as the so-called American Riviera, in the process offering a sophisticated corrective to those who would…
The Municipal Equivalent of Being a Little Bit PregnantEither you’re a city or you’re not: Though a rose is a rose is a rose, the seeds of what is being planted in the Redland may bear a prickly, poisonous plant. And though Jacob Bernstein highlighted personal feuds and conflicts between…
“Who’s here?” asked George Zamora, the president of record label WEA Latina, as he wrenched backward on his folding chair and squinted at the battery of television cameras perched on two platforms at the back of a conference room in the luxurious Mandarin Oriental hotel. “Channel 23, 51,” shrugged press…
Now that the Latin Grammys are coming to Miami, local politicians have been coy about the likelihood that Cuban artists might perform at the awards ceremony. City of Miami Mayor Joe Carollo coddled his constituency by claiming on Spanish-language radio that secret assurances had been made so no Cuban nationals…
DeFede Takes the BaitAnd Shiver takes the heat: Mayor Alex Penelas’s political strategy — employing a county manager with even fewer ethics than he can claim — is paying off. Jim DeFede is now focused on Steve Shiver, his lies and scams (“A Friend in Need,” April 26). As long…
Nobody knows better than Homestead Mayor Roscoe Warren how badly Steve Shiver has bungled his first two months as county manager. During a March 8 county commission meeting, Shiver sought to undermine the Homestead City Council by informing commissioners they should disregard a city resolution regarding Homestead Air Force Base…
Of all the heartfelt elegies for the Grateful Dead’s Jerry Garcia, it was fellow traveler Ken Kesey’s that seemed to strike just the right note. “Hey, Jerry, what’s happening?” he breezily wrote shortly after Garcia’s August 1995 death. “I caught your funeral. Weird.” Weird indeed. It’s almost too easy to…
Two Countries, Two Flags, One OppressorClose but no (Cuban) cigar: The flag depicted in the background of Kathy Glasgow’s cover story last week (“Voice of a Nation,” April 26) is that of Puerto Rico, not Cuba. The flags are identical in design except that the blue and red are reversed…
When 34 heads of state met in Quebec City this past weekend to plot the Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA), 25,000 protesters raised a racket. Activists marched, threw rocks, and rushed police barricades. There was no rock-throwing here when the FTAA talks began in Miami at the 1994…
Read “Sex and the Single Raver, Part 1” An intense game of naked Twister is the best way to describe the scene unfolding inside the bathroom of the South Beach nightclub People’s Lounge. Technically speaking, Monica Mayhem and Joey Ray are having sex. And if director Kris Kramski — wielding…
JFK and the CIA: We Didn’t Do ItAllow me to repeat that we were not part of any conspiracy: I read with much interest Jefferson Morley’s fact-filled article on the Revolutionary Student Directorate (DRE) and the assassination of President John F. Kennedy “Revelation 19.63,” April 12). For the record no…
Sooner or later a symbol as sacred as little Elian Gonzalez is bound to be mangled by some punk kid. Enter sixteen-year-old George Rodriguez of Newport Gestapo. Never mind that Rodriguez is the grandson of Guillermo Rodriguez Feiffe, Cuban composer of standards such as “La Negra Tomasa.” Never mind that…
