Michael’s Commonsense Guide to Hollywood Politics Planning and zoning boards were invented and exist primarily for the benefit of politicians and the wealthy. The precincts of the wealthy are kept free from encroachment by the unwashed working class, and the egocentric politicians can throw their weight around, as you’ve seen…
A giant white poodle named Gucci sits tall on a blue cabana chair on the porch, peering suspiciously through the sliding-glass door into the sparkling Deerfield Beach kitchen. The dog seems to trust only the aging mobster sitting inside in his blue pajamas. Save a few loose, barely visible strands…
The two teenage friends, one in Plantation, Florida, and one in a suburb of New York City, were watching TV and conversing with each other via a computer chat room when they saw the first horrifying pictures of the Columbine High School massacre in Littleton, Colorado. A cable news channel…
If Rodney Kay has his way, Broward County politicos (especially ones with balls) will have a new constituency to cater to — pornographers. Standing beneath a disco ball in the dimly lit swingers’ club Trapeze II last week, Kay implored Broward County’s purveyors of porn to come out from behind…
Valerie Bailey is in her garage, sitting behind a big brown desk under a framed portrait of John Lennon playing a snow-white baby grand. The two-car garage has been converted into a makeshift office — the walls are covered with plywood, the floor is lined with cheap carpeting and crowded…
Stories on union troubles, unusual art exhibits, and a male anorexic earned New Times Broward*Palm Beach two first-place awards and a finalist recognition respectively at the 49th annual Green Eyeshade Awards, which took place in Atlanta last week. Open to all forms of media in 11 Southern states and sponsored…
Hooray For Green Space! Your feature story couldn’t be more appropriate on how Alan Koslow operates (“Hooray For Hollywood!” Harris Meyer, April 29). It is unbelievable that he can go from one unwanted project to another without missing a heartbeat, and all the projects are destructive to surrounding neighborhoods. Only…
Talking with Hollywood attorney Alan Koslow is like trying to net a butterfly. You bob and spin in circles trying to follow him as he nervously paces, looking and acting like Tony Curtis as the frantic show-biz agent in the film Sweet Smell of Success. There’s a constant stream of…
Taxpayer watchdogs in Florida call them “turkeys.” Elsewhere these expensive and questionable projects tucked into budgets are called “pork.” The state legislators here who don’t kill these pet projects should be called “chickens,” and we the taxpayers, of course, are the “pigeons.” The menagerie approach is laughable, but the wasted…
Gail Norton is knocking on the front door of a Century Village condo in Deerfield Beach, but nobody’s answering. So she knocks harder. Then she raps on the window. Then she cups her hands to her mouth and yells between the glass slats in the door, which are open to…
Dump That Program First! I was very disturbed to learn about Character First! from a teacher at my small alternative school in Lake Worth, Florida (“The Culture War Continues,” Bob Norman, April 15). When she referred me to this article, I was appalled at what our government is intending to…
The legs that once pounded the hardwood floors of gyms from Scranton to St. Louis now shuffle along with a painful limp. The lean gut that once sported a cash-stuffed money belt is now beer-soft and bulging. The handsome jutting jaw that once drew many a second glance is now…
South Florida media-watchers puzzled over this question last week: Why would a large, prosperous daily newspaper crave attention so badly as to shame itself with blatant self-promotion, especially when that promotion was about something the paper didn’t actually win? Despite its best efforts, the Sun-Sentinel can’t seem to bring home…
Like every town in Broward County, Dania Beach has an official city seal. But you can’t see it. They won’t let you. The logo you can see — the one that’s painted on their trucks and printed on their letterhead — isn’t actually official. It’s just a drawing that was…
We’ll Let the So-Called Editor Pick the Smug 1. A Paper Named After Michael Koretzky’s Passion: Free Press 2. Department of Self-Promotions, Koretzky Speaking 3. Loser of Palm Beach Speaks, World Yawns 4. Don’t Read This Boring Letter 5. You Still Can’t Get a Job With This Paper 1.)Thanks for…
A twin-engine Aerocommander dipped from the sky above Lantana’s municipal airport. Caught in a gust the plane hovered above the tarmac before screeching to earth. Tearing past Pipers and Cessnas, ultralights and helicopters, the six-seater slowed to a halt at the mouth of an overstuffed hangar, propellers whirring. Jean-François Buslik…
From a distance, the midmorning scene in the fenced-in yard of a warehouse storage company in northern Miami-Dade County was so common as to be commonplace: two men standing in the open cargo bay of a panel truck, waiting for a series of metal drums to be lifted and loaded,…
Plantation City Hall hasn’t changed much since longtime mayor Frank Veltri left office last month. That’s because lobbyists and law partners Bill Laystrom and Emerson Allsworth are still stalking the corridors. Case in point: last week’s council meeting, during which Laystrom presented a plan to build a “three-in-one” restaurant, in…
It looks like Hamilton Forman, Broward County’s chief political potentate, was right: His bill requiring that every elementary school student in Florida be taught “character education” will likely be passed into law by the state legislature. But the multimillionaire was wrong about one thing: His favorite character-training curriculum, Character First!,…
The heavyset woman at the microphone is telling a sob story in a halting Hispanic accent. It’s the story of how her laundromat is being lost. When she took over the business at NE 7th Avenue and Sunrise Boulevard just over a year ago, Cindy Salamy says, it had been…
Out of the Closet … and Still Battling As a member of the Dolphin Democratic Club for a number of years, I found “Out of the Closet and Into Battle” (Paul Demko, March 25) very distressing, particularly because I agreed with most of it. I supported and respected Bill Salicco…
Every Tuesday afternoon at 4:30 Danny DiLiberto climbs into his battered yellow Toyota Tercel with a cardboard license plate and drives 60 minutes against rush-hour traffic from Hollywood to Coconut Grove. His destination is a Mediterranean-style villa in a gated community with ornate columns, a swimming pool, and a custom-made,…
