Welcome to the land of excess and instant gratification. You sensed it when you got off the plane or maneuvered into that I-95 exit lane. Or maybe it was the first time you spotted that shady, mustached man with sunglasses and a briefcase, standing conspicuously under a palm tree. This…
A turtle suns itself on a rock along the edge of a dark and placid comma-shaped lagoon that marks the center of campus. Casually dressed students carrying schoolbooks saunter across manicured lawns or slouch at patio tables outside the modest student activity center. A pleasant breeze rattles leaf-stocked branches on…
Joel CastilloWe’re beginning to feel sorry for the public relations department of Miami Gardens’ Florida Memorial University. As this week’s feature story on the violence-plagued school — think shootings, carjackings, home invasions, and a near-riot — went to print, the first reports of a fresh stabbing on campus began to…
A ratty blue tarp is wrapped tightly around a huge sphere in a Lauderhill driveway. It takes up a full parking space and is nearly as tall as the simple white house behind it. It looks like a captured UFO. As Joel Waul throws aside cinder blocks to remove the…
With three seconds left in the game and his University of Michigan squad trailing Seton Hall by one point, 22-year-old guard Rumeal Robinson lined up for two all-important free throws. The NCAA Division 1 basketball title hung in the balance. The Zen-like junior fluttered one and then another shot through…
Twelve fat men gather in heavy-breathing anticipation at the mouth of the third-base entrance to the field. It’s Disco Night — the Village People, after presumably having been removed from some far-flung crypt, are booked for the post-game concert — so the crew is decked out in neon pimp suits,…
The news piece begins with footage of a polished black Range Rover pulling up to a white Gulfstream G400 jet at the Opa-locka Executive Airport. Two female members of South Beach’s perma-tanned glitterati scamper out and into the $35 million plane. In the next shot, the women have gotten comfortable…
It was pouring rain just after 1 p.m. Monday, July 20, when a man burst into a Honduran grocery store on NW 36th Street in Miami. A shirt was wrapped around his face as he gripped a black semiautomatic handgun. The lanky 20-year-old African-American, Charles Bell, shoved the pistol into…
Between bites of braised lamb shank, Richard von Houtman — or, as his black American Express card reads, Baron Richard von Houtman — holds his iPhone sideways to display a recent call. It’s a Chicago number alongside the name “Siohvaughn.” As in Siohvaughn Wade, the ex-wife of 27-year-old Miami Heat…
This week, New Times publishes “Dwyane’s Disaster,” a cover story about Dwyane Wade’s catastrophic partnership with Richard von Houtman, a British baron with a sordid past. Von Houtman has been making wild allegations about the Heat superstar’s personal life since their business relationship dissolved. Two weeks after Wade responded by…
Former mega-smuggler Jon Roberts, who flooded Miami with $2 billion worth of cocaine in the ’80s, naps away his days in a quiet lakefront Hollywood home. But soon, if what he says is true, a book, a high-octane movie, and videogame contracts will again make him a player. But he…
Near dawn on Wednesday, January 21, Glades airboat captain Jesse Kennon was jolted awake by the whirring of helicopter blades over his roof. His first thought: That sounds like Rescue One. The ruddy-skinned, pony-tailed patriarch of Coopertown had heard Miami-Dade Fire Rescue choppers many times before. He estimates he has…
Niurka Marco is a middle-aged, Havana-born telenovela star and erotic model who is the scourge of the tabloids in her resident Mexico. She’s the Cuban Anna Nicole Smith. The buxom woman with curly, tomato-colored hair could travel anonymously in any American city but Miami — which must be why she…
“I don’t want to get stabbed for a hot dog” might be the quote of the year. Last week, a riot- the definition for that term seems to be getting looser by the news story, but we’ll roll with it- broke out at a Brooklyn Shwarama King when Hasidic customers…
On a sun-blasted Tuesday morning in the last weeks of 2008, four people pedal camouflage-painted bikes toward NW 61st Street and 13th Place, one of the busiest intersections for Liberty City’s booming drug trade. Donald Vamper, a jovial 46-year-old wearing a camo bandanna Tupac-style; his cornrow-tressed wife, Sylvia; and Chris…
Correction: A previous version of this article contained factual errors that have since been removed. Raul Regalado, the wide-eyed, 25-year-old son of a Venezuelan textile executive, turns to a passenger as he pilots a $235,000, pumpkin-orange Lamborghini Gallardo south on Ocean Drive. “If I pick up a bitch,” he declares,…
He exits the Starbucks at Federal Highway and Broward Boulevard on a warm Wednesday afternoon. Traffic slows, and drivers stretch their necks to get a better view. A woman in a red Toyota Camry slams on her brakes and rolls down her window. “Oh my God! Is that — “…
Michael the Black Man, as he calls himself, steps from a brand-new pearl-white Mercedes, ponytail neatly crimped and big black pupils lazily regarding the world after a Sunday spent yachting. Maybe money does buy respectability. Because he now appears far saner than he did two days ago, spewing Old Testament…
