Forget about digesting turkey and stuffing. I’m still churning over the pre-Thanksgiving festivities from the week before. I know I previewed a lot of this stuff two columns ago, but I had no way of knowing what would actually happen. Pop psychology has it that if you never process the…
Message to Merrett: Get a Life!I was there and I can tell you he was spoiling for a fight: I work at the county’s Emergency Operations Center (EOC) during activations and was there during the Hurricane Michelle activation described by Jim DeFede (“Bunker Mentality,” November 15). Miami-Dade County residents are…
Blame Ayden. Even after three hot teenage girls plied him with food and gas money, the nineteen-year-old MDCC student took his time driving from the school’s Kendall campus to Spec’s records in Miami Beach. Now Bettsy, Linda, and Sandra are stuck on the wrong side of Ocean Drive at the…
By its very nature, the county’s Emergency Operations Center is a tense place. Activated in times of crisis, the EOC becomes the nerve center of local government, the fulcrum of decision-making for the state’s most populous county. And so as Hurricane Michelle moved north toward Cuba and possibly South Florida,…
The cobblestones of the Shops at Sunset Place are a world away from Mr. Cheeks’ old haunts in South Jamaica, Queens. Indeed as the 29-year-old rapper leads Kulchur inside the mall’s sprawling GameWorks arcade, there’s little to distinguish the expat New Yorker from any of the other figures playing video…
Thugs, Dictators, and Freakin’ CommunistsNo surprise that the first two are local boys: Thanks to Kirk Nielsen for exposing Otto Reich, the thuggish Bush administration nominee for assistant secretary of state for Western Hemisphere affairs (“Waiting for Otto,” November 8). And as reported in the same issue in “Riptide,” a…
A lot can happen if a drinking hole manages to stay open 89 years. Tobacco Road started as a speakeasy and gambling den during Prohibition and would have been a strip club back in the Mariel days, but the crowd was so rough no woman, self-respecting or otherwise, would work…
A few weeks ago a county hall insider mentioned to me that he had heard about an interesting memo written by Tom David, executive assistant county manager. David is new to Miami-Dade government, brought in by County Manager Steve Shiver seven months ago to be his right-hand man. Since his…
A Paragon of Fair and Thoughtful JournalismFree weekly lauded for political coverage: So New Times considers itself an alternative newspaper. Yeah, right! Lately you guys have been coming across about as alternative as the Wall Street Journal. Let’s see, first there was your puff-piece interview with former Miami Beach Mayor…
Forget about anthrax jitters or terrorist sleeper cells. To hear outgoing Miami Beach Mayor Neisen Kasdin tell it, there’s a more imminent threat, one set to rear its head with the local election this Tuesday, November 6. “The fate of the Beach hangs on Elaine Bloom beating David Dermer in…
So Sayeth the Old SpookNow tell us, would it help to bribe the INS? Bob Norman’s article “Admitting Terror” (October 18) was a true public service. It’s shameful how indifferent our authorities are regarding immigration. Having lived in Mexico, Uruguay, Spain, and Japan, among other places, I can tell you…
The folks at IRmagazine have a roundabout strategy for boosting readership. “It’s a literary magazine,” explains editor in chief Ben Carrasco. “We do short stories, poetry, nonfiction. But people like to read about music, so we write about music, too.” The only problem is, Carrasco doesn’t think there’s all that…
“A recession is never a good thing,” says Saul Gross, owner of Streamline Properties (a real estate management and brokerage firm) and a candidate for the Miami Beach City Commission in the November 6 election. But, he explains carefully, there’s a “silver lining” to this ongoing crunch, particularly as it…
INS: Incompetent Nonsense ServiceAnd I should know because I worked there: I am a former immigration inspector at Miami International Airport and am writing in response to Bob Norman’s article “Admitting Terror” (October 18). I agree with Immigration and Naturalization Service inspector José Touron’s assessment of the persistent problems that…
Pushed back from the original September date, the Fourth Annual Mix Show Power Summit finally went down this past weekend, bringing to town more than 100 commercial radio mix-show DJs for some high-profile politickin’. The Eden Roc meet-and-greet sessions were closed to the public, but late-night Thursday through Sunday, jocks…
High and InsideIn perpetual awe of the slugger: I read Gaspar González’s article about Ted Williams (“America’s Past Time,” October 11) and just had to say it gave me chills. I have been a die-hard baseball fan since I was old enough to hold a bat, and ever since then…
On September 5 Emilio Estefan, Jr., and his niece, Univision host Lili “La Flaca” Estefan, made the short list of guests at the Bush administration’s first White House gala, boosting the Latin factor at the dinner honoring Mexican President Vicente Fox. Cowboy to cowboy, the Mexican leader was pushing the…
Investigators on the trail of Miami-Dade County Commissioner Miriam Alonso have uncovered a dizzying array of front groups and secret bank accounts apparently used by Alonso to generate and then hide a private slush fund. Prosecutors and police discovered the existence of these bank accounts while researching Alonso’s connection to…
What’s the tasteful way to make a buck during a time of national tragedy? That’s the question the pop culture industry has been gingerly grappling with a month on from the horrific attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. In those strikes’ immediate aftermath, entertainment practically vanished from…
Trauma + Emotion = Sincere SentimentAnd Now This Word from Your Pinko Weekly Beware confusing the message with the messenger: In last week’s issue, I was surprised to see a full-page open letter next to the regular letters section that appeared to be endorsed by New Times. It wasn’t signed…
You don’t need to tell the staff at the Delano Hotel that a recession is here. One look at the pool makes it pretty obvious. Gone are the days when only a strategically placed tip would snag you a prime deck chair as the $400-per-night set splashed and sweated in…
Orwellian RageStill, I’ll defend her right to be wrong: My first response to Susan Eastman’s article “1984 and Counting” (September 27) was anger. But upon reflection I realize she had every right to disagree with all the patriotism and fanaticism that follows it. She is correct in her assessment of…
