Pompano Beach splash: I want to thank Bob Norman for his December 18 column, “Don’t Drink the Water, Seriously.” It was really on the nose — another gem for us to use to clean up Pompano Beach. Joe Ryan Pompano Beach Norman feeds the masses: It appears obvious from Bob…
Ron Lawrence has paid $25 to a dump truck driver for a load of dirt that never appeared. He once reluctantly loaned $20 to a man who entered a pool hall swearing he needed to fill his diabetic mother’s prescription; the fellow disappeared. And once, after he noticed a guy…
“Good for you,” Susie says when I walk into the bar of the Entrada Motel (509 N. Federal Hwy., Hollywood) and point out that my car is parked in a lot with a tow-away sign. She warms up a bit when she cards my male companion and tells him he…
I persecute Christians. David Limbaugh says so and he’s famous radioman Rush’s brother, so it must be true. The uncle of Dittoheads across the land came out with a best-selling book this fall titled Persecution: How Liberals are Waging War Against Christianity. Just to make sure you don’t miss the…
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…
Get outta town: I enjoyed reading Bob Norman’s December 18 article about the continuing saga of water problems in Pompano (“Don’t Drink the Water, Seriously”). Over the last year, I had been experiencing problems with pipes that were failing both inside and outside my home. At first, I thought it…
Brittany Mullen ambles into DM Records in Boca Raton a little after 2 p.m. on November 15, upbeat, eager, and, as always, ready to work. Even though she’s only 13 years of age, this is where Brittany wants to be. She’s one of four Funn Club girls the label assembled,…
Imagine the disappointment of Cory Brehm and David Turner, a couple of friends who had journeyed from Wilton Manors to Fort Lauderdale last week to see a smoochy, thong-poppin’ cheesecake brawl at Beach Bums, a beer-splattered hangout on A1A, and instead were subjected to some actual wrestling. “It could have…
The Pompano Beach water scandal is starting to feel like a bad dream, or a Dolphins game at New England, or, worse, a Terry Gilliam movie, non-Monty Python. Faces change, nonsense is uttered, awful things keep happening, and the thing just won’t end. Now, high levels of dangerous lead –…
Some people hit the bars in the afternoon. Ninety-two-year-old Rosie Hirsch Leckart is one of those people. Sure, she’s only drinking soda water — a drop of liquor and she might fall asleep right there in her chair– but, she’s on the prowl. Her not-quite-five-foot frame teeters on the edge…
Four wheels beat the two-wheeled variety every time: In regard to “In the Blink of an Eye,” December 4, by Eric Alan Barton, the use of motorcycles by the police has never been a cost-effective mode of transportation, and, as such, these devices are not used by 99 percent of…
Donna Kim waits behind the metal detector at the federal courthouse in Fort Lauderdale at 9 a.m. on Thursday, October 16. A stout woman with long, shiny, black hair who stands about five feet, five inches, she wears a blue, loose-fitting shirt and black slacks. She has on no jewelry,…
Talk about stepping into deep doggy doo. Authorities are still trying to piece together exactly what happened at an alleged local drug hangout in November 2002. What began as a late-night drug bust, with a scrum of Fort Lauderdale police officers poised to follow a battering ram into a marijuana…
The good doctor phoned me a couple of weeks ago after reading a column I wrote about the corrupt depths of a North Broward Hospital District building deal. He says he didn’t want his name in print because district leaders would try to destroy him for saying his piece. “I…
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…
All those damn kids are the problem!: As a recently retired police captain with 30 years of service, I have seen my share of death and destruction, particularly as it relates to the carnage that is occurring and has occurred on our highways. With this in mind, I attempted to…
It was lunchtime on a hot Friday in October, and the Ortiz family cottage on Morton Avenue in West Palm Beach seemed to be bursting with restless kids. The house, a cramped, two-bedroom rental unit, maybe two dozen paces from end to end, resounded with the din of five hungry…
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…
Huh, Mr. Mayor, sir? Huh? It seems to me that nobody was really much fooled by your hoax article about anarchists’ releasing rodents at the Republican Governors Association meeting in Boca Raton (“Our Own Smarty-pants,” November 27). None of the newspapers ran with it, and police security was in place…
It’s 7:30 pm on a Monday, and the bartenders are clearing away someone’s dinner from an open spot at the bar of Mangos (904 E. Las Olas Blvd., Fort Lauderdale). As I try to put my purse down on the empty chair beside me, a husky man with a stack…
Andy Markley, a graphic designer in Sacramento, California, was finishing some work on Saturday, August 30. The Labor Day weekend upon him, Markley was ready to relax. But before leaving his office, he decided to check his e-mail one last time. To his surprise, he found hundreds of bounced-back messages…
What a difference four years makes. In 1999, some Christian conservatives were so demoralized at having failed to remove Bill Clinton from office that they were ready to drop out of politics. Moral Majority co-founder Paul Weyrich went so far as to declare that Christian conservatives had lost the culture…
