Sometime in the last few years — he wouldn’t say why, and wouldn’t say when — Sandman Da Black Ghost, a rapper from West Palm Beach, says he spent some time in a “drug treatment facility.” There, he says, he was stunned what he saw. Many of the people around…
Armed with a scuba tank and speargun, Christian Mathisen has been plunging deeper than 100 feet into South Florida’s waters for the last 20 years. Based out of Jupiter, Mathisen says he has spent nearly $90,000 acquiring the necessary permits to legally spearfish commercially. He makes a modest living selling…
Some of the most amazing species on Earth are here under the water. Take, for example, hogfish, which can convert from female to male when they are about three years old. According to FWC Biological Scientist Jeff Renchen, all hogfish begin their lives as females. As spawning season approaches, the…
Before the Fort Lauderdale City Commission voted on a controversial plan to re-zone and develop the Bahia Mar resort area, at least 70 people spoke before the city’s governing body, turinng the meeting — scheduled to last a little more than two hours — into an eight-hour gauntlet, which ended…
As flops go, this one was spectacular: last year, rich philanthropist Margaret Blume spent many months and $500,000 getting a sculptor to create statues that looked like the famous moai — giant stone heads —- found on Easter Island. To make an artificial reef, she and her team affixed the…
In 2007, then-Governor Charlie Christ appointed Matthew Destry as a criminal judge in Florida’s 17th Judicial Circuit, serving Broward County. Shortly after, Brian Greenwald, then a public defender, was assigned cases that came before Destry. For three years, Greenwald witnessed Destry develop his reputation as the toughest sentencer in the…
Last Wednesday, a tribute to a beloved hospital CEO who died began with one man throwing a pie at another. Nabil El Sanadi, the former CEO of the Broward Health Medical Center, one of the 10 largest public hospital systems in the nation, died by suicide on January 23. El…
The bulldozers were the worst. The noise and dust bothered the residents of Little Farm Trailer Park — a 15-acre low-income community just off Biscayne Boulevard in El Portal — and so did the newly vacant lots. They were a stark reminder of the fate residents feared awaited their own…
On Sunday morning, just before 9 a.m. mass, about six protesters held signs outside of St. Rose of Lima Catholic Church in Miami Shores, suggesting that parishoners withhold donations. Many parents of students who attend the church’s K-8 Catholic school,are upset because they were not consulted, and thus caught by…
Florida Gov. Rick Scott visited the Seminole Tribe of Florida’s headquarters Monday as the Seminoles unveiled details for a $1.8 billion expansion. They said they intend to build new hotels at their Hard Rock casinos in Hollywood and Tampa. A new hotel would go up at the Hard Rock in…
Broward’s buses are rarely on time, and even if they were, schedules are confusing for users and hard to find online. Since only some stops have bus shelters, riders are left waiting indefinitely — often sweating or drenched on the side of the road. The biggest complaint is that a…
Kelli McDonald, a former Broward Sheriff’s Office crime-lab analyst, was involved in testing at least 5,800 drug cases during her nine-year career with the agency. But after discrepancies were found in drug cases she had worked on beginning in 2012, she became the subject of multiple internal affairs investigations. After…
A bill pending in the Florida Legislature would let anyone pay $100 for a so-called “citizen archaeology permit” and then be able to dig up historical artifacts from submerged lands like riverbeds and lakes — and keep what they find. Collectors are psyched about the bill. Archaeologists say that only…
Last summer saw the end of a five-year deal that had let the Seminole Tribe of Florida run blackjack and baccarat card games in exchange for $1 billion for Florida’s state coffers. Now that’s it’s time to renew a deal, Gov. Rick Scott has proposed a seven-year agreement with the…
James Tracy believes he has been wronged. Tracy, formerly a tenured Florida Atlantic University media professor, was fired earlier this month, technically, for refusing to fill out some clerical forms at the school. If this seems like a dubious reason to fire someone, Tracy had, at the same time, been…
In ten months, Florida voters can decide whether or not to legalize medical marijuana in the state. A group called United for Care has drafted a proposed amendment to the state constitution that would make it legal. For months, its volunteers and workers have circulated petitions. They gathered one million…
The people of Fort Lauderdale need a pep talk. There’s not a whole lot of Fort Lauderdale pride (and, no, we don’t mean the kind parading from Wilton Manors). It’s most pronounced at college orientation, when someone asks where you’re from. It’s a paralyzing moment for any Fort Lauderdale-bred college…
Every morning, at St. Rose of Lima K-8 Catholic school in Miami Shores, the white-haired principal, Sister Bernadette Keane, can be found in the parking lot, blowing her whistle. “She tells kids to tuck in their shirts,” says one mom who asked not to be named. “All the kids are so well behaved…
In what is almost certainly not news to people of color in Florida, the state’s chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union has found that black motorists are cited for seatbelt violations twice as often as whites, despite the fact that seatbelt usage is roughy the same among members of…
The great warrior king of 17th century India, Shivaji Maharaj, fought off Europeans and their imperialist ambitions. To protect a group of islands in the Arabian Sea, Maharaj designed a series of stone walls that snake the perimeters of the islands. It kept the Europeans and, somewhat unintentionally, the ocean…
Tanya Tweeton, an activist with the SouthEast Florida Sierra Marine and Water Quality Team, was seated in the hall outside yesterday’s Broward County Commission meeting, chatting nervously with three friends. The County Commission was set to vote on an ordinance to ban fracking, the process by which water, sand and…
A weekly newspaper, the South Florida Gay News, has long been distributed on the campus of Florida Atlantic University in Boca Raton – a public institution. But according to SFGN’s editor Jason Parsley (a graduate of FAU), earlier this month, “My delivery guy showed up to FAU and realized there…
