This past September the Sun-Sentinel got a license from the Cuban government to open a bureau in Havana. Permission to operate down there is something of a coup for the paper, particularly because its biggest competitor, The Herald, is likely to receive permission for an office on the island only…
Leonin’s lone battle against baloney: I am breaking a promise I made to myself to never, never, ever write another letter to a critic, no matter how inane or insulting their review. I had been doing an excellent job until I read your shrill and wholly ignorant attack on The…
“Come on. Come on,” Grant Hall hissed through clenched teeth, to no one in particular. On a warm Friday night in mid-May of last year, Hall stood outside FU*BAR, a now-defunct club on Cypress Creek Boulevard in Fort Lauderdale, scanning the street for potential customers. His hangdog, bespectacled visage tracked…
Norman Smith lives in a modest one-story home on an idyllic street canopied by trees and lined with shrubbery. Five years into a committed relationship, he and his partner gaze at each other with obvious affection. It’s a life for which the middle-aged Smith has worked hard: four years of…
It isn’t often one sees a newspaper publish a correction on the front page above the fold, complete with a color photo of the person who was wronged. That’s because editors are like doctors — they like to bury their mistakes. So what kind of colossal screwup would necessitate such…
Stratton’s mature ways don’t impress Wilbur: I don’t know you, but you must be plenty bored with your life to devote so much time to such a useless piece of plastic that will inevitably end up in some landfill resisting decomposition for several millennia (“Blowin’ in the Wind,” Jeff Stratton,…
Harry Murphy’s living room is more a mausoleum than a place to live. Nothing with a heartbeat sets foot there except for Murphy, and then only to water his plants. The room isn’t for human beings; it’s for toys. Dozens of dolls, stuffed animals, and action figures are stacked on…
Had you just fallen off a turnip truck or driven in from Quebec, you would have thought last November’s battle between Hollywood and Dania Beach for a 307-acre chunk of unincorporated land was a no-brainer: Hollywood by a landslide. After all, Broward’s second-largest city has more cultural clout, cops, and…
Ben Waldman has a question for police: When are we going to talk? Waldman is president of SunCruz Casinos, the cruise-to-nowhere company founded by the now-deceased Gus Boulis. Before Boulis was gunned down in his car just off Federal Highway last month, SunCruz executives were embroiled in a bitter gambling-business…
What do you think Al would do with the sugar? Huh, sugar? Thank you so much for the wonderful story on Al Goldstein (“Screwed,” Bob Whitby, February 22). I am a transplanted New Yorker who loved Midnight Blue, and I really miss seeing it. I met one of his neighbors…
The ashram of the imagination is solitary as a mountain summit, riddled with secrets, inhabited by gaunt, ascetic bodies swaddled in monastic robes, wrapped in turbans, shrouded in mystery. Yogi Hari’s ashram, or retreat for yoga practitioners, belies this idealized image, except for the fact that it is a bit…
Gustavo Woltmann happens to be sitting across the street from Fort Lauderdale beach, but inside Soapy’s Internet Cafe, logged on to his laptop, he could be anywhere. Barstools are arranged in front of a row of computer terminals, and a cooler is filled with soft drinks and bottled water. “Big…
The Sun-Sentinel’s new entry into the glossy-magazine market, City & Shore, has arrived, and it reads suspiciously like Sunshine, the daily newspaper’s defunct Sunday magazine. In February about 35,000 copies of the 140-page, bimonthly publication showed up on newsstands and in mailboxes, says editor Mark Gauert (formerly of Sunshine). The…
Harvey slams a couple of SunCruzin’ Benedict Arnolds: The most disturbing part of Bob Norman’s story (“A Double Whammy,” February 22) is not about SunCruz but that two Jewish businessmen support the Christian Coalition in a big way! Why would influential Jewish businessmen promote an organization that wants to convert…
Al Goldstein’s 10,000-square-foot Pompano Beach home holds many wonderful things: probably the largest collection of pre-Castro Cuban cigars in the country, a media room lit by the glow of four TVs stacked atop one another and tuned to different channels, a collection of nine-foot-tall decorative robots, an Olympic-size swimming pool…..
Almost immediately after Greek tycoon Gus Boulis was gunned down in his BMW on February 6, Fort Lauderdale police investigators began scrutinizing SunCruz Casinos. But a look at the short list of owners of the cruise-to-nowhere company that Boulis founded turns up nothing resembling violent thugs or organized crime figures…
If you were disgusted by President Clinton’s farewell pardon for financier Marc Rich, you’ll be appalled by former Florida agriculture commissioner Bob Crawford’s good-bye kiss to his buddy and campaign supporter Ed Gregory. In December Crawford, who has overseen the pillage of South Florida’s orange and grapefruit trees, outraged homeowners…
This corner is a nice place to visit, but…: In your story about prostitution on Federal Highway in Hollywood (“Street Life,” Emma Trelles, February 15), you characterized the corner of Federal Highway and Fillmore Street as a mecca for prostitutes, drug dealers, and users. While in the past this may…
The first time I meet Stephanie, the only part of her I see is her hand. Its knobby digits poke through the slats of the cheap blinds that cover the window of her room at the Travel Budget Inn Motel on Federal Highway in Hollywood. The hand appears for a…
In the wee hours of February 27, 1999, John Holland and Carl Wald decided to end their night of bar-hopping. Holland, who felt he was too drunk to drive, handed his keys to his rugby buddy and agreed to go to Wald’s Palm Beach Gardens home for some breakfast. They…
It was the biggest local news events of 2001, and the hometown paper missed it. Worse, the Sun-Sentinel was scooped by archrival The Miami Heraldon the February 6 murder of Miami Subs founder and cruise-to-nowhere gambling magnate Gus Boulis. Boulis, you’ve surely read, jumped ship as a young Greek immigrant,…
A shrimpy complaint: I have always enjoyed Jen Karetnick’s reviews because I have felt that she was someone who had done her time in the trenches, worked at a restaurant, and dealt with the South Florida dining audience. I admired her almost as much as [Gourmet editor-in-chief] Ruth Reichl, who…
