Before the gangsta, there was the guapo — the tough guy who cruised the mean streets of Spanish Harlem and El Bronx with a wide-brimmed hat cocked over one eye and a razorblade hidden in his pocket. In the Seventies the urban Latin sound was salsa, and there was nothing…
My last column, “Smiling Through the Apocalypse,” split its popularity strictly along age lines: Seniors like me, and mature women, thought it was funny in a sardonic way; young dudes (like the Broward-Palm Beach NT calendar editor Dan Sweeney) took offense, feelings hurt at being indirectly called “slackers” for not…
After several long weeks immersed in the depressing subject of Miami’s world-class poverty, I found some relief in the final article of New Times’s two-part series “We’re Number One!” (September 26 and October 3). Titled “A Few Good Ideas” and compiled by staff writers Rebecca Wakefield and Tristram Korten, the…
Mutant Writer Spews Gibberish Fiendish free weekly creates journalistic Frankenstein: The once friendly, sober, and decorous Frank Alvarado of Miami Today and the Daily Business Review joins New Times and appears to have been psycho-surgically transmuted into a caustic, trash-talking Hunter Thompson wannabe named Francisco Alvarado, a snappy pseudo-hipster with…
“A lot of people say I’m difficult,” Robert Rosenberg muses with an awkward smile, pausing over a description he’s been hearing quite a lot lately. Leaning forward at a table inside the Beach’s Wild Oats market, he continues: “Look, it takes a certain kind of obsessed person to want to…
Poor Miami: No Tears Don’t just sit there — do something substantial: Thanks very much to New Times for the special report on poverty in Miami (“We’re Number One!” September 26 and October 3). We must all do better for our community and its people. Conviction and education are the…
Maria Marocka is no schoolmarm. Over at Biscayne Gardens Elementary in North Miami, she’s the cool teacher. Tall and glamorous with funky clothes and an asymmetrical haircut, she has CDs filled with songs that she wrote and sang. “Are you famous?” her students ask as they hand over scraps of…
In the bad old days of segregation, wasn’t nobody black and famous come to sing in the white-only nightclubs of Miami Beach who didn’t make a late-night stop for a show in Colored Town: Ella, Basie, Nina Simone. Then the interstate sliced through and drained the blood out of a…
Good Job on Public Corruption Too bad you screwed up the details: Once again New Times deserves to be commended for doing a public service by writing an in-depth article about public corruption (“Busted!” September 19). I would like to think that when it comes to political corruption we are…
Vaclav Havel arrives in Miami on Sunday, as much a visiting rock star as a sainted political leader. The Czech president, who’s jammed with both Lou Reed and Frank Zappa, even has a snazzy tour name for his South Florida jaunt — ready-made for souvenir T-shirts: “Cuba Libre.” And at…
Clickety Clack on Down the Track Seeing America by rail was a privilege, and now it’s lost: Congratulations to John Anderson for researching, writing, and experiencing “The Last Amtrak” (September 12). I grew up (one year old in 1935) making annual summer round trips (always by Pullman) between New York…
Attention aspiring South Beach power brokers: Wanna learn how to game the system like a pro? Hollywood macher Michael Bay was more than happy to provide an easy lesson, schooling one of Kulchur’s clubland spies as she shimmied up to the Bad Boys 2 director inside Lincoln Road’s Rumi lounge…
If You’re So Smart, Go Start Your Own School It’s more work than you’ll ever imagine: New Times should be ashamed of Rebecca Wakefield’s article on Florida International Academy (“Strange Days at FIA,” September 5). Any effort to present a balanced treatment of this embattled charter school was negated by…
Last week, in the days leading up to my father’s funeral, I played Susana Baca’s album Espiritu Vivo (Living Spirit). The beat of the cajon, the wooden box that speaks Afro-Peruvian rhythms, might have seemed incongruous to my brothers and sisters as they sifted through photos of our childhood in…
Give former supermodel Janice Dickinson points for a sense of humor. In her new tell-all memoir No Lifeguard On Duty, the enfant terrible of the late-Seventies fashion world writes: “Models are supposed to be dumb, right? But most of us can actually walk and talk and snort coke at the…
Son, When I Was Your Age… We smoked dope all day, got laid every night, and really really dug the revolution: So I read John Lombardi’s bit on Hunter Thompson and Rolling Stone (“Smiling Through the Apocalypse,” August 22). I take serious offense. First off, how can he talk about…
I think there’s a lot of misconceptions about what goes on at Crescent Moon. I’ve heard about people who’ve been unhappy and moved on, but you rarely hear about the people like me who are happy to work there. I’ve been with Emilio for ten years. I started out as…
Something Is Rotten in the City of Miami Specifically in its police department — and I should know: As one of your most loyal readers, I must say that rarely has an article stirred my emotions as much as Tristram Korten’s “Travail to the Chief” (August 22). After reading it…
Universal language. Universal language. Now that Music Fest Miami appears to be here to stay — a solid annual event — it’s time to trot out the old truism again. Nothing brings people together like music. Just to put the old adage to the test, Shake conducted a brief survey…
Harris Meyer from the Business Review and I were sitting in the leafy part of Piccadilly Garden in the Design District the other night, swatting those big, floaty Miami mosquitos, sloshing ourselves with Bass, and telling journalism war stories. I led with “How I Brought Hunter Thompson to Rolling Stone,”…
My Doggie Tale o’ Woe I told it to a judge who agreed with me: Thanks very much for Mike Clary’s “Puppy Dog Tales” (August 15). I read it with great interest. You see, two years ago I purchased what was represented to be a healthy, purebred English bulldog from…
South Beach isn’t exactly known as a literary mecca, making the standing-room-only crowd inside Lincoln Road’s Books & Books this July evening all the more eyebrow-raising. But then Nick McDonell, the bookstore’s guest of honor, isn’t your typical literary wunderkind. Forget the tweed and horn-rimmed glasses. With his artfully tousled…
