It has been close to a year since I wrote my cover story about Lilly Aramburo, a 24-year-old single mother and drug addict who disappeared from her boyfriend’s apartment June 1, 2007. Today, there is still no trace of her, but friend Janet Forte presses on with her social media crusade to find…
Today, Banana Republican begins a weekly series assessing candidates running for various municipal elected offices this year. Let’s turn our attention to the District 3 city commission race in Miami, where we have seven contenders vying to replace Joe Sanchez, who is running for mayor. The district includes the affluent Roads…
Miami Police Rush a Murder Case on TV show The First 48
Watching Helio Castroneves sob joyfully as he sipped from his victory bottle of milk, Riptide couldn’t help but feel all warm and fuzzy. After all, we like it when a Miami celeb can get over on The Man and continue making millions more dollars entertaining us. When Castroneves won his…
Just got back from the Spence-Jones Vindication Show in Overtown. The thunderstorms had just subsided outside the Mt. Zion Missionary Baptist Church at 301 NW 9th Street. But inside Commissioner Michelle Spence-Jones’ angry voice boomed throughout the cavernous assembly hall. She was flanked by 30 to 40 supporters.”It’s been almost…
Cleared of public corruption charges last week, Miami Commissioner Michelle Spence-Jones will hold a press conference today at 5:30 p.m. We’re guessing Spence-Jones will gloat a little, maybe take a baseball bat and bash cardboard cut outs of ex-city manager Joe Arriola and Commissioner Marc Sarnoff, who both talked smack…
In this week’s print edition of Riptide, I wrote that none of the candidates in the Miami mayoral race will crack the $1 million benchmarks set by Manny Diaz in 2001 and 2005. Nevertheless, City Commissioners Tomas Regalado and Joe Sanchez are shoring up support with some of the city’s…
Miami’s mayoral frontrunners struggle to raise campaign money in recession
UPDATE: Facebook has restored Alexis Mincolla’s privileges to upload all the Satanic-themed nightclub violence footage he wants. It appears Facebook doesn’t like what Alexis Mincolla, the mastermind behind the popular Black Sunday party at Bella Rose, is posting on his page. The social media network’s Iron Guard has taken down…
This past April 30, I wrote about North Miami mayoral candidate Frank Wolland calling out opponent Andre Pierre for supposedly refusing to answer questions about his 4.9 percent ownership interest in North Miami Housing Ltd. The partnership was established by the developers of Biscayne Landing, a controversial 193-acre residential and…
This week, North Miami mayoral candidate Frank Wolland went on the offensive for the city’s upcoming May 12 municipal election by having a volunteer dress up in a chicken suit and tail opponent Andre Pierre at this past Tuesday’s city council meeting and at yesterday’s mayoral candidate forum.Wolland is calling…
Local campaign strategist Michael Caputo likes to employ some fowl play in his election day tactics. In the mid-1990s, Caputo busted out his patent-pending tactic of using a man-in-a-chicken-suit-to-tail-opponents when he worked for Russian President Boris Yeltsin’s campaign. Back when he was spokesman for ex-School Board Member Frank Bolanos’ failed campaign…
On its corporate website, Bilzin Sumberg Baena Price & Axelrod boasts that its land use and zoning lawyers have “literally helped to reshape the skyline of our community.” No doubt the influential downtown Miami law firm knows how to persuade local government officials to allow developers to build, build, and build…
North Miami Beach residents say candidate for mayor violated construction laws
For nine years, Frank Pintado, as the operations manager of Standard Parking’s Miami Beach operations, lorded over the city’s public garages and several lots. The deal was worth $3 million a year to the publicly traded company. But that all came to an end last year when the city commission voted…
Coming in November, the City of Miami’s public access channel will try its hand at some new, innovative programming to get residents amped up about the Magic City’s elected officials. It’s a variety show based loosely on the popular television series Dancing with the Stars. And the first contestants are commissioners…
Between September and November last year, an anomaly occurred in Miami. For 38 days straight, no one was murdered within city limits. It was one of those rare occurrences that had newspapers around the state buzzing. But while the Magic City enjoyed a small respite from people getting killed, the…
Matheson Hammock dry dock storage project has stalled
With millions of dollars at stake, two private marina operators are duking it out to win a Miami-Dade County contract to build and manage a dry dock boat storage facility at Matheson Hammock Park in Coral Gables. Earlier this year, an evaluation committee of Miami-Dade County employees selected Aventura-based Aqua…
Juan Carlos Zapata, a state representative from the Kendall area, is gunning for Miami-Dade County Commissioner Joe Martinez’s job. The legislator is going to be termed out of office in 2010, so he’s laying the groundwork for a run at Martinez’s seat in 2012. Already, the first Colombian-American elected to the…
The brains behind the Cocaine Cowboys documentary franchise have placed bounty on Florida Film Commissioner Lucia Fishburne. Rakontur producer Alfred Spellman claims Fishburne has not ponied up $68,000 in state incentives his company earned for filming two documentaries in-state. So irate is the 30-year-old University of Miami graduate that he…
So after wrapping up a couple of feel-good stories about a female inmate being sexually assaulted by prison guards and the ridiculous shenanigans by some cops in a tiny place called Biscayne Park, I stepped out this past Friday to The Vagabond for a little Winter Music Conference R&R. There we caught…
