Something, or someone, failed Jarvis. Maybe it was the social worker assigned to visit the family, or maybe it was his mother who couldn't keep him off the street. Or maybe it was Jarvis himself, a headstrong boy who tried to become a man too quickly.
In a sterile white conference room on the second floor of the Department of Justice building in downtown Miami, about 80 Opa-locka residents are gathered: old ladies in floral-print dresses, pastors in suits, and police officers in short-sleeve, midnight-blue uniforms. A serious-looking black man in a dark suit, white shirt,...
There's something about a photograph taken last year in Washington, D.C., that recalls images from the civil rights movement of the Fifties and Sixties. Against the backdrop of the Capitol dome, twenty or so people cluster behind a podium and a bank of microphones. Among them are U.S. Rep. Carrie...
Inner City, Outer Beauty I'd like to thank New Times for Judy Cantor and Steve Satterwhite's extraordinary article, "The People's Gallery (July 16), about our inner-city wall paintings. I have lived in Liberty City for 30 years and have never read anything as uplifting as this article. Not one newspaper...
Udonis Haslem made a name for himself in Jacksonville. In only two seasons the starting power forward for the Wolfson Wolfpack high school basketball team established himself as one of the best big men in the state, earning a spot on the Jacksonville All-Stars traveling squad. Teammates say Haslem's sure...
You can't go around slashing dogs," Rosie Heffernan warns a roomful of chattering high school students at Our Lady of Lourdes, an all-girl Catholic academy in South Miami. Not that any of the girls has converted to a religious cult with a penchant for cutting up canines. Rather, Heffernan, their...
State Rep. Steven Geller had a disturbing experience last October. He turned on his radio for a news update, only to find that the format on WINZ-AM (940) had been altered. "It was like a slap in the face," Geller exclaims, his voice rising in volume as he recalls the...
Gloria Leonard, Al Goldstein's friend and colleague, is on the phone from New York City. "Victims again?" Goldstein says to the former pornographic-movie star and publisher of High Society magazine. "It was a setup. You can't win, Gloria." It seems Leonard had been invited to appear on Geraldo to discuss...
On the Wednesday in April 1988 that Kenneth E. Moore walked into his video store and asked to buy five kilos of cocaine, proprietor Sam Ferguson wasn't hurting for cash. Ferguson had met the Delray businessman through mutual acquaintances, and for the Liberty City shop owner it was no big...
Tim Dog is a real mother for ya, as Johnny G. Watson might put it, make ya wanna run for cover, or at least poke a b-hole in the break-bad front of alleged gangsta rappers and chart toppers N.W.A. Yo, I know you're already down with the dispute: West Coasters...
Despite the normally vapid state of TV, remote-control fast-forwarding does occasionally result in the unearthing of something worth staring at. Case in point: One night while zapping through the dreck I came across an interview, conducted by Dick Cavett, of the cerebrally luminous author/philosopher Gore Vidal. America's internal conflicts, postulated...
Made in 1980 on a shoestring budget -- and looking every bit as dirt-cheap as John Waters's deliciously trashy Baltimore chronicles of the early Seventies -- Pedro Almodovar's Pepi, Luci, Bom has the courage and outlandish invention of new discovery. For not only was Spain enjoying a honeymoon with life,...
A list of childhood abuses hangs on the glass partition in the tiny cubicle used by Health and Rehabilitative Services (HRS) protective investigator Lulus McQueen. It serves, in some ways, as a stark reminder of the cruelties that he may uncover each day on the job. The list is meant...
A line of cars snakes down U.S. 1 toward a party in Kendall. Although tropical storm Allison is directly over Cuba at the moment, a torrent of rain has fallen on Miami, leaving the streets glistening and slick. There are about twenty cars in all, including a BMW 325i, a...
When Derrod Bush was called before a judge last Tuesday, just before noon, chuckles rippled through the courtroom. That might seem odd, given that Bush has been charged with aggravated assault, a third-degree felony that carries a maximum punishment of five years under the state's supervision. But consider Derrod Bush...
It is a cinematic moment that can be relished by anyone who has ever overpaid for a bad meal: Donald Sutherland playing a health inspector in the 1978 remake of the sci-fi classic Invasion of the Body Snatchers. Nervously shadowed by owner Henri, Sutherland prowls the kitchen of an exclusive...
My momma always told me that year-end top-ten lists are like a box of chocolates. You never know what you're gonna get. A quick glance through other film critics' nominations for the best and worst of 1994 confirms Momma's wisdom. For example, Rolling Stone's Peter Travers and Entertainment Weekly's Owen...
In some segments of Dade County society, Roxanne Falco is a famous person. Stories are told about her, news of her whereabouts exchanged. But the talk is not complimentary, unless you consider sheer notoriety flattering. Roxanne Falco is a prostitute, and she is generally unwelcome in the part of town...
Dennis Britt inspires something bordering on fanaticism among his fellow musicians. "No artist to break out of Miami, past or present, myself included, possesses half the genius of Dennis Britt," claims pop songwriter-vocalist Tommy Anthony, whose recent independently released CD, Mondial, sold thousands of copies after garnering airplay on Top...
Otis Wallace is the undisputed heavyweight champion of politics and power in Florida City. Last month the voters in this southernmost Dade community handed him his seventh term as mayor, a knockout streak nearly unprecedented in contemporary South Florida, where political success is normally measured by how quickly your constituents...
