Assistant U.S. Attorney Patrick White manages to overcome all the starch stiffening his dress shirt, lean back in his chair, and actually appear relaxed for one moment, however brief, of this long April day. He is startled back into bolt-upright position by his own voice, recorded ten months earlier, talking…
Does South Beach have a parking problem? Dade County Court Judge Raphael Steinhardt would probably say so. According to an incident report filed by two Miami Beach bicycle cops, the judge became irate after his green Corvette acquired a twenty-dollar handwritten hood ornament for parking in a no-parking zone across…
Rosaries dangling from their hands, a clutch of women stands on the sidewalk that circles Ermita de la Caridad church. Daylight is fading on a southerly wind from Cuba, breathing wisps of clouds over the tepee-shaped church, which overlooks Biscayne Bay just south of downtown Miami. The women, the majority…
When it happened, the first thing he noticed was the sound A or rather, the absence of sound. No more bleeping. No more whirring, no more of that other clatter you got in even the most expensive hospital. God knows he’d heard enough such noise to know when it was…
As hosts of a hugely popular radio talk show, Ron Diaz and Ron Bennington spend most mornings trying to be funny. Which to them tends to mean poking fun at the world in general, with particular emphasis on gays, blacks, and female genitalia. But the Rons, whose Ron and Ron…
Every year Dade County is required by law to publish the names of all business-and land-owners who haven’t paid their county property taxes on time. Dade publishes two lists: one for local businesses’ unpaid personal property taxes (i.e., those that relate to an enterprise’s equipment and furniture) and one for…
To passersby, it might have looked like just another traffic altercation, the sort of roadside scuffling that has made Miami a famously dangerous place to drive. But the incident staged this past Wednesday morning on a rain-slicked Interstate 95, in which two motorists allegedly came to blows, was no random…
On a hot afternoon this past January, Herbert Siguenza, Richard Montoya, and Ric Salinas were driving south on I-95 in a white Alamo rent-a-car, looking for a dead cat. For the members of the Los Angeles-based comedy theater troupe Culture Clash, on a two-week visit to Miami to acquire firsthand…
In the South Beach drag scene, where lip-synching is a talent and “dressing up” is murmured in the reverent tones you might employ to say “composing music” or “writing poetry,” Shawn Palacious is on to something a little bit different. “Some people don’t have a grasp of what I’m interested…
Two weeks ago today, County Commission Chairman Art Teele and Commissioner Pedro Reboredo convoyed north to the West Palm Beach headquarters of the South Florida Water Management District, along with Aviation Department Director Gary Dellapa and Department of Environmental Resources Management Director John Renfrow. When the future of your county’s…
When Pan American World Airways slid into bankruptcy in December 1991, the Dade County Aviation Department inherited the airline’s sprawling network of underground tanks and pipes that supplies jet fuel to hundreds of passenger and cargo planes at Miami International Airport. The department also inherited a critical problem: the need…
You might think a lawyer facing a federal fraud investigation and possible disbarment would keep a low profile. Not James Dougherty. Employing the legal rationale that the best defense is a good offense, he filed two lawsuits against his accusers this past December. While the Miami Beach attorney refused numerous…
The senator spoke, as befits a Democrat from Massachusetts, with the moral indignation of a Kennedy. “Today is really a case study in the way a bank can foster the sort of conspiracy that rips at the fabric of our values,” John F. Kerry warned, his small mouth frowning. Though…
To private security companies, the county contract for guard service along Metrorail and the Metromover reads like a dream. The five-year deal calls for more than 150 guards, and is valued at anywhere from five to six million dollars per year. With the expansion of the Metromover, security duties will…
Key Biscayners failed this past week in their effort to snare a parcel of Bill Baggs Cape Florida State Recreation Area, but it wasn’t for lack of trying. Indeed, at the ripe old age of three, Dade’s youngest municipality is behaving less like a toddler than like an uppity adolescent…
Eight months ago no one had heard of the Rolling Stone Rock & Roll Bowl, and I was just an obscure graduate student, a former New Times writer enduring a self-imposed five-year exile in the vast Midwest. Today a few dozen people — perhaps even a few hundred people –…
Like many homes in Cuba, the small ranch-style house off Bird Road that artist Jose Bedia bought when he moved to Miami with his family last summer is protected by what is known as the “Indian commission.” Its members, an assortment of small ceramic statuettes of braves and squaws depicted…
The brainchild of Rolling Stone founder Jann Wenner, the Rolling Stone Rock & Roll Bowl kicked off its inaugural run last fall with challenge exams at 30 colleges and universities nationwide. Six months later, after increasingly competitive regional and semifinal rounds, two three-person teams duked it out for the big…
On January 24, when Martha Ayerdis filed a discrimination grievance with the Dade County Affirmative Action office, she officially entered the murky waters through which sexual harassment allegations run their bureaucratic course. But not even the 39-year-old Ayerdis, who worked as a defense lawyer in her native Nicaragua before escaping…
The people have spoken. The votes have been cast. The outcome is clear. In a nearly unanimous display of love and support, South Floridians have selected “Oh My My, Where Am I A Miami” as their new unofficial, official song. “I can’t stop humming the refrain,” said one man who…
On March 24, Philip Michael Thomas, former Miami Vice star, transformed the Miami City Commission chambers into a cheesy nightclub and belted out his latest musical inspiration, “My, My, My, MI AM I.” Awestruck by Thomas’s creative genius, the commissioners – well known for their sophisticated taste in music…
From a historic old home to a string of failed restaurants to an empty dirt lot A the saga of Grove Calloway’s came to an ignoble end three weeks ago when bulldozers razed whatever memories were left of the historic Peacock House. By the time heavy equipment moved in, though,…
