his week I wanted to praise the City of North Miami and its police department for firing Det. Fred St. Amand. Instead I find myself once again wondering if anyone in that city — the mayor, the city manager, the police chief, the city attorney — understands the difference between…
“Let me ask you something,” the man on the other end of the telephone line says. “Where are the commission-sponsored initiatives? Where are the ordinances and resolutions designed to make this a better place to live? There aren’t any anymore. They don’t have any. They’ve run out of ideas.” The…
You can take your pick of the many neo-fin-de-siècle gigs vying for millennium-worthy status, from the dueling downtown saccharine fests of Puff Daddy and Gloria Estefan to the chirpy dance blowouts at the Ice Palace and Miami Beach’s Convention Center, each promising uniqueness, each featuring many of the same oh-so-tired…
“Imagine rock music as a beached whale’s carcass,” suggests pop critic Simon Reynolds. “What seems like intense activity is really necrotic vitality — a maggot horde of bands living off the rotting flesh of a moribund culture. In their teeming tediousness, rock books exist on an even lower plane, microbial…
Last week our intrepid mayor, Alex Penelas, flew off to Spain — at taxpayer expense, of course — for a bit of sightseeing and a chance to sample some fine Basque cuisine. The mayor, his wife, and their two children visited the scenic cities of Madrid, Alicante, and Santander during…
Here we go again: The Cuban-exile community has snapped to attention in anticipation of their latest battle, next weekend’s concert featuring a double bill of Cuban chanteuse Rosita Fornes and that island’s famed performance poet Luis Carbonell, scheduled for a Miami Beach location that was undisclosed as of press time…
For those of us innocents who live outside the magical realm of viejito politics, the continuing success of school board member Demetrio Perez, Jr., is a thing of wonder. Despite nearly two decades of conduct that sensible people have found appalling, and despite his recent arrest at Miami International Airport…
Where have all the Mohawks gone? If you’re looking for the perfect symbol of the aesthetic denouement of the underground punk scene, you don’t have to search too hard. The icons of that movement’s mid-’80s subterranean flowering are in plain sight, circa 1999. Sonic Youth’s scowling siren Kim Gordon now…
It seemed absolutely fitting that the Los Van Van concert took place during the same week that the Justice Department finally released the 1948 grand jury testimony of Richard Nixon’s crusade against Alger Hiss, an event that had served as a catalyst for the McCarthy era’s anti-communism hysteria. After all,…
I was playing a show in Miami in the theater of divine comedy…. — Bob Dylan, “Caribbean Wind” A tailgate party with teeth is the best way to describe the protest of more than 4000 Cuban exiles, all screaming themselves hoarse outside the Miami Arena, while many of their fellow…
Ira Clark was hiding. Somewhere inside county hall, the president of the Public Health Trust had decided it was better to stay out of sight during the county commission’s annual budget hearing than to step forward and defend his agency’s spotty record for meeting the medical needs of Miami-Dade’s indigent…
It’s time to announce the results of my “Nickname the Mayor” contest. As you’ll recall I thought Miami Mayor Crazy Joe Carollo needed a new handle following his efforts to prevent the band Los Van Van from playing in the city. Among some of the entries: Clueless Joe Carollo, Joe…
“I feel sorry for the Cuban community in Miami. Because they have imposed on themselves by way of the Right, the same condition that Castro has imposed on Cuba. Total intolerance. And ours is worse. Because it is entirely voluntary.” — Bernardo Benes Another week, another round of Los Van…
Quaaludes, the aardvark of the drug world. — Angela Carter There’s a theory that the counterculture of the moment is defined by its drug of choice. Thus as the heady utopian urges of the late ’60s gave way to the malaise of the early ’70s, decent acid became scarce, the…
You wouldn’t know it from reading the Miami Herald or watching local television, but there are a few people out there who think it’s insane to consider cramming a major-league baseball stadium into downtown Miami’s Bicentennial Park. So far all we’ve seen in the press are appealing designs for new…
Attorney Hank Adorno had represented the interests of Jorge Mas Canosa for more than a decade and was both a friend and a trusted advisor to the patriarch of Miami’s exile community. Adorno was also considered to be very close to Mas’s son, Jorge Mas, Jr. Both men own summer…
Good morning. Miami Herald circulation department. How can I help you? Yes, I’d like to report a problem with my delivery boy. What’s wrong, sir? It seems the little bastard has shrunk my paper. Just because I forgot to tip him at Christmas doesn’t mean he has the right to…
Dear Jim: I was greatly disturbed by the recent efforts of some city officials to ban Cuba’s Los Van Van from playing in Miami, and was particularly appalled by how smug and self-righteous the mayor and several city commissioners seemed throughout the entire charade. Don’t they realize they are behaving…
Once again, the cultural commissars of Miami’s Cuban-exile community have cracked their whips. The result: the embarrassing spectacle of city officials falling all over themselves in their quest to cancel the first local appearance of legendary Cuban timba outfit Los Van Van. Of the group’s 28 tour stops around the…
Miami finally received a tangible expression of the economic aftershocks of Ricky Martin mania and the newly ascendant Latin chic with the opening of the second Café Nostalgia, this one on Miami Beach. The club’s location inside the venerable Forge restaurant — a world away from the original site’s funky…
It’s not easy being a hardcore punk band in Miami. Just ask Jason Deucifer, drummer for the local outfit Where Fear and Weapons Meet. “People are scared of us,” Deucifer says with frustration in his voice. “We draw 300 kids to our shows but we get no press, no nothing…
Politics and pop music are rare bedfellows these days. Instead social consciousness finds itself comically channeled into spirituality, where today’s young activists can adopt a rebellious stance without having to tackle the thornier issues of class and power. Thus, Lilith Fair audiences can coo about what passes for premillennium feminism…
