Opinion & Commentary

Last Friday the crowd at Churchill’s included hesher types, bikers in Motörhead jackets, crusty bicycle people wearing shorts and stitched-up leather fanny packs, and a gaggle of of-the-moment local artists. Then there was the guy my companion pointed out: “Surprise! There’s someone in a Star Wars shirt.” In short, it…

The first time I tried absinthe, I didn’t feel compelled to hack off my ear. Nor did I see any green fairies. In fact the only things I remember are sugar, a lighter, a shot glass, and the booze hitting my lips. That’s it. Well, that and the flush of…

Rather than dealing with people on Biscayne Boulevard who don’t know how to merge, I chose to go down NW 36th Street. As I was reaching the light at NW 5th Avenue, the dude in front of me slammed on the brakes. After holding back a few expletives and regaining…

Dissin’ Cousins Give this man a polygraph!: Congratulations to Miami New Times and Francisco Alvarado for having the courage to print the truth about my first cousin, Chris Korge (“Hillary’s Money Man,” January 24). I will be more than happy to take a lie detector test concerning the events that…

I don’t care about his feathered hair. I don’t care about his unfortunate fascination, in the Seventies and Eighties, with puff sleeves. Or his continuing fascination with white suits. Or the fact that, with some teenage parenting, he could technically be old enough to be my grandfather. I love Rod…

Three skulls lay in the dust beneath silvery buttonwood leaves. Two were covered in rotting flesh. One had been severed by a hacksaw. That was December. A month prior, a truck driver had swerved off the road to eviscerate an endangered key deer, spreading her organs over 30 yards of…

As I walked from gallery to gallery during this year’s first Wynwood art walk, I noticed a lot of graffiti but assumed most of it was there as part of an exhibition. But this one on NW 2nd Avenue and 24th Street was far from most of the galleries and…

First there was the menacing claim broadcast on Spanish-language television that “someone might crack your head like a coconut.” Next came three death threats. Finally, as the peace loonies recently piloted their Dodge Ram pickup onto SW Eighth Street, an angry crowd composed mostly of Cuban exiles — spitting and…

Heroes All So proud: Thanks so much for Janine Zeitlin’s “Frogmen” (January 17); it’s such an amazing article. I’m so proud of my father, Andy Pruna, for being one of the heroes in this article. I read this great story to my kids so they could hear the truth about…

There’s something about the video for “Just a Friend” and the song in general that was pivotal for an entire generation to get a better understand of what hip-hop really is. Up until this song went national, most hip-hop singles were either serious, message driven tunes of the “White Lines”…

With the conversion last year of the old Jackie Gleason Theater to the Fillmore Miami Beach, Miami-Dade County gained yet another live music venue. And it was yet another enticement for bands to play down here, rather than make the rest of us trek up to Broward or even Palm…

The beef began with a fish. Fueled by liquor, it ended with Miami New Times owner Mike Lacey launching a bottle at its editor Jim Mullin. “One of our sarcastic writers called [legendary newscaster] Ann Bishop ‘a bossy old trout’ in, I think, the first ‘Best of Miami’ issue,” Mullin…

Thanks, We Think Now you’ve got it: Jason Handelsman’s January 10 article about Rick Ross, “Still Hustlin’,” was 10 times better than the garbage he wrote about Bigg D (“Bigg Pimpin’,” December 13). The focus was on Rick Ross and his music, not on fried chicken and strippers. Thanks! John…

After missing my exit on the Palmetto Expressway, the one that leads to NW 167th Street, because some dude couldn’t show me some common courtesy. I had to take the long way back onto the expressway. I looked to my left as i traveled up the ramp back onto State…

A Wicked Check into the Boards Chris, can you skate backward?: Brett Gillin proves in his January 3 article “The Whiny One” that he knows nothing about hockey or Sidney Crosby. It’s one thing to talk about something he knows about, but it’s another to repeat things he has heard…

I know, a couple of weeks ago I talked smack about year-end lists while dispensing a roundup of my favorite local albums of 2007. But I couldn’t resist one more, especially with the previous issue’s national roundup of the year in music. For some local flavor I racked my brain…

Standing Up for Stacey She’s won some too: I am writing to you five days after reading Bob Norman’s December 20 story “Stacey and Friends,” about my wife, Stacey Honowitz, because I didn’t want to have a knee-jerk reaction to it. I am absolutely incredulous that your publication could allow…

Click here to check out a slideshow from the Zombie Walk. I was playing fast and loose with other people’s money, and I came up dead one morning in a Dumpster wearing this amazing outfit,” a guy named Jesse says as one of his brown eyes peeks down at me…

Homeless Harangues No sympathy here: I am having a hard time finding sympathy for the men in “The People Under the Bridge” by Isaiah Thompson (December 13). They assaulted the innocence of children, as far as I’m concerned. They forfeited their right to state support (I’m not particularly sure I…