In November 1994 the United States had not yet gone loco for Latin pop music. Even so, old-school Spanish crooner Julio Iglesias had just finished the first of four sold-out shows at the Broward Center For the Performing Arts, and he was pumped. In the dressing room, he recalled the…
It’s been 16 years since Paul and Betty Sears moved into their trailer behind South Plantation High School. And they’ve been good years. Paul’s commute is among the shortest in all of South Florida — he’s the head facilities person at the high school — and the living arrangement has…
Seven teenage boys fall on their bellies and press M16 semiautomatic rifles tightly against their shoulders. Wearing black boots, fatigues, and caps, they squeeze the triggers five times, the air erupting with eardrum-splitting explosions. Hot brass bullet casings scatter in all directions. The smell of smoke and gun lubricant mixes…
The much-ballyhooed video that was secretly shot in the swingers’ club Trapeze II was more disappointing than the digitally remastered orgy in Eyes Wide Shut. Three judges watched a matinee screening of the local skin flick at the Broward County Courthouse last Friday. The video was exhibit “X” at a…
Rod MacDonald is setting up shop on what constitutes a stage at the Coffee Gallery Café in Lake Worth. Dressed in sandals, black shorts, and a red striped shirt with the top few buttons open, he tunes his guitar and fiddles with his beer-stained soundboard. Hair is his most arresting…
Who’s the Broward teacher who works only about 18 weeks a year and doesn’t teach but gets a $48,266 annual salary? Hint: He gets lots of paid time off because he has other employment at the state capitol doing another job — which pays him an additional salary, this one…
The improvised locker room off the Broward Community College gymnasium in Pembroke Pines reeks pleasantly from the wintergreen smell of liniment. Yard-long submarine sandwiches line tables along the wall. As cheers and jeers drift in from the gym, hulking men with long hair or no hair, many wearing brief black…
When challenging one of the most successful fundraisers in the Republican party, a Democratic candidate for the United States Congress must devise unique strategies. Incumbent congressman Mark Foley of South Florida’s 16th District has already raised a half-million dollars in six months. So what does upstart Democratic citizen-candidate Jean Elliott…
It’s sweltering inside the rundown trailer home in Davie. The electricity and air conditioning are down, and Roxann Dagenais is stuck with a half-cooked stew in her frying pan, the onions pungent in the stagnant air. Danny and Michael, two of her teenage sons, lounge on a nearby bed, waiting…
Laura Mutti’s circa 1930s clapboard house might be what one would find at the end of a Florida fairy tale: metal jalousie windows, Dade County pine floors, a peaked roof, and a brick fireplace. Outside, a lilac bougainvillea bush spills over the front archway and half a dozen coconut palms…
Dave Dwayne Davis and Paul Dewey, who live together in a tiny mobile home in the Royal Garden Village mobile home park in Hollywood, are ticked off. The two just learned that there is no longer a primary hurricane shelter in Hollywood and that the closest one is in Hallandale…
And the winner is… Alberto “the Cuban Crusher” Milian! The hotshot prosecutor, who has a portrait of Rocky Marciano hanging in his office (see “A Pugilist in PinstripesNew Times, May 20, Paul Demko), walked away the clear winner over defense attorney Ty “Punching Bag” Terrell in their much-publicized bout in…
Off Miramar Parkway, in a community studded with pricey identical houses, Trick Daddy sits in his living room watching the Lifetime channel. Trick (his given name is Maurice Young) is a rapper whose latest album, www.thug.com, is a national hit. Although the past six months have been a succession of…
In January 1998 Ann-Marie Young arrived for her 10 a.m. appointment with a caseworker at the state Department of Children and Families office in Fort Lauderdale at 8 a.m. Because she was eight months pregnant and had felt sharp pains earlier that morning, she was hoping to bump up her…
“Why is this a story?” grumbles the weary drug-enforcement agent, clad in black boots, black pants, black sidearm holster, and a black T-shirt with the words Six to ten seconds to make a first impression on the back. He stands guard near the rear entrance of a dingy, five-story office…
A Broward school board meeting is a superior setting for learning. One can study modern management practices regarding personnel and ponder human sexual response in one room. A student last week could also witness the media-horde approach to journalism. We, of course, prefer a lesson in how politics is the…
A conversation with Carole Demesmin is like a fugue. Themes run in, out, over and under, and just when your ears start to tire and your eyes start to wander, Demesmin gets to a point that, as often as not, is poignant and insightful. It’s quickly apparent that careful listening…
The Fort Lauderdale police have spoken: No intrusive video camera shall videotape the type of harassment the homeless receive. And of course the so-called Broward Coalition For the Homeless caved in and agreed. Well, if cameras were out there on the streets and in the parks, the videotape would undoubtedly…
Movie producer Mike Dodsworth, with a voice full of native New York, talks at the speakerphone in his Pompano Beach film company headquarters, proudly telling his new starlet about a recent media blitz. “Esquire magazine called, and they want to do a story, so we’ll have to set that up…
The construction firm of Church and Tower, founded by the late Cuban exile leader Jorge Mas Canosa, may as well have been branded with a scarlet letter b. For bad, as in bad news. Even though the firm was a financial success, the press was terrible, and its reputation suffered…
Because his left eye is completely blind and his right one only 60 percent functional, Ed Foley spends most of his time indoors. The 51-year-old editor of the weekly Pompano Ledger used to get out more often, sticking his nose into every foul-smelling cranny in the city he lovingly calls…
Padre Pio wrestled with Satan — literally. The eccentric Italian Capuchin Catholic priest would sometimes emerge from his bedroom to celebrate 5 a.m. Mass covered with cuts and bruises after a night of going mano a mano with the red, horned one. Padre Pio also possessed the power of bilocation…
