Opinion & Commentary

You have not always been the kind of guy who shows up at Boomerang at 3:00 a.m., but here you are, and you cannot say that the night has yet lost all its promise. You think back to all that had led up to this hour. That pleasant spat of…

SO THAT’S HOW SLUMS GET STARTED! Regarding your story about a trash heap in a police parking garage (“Unsolved Mysteries, Dateline Miami Beach,” September 25): Your tongue-in-cheek approach to the incident was uncalled for. Chief of Police Philip Huber, coming from Baltimore, is obviously accustomed to clean streets and clean…

Let me state just two things before I go so you won’t forget: The South Florida Rock Awards (the third annual) is going to be awesome this year and is going to be December 9. And I’ve heard a rumor that the sales side of the New Times corporation will…

Those people you berate in the Guardian Ad Litem program and HRS are trying to protect these children from further damage. They are operating under laws of confidentiality and can’t respond to the unfair allegations in the article. I’ve really lost much of the respect that I had for your…

Every once in a while we take a stab at grasping the meaning of the blues (both in this space and in real life). Try this: James Thomas was born in 1926 on a farm in Ya¯zoo County, Mississippi. Influenced by Arthur “Big Boy” Crudup and Elmore James, he worked…

The upcoming socio-cultural season is taking shape, and gradually Miami is beginning to seem like a valid place to live, something more than just the hot bottom of the earth. Things are beginning to happen. The new Tony Chan’s Water Club restaurant at The Grand, in the space formerly occupied…

INSULTS FOR EVERYONE, EXCEPT DETECTIVE CHRISTOPHER Kudos and congrats on one of the most boring articles I’ve ever read by New Times (“The Case from Hell, Part One,” September 11). Maybe if Aimee’s mother hadn’t been such a devout Catholic and so worried about bad outside influences, none of that…

So many new things lately: 32 Grand in the Grove, the cinema/pub/theater complex with identity problems. The Century Hotel restaurant, which, according to co-owner Willy Moser, will shortly be in the throes of a soft opening. And then, as always, the gay South Beach beat, mushrooming steadily like some sort…

Once again, good people, we face the scourge of that damn nigger music. Among the millions of hate letters – from barely legible postcards to boxes filled with voodoo trinkets – I’ve received over the years, the one I remember most was a racist diatribe delivered to the Miami News…

GEORGE BUSH, PATHOLOGICAL MISSPEAKER In reference to Weston Kosova’s article concerning our president’s supposed lying (“Whoppers!,” September 4), it is clear from the article that the author is biased. Why could you not write the same article without mentioning that George Bush is Republican? Is it because you want to…

The consolation of philosophy, food, and art all came to us recently over a delicious meal of fried chicken and collard greens at our new favorite lunch spot, the cheery pocket-size Lorene’s Cafe, contained within the bar-that-time-will-never-forget, the Satellite Lounge on NW 7th Avenue and 62nd Street. Normally a squalor-central…

The release of the second Nuclear Valdez album has been delayed by Epic until next year. The record has been complete for months – it sounds great, by the way – but its original release date (the middle of this month) was moved to October. Now it’s January. A few…

Throughout South Florida, scattered outposts of gay civilization have always dotted the landscape: Cheers and Cherry Grove in Miami; The Copa, Cathode Ray, and the Marlin Beach Hotel in Fort Lauderdale; the dance club Heartbreaker and cruise bar Man’s Land in West Palm Beach. But lately an entire culture has…

CUT PTR SOME SLACK! In response to the article “Get Out of Jail Free,” certainly certain people have a vested interest in attacking the pretrial-release program. The program has helped many citizens of this county get out of jail who shouldn’t be in jail. As for those violent individuals, I…

WARNING: POACHING IS HAZARDOUS TO YOUR HABITAT We read with great interest Mr. Baker’s article, “For Goodness: Snakes,” published in your August 21 edition. Mr. Baker briefly mentioned that some species and areas of “the Everglades” are closed to collection by law. The National Park Service and Big Cypress National…

School books are flipped open, homework awaits, the leaves are turning to a loamy rainbow, September’s earthen burden has – whoa. Criminy, we’re starting to sound like Spy magazine. What September is around here is Women in Music Month, Cactus Cantina’s annual salute to distaff songmakers. Apart from the not-minor…

Lately, what with one thing or another, we’ve been looking for something different. Something that doesn’t make sense. Something rough. The thirst for the unusual was almost permanently cured by the Saturday night second-anniversary celebration for Warsaw, a hellish, deranged, utterly offensive carnival. Standing on the balcony, looking out over…

DO WE DETECT A SUBTLE HINT OF ACRONYM-ONIOUSNESS THERE, T.J.? Regarding “Politics and Power”: Besides the lengthy paragraph after paragraph without any reference to who is speaking – how about an occasional “Baldwin said”? – I found a number of things unsettling. This is not a political issue; it is…

One of my favorite mixmasters, Clay D, has had a hand in a vast array of hip-hop projects. You gotta own the Pull It All the Way Down album featuring D and Prince Rahiem, and you might want to check out the Clay-molded LPs You Be You, I Be Me…

NO POLITICS, NO HERESY In “Politics and Power” (August 14) a reference was made to the Gay and Lesbian Youth Group of South Florida, Inc. in a quote attributed to Greg Baldwin. This quote is in error. As president of the youth group, I wish to make a correction. In…

We have wandered, it seems, into a time and space where the parameters of fun in the Nineties – bargain-basement sensation as soulless, senseless, and dumbed-down as a television sitcom – have already been exhausted. Other eras of fun are needed for fuel. The Fifties have been used up as…

As you probably know, the national concert-tour business is in worse shape than my liver. Volume this year is down some 30 percent, which explains all those illogical package tours (Sisters of Mercy on the same bill as Public Enemy?) and other tricks of the trade, such as a Warrant-Trixter-Firehouse…