For the first time in years, when Steve Welsch awoke last Wednesday morning he saw sunshine in the future of his North Beach neighborhood. It was the day after Hollywood’s special city-commission election, and the candidate Welsch supported, John Coleman, had won decisively. To Welsch, president of the Beach Defense…
Thomas Storm stepped off a jet in Singapore feeling irritable and hungry but nonetheless ready to wrestle a big crocodile. Like his father and grandfather before him, the 260-pound Seminole Indian fights Florida alligators for a living. But he had tussled with crocs before, too. “Not that different,” he observes…
Do Independent Study of Las Olas Isles Thanks for your article that points to the true problems of pollution in the Las Olas Isles (“There Goes That Theory Down the Toilet,” Lucy Chabot, June 4). After being wrong for six years the DNRP (Department of Natural Resource Protection) should accept…
Regarding Spam (April 30), is it true, as travel writer Paul Theroux claims, that the people of the South Pacific love their Spam because it tastes so much like… people? — Mary E. Sage, via the Internet Marketing Spam must present some unique challenges. Imagine the conversation in the boardroom:…
At age 67, Frank Pernice looks and sounds like Hollywood’s vision of an aging mobster — gold medallion, big indoor-outdoor prescription sunglasses, an accent one generation out of Sicily. Three years ago he opened Plato’s Repeat, a swingers’ club on Sunrise Boulevard in Fort Lauderdale. The name is a reference…
Greg Scott cannot be rehabilitated. He is an incorrigible outlaw who regularly flouts the law and commits a drug-related crime as often and as easily as most people eat a meal. But he’s never been arrested for breaking that law. Instead he landed in an Orlando jail cell two weeks…
From Davie a salute to Florida’s new Democratic emperor: “All Heckle Ceasar!” As last week began, of course, Broward Democratic chairman Mitch Ceasar was crowned all-powerful head of the state party, then — since even emperors can use an extra grand or two — found himself three days later at…
Fecal Bacteria — That’s Like Dieting I have a comment in regards to your story, “There Goes That Theory Down the Toilet” (Lucy Chabot, June 4). I’m not much of a scientist, but everything I know about biology tells me that reducing the amount of bacteria put into a certain…
In the answer about the guillotine in your online archive, you say that “the fatal blow induces immediate unconsciousness.” In actuality the human head does remain conscious fifteen to twenty seconds after decapitation. This was proven when a scientist condemned to the guillotine in the 1700s told his assistant to…
When a visitor arrives, West Palm Beach City Commissioner Jeff Koons drops the newspaper he’s been reading, stands up, and shakes hands like a politician on the campaign trail, even though he was reelected just a few months ago. He suddenly announces: “We have an errand to run.” Hurrying toward…
Sometime within the past four years in Broward County, a man in his early twenties developed a fast-spreading infection in his lungs and died within days. Because of his youth and the suddenness of his death, the man’s body came under the scrutiny of Broward County Medical Examiner Joshua Perper…
In the “I’m not heavy, I’m your newspaper” department, the May issue of American Journalism Review offers an in-depth look at the Sun-Sentinel and its corporate parent, Chicago’s Tribune Co. At the Sun-Sentinel and other Tribune papers, there is “a business culture that permeates every edition,” national media analyst Ken…
Pick up any brochure about Fort Lauderdale and see beautiful photographs of sailboats breezing along the sparkling canals that surround expensive houses. This is Fort Lauderdale’s signature image — its “Venice of America” persona that covers for a city actually crisscrossed with more crime than canals. But this representation is…
Small-Business Accomodation For the most part, I thought “United They Fall” (Paul Belden, May 28) was a very well-written article, but I think Mr. Belden might have lost track of what problems the owner of Kitchens of the Oceans might have had. The story mentioned that there was a proposed…
There was a news story a few years back about a jazz musician who died and was found to be a woman after living her life as a man. She was married and had three grown children who refused to believe their father was a woman. No one I ask…
Last summer an untried labor activist named Ocean Dessoi saw his first union victory deflate into defeat in the time a fax machine spits out a single page. The scene of Dessoi’s dizzying free fall was a drab hotel conference-room in Deerfield Beach where he and nine colleagues had been…
Separated from his wife and daughter and holed up in a Deerfield Beach hotel room with two women he dispassionately refers to as “crack whores,” Michael Kleiman says he was living his “second childhood.” But the 41-year-old used car salesman had more than the usual trappings (hideaway, women, illicit drugs)…
In the hall of fame of Broward County power, a special alcove — decorated perhaps with dollar signs — would be reserved for lawyer-lobbyist extraordinaire George Platt and the awesome political machine of the Hamilton Forman family. When county commissioners collect campaign contributions, it is not unusual for reporters to…
For another example of tax dollars at work — and the sharp-eyed vigilance of City of Fort Lauderdale regulators — Undercurrents this week turns with pride to one of its own, circulation director Jason Ward, field general in the New Times battle of the boxes. As readers no doubt have…
Cruz Control I think it was Bette Davis who said, “Fasten your seat belts, it’s going to be a bumpy night.” That line, from the movie All About Eve, may become the official line for the saga that is going to evolve out of Michael Freedman’s reporting found in “Cruisin’…
It’s a miracle! No, I don’t have stigmata, I haven’t tasted a Circus Peanut and enjoyed it, and I haven’t heard Steve Miller apologize for ripping off other artists. What has happened is that I’ve found relief for my asthma in a medication known as a steroid (Azmacort). I assume…
It took just three minutes for two city employees to make a dumb decision that will likely cost Fort Lauderdale’s taxpayers more than $1 million. On February 8, 1995, at precisely 11:25 a.m., city staff assistant Lori Milano sent assistant city attorney David Feldheim an e-mail asking for the go-ahead…
