There comes a point during every presidential race when the candidates stop feeling like candidates and begin to seem like the worst members of your extended family. They fight every night. They make mean comments about each other through lawyers and surrogates. Hell, you probably hear Donald Trump’s voice in…
In 2012, Fort Lauderdale Police paradoxically arrested Michael Cunniff, now 33, for resisting arrest, without any underlying charges. In a lawsuit Cunniff later filed, he says he’d gotten locked out of his own home, and a neighbor had mistakenly called the cops, thinking there was some sort of disturbance. But Cunniff…
Last week, my colleague over at Miami New Times, Ryan Pfeffer, made the salient point that government agencies are responsible for killing nearly all the world’s memes. The “Harlem Shake” stopped being fun after your local DMV hate-shook its arms to Bauuer in 2013. And that was the Harlem Shake, a…
Catherine Uden, secretary for the Surfrider Foundation of Broward County, has spent much of the last month trying to stop an informal beach party. During “Floatopia” events, thousands of revelers take to the sea in inflatable tubes and proceed to drink heavily. After a Floatopia in Miami Beach last month,…
Of the 42 states and one city (Washington D.C.) that maintain Pre-K programs in America, the State of Florida manages to spend less on preschool care than almost all of them, according to a report released yesterday by Rutgers University’s National Institute of Early Education Research. Of the 43 areas…
Life is always difficult for the nation’s Democratic National Committee Chair. Like the Presidency itself, chairing the party is a thankless job, one typically beset by accusations that you are inevitably driving the left-wing into the ground. Howard Dean was roundly criticized for the direction he took the party in…
Around 2 o’clock this morning, following an eight-hour gauntlet of a public hearing, the Fort Lauderdale City Commission tentatively approved a zoning ordinance that would clear the way for the redevelopment of the publicly-owned Bahia Mar property on Fort Lauderdale Beach and the construction of two 29-story towers. The ordinance will…
Alan Amron’s living room on Evernia Street in West Palm Beach is barely wider than the dark sofa that dominates it. The kitchen is too small to eat in, so a tiny round table is crammed into the living room. It’s unclear whether two people can eat there at once…
Last year, a New Times investigation found that the city of Hallandale Beach had executed 38 SWAT raids since 2006. Thirty-three of those were located within the city’s poor, majority-black neighborhood, and none of the raids led to major drug busts. But one May 2014 raid killed 34-year-old Howard Bowe, Jr…
For quite some time now, Broward County has been besieged by a contingent of Islamophobes who claim our local police departments, schools, and city governments have been “overrun” by “terrorists” looking to institute Sharia law across America. Notable among these: Joe Kaufman, the lead Republican running against Debbie Wasserman Schultz…
For just $69, you, too, can receive some sound advice this month from a disbarred lawyer, who went to jail for his involvement with one of the largest Ponzi schemers in American history. Don’t all sign up at once! Steven Lippman, 54, spent two years in jail for helping famed…
Cara Jennings, the ex-Lake Worth Commissioner who became internet-famous when she called Scott an “asshole” in a Starbucks on April 5, released a video yesterday begging the state of California to help “Stop Rick Scott.” She’s even started a #StopRickScott hashtag. Scott — whose name has been batted around a…
I once, in the 8th grade, got into a slap-boxing fight on a trampoline, with a kid who was about a foot taller than I was. The fake fight turned into a real fight, which then turned into me running inside with blood streaming from my nose. I have since…
On the TV show American Takedown, which airs on A&E, camera crews follow elite police forces as they bust high-stakes criminals. It’s basically Cops on steroids. In one episode, the U.S. Coast Guard ambushed a drug-filled boat en route to Puerto Rico. In another, a sheriff’s office in Tennessee busted…
Miami is something of a spawning ground for the champagne-infused salmon that is Aubrey Drake Graham, America’s leading male pop star. He seems compelled to return to South Florida biannually to roost. And why not? The confines of South Beach offer just about everything he could want: Clubs that blast…
The biggest knock on Democrat Tim Canova, the onetime Bernie Sanders adviser who is trying to oust fellow Democrat Debbie Wasserman Schultz from Congress, has been that most of Canova’s support is from a rabid group of “Bernie Bros” on websites like Reddit, rather than folks in South Florida. While…
The Palm Beach State Attorney’s Office could have charged Nouman Raja, the ex-Palm Beach Gardens cop who shot local drummer Corey Jones to death in October, with a crime by now, if they wanted to. Prosecutors have interviewed more than 230 witnesses in three countries about the case, and the investigation…
Approach and the first thing you hear is buzzing. It’s like a swarm of food processors flying overhead. Look up. In the twilight sky, Tron-like flashes of neon turn circles, some stopping midair before diving close to the ground at breakneck speed. They’re like tiny comets or steroid-stoked fireflies. Suddenly,…
Earlier this month on Miami Beach, revelers gathered with their inflatable tubes and rafts for Floatopia, a massive, informal party that has been happening since at least 2012 and left the beach smothered in trash. The event (which is just an excuse to drink beer, smoke weed, and eat corn…
It took four entire paragraphs in James Tracy’s latest press release before he accused someone of orchestrating a conspiracy. We can only imagine how long that wait must have felt for him. Tracy, who was fired from his tenured position as a Florida Atlantic University professor in January after the…
In February, Fort Lauderdale held a public meeting about a controversial proposal to build two 39-story towers at the Bahia Mar resort area. Proving there is nothing that South Florida residents care more about than land development, the meeting stretched for a staggering eight hours, until 4:30 in the morning. More…
More than 20 counties in Florida have signed ordinances banning fracking, the controversial process by which water, sand, and an unnamed cocktail of chemicals are jammed into the ground, in order to extract oil and natural gas. The process has been blamed for contaminating groundwater. Around the time Broward County…
