Six Degrees, So Long. 944, Howdy!

No doubt about it. Times are tight in the media market. The Herald’s for sale, the Sun-Sentinel is bankrupt, and the SunPost is nearly cooked. Now comes news that 944 has purchased Six Degrees, one of our favorite spunky little club entertainment mags, which just recently gave up the ghost…

Letters from the Issue of March 5, 2009

Torture by Any Other Name Still stinks: Gee, things really are changing these days — the final days of Gitmo (“Guantánamo’s Final Days,” Tim Elfrink and Jesse Hyde, February 26). Yeah, they’re changing the venue to U.S. military bases and other secret locations to continue torturing goat herders from Afghanistan…

Obama’s New Cigar Tax Might Just Kill Miami’s Torcedores

Tendrils of earthy smoke snake through a room on the edge of Little Havana, past old men in guayaberas slapping dominoes on a folding table and a long counter where a wrinkled 80-year-old brews espresso. Near the front window facing NW Seventh Street, Dionisio Gonzalez gently peels a cured deep-brown…

Miami Graffiti: The Book

Local graffiti artists have been getting a lot of attention lately. In February, they pierced the mainstream media by targeting some uber-audacious locations, eventually culminating in a fatal accident. And in April, a photography book, Miami Graffiti, pays tribute to some of the street’s most skilled artists.Husband and wife photographers James…

Marlins Deal Kaput?

The Florida Marlins are in desperate need of a great closer. Someone who can seal the deal with the Miami City Commission and the Miami-Dade County Commission over the team’s sweetheart $630 million stadium deal. Right now the Marlins dreams of a new domed home on the former Orange Bowl…

¿Que Pasa, M.I.A.? ¡Time For Lent!

Catholicos, it’s Lent time! Cuaresma, baby! Time for to behave really good. Time to make up for all the sinning and loving ladies and inappropriate gyrating. Time for me to undo the damage of having become a Cuban-American Idol. In Catholic school I was told to give up something during…

Five Horny, Homeless Frenchies Set Free in Miami Without Warning

It’s not exactly breaking news when American producers are reworking a European reality show for American airwaves. However, we’re surprised that we’ve never heard of the original series in this particular case because it was based in Miami. According to Reuters, RDF USA has acquired the rights to a foreign…

Letters from the Issue of February 26, 2009

Super Response She’s disappointed: I was excited to read “Superfans” (C. Stiles and John Linn, February 19), until I noticed you missed two big diehard superfan groups: Dungeons & Dragons and animé. My husband, Armando Mendive, is the dungeon master of his group, which has been playing more than 20…

Timoney Loses, Freedom Wins, Taxpayers Pay

Miami Police Chief John Timoney screwed up, and we taxpayers are just gonna keep paying and paying.Back in November 2003, the City of Miami shut down some protests against a Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA) meeting being held here. The cops beat some protesters and illegally jailed others…

Tyra Banks Looking for Some Shorties on Miami Beach

Riptide just got Tyra Mail! The reigning queen of reality TV train wrecks, Tyra Banks, is casting for the next season of America’s Next Top Model in Miami Beach, but there’s a catch… wait for it… wait for it… The next season, the contestants must all be pregnant male paraplegics ladies 5’7″…

Message to Andres Oppenheimer: Work Harder!

OK, now this is funny. In a Herald correction this morning, the newspaper admitted the first paragraph of Andres Oppeneheimer’s column “was inadvertently picked up from a previous column.”What they actually “picked up” was the headline of the column from three days before: “One sure bet: Venezuela’s condition will worsen.” And…

Odebrecht Is Portuguese for “Big Money Donor”

For the past two days, I’ve noted all the work Miami-Dade County awards Brazilian engineering and construction firm Odebrecht. Despite a history of completing jobs behind schedule and over budget, the company continues to get the nod to build county-funded projects worth hundreds of millions of dollars. Part of the…

¿Que Pasa, M.I.A.? Miami in Pop Culture

Seeing Miami in a movie or a TV show or music video turns on my internal geek switch. I’m super excited to see the 305 represented on the screen, but I approach America’s assessment of Miami like one of those guys that knows the names of the different kinds of…

Letters from the Issue of February 19, 2009

Six Good Kids Dead Show some respect: To begin with, Brian DuPree was murdered on a Friday morning, not a Saturday, and he was sitting on the passenger side of the car, not the driver’s side, as Gus Garcia-Roberts wrote in the “Curse of the Class of 2006” (February 12)…

Odebrecht Is Portuguese For “Behind Schedule”

For more than 10 years, Brazilian-based construction firm Odebrecht has made tons of money from Miami-Dade County public works projects. If anything, the company is consistent…at completing jobs behind schedule and charging the county more money to finish. For example, Odebrecht accepted responsibility for having to repair 96 massive concrete…

Odebrecht Is Portuguese for “Pay More”

Imagine you hire a contractor to build your house. And that contractor goes over budget, continually misses deadlines, and then tries to charge you more for it. Logic dictates you wouldn’t hire that contractor again, unless you’re a sucker. Well, Miami-Dade County government is the biggest sucker when it comes…

Are You Obese? Talented? Both? NBC Wants You

Riptide was actually not aware that NBC bothered to broadcast anything besides 30 Rock, The Office, and the “I really, really hope one day it gets funny” Kath & Kim. But apparently those shows aren’t paying the bills, so they’ve got a schedule full of sweet, sweet reality television, and…