Portugal. The Man, with Crystal Fighters Revolution Live, Fort Lauderdale October 9, 2013 Better than: Taking acid and watching Yellow Submarine. If your idea of a wicked Wednesday night is tripping balls to some psychedelic indie rock, then chances are good that you were among the sweaty, sore-throated masses at…
“They are stealing my, my boat in the back,” Yasmin Davis stuttered into the phone. Seconds earlier, the pretty Peruvian architect had been eating lunch in her $2 million Miami Shores mansion. As she tucked a slice of sushi into her mouth, she glanced out the huge glass windows and…
Bruce Lowerre had a simple but soaring dream. “I want to finish my plane,” he wrote on his blog. “I’ve been building since 1977… and my plane hasn’t flown yet!” Sadly, that dream came to a terrible end on Saturday when Lowerre fatally crashed his home-built seaplane into Lake Okeechobee…
On August 8, the Broward Sheriff’s Office announced that a lucky break had led them to solve a grisly three-year-old murder. DNA taken in a South Beach drug bust had connected a muscular, 26-year-old man named John Snavely to the 2010 slaying of businessman Samuel Del Brocco. The case’s closing…
Murals have been popping across South Florida since the death of local teenager Israel “Reefa” Hernandez. The 18-year-old artist and skater was tagging his name on an abandoned McDonald’s in Miami Beach when cops chased him, caught him, and shot him with a Taser. Hernandez died moments later while cops…
Chad Johnson is damaged. But as he sits on the patio of the Pelican Hotel on a Thursday afternoon, the holes in his life are hidden. It’s been nearly two years since Johnson last suited up for the National Football League, but he still looks the part. His muscles bulge…
The cops lay motionless and silent on the sand — two ink stains on an already bruise-black night. Through night-vision goggles, they surveilled the concrete skeleton of a building in the distance. Covered in graffiti, it rose like a crumbling tombstone against the desolate Mexican desert. Behind broken windows flitted…
“I’m just looking for a generous guy who wants to spoil me like I deserve,” Rachel croons into her cell phone, leaving a not-so-subtle message with the cool, coquettish tone of a practiced phone sex worker. Her voice is high and childlike, but in reality, the black 20-year-old is all…
Hissing and spitting like an animal, high tide surged across the sands of Virginia Key. Dark waves broke over the jagged shore and scattered flotsam on the stones like tea leaves at the bottom of a cup. When the water receded, it left more than the usual behind. As dawn…
Julio Ramos Oliver died over a spilled drink. It was just after midnight January 20, and Old San Juan shook with the fiesta de San Sebastián. Under the golden glow of street lamps, more than 100,000 Puerto Ricans packed onto the narrow cobblestone calles for the year’s biggest party. Dressed…
The photos atop Keskea Hernandez’s casket showed a pretty Dominican woman with caramel skin, a brilliant smile, and a cascade of expensively cut hair. As religious hymns drifted across the lavender carpet at Boyd’s Funeral Home in Pembroke Pines last month, family members rose one by one to describe Hernandez…
Thwack! Thwack! The three men hack their way through the Guatemalan jungle, one machetazo at a time. A thick canopy of kapok trees filters out all but the faintest stream of emerald light. As they reach the ruined temple, each man fires up his torch. The youngest, a college student,…
“Have you ever wrecked one of these?” I ask as our burnt-orange Bugatti Veyron Grand Sport Vitesse bursts onto the Julia Tuttle Causeway like a fireball from Hell. Butch Leitzinger shakes his head. The mild-mannered former racer is Bugatti’s official driver, but a better title would be “pilot.” With a…
The limos begin pulling up to Alex Rodriguez’s North Bay Road mansion at dusk, disgorging one celebrity after another: Owen Wilson, Real Housewives star Lea Black, even murderer-turned-mob-rat Chris Paciello. A-Rod, clad in a navy blazer, checked tie, and Italian loafers, welcomes each with a meaty multimillionaire’s paw. Two months…
Tony Galeota: From Running Porky’s, Miami’s Most Notorious Strip Joint, to Rotting in a Panamanian Jail
Jennifer Barker didn’t recognize the number rattling her cell phone one morning in May. But the soft-spoken blond answered anyway. It was a decision the Louisville, Kentucky, resident instantly regretted. The unknown caller claimed to represent a law firm seeking to settle a civil complaint against Barker. The middle-aged hospital…
Fear and Loathing in Tampa: Your Gonzo Guide to the Republican National Convention
One by one, horses strut into the stadium for the second race of the day. Each is a sleek machine shining under the sweltering midday sun. Their sinewy legs sway under muscular torsos rippling with veins like river deltas. Portly Jamaicans and aging sailors with faded forearm tattoos stand in…
March 13 was shaping up to be another day of protests and partying at Fort Peace, Occupy Miami’s grungy Overtown safe house. More than a dozen members had shaken off their hangovers and emerged to demonstrate against a bank. But before they could gather their handmade signs and head downtown,…
Roger Gonzalez Jr. guides the car full of thieves through the Redland, past the groves of mango trees glowing blood red against the evening sky, toward a beige building with a large yard and a black Mercedes-Benz parked in front. He slows down. His father, Roger Sr., calmly checks the…
This is the landscape of nightmares: pitch black, zero oxygen, freezing cold. Beyond the inky, icy darkness lies a seemingly endless expanse of barren rock. Here, silt swirls like snow. Strange creatures, their pale bodies as white as bleached bones, scuttle between rocks. And the pressure is so great that…
Marielena Stuart stood in the middle of a quiet street, 120 miles across the swamp from Miami, and stared down the black plastic barrel of a news camera. Behind her loomed a monstrous church, its 100-foot orange brick façade shimmering like scales in the nighttime spotlights. Stuart glanced up at…
