It must have felt more like open season than the opening home game for the Florida Marlins’ new top brass this past Monday at Pro Player Stadium. Indeed, so cold was the reception from the media and fans that new owner Jeffrey Loria and team president David Samson might have…
What about Dad? Susan Eastman’s article “Not Kid Stuff” (March 28) is timely and well-written. It boggles the mind to imagine that this story is being repeated over and over in our community and around the nation. I honestly believe that these youths are not inherently evil and that their…
By 8 a.m., Bruce and Rick Rutsky are at their table in Rose’s section at the Denny’s on U.S. 441 just south of Hollywood Boulevard, clamoring for their bowls of oatmeal and bananas. The two huge, grizzled, and grimy men look like tractor-trailer drivers who just rolled off the turnpike,…
Miss Cleo’s act is based on mystery. The pseudoshaman, shilling for her Fort Lauderdale bosses, dons exotic dress to sit in a cloud of smoldering incense, enticing callers to avail themselves of her self-professed fortunetelling powers. Millions have fallen for her pitch, and many thousands have complained that they didn’t…
Pompano Beach is a city of 80,000, but it’s ruled by a tiny cluster of backroom dealers. At the top of the very short list of Tweed-like (or Hogg-like, depending upon your frame of reference) bosses are Mayor Bill Griffin and lobbyist Tom Johnston. You’ve seen those names before. Pompano…
Adopt a new law: As a resident and Florida voter, I am outraged by Florida’s ban on gay adoption as described in Ashley Fantz’s March 21 story, “A Queer Law.” I am a devoted Presbyterian and come from a long line of ministers. My family settled in Florida in 1904…
The clock says 5. Above a dish rack stacked with black-and-white dinner plates, above a small sink and a window shaded with deep green vertical blinds, is an old-fashioned, schoolhouse-style clock, round with big numbers and circled in brown trim, moving through the minutes, the hours, the days, the months,…
Had everything gone according to plan, the bullhorn wouldn’t have shown up 20 minutes after the protest was over.Greg Scott took a moment to inhale calmly, beads of sweat chasing down his white, bald head and into the creases of his squinting blue eyes. The People with AIDS Coalition (PWAC)…
At 5:30 a.m. on Florida Derby morning, the silhouette of Barn 16 in the stables at Hallandale Beach’s Gulfstream Park gleams in watery light. Grooms lead horses from their stalls, and the only sounds are the muffled steps and occasional coughs of the animals on their way to morning exercise…
Dear Marlins Fans, Some of you might wonder why you haven’t heard much from your Florida Marlins lately. Well, first off, I’ve been extremely busy — you know how it is when you move. Getting everything switched over to your name, waiting for the cable guy, dealing with our bald,…
Miles to go: Just a few words to let you know that Ashley Fantz’s March 21 story, “A Queer Law,” was great. As a gay man, I’m very offended not only by laws in Florida but by laws throughout the country about homosexuality. Even though I think we’ve come a…
Two weeks before Christmas in 1995, Doug Houton got a handful of unexpected gifts. The 32-year-old pediatric nurse was in the middle of his afternoon shift at Fort Lauderdale’s Children’s Diagnostic and Treatment Center. He was thinking about what to do for the holiday — maybe take a vacation to…
Earnest and dutiful as a schoolgirl at first communion, Ann Marie Nyhuis sits in a cramped room in a Royal Palm Beach office building and leafs through a diary of her days as a lay employee of the Catholic Diocese of Palm Beach. A pleasant-looking, modestly dressed woman in her…
The Andre Johnson cheating case remains a subject of discussion at the University of Miami. Seven members of UM’s faculty senate are investigating the case, in which the star football player was caught cheating on his classwork, but will still be allowed to play this fall. “I have asked the…
No evidence: In regard to Steve Ellman’s March 14 story, “Making Airwaves,” there can be little doubt that “The Dick” Farrel will lose his court case against the former schoolteacher, Larry Ferrara. After all, Farrel, according to New Times, has offered no proof Ferrara is a pedophile or a threat…
If the Rev. Avis Hill had any trepidation about standing in a synagogue to deliver a sermon on the evening of Friday, March 8, he didn’t show any sign of it. A short man wearing a blue sport coat and an American-flag tie, Hill exhibited a nuclear smile that radiated…
Hundreds of Pompano Beach residents are swarming to fight the proposed International Swimming Hall of Fame deal between the city and controversial developer Michael Swerdlow. About a half dozen civic groups have banded together to stop Mayor Bill Griffin, who is spearheading the deal. They’ve gone so far as to…
“America to me should be shouting all the time, a bunch of shouting voices, most of them wrong, some of them nuts, but, please, not just one droning glamorous reasonable voice.”– George Saunders, My Flamboyant Grandson By night, WPBR broadcasts Creole-language programming for Palm Beach County’s Haitian community. Most of…
Take notice, Tally! Thank you for publishing “You Can’t Handle the Truth!” (Strouse, March 7). I think everyone assumes that if public officials don’t want us to know what they are doing, they should not be doing it. With that in mind, please keep up the good work. It would…
It’s 7:06 a.m. on Wednesday, February 6, and Palm Beach County’s last outpost of locally produced talk radio, WPBR-AM (1340) is on the air. The station’s disclaimer has run — “The views and opinions expressed on this program are those of the host, guests, and callers and do not necessarily…
As Sgt. Scott Russell eases the police van into the parking lot of St. Andrews United Methodist Church, a ragtag throng quickly surrounds it. Each Thursday evening, the Fort Lauderdale church, just a half mile north of City Hall, serves a meatloaf dinner for the city’s poor and homeless. Many…
Attention, fellow animal lovers: With our unelected president pushing for more tax cuts, even in the face of $1.3 trillion in deficits projected between 2002 and 2012 (call it Reaganomics 2: Electric Boogaloo), we should all take a moment to thank the powers that be for maintaining the federal government’s…
