It’s a memory I try to suppress. December 3, 1999. The eve of Saint Barbara’s feast day at the now-defunct Mojito Room on Collins Avenue. Nearly everyone in the elegant Havana-esque parlor was dressed in red, in honor of the Christian saint’s African alter ego, Shangó. A frail Gina Martin,…
Monday, January 15, 11:30 p.m. You never forget your first time. “Lua was just incredible,” sighs nightclub promoter Mykel Stevens with a smile. He’s momentarily lost in a wistful memory for the Española Way space in which he first threw his weekly Back Door Bamby party in the mid-Nineties. Stevens…
Government of the Cronies, by the Lobbyists, for the Special Interests Pardon me for being paranoid about Homestead Air Force Base: As happy and relieved as I am over the decision not to transform Homestead Air Force Base into a regional airport, I am still troubled by the idea, as…
With Abraham Lincoln glowering in the background and fireworks bursting in the sky, Ricky Martin swung his famous hips at the opening ceremony of the presidential inauguration to his bombastic hit “The Cup of Life.” His dance pupil, barely president-elect George W. Bush, put his hands on his own stationary…
The rationale for rejecting Homestead Air Force Base as the site for a new commercial airport was both forceful and unambiguous. “Special circumstances exist regarding the Homestead property,” the U.S. Air Force concluded. “It is proximate to and located between two national parks. The parks are under assault from urbanization…
It all looks so easy. Just lease a space on Washington Avenue, hire a DJ, throw a velvet rope up out front, and voilà! You’re a South Beach club owner! All that’s left to do now is pick out a name for your venture, preferably one with a not-so-subtle allusion…
Knight Ridder Confidential Action Report #01-47Miami simpleton strategy exceeds projections; prepare to roll out in all KR Latin markets: I stopped getting the Miami Herald because it neither understands nor represents me. And I don’t read El Nuevo Herald despite having free daily access to it and being part of…
“We’re putting together the online with the offline,” booms Yemil Martinez with the enthusiasm of a game show host. The chat events coordinator for Starmedia.com proudly sweeps his arm across the panorama of Espacio Latino, the new Latin night inaugurated last Thursday at Club Space. Before beginning their first Miami…
Nearly two decades before legions of concerned parents and oh-so-earnest editorial writers spent sleepless nights fretting over Eminem winning a Grammy Award, heavy metal was the musical siren luring America’s impressionable youth to their ruin. As he answers the door to his spacious Miami Shores home, Swedish-born heavy-metal warrior Yngwie…
It Wasn’t Such a Bad Article About My NewspaperIt just wasn’t a very smart article: Regarding Jacob Bernstein’s entertaining and (mostly) balanced article about El Nuevo Herald, where I work (“Sex! Sin! Sensation!” January 11), you don’t have to reach back into the dim recesses of pre-Carlos Castañeda history to…
Uncle Sam is a smirking skeleton flying toward a cruel heaven. A handbill advertising Negroes for sale is bound in a book opposite the Declaration of Independence. Africans in chains scream in pain, their backs bloody with welts from the slave driver’s whip. This is the vision of American Massacre,…
“I need a drink.” Walking out of the ballroom, Interior Secretary Bruce Babbitt was feeling a little parched after speaking to more than 400 environmentalists Friday evening at the sixteenth annual conference of the Everglades Coalition. The coalition, composed of more than 40 environmental groups across the nation, was meeting…
Padron’s Power GrabIt sounds distressingly familiar, and I should know: Gaspar González’s inferences regarding the manner in which MDCC district president Eduardo Padron operates are right on target (“Power Play,” January 4). This story about Juan Galan’s resignation from the MDCC Foundation is a replay of Padron’s power takeover of…
When Duran Duran came to Detroit in 1984, the only girl I knew who got to go to the sold-out arena show was my best friend Linda’s cousin Anne, who scored tickets because she lived around the block from a record store. The rest of us had to be content…
Two weeks after Hurricane Andrew ripped through South Florida, Arkansas Gov. Bill Clinton toured the hardest-hit areas of Homestead and Florida City. “We have more tornadoes in our state, and I’ve seen a lot of little towns leveled,” he offered in September 1992. “But I’ve never seen anything of this…
This was a lousy year to be a film buff in Miami. Not that there weren’t plenty of great movies released. Just that Miami was one of the worst cities in the nation in which to see them. Reissued classics such as the vintage noir Rififi, Krzysztof Kieslowski’s The Decalogue,…
Cringe at the Story, Embrace the StorytellerIt wasn’t just a tale, it was life: I very much enjoyed Celeste Fraser Delgado’s article “Tales of the Hood” (December 21). Her experience in that Little Haiti neighborhood seemed very interesting. I don’t know if I would have handled it as well as…
A dizzying blitz of corporate-generated hits blasts the ears of today’s songsmiths, plaguing them with a sense that if their music does not sell, it does not matter. That sense is especially sharp in Miami. The boom of the Latin-music industry brings to our beaches the platinum pop idols of…
With the decision on the future of Homestead Air Force Base now less than three weeks away, newspapers around the state have begun publishing editorials urging President Clinton to kill Miami-Dade County’s efforts to transform the base into a major commercial airport. The editorials reflect growing public sentiment that an…
There’s a theory that the pop music of a given moment in time isn’t determined by aural trends, record-company marketing plans, or even artistic flashes of brilliance. All those elements simply are dogs chasing the rabbit. Instead, if you want to decipher a period’s music, look to its drug of…
Editor’s note: We greatly appreciate receiving letters from our readers and try to publish as many of them as possible. Predictably, though, some missives fall victim to space limitations or time constraints. In this issue we try to make amends. Below is a sampling of correspondence from the past year…
Few people have invested more in the business of salsa than Ralph Mercado. The 59-year-old CEO of RMM Records was in the game before the genre even had a name, representing originators in the early Seventies such as Eddie Palmieri and Ray Barretto. In the universe of Fania Records, whose…
