In the coming weeks, as the push for health-care reform collides with efforts to reduce the national deficit, one federal program is virtually guaranteed to get caught in the crunch: Medicare. Lawmakers in Washington are targeting that sprawling program A primarily for those over the age of 65 A for…
The modern hospice movement was born in England as an idea that you should have someone close by as you near death A a helping friend, a caregiver to sit with you in those final days to ease your fears and tend to your needs. The idea has been expanded…
It was one of those little things that mean a lot. A postcard from a distant country. “Thinking of you!” it read. “See you soon!” When Shirley McGreal found the Kenya-postmarked card in her mail about a month ago, she wasn’t sure exactly what it meant, but she did know…
They say the big house ages a man. Something about the empty hours, the bare cells, the crush of conscience, gnaws at the very fabric of youth. In Stanley K. Shapiro’s case, that fabric was pretty frayed going in. Lightly liver-spotted, bulging around the belly, the 63-year-old emerged from Turner…
Roberto Polo couldn’t even begin to explain. All he knew was that at some point the money had stopped being money. This was something those around him would never fathom A the sycophants who slobbered for his invites, the art dealers who gasped at his bids, the investors who shoved…
Early in the first quarter of the Miami Hooters’ franchise-opening Arena Football League game against the Charlotte Rage, rather than ducking his head and safely absorbing a sack in the quarterbacking equivalent of the fetal position, Hooters quarterback John Fourcade uncoiled in the face of several onrushing Rage defensive linemen…
As the United States trade embargo against Cuba has dragged on over the past 30 years, a simple phone call to the island has become a frustrating ordeal. New or upgraded phone service from the U.S. to Cuba was forbidden when the Kennedy administration imposed the embargo, essentially freezing telecommunications…
Horses did not eat one another. Pigeons’ heads did not spin around and fall off. In all, the world’s framework did not disjoint. But as of 1:59 p.m. on Saturday, May 29, 1993, it was a world without The Jim and Steve Show. Nobody thought it would last. The radio…
Because it was there. Some men climb mountains. Some men sail around the world in papyrus boats. Some men cross the Atlantic in hot-air balloons. Some men drive on the Palmetto Expressway at rush hour in Toyota Tercels. And when you ask them why they did it, what madness or…
This is a nice place. A workman shines up the oversize glass doors that open into the 27-story Capital Bank Building, located in a sweet pocket of the Brickell business district. Here, the carpet caresses. The elevators speak to you. Fine wood and spotless mirrors, marble and chrome. Shine. The…
The grass at Bayfront Park is wet with fresh paint, applied especially for an evening concert at the AT&T Amphitheater. The AT&T marquee on the downtown park’s border with Biscayne Boulevard has been announcing the event for a week along with a recommendation that spectators arrive early. One family with…
Finally, a singles club that has found the fast lane to romance in South Florida. Similar interests? Nah. Intellectual compatibility? Ha! The potential for long-term commitment? Not a chance. Try this: a hot set of wheels. As any swinging single will tell you, the key to becoming a love magnet…
Both Arthur Teele, Jr., and Hans Peter Kugler say they don’t remember much about the exact moment they met on a 1985 Concorde flight from Paris to New York. But the chance encounter turned out to be fateful for the Dade County Commission chairman and the German tycoon. Kugler has…
The kid is a giant heavyweight: 6′ 8″, 270 pounds. He just moved down from North Carolina. Can he fight? Well, sure he knows how to fight, he can box, and with the right opponent, he can win. Even better, he’s white. It’s just a fact in the boxing trade…
Does Dade County’s film czar talk in her sleep? If so, does her husband listen? These ostensibly private questions have become matters of public debate amid Miami’s burgeoning production community. And in the halls of county government. And in the chambers of the Dade State Attorney’s Office. As director of…
Ricardo Samitier, Sr., has a knack for winning attention. The wrong kind of attention. In 1986 Samitier, the former president of Commuter Airlines, was found guilty of defrauding Eastern Airlines and sent to prison. While incarcerated, he claims former business associates forged his signature to strip him of two airplanes…
Le Jeune Road near Miami International Airport. A right turn loops around, allowing access to a service road that leads past the Sheraton Hotel and practically right onto the fairways of Melreese Golf Course. A water hazard prevents parking directly in the line of soaring Titleists, but across the canal…
Hack critics and weathered promoters will all tell you the same thing about Bob Seger. Seger, they’ll say, never had it easy. Abandoned by his daddy at age ten, he shared a one-room dive with his mom and brother during junior high school and cooked off a hot plate. By…
No matter how hip South Beach residents think they are, they have for years suffered from a major case of cultural deprivation: no first-run movie theaters. South Beachers have had to endure the painful, humiliating chore of driving several miles out of town, to places like the Omni in gritty…
For two years, a Mano was one of a handful of bright stars in the dim constellation of local eateries. Ensconced in a corner of the Betsy Ross Hotel in the upper reaches of Ocean Drive in Miami Beach, it came as close to offering a true fine-dining experience as…
Wendell Banks slithers along a narrow passage between cars before bursting into the open with as much pseudo-official bravado as his tattered clothing will allow. He wants to look authoritative as he quick-steps across the municipal parking lot at the corner of S.W. First Street and S.W. Second Avenue. When…
Mitch is strutting around, fists clenched above his head, completely in love with himself. “I’m bad,” howls the off-duty postal worker. “I live on Baaaaaad Street. I live all the way down at the end of that street past all the other houses, I’m so bad. There aren’t no other…
