Mara, Mara, Mara. We have grown increasingly concerned about the mayor of Hollywood and her grasp of reality. Or at the very least her ability to read a newspaper and a calendar. Writers from this paper have called Mara Giulianti regarding stories, and she rarely deigns to return phone calls…
Bruce Godfrey is sitting at a booth in the Malibu East Restaurant and Coffee Shop. Behind him is a shrine to The Wizard of Oz, adorned with images of Dorothy, the Tin Man, and the Wizard himself. It is topped with a dusty papier-mâché rainbow. Godfrey sits near the door…
Joe Benavides and his partner, Lee Bennett, were the first team from the Port Everglades Fire Rescue Department to enter the burning tugboat. Dragging fire hoses down stairs and through hatches, they descended through 1500-degree temperatures and choking smoke to an unlit storage compartment where used diesel engine filters had…
The crowded Carnival cruise ship that left on June 20 carried hundreds of giddy passengers. Some were celebrating momentous family occasions. Gloria Hernandez was onboard for her daughter’s quince. Deborah Osgood took her 18-year-old son along as his high-school graduation gift. An Italian couple was honeymooning. For at least six…
Without even knowing it, Broward boosters and baseball enthusiasts were given a reprieve with the failure of Miami-Dade’s proposed sales tax increase last week. Those hoping for a new baseball stadium built in Broward didn’t know that millions set aside in the tax hike for “civic improvements” would have gone…
Elise Leonard seems like the kind of doctor everyone wishes they had. The attractive, mid-fortyish Plantation ophthalmologist is friendly, listens well, and likes to spend time with patients, evaluating their health. But behind her courteous professional demeanor is a growing frustration that her income, like that of many doctors, is…
Sally Hester is notorious for staying out late on weekends. As unlikely a night owl as this unkempt, harried Hollywood resident seems, it is what she does in those early hours that is even more peculiar. For the last two months, Hester has spent her nights videotaping the policemen who…
Check. My king is cornered, surrounded on all sides by knights and rooks and pawns. There is one way out, a diagonal move across the board, but it’s only a temporary escape from the firing line. Pondering the prospects for long-term survival, I reach for the king. “Hey, it’s not…
You shouldn’t wave a gun at police and expect anything good to happen. But citizens should expect police will do everything they can to prevent a tragedy such as the one that put Jimmy Lee Thompson in a grave last week. The obviously distraught man brandished an unloaded pistol and…
It scares people silly. It makes cool-headed adults wonder if witches are real. It draws hundreds of thousands of hits to its Website. It drives a local historian in small-town Maryland crazy. The Blair Witch Project, a first film by two canny young Floridians, has developed a reputation as the…
Fort Lauderdale resident Stephen Zebrowski, Sr. died in excruciating pain in a Jamaican jail cell. He was 47 years old. How he became imprisoned and what his family is doing about his untimely death create one of those strange and mysterious tales that seem to flourish in the South Floridasun…
Teressa Cawley is a smart, energetic young woman, an astute manager, and a whiz in the field of municipal bonds. She’s good enough to have been hired as a financial adviser for Broward County. Simply put, she’s a player. She’s also a liar, according to the Securities and Exchange Commission…
-as told to Tom Walsh Here’s a new theme song for downtown Fort Lauderdale: “Where have all the homeless gone? Gone to the bushes, every one. When will the cops everlearn?” We hear that harassment, in the form of rousting, is continuing, and the police are confronting the homeless with…
On most maps of South Florida, civilization simply ends somewhere out west. In Broward County the demarcation line is I75 in the south and the Sawgrass Expressway in the north. In southern Palm Beach County, State Road7 is pretty much the end, though some development straggles west of the line…
In late May, Fort Lauderdale mayor Jim Naugle, Broward County state attorney Michael Satz, and other local politicians and upholders of the law received an eye-catching delivery at their offices: the June issue of Xcitement magazine. The cover of the glossy magazine features a naked Jasmin St.Claire (owner of the…
Here’s some advice: Never tell Russ Rector, director of the Dolphin Freedom Foundation, that you can’t see how swimming with dolphins could be as dangerous as, say, swimming withsharks. “Don’t get me started on the shark thing, goddammit!” an already started Rector thunders in response. “Don’t even go there! Everybody’s…
If Hollywood were to revisit the Cold War era with a movie about an idealistic rogue inside the KGB, studio execs would probably cast a large, menacing leading man, maybe Arnold Schwarzenegger or Sylvester Stallone. They would want someone who fits the stereotypical mold of a jackbooted stoic, someone who…
Billing itself as the largest dealer of exotic cars in the world, the Toy Store Group in Fort Lauderdale sells automotive dreams to wealthy and famous customers — Bruce Willis, Arnold Schwarzenegger, and Jay Leno among them. The gleaming sports and luxury cars — from regal Bentleys to sleek Ferraris…
Former Plantation mayor Frank Veltri secretly ordered city staff to issue him checks for $44,000 worth of possibly illegal vacation and sick-leave payoffs — including a whopping $20,790 payment just after he left office in March, according to city hall records. A preliminary investigation by city attorney Donald Lunny, Jr…
Forget the supposed midsummer South Florida exodus. Last week’s Fort Lauderdale City Commission meeting was packed. Crowds spilled onto the sidewalk, others were sequestered on the eighth floor to watch via TV. The reason for this sudden upsurge in civic engagement? Free money. Got your attention, didn’t it? It seems…
If Hollywood were to revisit the Cold War era with a movie about an idealistic rogue inside the KGB, studio execs would probably cast a large, menacing leading man, maybe Arnold Schwarzenegger or Sylvester Stallone. They would want someone who fits the stereotypical mold of a jackbooted stoic, someone who…
