Lori Parrish is everywhere. The inimitable Broward County commissioner, a candidate for the $148,000-per-year property appraiser sinecure, has been mentioned eight times in the past two weeks in the Sun-Sentinel. A website, floridapropertytaxappeals.com, links to a glowing, 18-page biography complete with pics of the commish in pigtails. And her campaign…
“If you get busted for drugs over there, you’re in for the hassle of your life.” — ominous, 1970s-era U.S. Public Service Announcement Last month in Istanbul, two Broward County women made history when they were arrested in what is reportedly Turkey’s biggest drug bust ever. The incident has gone…
Kiss Has Class Mick Jagger Too Funky for You, Bucko? I’m a few years older than Geoff Harkness, who wrote the July 29 story, “Army of Old.” I was in fifth grade in 1979. The same Kiss-mania raged when I went to school. I wasn’t so hip to the pop…
Jennifer Van Bergen opens the door to her tenth-floor apartment on Hallandale Beach, a law review article in her hand and eyeglasses perched on the bridge of her nose. She looks up, squinting. “Have we met before?” she asks, standing about 25 feet from a balcony that overlooks the Atlantic…
Some sadistic soul has placed South Florida’s sun directly overhead and cranked up the heat to the “July” notch, brutalizing the small Lake Worth apartment where Gidget Gein sleeps and paints. A single window-mounted air conditioner valiantly cools the small bedroom. All day, Gein has worked alone in the stuffy,…
Affluence is besieging South Florida’s cities. Five thousand mostly upscale condos and apartments recently began filling up in downtown Fort Liquordale. Almost as many are planned or poised to open in West Palm Beach. Hollywood, desperate to catch up, last week agreed to give a developer $350 million to build…
Wearing all-black, flowing garments, red-haired Maureen Reilly looked like a would-be high priestess as she addressed the Hollywood City Commission last week. But she went by another title: The Sludge Queen. Reilly flew from Canada at the invitation of Schwing Bioset, the sewage company that was lobbying to keep a…
It’s secretive and rushed — the twin hallmarks of bad government. The tax-subsidized North Broward Hospital District was to unveil a plan to build a 150-bed hospital at Nova Southeastern University in Davie — at a likely cost of more than $100 million — next week during a hastily called…
No Cure for the Hospital District Taxpayers lose: Thank you for advising the public of the matter regarding the abrupt cancellation of our advertising contract with the North Broward Hospital District (“Message Control,” Bob Norman, July 22). The loss of revenue is not an issue to me. What is of…
Hand it to the folks at Gulfstream Park. They’ve never been afraid to tinker with the formula. Unlike some racetrack managers, who wait passively as their elderly core audience does a slow fade to black, the guys at Gulfstream will do almost anything to put butts in the grandstand seats…
Storm clouds have begun collecting over the beach as John Brandon dives into an underwater whirlwind. A quarter-mile from the shore off Fort Pierce, sand, rocks, and air bubbles swirl so wildly around Brandon that the sun nearly disappears. Above him, the blunt force of his ship’s engines aims down…
Corruption and conflicts of interest have already sullied the City of Hollywood’s multimillion-dollar sewage deal. Now it appears the March vote to choose a company with financial ties to Commissioner Keith Wasserstrom was based on false claims. The City Commission decided to hire Schwing Bioset to treat and haul tons…
Bad Fortune And imprudent jurisprudence? Trevor Aaronson’s July 15 story on Melody Fortunato (“Below the Bar”) could have been called “Below the Belt.” This so-called representative of the people screwed me bad during my divorce in July 2000. She was supposed to represent me for a child support hearing before…
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Joyce Tarnow’s a weird combo: a wiry, gray-haired mother of three who’s a feminist, an environmentalist, and slightly wacko about population growth. “Fertility is an environmental issue,” she says. “That’s why I try to get as many people sterilized as are in my way!” Tarnow also has an interesting stance…
Melody Ridgley Fortunato was the type of woman young girls are taught to admire. She overcame early hardship, living modestly but with big ambitions in Americus, Georgia. After moving to South Florida, Fortunato took on a sexist boys’ club in the Hollywood Police Department and won. Then she divorced a…
In the early evening of Tuesday, November 11, 2003, Stephen Jordi parked his 1988 Ford Aerostar van in a lot south of the Sunset Harbor Marina in Miami Beach. With him was a friend he’d made in August, Stewart Welch. The two looked almost identical: middle-aged white men with flabby…
Well-run cities are all alike; every corrupt city is corrupt in its own way. Hollywood is a good example of the latter. Dragged by its dysfunctional mother, Mayor Mara Giulianti, the city keeps sliding further into the stinking sludge. I mean that almost literally, since the latest scandal centers on…
For the Love of Dogs Not the bad rep: I just read Sam Eifling’s July 8 article on the Pembroke Pines gentleman who had the issue with the pool guy (“`Burb Dogs”). It always saddens me to hear of any pit bull mishap, as I have been involved with the…
A spin of the Romance Roulette wheel landed on a Thursday night for my newest sidekick, Rufus. The lucky chap’s spectacles positively fogged up over the prospect that I’d throw all five feet, eight inches of his vein-bursting desire into the path of lusty ladies in downtown Fort Lauderdale. I…
It’s the sort of place where people obey speed limits, keep their lawns lush, play catch with their kids in the front yard, and invite one another to barbecues on Friday and Saturday nights. Teenagers maneuver bikes, skateboards, and motorized scooters around the meandering streets, past the beat-up basketball hoops…
North Broward Hospital District Commissioner Dorsey Miller appears to have used his influence to help Enterprise Security, a minority-owned Fort Lauderdale firm, land a contract worth about $500,000 a year to help guard the district’s four hospitals. At the same time, Enterprise was paying the commissioner’s company, D.C. Miller &…
