When authorities last week released 433 moths in Palm Beach County’s Jonathan Dickinson State Park, there was barely a whisper in the local or national press. Yet the act may prove even more significant to the Florida Everglades — one of the world’s most diverse ecosystems — than the multibillion…
It’s all there — the sooty buildings, the sunless streets, the cockney rabble, and the little boy who committed the cardinal sin of asking his orphanage turnkeys for some more gruel (“Please, sir, I want some more”). It’s all there in the traveling production of Lionel Bart’s 45-year-old musical Oliver!,…
When George W. Bush wanted to connect with the Almighty during his recent campaign stop at the Office Depot Center in Sunrise, he called upon firebrand O’Neal Dozier, of course. Dozier is the black preacher from Broward County whose homophobic vitriol actually waves and shimmers like heat rising off a…
Is it too late to juice up the Museum of Art’s underwhelming show “Diana, A Celebration,” which opened Sunday? We could bring in the tabloid boys to try to cut the stifling atmosphere of reverence for a glamour icon. Give us, say, some of those hot love letters she sent…
Frank Cabadiana is a short, pit bull of a man who, as a 41-year-old National Guard sergeant, used to awe the younger soldiers in his unit by doing 20 one-handed pushups with each hand while delivering a lecture on the virtues of keeping fit. But he has lost a lot…
A lot of South Floridians, seeing film crews set up on local streets or fashion models drape themselves across Fort Lauderdale’s famous seawall, believe we’ll be the next Tinseltown. Not in this century. If there is any real local connection to the pic biz — that entrepreneurial yeast culture in…
Tailpipe thought that developer Gary Posner’s sunny promises to keep the Hollywood Playhouse afloat were too good to be true. Last September, Posner and his partner, Patricia Peretz, bought the theater building on Washington Street where the fiscally-troubled playhouse has been putting on award-winning plays for 50 years. They promised…
When you’re in the newspaper business, you’re supposed to give the people you write about a chance to speak. Maybe you don’t like somebody, but at least you let him respond to your criticisms. That old cornerstone of the free press recently got swept into the trash bin over at…
Imagine trying to find a decent drink of water in Pensacola. Environmental agencies have found the city’s water supply to be so hopelessly laced with dry cleaning chemicals, pesticides, petroleum products, and the like that even Tailpipe wouldn’t want to put it too near his rusty lips. An Escambia County…
What in God’s name are the top dogs at the Sun-Sentinel thinking? It’s a newspaper, right? It’s supposed to advocate open discussion of ideas, no? And it sure as hell should be impartial. At least, that’s what this grimy old ‘Pipe thinks. But that doesn’t seem to be the case…
The Garden of Eden it ain’t, but Lake Worth’s Old Bridge Park, a characterless acre and a half of parking space along the western edge of the barrier island, is a thing of beauty to locals. Beach parking? Hell, the gardens at Versailles could never look sweeter. Now, here’s Mayor…
The last time Broward County mounted a big dredging program at Port Everglades, environmentalists raised so much hell that taxpayers had to spend millions to create a whole new mangrove marsh along the edge of John Lloyd Park. It was the late 1980s, and port officials vowed that the adjoining…
Pull up a stool, kid. You want the Mickey shot of vodka or the SpongeBob tequila? Hey, it’s for a good cause. The kids from Indian Pines Elementary School in Lantana regularly bring home fliers encouraging families to encouraged to patronize JJ Muggs, a local sports bar. and grill. The…
Dude, come on in. Welcome to the brand- new Broward County North Jail. Have a seat. No, not there. Over here in this boxy wooden chair with the wires. Built not for comfort but utility, you could say. No, no, no. It’s not — ha ha — the electric chair…
The buzz about the new movie Monster is all about actress Charlize Theron, who plays Florida serial killer Aileen Wuornos. It’s a remarkable performance by the statuesque South African beauty. Tall, leggy, and — in Tailpipe’s opinion — one of the tastiest dishes in the movies, Theron has somehow turned…
In a state where thick-trunked trees are almost as rare as Florida panthers, the small sliver of forest that thrives outside the Motel 6 on Dania Beach Boulevard west of A1A is a welcome surprise. Even more thrilling is seeing real monkeys there. Yes, there they were last week, about…
As the rest of the nation reeled from the thousands of deaths and carnage of 9/11/01 and the anthrax scare that followed, the Boca Raton-based monthly newspaper Happy Times barely missed a beat, pumping out heartwarming pet stories, upbeat celebrity interviews, and New Age wisdom. The staff pieced together a…
Bitching about the system is as much a part of being in the military as bad food and dumb non-coms. But the longstanding complaints by National Guard soldiers in Iraq that they’re always the last to get the latest battle equipment are starting to assume a deadly reality. “They always…
Big sleek farm animals with blue ribbons attached to their harnesses. Ladies in gingham unveiling the perfect chocolate layer cake or lemon meringue pie. A calliope playing carousel tunes, the gleeful shouts of children, somebody picking at a banjo somewhere or sawing away at a musical saw, and the sweet…
Marla Somerstein, a 22-year-old Fort Lauderdale resident working in the finance department of the “Bob Graham for President” campaign, had just returned from Yom Kippur last month when she turned on Larry King Live. It was, in effect, that suspendered CNN blowhard who delivered Somerstein’s pink slip. Graham (“Dick Gephardt…
Jackie Johnson is just about everybody’s favorite weather chick and television feature reporter. The WSVN-TV Channel 7 hottie is “America’s sexiest weather girl,” says Playboy.com; several local publications, including this one, have dubbed her outstanding television weather forecaster in their “best of” issues. With that cute little Barbie figure of…
Many families have an uncle or a cousin like Charlie Osborne: likable, sunny, smile as big as a house, but a magnet for trouble. In Osborne’s case, the trouble was drugs. Between 1997 and 2002, he was arrested four times for possession of cocaine or drug paraphernalia. In August of…
