The Sony Ericsson Open begins in Key Biscayne this Wednesday, and that means the tennis world’s most notorious one-man circus is coming to town. Forget the athletes; we’re following Richard Williams, dad of top-seeded sisters and Palm Beach Gardens residents Serena and Venus. You gotta love the sideline character and…
“Bingo!” Rafael announces as he tools his black Dodge Dakota toward a wooden sign wired to a chainlink fence and scrawled in orange spray paint with “Se Venden Puercos.” Only a mile into Hialeah Gardens on a late February afternoon, his quest for fresh pork is nearly complete. The Cuban-born…
The Marlins settled for 600 fans to a home game last year. The Panthers are literally giving away tickets. Our minor-league soccer team is hemmoraging cash, And those are sports that Americans have at least heard of. So you might think it’d be foolhardy to bet millions on Miamians attending the…
The Sony Ericsson Open begins tomorrow on Key Biscayne, and that means the tennis world’s most notorious one-man circus is coming to town. Forget the athletes; we’re following Richard Williams, dad of the top-seeded sisters and Palm Beach Gardens residents Serena and Venus. Richard’s antics include telling a reporter: “The…
Frank McKinney is a “maverick daredevil real estate artist” according to his not-at-all-over-the-top website, a “super hero meets Robin Hood, 5-time international best-selling author; philanthropist, risk taker, and visionary who sees opportunities and creates markets where none existed before.”In short, he’s everything but modest. Same goes for the mega-mansions McKinney…
Floridians haven’t followed the Marlins this closely since the Gary Sheffield Era, and today, another chapter was written in the saga of the proposed Little Havana stadium. Commissioner Michelle Spence-Jones pretty much played this perfectly, even using a fetus to her advantage. She was on maternity leave when the remaining…
Take a drive through West Miami-Dade — anywhere from as far south as Kendall to beyond the northern borders of the county — and you’ll see the signs everywhere. Se Venden Puercos. Venden Animales. Animals for Sale. Guess what? The farmers inside ain’t selling their pigs alive. But they certainly…
We would’ve thought Miami-Dade transit parties would be dull affairs — you know, where the administrators get tipsy and see who can recite the Sunday schedule for Route J the quickest. But no, director Harpal Kapoor, an Indian-born sikh, and his merry band of bureacrats go buck-wild after hours. Evidence: This…
For exhibit 3,862 that our world is accelerating toward apocalypse, witness the launch of Anxo, the Miami-based line of bulletproof clothing for civilians. Its slogan (and we can’t make this shit up): “Our promise: You won’t be a victim of fashion.” “It’s horrifying,” cofounder Eric Dominguez, a Los Angeles native…
There’s something definitely extortive about the latest press release from Miami FC, the under-attended and gravely endangered second-tier pro soccer team that allegedly plays at Tropical Park Stadium. The club is under the gun from the Brazilian company that owns it- which, like the sad sap who owns the Panthers, is…
Public buses that don’t stop when we run to try to catch them always struck us as a unavoidable fact of life. Jeffrey Bradley, a sometime blogger for Miami Beach’s Alliance for Reliable Transit, haughtily disagrees with that concept. We were copied on an e-mail Bradley sent to Miami-Dade Transit…
Like its sister past-times of golf, polo, and hedge fund fraud, tennis has always been rank with the stink of exclusivity. But while it is usually played by guys named Nigel who tie their sweaters around their chests, once you take it out of the country club, tennis can be…
In these tough economic times, Miamians find themselves cutting new corners to make ends meet. As unemployed 39-year old Hialeah resident Ricardo Caonwahi tells us, that can sometimes mean making a meal out of a pony. Yes, a miniature horse.Caonwahi is being charged with three misdemeanors- creating a sanitary nuisance,…
There are a couple of unusual aspects to the breaking news that embattled native Alex Rodriguez is gonna miss at least six weeks of the baseball season to have hip surgery.The first is that the story was first reported by ESPN Deportes, which has even the New York Times chasing…
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…
On Thursday, Riptide finds Roosevelt Ivory, Sr. stepping out of a white Lincoln Navigator, accompanied by an apparent bodyguard, at his two-house compound on Northwest 69th Terrace in Liberty City. It’s advertised as “Roosevelt’s Rooming House” in the White Pages, but this certainly is no Days Inn. A burly, dreadlocked…
Though he now lives in a red-brick minimansion on a silent, frostbitten cul-de-sac in the Virginia suburbs near Washington, D.C., Alberto Mora is at heart a Miami Cuban. Among the clues are a voracious appetite for debate and the Bustelo espresso he brews for visitors to his sparsely decorated home…
The Alex Rodriguez steroid saga is a homegrown fiasco. It first got legs last April, when Miami-raised Cuban exile and artificial baseball humanoid José Canseco published Vindicated, a finger-pointing tome that claimed Westminster Christian alum and University of Miami friend-with-benefits Rodriguez had grown huge through juice. According to the book,…
This past Sunday, when Mickey Rourke was heinously denied of an Academy Award, one local relative wasn’t watching in outrage. That’s because stepbrother Michael Scott Addis, who was raised with Rourke, doesn’t have a television set; he lives on the street behind a dilapidated upholstery shop in North Miami Beach…
Things have gotten a little crazy in the Miami graffiti scene as of late. First, spray-paint crew Buk 50 made the news when its giant tag obscured an overhead I-95 sign during Presidents’ Day weekend. The uber-ballsy stunt earned a nod from our boss, and a stodgy rebuke from our…
Yuri Sucart’s Google search will never be the same again. On Tuesday, Alex Rodriguez held a press conference saying his cousin provided and injected him with ‘roids. A day later, ESPN has identified that cousin as Kendall resident Sucart, A-Rod’s right-hand man. His name has today’s top rank in Google…
If you’ve been to Little Haiti, chances are you’ve seen his work: fat, glistening, cartoonish acrylic depictions of everything from hair grease tins to roast chickens to his trademark soda cans, which sport the brand “Serge” in place of Pepsi. “I don’t want to say I’m the best muralist in…
