People Belong in Bicentennial Park Only the unenlightened would pave over the last waterfront green space: The county wants us to vote yes on bond issue #8 and spend $275 million on two massive museums in Bicentennial Park, hijacking the last green space on the water in the heart of…
Living in a democratic society is time-consuming. Under totalitarian regimes, no one has to spend valuable hours evaluating candidates. The deal with dictators is that they abolish voting, and as long as you don’t try to depose them or say bad things about them, they don’t drag you in front…
Let’s hope Laurence Tribe has a finely honed sense of irony. It was nearly four years ago that Tribe, a Harvard University constitutional scholar, saluted the Florida Supreme Court for ordering a manual recount of our state’s now-notorious presidential votes. The court had declared it was duty-bound to “safeguard the…
An ambitious and costly plan to put two museums in Bicentennial Park came under attack this week when the Urban Environment League demanded dramatic changes to the proposal and an influential art collector voiced his complete opposition to the development idea. The Miami Art Museum, the Miami Museum of Science,…
Toronto would seem an odd place to take the pulse of Latin cinema. Sure, you can buy Cuban cigars, fresh from Havana, at any of the corner newsstands that dot the city’s downtown — there’s no embargo here, compañero. However, actual flesh-and-blood Cubans, or indeed Latinos of any national stripe,…
Prominent Lobbyist Exposes Breast “If successfully suckling at the public teat is a crime, then consider me guilty!” As a lawyer who is well past his early development years, I was a little surprised by Rebecca Wakefield’s statement in “Rage Against the Machines” (September 23) to the effect that I…
Life is tough for old musicians. Just ask Ricky Williams — not the pot-smoking, team-quitting ex-Dolphin. This Williams is a six-and-half-foot-tall, blind piano player, lately of the Forge, currently of nowhere in particular. For the past decade Williams played piano a couple of shows a week at the club most…
The Story Is Not All Right How easy to avoid the tough questions and aim for the sensational: Rebecca Wakefield’s article “The Kids Aren’t All Right” (September 16) was a sensationally crass attempt at journalism. Although the information she used may be publicly accessible, her “look at these nutcases” portrayal…
The beckoning of a pay phone ringing on a derelict downtown corner, in front of a seedy convenience store, or better yet, in the arid lobby of an office building, offers the thrill of random human contact, or at least the opportunity to generate good prank karma by helping the…
The clearest lesson from the August 31 county mayoral election: $1.8 million just doesn’t buy what it used to. That was the size of candidate José Cancela’s immense campaign war chest, and it delivered only a distant fifth-place finish for the media mogul turned pol. Contacted by Kulchur, Cancela declined…
Bus People: Don’t Bother Complaining Miami-Dade Transit customer service — now there’s an oxymoron: Kudos to Francisco Alvarado for exposing the mismanagement and lack of commitment to customer service so rampant at the Miami-Dade Transit Agency (“Critical Mass Transit,” September 2). My dependency on transit is a constant frustration and…
The Teele Inaccuracy A phone call would have been nice, but I didn’t even get that: My name was wrongly inserted in your article “The Teele Conspiracy” by Francisco Alvarado, Kirk Nielsen, and Rebecca Wakefield (September 2). At no time did I speak to anyone at New Times or anyone…
Seaquarium nemesis Russ Rector is at it again. In October 2003 the founder of the Dolphin Freedom Foundation hired a public safety expert to check out the aquatic attraction. The ensuing report, along with videotape of the Seaquarium, became the basis for federal and city inspectors to cite 137 violations…
Big Sugar vs. Silly MTV Guess which one gets the cover treatment: Bravo to Eric Alan Barton and New Times for the story on the Fanjul family and their wicked ways (“From Bitter to Sweet,” August 26). This type of writing, and the reporter’s active prodding to force the Fanjuls…
The MTV Video Music Awards went off as planned Sunday at the American Airlines Arena, with no known interference from Alberto Ibargüen. Celebrities did what they were supposed to do — look remote and beautiful, and throngs of Miamians massed outside VMA ground zero as well as indoors in the…
Eohippus, the miniature five-toed ancestor of the modern horse, bounded through the rainforests of South America dodging dire wolves and munching lush vegetation. As primitive ponies emerged from the forest to gallop across plains and continents, another eohippus descendant, the tapir, remained in the jungles along the Amazon River. Tapirs…
The Mayor Matters He still has veto power and can smack down the commission: Last week’s cover story on why the mayor’s race is not important (“Mayor X,” August 19) hit a huge nerve in our community, particularly because we are working so hard to get Jimmy Morales elected. I…
Get ready to see your local justice system spirited away over the next few years, thanks to a flaw in a brave new computer imaging system that Miami-Dade County is using to scan and file court records. “The SPIRIT system is not adequately secured or protected to ensure the reliability…
As he prepares to attend next Monday’s Republican National Convention in New York City, Miami delegate Marco Rubio is already anticipating trouble. But not from the more than 250,000 anti-Bush protesters expected to march past the convention’s Madison Square Garden site. “I’m hoping to go to a Marlins game in…
Why We Love Our Place We wear casual clothes, there’s no velvet rope, and you don’t have to take out a second mortgage to buy a round of drinks: I’m writing in response to Humberto Guida’s “BuzzIn” column about Our Place in Miami Lakes (“Dive Bar Shenanigans,” August 5). I…
Christopher Mazzella: Vigilante Unbound This inspector general has crossed the line: Tristram Korten would like his readers to believe that Christopher Mazzella, the crime-fighting Miami-Dade County inspector general, is about to be fired by his boss, Kerry Rosenthal, chairman of the county’s Commission on Ethics and Public Trust, aided and…
Though The Bitch normally wouldn’t notice a 100-meter dash even if one happened in her back yard, she thinks the Olympics should be taken seriously. People in the ancient world really knew how to party; long-snouted, rose-eared hounds gained welcome just about every place in Greek society; and intramural sports…
