Editorial Voice

Letters from the issue of December 24, 2009

Whenever the web seems to have reached its peak of weirdness, the whole thing whirlpools into entirely new dimensions of the bizarre, revealing secret worlds where you can watch celebrity breakdowns streamed live, read first-round NBA draft picks suicide tweets, or even e-shop for shrunken human heads. One of the…

Ronda Vangates was once caught up in one of the worst scandals of Rudy Crew’s tenure as Miami-Dade County Public Schools superintendent. Today, the 38-year-old school district bureaucrat is the anointed successor to board member Solomon Stinson, who has decided not to run for re-election. That’s politics in the nation’s…

Last time So You Think You Can Dance held auditions in Miami, they found their winner: 18-year-old Pinecrest resident Jeanine Mason. For the seventh season, the inexplicably popular televised dance-off will again come searching for talent in the 305. So, if um.. you think you can dance, then gather up your dance…

The rent has skyrocketed eightfold. The onetime flophouse has been painted and transformed into pricey condos. A shabby sign that once read, “Vacancy — Lowest Rates — Beach Facilities — Always a Seabreeze,” has been replaced by a pretty picture peddling a $7 million residence. The beachside hotel where two…

We’ve been hit with a cold front, and if you’re like Riptide, your office is about as cozy as a gulag right now. But that’s OK, because this week’s batch of morons has a MWQ (Moronic Wattage Quotient) powerful enough to heat a three-story building. Throw on a Christmas sweater…

The incoming president of the county firefighters union, Dominick Barbera, is demonstrating a terrible lack of ethics in his personal feud with Miami-Dade Fire Rescue Chief Herminio Lorenzo. This past December 9, sent Lorenzo an audaciously snarky letter mocking the chief’s proposal to require all county firefighters to report traffic…

The day after a man lost his wife in a scuba diving accident, he was greeted by two grim-faced policemen at his door. “We’re sorry to call on you at this hour, Mr. Wilkens, but we have some information about your wife.””Well, tell me!” the man said.The policeman said, “We have some…

“You see this knob? It’s precious to a lineman, especially when it gets real busy, cause you’re struggling to turn everything on. They come right off see? One thing cooks will do just to mess with each other is steal em’, and hide em’. I remember being in a kitchen…

With less than a month to go in Miami’s upcoming special election for the two city commission seats left open by the removal Michelle Spence-Jones and Angel Gonzalez, some of the candidates are relying on their own cash rather than hitting up people for campaign contributions.Miguel Gabela and Waldo Faura…

Study Up FMU is just fine: I am very familiar with Florida Memorial University, which was described in “Crime 101” (Gus Garcia-Roberts, December 10). I know wonderful things happen on campus, yet I never see news coverage. Is there a conspiracy to destroy the only black university in South Florida?…

Despite its seemingly official, compendious name, the Mexican Institute of Sound is not some sprawling, south-of-the-border government entity all about the science of airwaves and eardrums. In fact, the Institute’s only got one member — Mexico City cratedigger-slash-EMI exec Camilo Lara — and he mostly studies the art of shaking…

Alright, I promise this will be the last Miami Music Festival post for a while. But in case you wanted to see what you missed — because you missed it, didn’t you? — check out these YouTube clips of a few choice performances. First, I’ll post a few from Saturday…

Recently dismissed ethics complaints against three lobbyists provide a glimpse into how developers will pay off so-called community activists to win support for their projects.In finding that zoning lawyers Juan Mayol, Joseph Goldstein, and Richard Perez did in fact register to lobby on behalf of their client Q2 — a group…

Moving Units is a weekly column on Crossfade tracking the best-selling albums at South Florida independent record stores. Top Five Albums for the Week of December 6 – December 12 Sweat Records, Miami 1. Getting On My Mind, Panic Bomber 2. No Mercy, Raffa & Rainer 3. No Seasons, Jacuzzi…

Seems like two life partners of Miami Heat players won’t be joining the ranks of Jose Canseco, Flava Flav, that guy who killed his girlfriend, New York, and various people with porny pasts in the pantheon of VH1 Reality shows after all. When VH1 and Shaunie O’Neal, Shaq’s wife announced plans…

Milton Hirsch will take Barbara Carey-Shuler’s money, but he’ll hold off on her endorsement.​ And the 2010 Miami-Dade judicial candidate doesn’t want Angel Gonzalez giving him the thumbs-up either.Hirsch removed their names from the official endorsement list on his campaign website, electmiltonhirsch.com, on November 27, days after two Miami city commissioners…

If you thought Phoenix dubstep duo UltraBlack’s minimal moniker was some kind of warning scream against the sleek and opulent evils of future technology, you were wrong. Truth is, Bryan Marek and Nick Suddarth make dark party tracks that, perversely, seem to revel in the debauched potentialities of a not-so-distant dystopia…

A Miami-Dade jury has convicted Liberty City pastor Gaston Smith on one count of grand theft for looting more than $10,000 in grant money intended to help the poor.Yesterday, Banana Republican caught the tail end of closing arguments by Smith’s defense lawyer Larry Handfield and prosecutor Richard Scruggs. Both lawyers…

It’s inevitable … Sometime this Saturday-night-slash-Sunday-morning your half-drunk ass will find itself wandering, like a partied-out zombie, through the near-abandoned labyrinth of weird, winding roads that buffer Transit and those temporary Miami Music Festival tents from the banker-bustle of Brickell. But wait, before you pass out and puke on that…

Update: Jervon A. Smith wants the world to know that he wasn’t a pastor when he did all this creepy shit.We usually use this column to recklessly mock regional idiots who accidentally shoot their toes off or are busted for running pathetic Ponzi schemes. But this week, we’re issuing a…

Mandolin Set To Play Turkish/Greek CuisineIt is a white-washed 1940’s house with blue trimmed windows. There are bougainvillea boasting bright colors, greek oil canisters turned into flower vases, traditional taverna chairs at wooden tables beneath a lantern-lit tree. Mandolin Aegean Bistro, serving rustic dishes authentic to the villages of Greece…