The ‘Pipe is still shaking his rusty noggin over the recent debacle in Sunrise involving hometown hero Kimbo Slice, the homeless man turned porn bouncer turned mixed martial arts fighter. In less than 14 seconds, Seth Petruzelli, a pink-haired Orlando native whose MySpace page showed him in some questionable getups,…
Filmmakers and novelists love to talk about American insularity and blundering naiveté. You know, that distinctive and ultimately insidious impulse to do good while making a profit — a course that, witness the hapless characters in Coyote, invariably seems to create havoc. Steve and J. (Brian Petersen and Brett Spackman,…
Less than a month away, the presidential election looms off the coast of South Florida like a seasonal storm, one of those buzz-saw conflagrations that television weathermen track on their display maps. Yes, it’s a red, flaming buzz saw coming this way. Broward Supervisor of Elections Brenda Snipes likes the…
The fate of one New Times sidewalk distribution box doesn’t amount to a hill of beans in this cockeyed world of ours. It’s there one minute — on the sidewalk in front of Donald Trump’s brand-new Trump International Hotel & Tower on A1A — and gone the next. Mysteriously gone…
When the Gallery at Beach Place opened ten years ago on A1A, it epitomized the “New Fort Lauderdale”: big chain stores and restaurants teaming up with expensive boutiques and corporate hotels to draw a higher class of tourist. Attached to the Beach Place Marriott, the commercial plaza replaced a few…
The ‘Pipe was on hand a month ago at the 15th Street Fisheries in Fort Lauderdale when Jean-Gabriel Chelala huffed in on a 25-foot pedal boat, completing a 107-day transatlantic journey. It was actually the second leg of Chelala’s planned ’round-the-world odyssey, which began when he biked out of Paris…
It was like The Thomas Crown Affair. Except replace that dashing, adventure-seeking billionaire played by Pierce Brosnan with an indigent, inept felon from Miami. Meet Marcus Patmon of South Miami. “He obviously was somewhat well-educated in the art field,” says Kreg D. Kelley, curator of the Gallery Lareuse in Washington,…
Aaron Jackson went to Haiti a few years ago on a mission to help the malnourished children in one of the poorest countries in the world. With a little help from local allies, Jackson has dewormed millions of children, giving them medication that kills parasites and allows the kids to…
In South Florida’s very midst lives a transplant who hails from the celebrated town of Wasilla, Alaska. A second-year medical student at Nova Southeastern University, his name is Harry A. Schultz IV, but he goes by “Buck.” (Judging by the Palin clan, they’re very big on colorful, one-syllable names up…
Anyone with an internet connection nowadays can go online and find a house party where like-minded political junkies are gathering to watch their favorite party luminaries in action. For example, Ann Calhoun and her husband, Roger, invited strangers to their Fort Lauderdale home to watch Barack Obama’s acceptance speech. A…
Egad, it’s happening again. Tailpipe feels an evil current drawing him back… back to Lost River Lake. There’s Dr. Hoak, the bristly mad scientist, and his lethal little meat-eaters. The government abandoned his project, of course, the controversial Operation Razorteeth. Hoak’s baby. Pulled the funds back. Tried to call Hoak…
So what does it take to get people’s attention in Broward County nowadays? Apparently, a lot more than dumping a corpse in your backyard. The Broward Sheriff’s Office says Samuel Nesbitt and Richard Isaac, housemates at 2844 NW Sixth Ct. in unincorporated Broward, got into a fight in June resulting…
Now, why would black firefighters claim there’s institutional bias in the West Palm Beach Fire Department? OK, departmental brass are all white, despite the availability of qualified black applicants. Recent promotions to lieutenant have skipped blacks. And Chief Robert Ridgeway, whose arrival was supposed to calm these concerns, resigned in…
Chris Imperial, the imposing host of spoken-word events at Delray Beach restaurant Dada, invited New Times writer Amy Guthrie to judge venue’s Durty Werdz poetry slam last week, and, she asserts, she was fuckin’ down for that shit. Guthrie was joined by Deerfield-based sex therapist Lori Sarvis, Boca Raton rapper…
So Tailpipe gets married, and his new wife brings along a 6-year-old son. This is, oh, better than three decades ago. Eugene is a sunny kid with a kind of inner quiet. Disarmingly watchful — so watchful, in fact, that Tailpipe starts to think, after a year or two, that…
Florida turns out world-class tennis players like California produces surfers and the Dominican Republic yields nimble-footed infielders. To watch Andy Roddick or Maria Sharapova (Russian-born but trained in Bradenton) on the court is to be awed by blazing serves, passing shots, and breathtaking volleys with little thought for what it…
Gamblers are lined up three-deep just to get a seat at one of the new blackjack tables at the Seminole Hard Rock Hotel & Casino, where they can have a stiff drink, rub elbows with a stranger wearing an Ed Hardy T-shirt, and bet away their life savings $25 at…
Tailpipe loves those elusive, cuddly sea cows that loll around in the shallows hereabouts, like Kirstie Alley in a bathtub. If only he could find them. Last time he looked — and looked and looked — there was nary a manatee to be found. Still, a lot of money has…
When some larcenous computer genius figured out the PIN for Tailpipe’s ATM card recently, first thing the cyberthief did was make four $100 purchases at a San Antonio gas station. The bank alertly shut the card down. The ‘Pipe’s not sure what the tipoff was, but, for smart security operatives,…
The long, exhausting election season is beginning to seem to Tailpipe a lot like Napoleon’s march on Moscow. No snow yet, maybe, but a grueling retreat for all the blow-dried candidates of January and plenty of bodies along the road. It’s in the blizzard of second-tier races, though, that the…
Back in the 1960s, America declared a war on poverty. The government funneled millions into “community development” programs, recruited neighborhood enablers, financed jobs programs, and then, by the 1970s, realizing that poverty was the most tenacious of adversaries, pretty much gave up the effort. By the time the Reagan administration…
If they gave an Oscar for the muckraking documentary that most riles the world’s fat cats, turning them into red-faced, sputtering stuffed shirts, Amy Serrano’s film on Big Sugar would surely win hands down. The exposé film Sugar Babies, which has been making the festival circuit for about a year…
