These are heady days for the Diaz de la Portilla clan. Renier, youngest of the three brothers, is on the verge of winning a seat in the Florida legislature, resurrecting a political career that only two years ago seemed all but dead after a brief but tumultuous stint on the…
Forget boy bands, Woodstock violence, or the “Latin” craze. If you’re looking for an overarching theme throughout last year’s pop music, just one word comes to mind: bass. It was all about bass. Moment of clarity number one: Midsummer. Sitting in the back of a car with Miami’s flagship experimentalist…
Y2K DISASTER STRIKES MIAMI Thousands Feared Dead in Millennium Mishap By Thomas Mayrose Washington Post Staff Writer January 2, 2000 MIAMI — In the most tragic event of the new millennium, more than 2500 people were killed when an American Airlines jumbo jet crashed into a Miami concert arena during…
I could hear my voice rising, my tone turning more aggressive, even hostile. I was talking to one of the Miami attorneys for young Elian Gonzalez. She was asserting that no loving father would want his son to grow up in Cuba, and so the pleas from Elian’s father for…
Rock en español largely remains a promise, an unfulfilled aesthetic vision of Latin-American musicians merging their native grooves with rock and roll, fashioning something altogether new in the process. On paper — and in the breathless cheerleading of many local critics — it sounds great. The reality, however, is a…
This past Saturday the Urban Environment League of Greater Miami fired the first salvo in what promises to be a momentous battle over the future of downtown’s Bicentennial Park. Will the forlorn park be rescued and serve as a catalyst for visionary plans to preserve and enhance Miami’s squandered treasure…
For the past three weeks Armando Gutierrez has been a frenetic blur of activity. He carries not one but two cell phones, on which he often juggles multiple conversations, his head bobbing back and forth between portables like a metronome. One minute he’s asking a local lawyer to help him…
An all-too-rare sound filled the intimately lit space inside Timba the Monday before last, as saxophonist David Liebman and percussionist Abbey Radar reached down deep inside themselves and pulled forth some truly beautiful moments. It wasn’t always easy listening, as Liebman’s body appeared to zig (often at an angle that…
That cold snap blowing through Miami last week had less to do with Mother Nature than with the specter of José Garcia-Pedrosa returning to his old fiefdom as Miami Beach’s City Manager. Thankfully Beach law-enforcement figures (quietly aided by local arts advocates) were able to intercede and convince the Miami…
his week I wanted to praise the City of North Miami and its police department for firing Det. Fred St. Amand. Instead I find myself once again wondering if anyone in that city — the mayor, the city manager, the police chief, the city attorney — understands the difference between…
“Let me ask you something,” the man on the other end of the telephone line says. “Where are the commission-sponsored initiatives? Where are the ordinances and resolutions designed to make this a better place to live? There aren’t any anymore. They don’t have any. They’ve run out of ideas.” The…
You can take your pick of the many neo-fin-de-siècle gigs vying for millennium-worthy status, from the dueling downtown saccharine fests of Puff Daddy and Gloria Estefan to the chirpy dance blowouts at the Ice Palace and Miami Beach’s Convention Center, each promising uniqueness, each featuring many of the same oh-so-tired…
“Imagine rock music as a beached whale’s carcass,” suggests pop critic Simon Reynolds. “What seems like intense activity is really necrotic vitality — a maggot horde of bands living off the rotting flesh of a moribund culture. In their teeming tediousness, rock books exist on an even lower plane, microbial…
Last week our intrepid mayor, Alex Penelas, flew off to Spain — at taxpayer expense, of course — for a bit of sightseeing and a chance to sample some fine Basque cuisine. The mayor, his wife, and their two children visited the scenic cities of Madrid, Alicante, and Santander during…
Here we go again: The Cuban-exile community has snapped to attention in anticipation of their latest battle, next weekend’s concert featuring a double bill of Cuban chanteuse Rosita Fornes and that island’s famed performance poet Luis Carbonell, scheduled for a Miami Beach location that was undisclosed as of press time…
For those of us innocents who live outside the magical realm of viejito politics, the continuing success of school board member Demetrio Perez, Jr., is a thing of wonder. Despite nearly two decades of conduct that sensible people have found appalling, and despite his recent arrest at Miami International Airport…
Where have all the Mohawks gone? If you’re looking for the perfect symbol of the aesthetic denouement of the underground punk scene, you don’t have to search too hard. The icons of that movement’s mid-’80s subterranean flowering are in plain sight, circa 1999. Sonic Youth’s scowling siren Kim Gordon now…
It seemed absolutely fitting that the Los Van Van concert took place during the same week that the Justice Department finally released the 1948 grand jury testimony of Richard Nixon’s crusade against Alger Hiss, an event that had served as a catalyst for the McCarthy era’s anti-communism hysteria. After all,…
I was playing a show in Miami in the theater of divine comedy…. — Bob Dylan, “Caribbean Wind” A tailgate party with teeth is the best way to describe the protest of more than 4000 Cuban exiles, all screaming themselves hoarse outside the Miami Arena, while many of their fellow…
Ira Clark was hiding. Somewhere inside county hall, the president of the Public Health Trust had decided it was better to stay out of sight during the county commission’s annual budget hearing than to step forward and defend his agency’s spotty record for meeting the medical needs of Miami-Dade’s indigent…
It’s time to announce the results of my “Nickname the Mayor” contest. As you’ll recall I thought Miami Mayor Crazy Joe Carollo needed a new handle following his efforts to prevent the band Los Van Van from playing in the city. Among some of the entries: Clueless Joe Carollo, Joe…
“I feel sorry for the Cuban community in Miami. Because they have imposed on themselves by way of the Right, the same condition that Castro has imposed on Cuba. Total intolerance. And ours is worse. Because it is entirely voluntary.” — Bernardo Benes Another week, another round of Los Van…
