At Long Last Art Believe it or not, Miami is more than crime and corruption: It is refreshing to see a New Times cover story that doesn’t involve corruption, murder, or local political nastiness. And so I enjoyed Rebecca Wakefield’s coverage of the belly-dance culture here in Miami (“In the…
Memo to Miuccia Prada: Your fall line is just as well suited to a downtown Miami riot scene as a night out in clubland. That was the lesson Kulchur drew after borrowing one of the designer’s military-style black sweaters and heading out to cover the recent Free Trade Area of…
Cops Gone Wild: Definitely Money Well Spent Let us praise the wisdom and vision of our leaders: Thanks to the foresight of our noble leaders, a terrible disaster was averted two weeks ago in downtown Miami. It is my understanding that extremely boisterous gangs of environmentalist tree-huggers, anti-trade rogues, and…
“Oh, you poor deluded leftists,” sighs author Neal Pollack while gazing out at the audience gathered before him at the recent Miami Book Fair International. The crowd, heavy on grad students, self-styled bohemians, and early arrivals for the FTAA protests, is in on the joke and laughs in knowing appreciation…
Quick Results, No Waiting Thanks to the county for our rapid HIV test: On behalf of the board, staff, and most important, the clients of the South Beach AIDS Project, I would like to commend Rebecca Wakefield for her insightful and informative article about the new “rapid” HIV test now…
Who knew that the floor seats at the James L. Knight Center could be removed? All these years I thought we had no choice but to evade the ushers and squeeze into the aisles to dance salsa with La India or toss flowers at Alejandro Sanz. Then again, from the…
If South Beach’s fashionistas have a bit less spring in their high-heeled step of late, show some sympathy. After all, Camelot just ended. For the sartorially obsessed, the recent departure of Tom Ford from Gucci is akin to losing both John F. Kennedy and Jackie Onassis in one fell swoop…
FTAA: The Apocalypse Approaches Meanwhile, free weekly frolics in frivolity: As I scanned through New Times’s tongue-in-cheek delineation of the upcoming FTAA ministerial meeting (“Free Trade Miami: Your Essential Guide to the FTAA,” November 13), the frightening question on the minds of many thoughtful people occurred to me: Does anyone…
Hidden Agendas? Bias? How else to explain the attacks on Bob Dugger? My name is Kenneth Karger and I am treasurer for the board of directors of the Spanish Trace Condominium Association. I’ve been on the board off and on for more than 22 years. During the past nine years,…
About You’re Toy Story It was swell, but why the mispellings? We got word from Miami toymakers Friends with You that Celeste Fraser Delgado’s story was published, and so we checked it out on the New Times Website (“Revenge of the Misfit Toys,” October 23). It was a really nice…
Utopia in Three Easy Steps Here’s how I would fix Miami: In response to Rebecca Wakefield’s October 16 report on Miami’s poverty rating (“We’re Still Number One!”): An all-inclusive national healthcare policy, plus work programs similar to FDR’s New Deal, would get the homeless off our streets. And real documentation…
The Oracle Dude We called him the Fat One, and we listened closely to his words: Let me tell you something about Abel Folgar that maybe every other letter-writer has already said. The guy was the Blue Table Philosopher, the Kamel Red-Toking Oracle, the Space Cowboy, if you will, of…
“We’re trying to act as a mediator, but we’re really limited in what we can do,” says Miami Beach Police spokesman Det. Bobby Hernandez with a frustrated sigh. After fielding a week’s worth of calls from angry residents and scoop-seeking reporters, he’s just now coming up for air. The cause…
Over the Edge in North Bay Village Potty-mouth free weekly pushes journalism envelope: I want to thank Francisco Alvarado for his journalistic aggressiveness in telling the story of my living nightmare in North Bay Village (“Thug Meets Pug,” October 2). The New Times has extended the edges of regular journalism…
When the Spam Allstars abandoned Little Havana’s Thursday-night Fuácata party last summer, after two years of packing Hoy Como Ayer, party promoter and veteran session hand Steve Roitstein did his best to fill the void with Palo!, which has the same DJ/Latin jam band format and the same violent Spanish…
To the untrained ear, that loud rushing sound in the air last week may have been mistaken for Hurricane Isabel’s final gusts swooping past Miami. Listen more closely. It was actually the turbulence created by two massive press corps passing in the night, a whirl of snapping camera shutters and…
Core Curriculum: Civics 101 Required enrollment for José Cancela, Seth Gordon, Pat Tornillo, and Marcos Jimenez: Brett Sokol asks county mayoral candidate José Cancela about Cuban musicians playing in Miami (“Mixed Message,” September 18). Cancela hesitates. So Seth Gordon comes to his rescue with a letter to the editor (September…
Our Eccentric Uncle Fidel Yes, he has a thing for throwing people in prison, but he’s a lovable old codger: I know that many of my fellow gringos see Fidel Castro as an antiquated and irascible but basically harmless old coot — kind of like weird old uncle Hiram who…
José Cancela has stopped eating. He carefully places knife and fork across his barely touched salad and stares at Kulchur with a wounded expression. When he asked for a lunch meeting, this conversation inside the Beach’s Van Dyke Café was not what he had in mind. “I really thought we’d…
Coming to the FTAA? Welcome to the VFAM That would be the Violence-Free Area of Miami: Regarding Tristram Korten’s column “Meet Us in Miami” (September 11), on the protest activities planned for the Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA) ministerial meetings in November, and the possibility of violence and…
Were the Latin Grammys fixed by President Bush? Based on State Department documents Kulchur has received, that would certainly appear to be the case. Call it an only-in-Miami moment, one in which 2004 presidential politics collided head-on with Cuban music. And Cuba’s musicians, who subsequently found themselves watching the Grammys…
It’s a Bird! It’s a Plane! It’s a plea agreement from hell! It flew by you good folks so darn fast that you missed it, just like all the others. In his column “Closed Case, Open Questions” (September 4), Tristram Korten alluded to the former federal prosecutor who “spent more…
