The toaster in which you toast your toast. The computer keyboard on which you type. The toilet on which you sit. Design affects us in myriad ways we don’t even notice. A flawed kitchen appliance can yield a burned breakfast. A poorly assembled keyboard can contribute to a nasty case…
“I don’t understand why people keep asking me that, as if I should be embarrassed to be associated with benefiting people,” laments Marlon Moore, drummer for world-jazz ensemble Mantra. Moore refers to the many queries he’s received about his next gig, a daylong concert devoted to amassing a fund that…
Covered in kooky cartoon characters such as Felix the Cat, Daffy Duck, and Beavis and Butt-head, logos such as the Rolling Stones’ luscious lips and protruding tongue, colorful Tibetan sand mandalas or peaceful Oriental motifs like lotus flowers or the yin-yang symbol, the sheets of perforated stamplike squares soaked with…
“Free rent!” says Judd Winick when asked the main reason why in 1994 he decided to compete against 30,000 eager postadolescents for a coveted place in the seven-member cast of MTV’s San Francisco edition of Real World, the reality-based soap opera that lumps people together in a house for six…
These buildings were once meant to dazzle people,” notes preservation advocate Randall Robinson about the modern motels that used to shine and that still line Biscayne Boulevard. Be they the exotic places or the footloose natives evoked by the names Shalimar, South Pacific, and 7 Seas, or the sophisticated urbanity…
Most people consider Giovanni Luquini to be a dancer. A natural assumption, since his day job is teaching dance at FIU. During his off-hours, however, the Brazilian-born Luquini does more than move his feet. He is a choreographer, sometimes an actor, and even a set designer. When Akropolis Interdisciplinary Theater…
All the things you’ve been told to seek in the perfect guy: sparkling sense of humor, sonorous voice, spiffy shoes. Trash ’em, says author Beverley East. The proof of the person is in the way he writes. Kingston, Jamaica, native East should know. As a professional handwriting analyst or graphologist,…
Zoom along Southwest 66th Street off 99th Avenue too quickly in your car and Palm Hammock Orchid Estate just may elude you. Slow down, though, look carefully, and you’ll be astonished to find the lushly landscaped nursery. Plunked down in 1973 on the site of a once-agricultural area, the Estate…
Dolphins are the “creatures we might have been if we had lived in the sea,” declares soft-spoken narrator Pierce Brosnan in the IMAX film Dolphins. The movie explores the mystique of these feisty, flirty, gregarious, intelligent, and mysterious mammals, of which there are 40 species. And they are the stars…
Fans of sleek buildings and furniture have always considered designers Mies van der Rohe, Marcel Breuer, and Le Corbusier as the main men of Modernism. Few realize that women were often behind the work of these successful men. Lily Reich helped Mies develop furniture and upholstery. Charlotte Perriand collaborated with…
Miami a hip fashion center? New York, Paris, Milan, and London definitely, but our capital of sun and fun has been known over the years for little more than sun and fun. Sure emaciated human hangers have been turning heads on South Beach for the last decade or so, but…
The Latin-music craze on the way out? Dead? Buried? Finished? Don’t tell Aurelio Rodriguez. He still earns a comfortable living from it. Rodriguez is not a singer but a former model, who inherited his family’s 4000-square-foot truck stop known as La Covacha following the death of his father in 1989…
A Cuban balsero is rescued in the Florida Straits by a cruise ship. Sounds like a typical story. But this tale is different. The rafter is quite musical. He is invited to perform on the ship and does so for weeks until he disembarks to seek asylum in California. Eventually…
The usual subjects Miami-based photographer Jamie Robinson shoots are flamboyant drag queens, hunky male exotic dancers, adorable dogs, even the president of the United States. But this weekend at a Biscayne Boulevard art gallery, Robinson, who was a White House videographer during the Carter administration, exhibits fifteen images of women…
The crumpled funky white T-shirt lay at the bottom of the laundry bag. It had been there for years. A rainbow of colors on the front advertised Miami Rocks Too!, Vol. 3., a yearly industry showcase for a select few local groups hoping to hit the big time. The back…
“They don’t have a decent piece of fruit at the supermarket. The apples are mealy, the oranges are dry … I don’t know what’s going on with the papayas!” once lamented eccentric, fruit-obsessed Kramer in the long-running sitcom Seinfeld. If the local grocery store is just not cutting it, and…
If you were around during the Roaring Twenties and you had the nerve to call Peggy Hopkins Joyce a gold digger, she probably wouldn’t have responded by delivering a stinging slap to your face. The former Ziegfeld girl, sometime Hollywood actress, and five-time divorcée most likely would have smiled flirtatiously…
The term mantra brings to mind many things to many people. Most think of it in the Hindu sense, in which a mantra is a series of words repeated continuously by a praying or meditating believer. Others remember the goofy scene in Woody Allen’s movie Annie Hall, when at the…
Say the word Juneteenth and it’s pretty much a given that most people won’t have the faintest concept of what you’re talking about, let alone realize that in some states (including this one) it is a holiday. An eventful day in history, most notably for blacks, Juneteenth is an abbreviation…
Three hundred sixty-five days a year the sparkling waters of Biscayne Bay beckon one and all. Fortunately not everyone heeds its siren call. Otherwise the soothing sea might more resemble I-95 during morning rush hour instead of a placid place for relaxation, contemplation, or recreation. Those rush-hour nightmares may come…
As a systematic ichthyologist (a scientist who explores the diversity and classification of fishes) for the Smithsonian Institution, Carole Baldwin has grown accustomed to her share of “swimming with the fishes.” But when she starred in the IMAX-3D film Galapagos, on land and under the waters of that nineteen-island chain…
“You hear poetry in these commercials on television, and it’s almost like the kiss of death,” chuckles poet Sekou Sundiata, referring to the TV spots featuring Star Trek’s William Shatner singing the praises of Priceline.com in full beatnik mode. “How far can the end be?” Although Sundiata can giggle about…
