This guy will razzle-dazzle them. That’s what Hollywood officials thought when they offered a young chef named Michael Blum a $150,000 grant in 2004 to open a trendy restaurant in the city’s downtown district. Blum’s eponymous Michael’s Kitchen in Dania Beach already had a loyal following that fawned over his…

Linda McCalister is a nurse at an elementary school in Coconut Creek. Most mornings, the 57-year-old throws on a school-issued navy polo shirt before leaving home to care for other people’s children. She paints black lines around her big blue eyes, combs her blond bob into place, and tries to…

Alan Shalleck knew a thing or two about storytelling: how to engage his audience and build suspense, how to bring a character to life. He honed those skills in the pioneering days of children’s TV and directed the first animated shorts featuring Curious George. That all took place when Shalleck…

A soccer ball with a Mexican team logo is buried in the weeds, next to a barbecue grill. Inside the two-bedroom condominium, the living room is empty but for discarded wrapping paper on the floor. This is a home that’s been seized by a bank, for non-payment of loans. Here…

It was a humid late-summer Saturday evening in South Florida in 1992, a few days before Hurricane Andrew barreled through. A group of teens gathered around a keg in a Coral Springs apartment. They played the drinking game Quarters and tried to hook up with the opposite sex. There were…

One morning in March, Joyce Kaufman called Comcast, her cable TV provider. It was the sort of mundane chore most folks must endure, but for Kaufman it became a turning point that would affect not just her but thousands of listeners in South Florida. That day, Kaufman reached a customer-service…

It’s Friday night in Wilton Manors, and Sidelines, a gay sports bar, is packed with slender boys. Carlos Lopez, 28, sits on a barstool near the door nursing a glass of whiskey. Trim and handsome, Lopez chats with Blake, a lean 29-year-old with chubby cheeks. Blake, who moved to Florida…

In the fall of 2006, David Lee Edwards and his wife, Shawna, decorated their front door for Halloween. But if trick-or-treaters made it to the couple’s home, a storage unit in Riviera Beach, no plastic ghost was as scary as what they’d have found inside: two pale, withered junkies from…

From his office on the 12th floor of the Las Olas Centre, Don Hall’s view stretches across the New River to take in regal yachts, fine mansions, and open skies. Hall says he likes open spaces. He even owned a ranch in Wyoming once, which explains his office’s Western décor…

The office door in Chris Hutchins´ modest Deerfield Beach apartment is closed to keep out Chester, a fat 11-year-old black tabby who´s inclined to meow unpredictably. Occasionally, a motorcycle roars or a fire truck bleats down Military Trail, the thoroughfare just outside. Traffic sounds are the bane of Hutchins´ existence…

In the brochures, everything is copacetic at Nova Southeastern University´s main campus in Davie. Under periwinkle skies sprinkled with fluffy clouds, students stroll past emerald lawns and sleek, modern buildings. The publicity shots show a school brimming with coeds deep in concentration or engaged in animated debate. The message: This…

Eva Wynne-Warren says she can teach anyone to twirl tassels from her nipples. Or, should the opportunity arise, his nipples. There’s that tantalizing hook. As with much of what Wynne-Warren — AKA Torchy Taboo — says and does, it comes with a tease. Want to know how to twirl tassels?…

So when Fidel Castro dies, the party in Miami was supposed to be so big that the city would have to open the Orange Bowl. Everyone was going to jam in, waving flags and posters, parading triumphantly around the arena. They were going to bring salsa bands on the backs…

A short, pale-skinned man with loose, cheekbone-length black hair stands before the congregation at St. Peter Catholic Church in Jupiter to read a passage from the Gospel of Luke. The sanctuary is sparsely decorated on this Palm Sunday, with white walls and a large wooden cross above the pulpit. Turquoise…