Charts Miami Neighborhood Map Lawsuits Galore The Miami Index Miami's Brain Matter Naomi wouldn't be quite so desperate now if she hadn't spent her rent money to bury her mother. But what choice did she have? Naomi is sure her 85-year-old mother, Rosalia, could have lived longer if she'd been...
He's our skinny one, and he has no idea what he's in for. That's part of what makes it hard. Seeing him looking so healthy, watching him swing on the monkey bars. He gets his legs going like a crooked pendulum, lets go with one hand and stretches forward, skips...
In an ongoing endeavor to develop, understand, and communicate "art," our definitions are constantly morphing. At the speed that we identify and recognize, we deny and re-create, each time pushing the walls of the "white box" to a point of distension. Since the advent of modernity -- when artists decided...
The birthday dinner's entrée had been prepared especially at the request of the honoree, a tri-coastal sophisticate who divided his time among Toronto, Miami, and the French Riviera. But all six guests plus the host qualified as educated and experienced international eaters, vera cucina italiana on top of most everyone's...
If Sax on the Beach fails, the newly opened music bar will be just another Miami jazz dream deferred, like Arthur's (which featured big names in the Eighties) and the cozy, if empty, Champagnes on 79th Street that closed months ago. This gin joint in the lobby of the Bay...
Photography is a great medium for social documentation. Think of nineteenth-century French photographer Eugène Atget, who produced thousands of photographs of Paris with direct, novel, and poetic renditions of everything imaginable: people in the streets, shop fronts, buildings, wheeled vehicles of all kinds, decorative details, et cetera. Cuban photo documentaries...
Close to HomeThey met at Victory Hospital back in August 1962. My mother had just given birth to me, but owing to problems during the delivery, she needed to be hospitalized for more than a week after I was born. One of her roommates was Rita Grady, who was expecting...
This past April 11, a heart attack took the life of 74-year-old Mary Ellen Bethel Hanna. Her children, Larry and Jacqueline, wanted a simple burial for their mother, whom they affectionately describe as old-fashioned. Mary Ellen had not remarried after losing her husband, World War II veteran Wilbert Hanna, in...
NW 36th Street in Miami. Action Muffler, El Patio Body Shop, an old warehouse transformed into En Espiritu y En Verdad evangelical ministry. Jackson High School stands secure behind an imposing iron fence. Across the street, protected by its own fence, Ebenezer United Methodist Church looms over all, the church's...
The first-floor lounge of the Radisson Deauville Resort Hotel is precisely the kind of place one would expect to find the cocktail set. Fifty blocks north of bustling South Beach, this gem of postwar-modern design features a sprawling lobby of sweeping curves and giant columns. Behind the bar the large...
The early morning dropoff at Belén Jesuit Preparatory School unfolds with almost military precision. Young uniformed boys, backpacks in hand, one by one jump out of late-model SUVs and minivans. The vehicles, many displaying "Belen Wolverines" license plates, linger momentarily at the school's entrance before lurching back into west Miami-Dade...
Little has been said about the ubiquitous effect of irony in much of today's art. Irony allows detachment, a trend that may have started with Dada, the first anarchic movement in modern art history. After a catastrophic first world war, Dadaists had good reasons to resent absolutes. When Genezyp Kapen,...
Before a nerve disease stole his independence, Martin Marcus lived a richly diverse life. He trained thoroughbred horses, manufactured hot tubs, sold units in a Colorado time-share project, and worked as an executive at a film company. He met success and tasted failure, but he always sprang back with a...
The good news is that Oliver Saucy and Darrel Broek are not putting Café Maxx and East City Bistro up for sale, despite rumors to the contrary. The better news is that the duo finally has found a site for East City Grill, their successful Fort Lauderdale venture that was...
Who stole the soul? Add Rawkus Records, the label that puts out the Lyricist Lounge series, to that list. In hip-hop the name of the record label often carries as much weight as the artists themselves when it comes to influencing sales (see Cash Money Records). Armed with arguably the...
It's always a letdown when the waiter in a quaint picture-perfect café hands out a slipshod piece of paper that passes as a menu. First thing most of us do is turn it over to see if there's anything else written on the other side. Artichoke's is the antithesis: The...
Now that our little Cuban refugee is back in his homeland, quietly becoming a role model for other young communists, it's the season in Miami for Elian retrospectives. It seems every local publication has compiled a list of winners and losers from the protracted custody saga. Regrettably these indexes tend...
Read “The Assassin Next Door, Part 1” The man who has just finished eating a plain yogurt at his black metal desk is so steadfastly intent on obliterating his past that when someone with those years in mind leans toward him and asks in a low voice, “Excuse me, are...
Even a casual observer in Havana would notice the striking disconnect between the slogans emblazoned on billboards across the city and the actual mood of the Cuban people who pass underneath them. “Imperialists, You Don't Scare Us at All!” reads one towering graphic depicting a Cuban soldier facing off against...
Sitting at a desk in his office, which is in a strip mall on Collins Avenue, Dave Samson thrusts his large head forward. The palms of his hands press on his desktop, supporting the weight of his squat torso. He wears a white polo shirt. What is left of his...
On a crowded bus in Buenos Aires, a gaggle of teenage girls huddled in the back, giggling and gossiping as teenage girls everywhere do. Their exuberant youth was too much for a cynic in his early twenties, who stood clutching a pole in the aisle. He couldn't resist baiting the...
Paola di Florio's documentary Speaking in Strings takes a midcareer look at Italian-born violinist Nadja Salerno-Sonnenberg, who leapt to prominence in 1981 when she became the youngest-ever winner of the international Naumburg Competition. Salerno-Sonnenberg, who moved to the United States at the age of eight, became a child prodigy of...
