Why the hell should Broward County’s working people care about $12 cocktails at the recently opened Blue Martini at the Galleria Mall when they make only $7 an hour? Why should they sample almost-new Nikki Marina, which sprawls along the Intracoastal at the foot of the Diplomat Hotel like a…
More Suffering That dirty rat: I just finished reading Trevor Aaronson’s December 9 article “Suffering Together.” I myself was in an organization in North Jersey called Kids in 1985 with Dr. Miller Newton. I was constantly abused, and it has damaged me for life. I was 15 years old at…
Vinnie Grande’s name doesn’t circulate much, but he’s still a player. In a few short years, Grande has become a power broker in Broward County, especially at the city halls of Lauderdale Lakes and Davie. Like all the really successful lobbyists in South Florida, he’s become an expert at earning…
Josephus Eggelletion’s people wait. The Broward County commissioner has called a town hall meeting at Dillard High School, and about 40 residents have shown up to hear what their man in office is doing for them. The 55-year-old politician, dressed in a gold-colored, U.S. Open golf shirt and black slacks,…
They aren’t nearly as morbid as the tourists who swarm to the entryway of Gianni Versace’s South Beach mansion, taking snapshots of each other on the very spot where the fashion designer was gunned down in 1997. But then, the steady stream of pilgrims arriving at 461 Ocean Blvd. in…
When Tracy McGrady Jr. landed a multimillion-dollar contract by signing with the Orlando Magic, one of the first things the Central Florida basketball prodigy did was buy his dad the car he’d always wanted — a black, 2002 Lincoln Navigator SUV. But Tracy McGrady Sr. hasn’t enjoyed a whiff of…
You have to love a law firm that uses a glowering watchdog with a spike collar for its logo and invites new clients to call them at 800-PIT-BULL. There’s none of that mincing pinstripe delicacy to the Fort Lauderdale personal injury firm of Pape & Chandler. This is bare-knuckles legal…
Arguing Together The article was profound: I just read Trevor Aaronson’s December 9 story on Growing Together (“Suffering Together”). I can’t tell you how much it means to see someone finally take an interest in what is going on in these places. I survived Straight St. Pete in the early…
He was 16 and scared. Jason was a newcomer at Growing Together, a boot camp-style drug treatment center for adolescents in downtown Lake Worth. During the day, he attended group therapy at the program’s two-story, banana-yellow building, which is equipped with security gates and barred windows. At night, he’d sleep…
Donald Baker takes a drag from a cigarette as he sits in front of a laptop computer at his mother’s mobile home near the Seminole Hard Rock Hotel & Casino in Hollywood. A lanky 52-year-old with light-brown hair that flows down to his shoulders but thins at the top, Baker…
Money burnin’ a hole in your pocket? For just under $3,000, Fort Lauderdale-based Zero Gravity Corp. will take you on a converted cargo jet into the world of weightlessness. It may be the ultimate thrill. Float around a padded chamber like an astronaut in a space capsule for 30 seconds…
Outside the Ramrod gay leather bar (1508 NE Fourth Ave., Fort Lauderdale), faces are obscured in shadow, even when you’re waiting in line. There is energy from the anticipation of being initiated into something secret. There are lots of men. No women. But, shit on a brick, the door man…
Beat ’em, Bust ’em Or democracy dies: In reference to the University of California at Berkeley analysis of suspicious Florida voting results cited in the December 2 Tailpipe (“Paperless Trail”), two things jump out. 1. In 2000, 575,143 people in Broward County voted for either George Bush or Al Gore;…
New Times Broward-Palm Beach staff photographer Colby Katz recently got an eye-opening backstage view of the most confounding aspect of the $5 billion-a-year beauty pageant industry: contests for preschoolers. “My project is about the ritual of getting ready,” Katz says. “A behind-the-scenes look at the girls picking out their clothes,…
“I’m Earl Maucker, Sun-Sentinel editor. How can I help you?” Well, for starters, Earl, you can start acting like a journalist rather than a castrated helper monkey. If you can’t do that, go ahead and pour me a double vodka martini. And throw in a full frontal lobotomy. Then I…
Tailpipe thought about jumping on the conspiracy-theory bandwagon to explain the Dubya’s unexpectedly breezy victory in Florida. But then the ‘Pipe learned about that core of conservative Christian suburbanites up around Orlando. Nuts. Let the liberal bloggers wail about miscounts and computer foul-ups, the ‘Pipe reasoned; there just wasn’t any…
Saints v. Triflers Mike’s amicus brief is a check: My reaction to the article “Enslaved,” by Chuck Strouse (November 25) was: To what address should I mail my check? My contribution would be to help New Times fight the apparently frivolous and malicious lawsuit by Tribune, owner of the Sun-Sentinel…
On a cool Sunday evening in January 1973, just days after Richard Nixon’s second inaugural, Peter Salerno and Dominick “Don” Latella crept along the ocean beachfront of a small jut of land in Juno Beach. The handful of mansions was isolated from the mainland by a gate and surrounding water…
Robb Tiller spent the night of Hurricane Jeanne doing what he has done for most of his 62 years — trying not to lose his ass. Every hour, as 130-mph gusts raked the grassy shore of Lake Okeechobee where his three-decade-old, amphibious Lake LA-4 airplane was staked to the ground,…
Mexican Attorney General Rafael Macedo de la Concha made an announcement in July that thrilled a Delray Beach company while frightening the hell out of privacy advocates. Macedo, the top law enforcement officer south of the border, allowed news photographers to snap his dimpled mug as doctors injected him with…
It could have been the sales pitch to end all sales pitches. Two Sundays ago, a rep for the Oceancrest Beach Apartments in Hollywood, who had just shown off some available flats in a tower at 3901 S. Ocean Dr., shepherded would-be buyers into an elevator on the 12th floor…
Gail Bobb is a single mom. A pretty, prim 39-year-old native of Guyana, she moved to South Florida in 2001 with her two nearly grown kids, Frank and Theresa. “It was paradise,” she recalls with a Caribbean lilt. “At first.” Bobb padded the pavement for four months until, finally, she…
