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Monday March 31, 2008

Delicious-looking freshly baked pita and Middle Eastern pastries, the only catch is that it’s in Ft. Laduerdale

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Saturday March 29, 2008

free concert 3 pm 2320 B N miami ave
 

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Updates

SO. Everything should be working much better now, and hopefully my web host will be happier, too. Please report anything unusual.

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Thursday March 27, 2008

More signs of desperation: Jungle Island will give you a year pass for the price of a single ticket. Let me mull over whether this makes me interested in going . . . um, nope!

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Boo, hiss: I stopped by Canela last night about 10:20 pm (went out of my way, because I know they’re open late), and arrived to be told by a waiter that they were closing because it was a slow night. Their regular closing time is supposed to be 11:30 pm. Look for more slow nights, Canela, because that’s bullshit.

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Cleveland Orchestra does Beethoven's 5th

The Cleveland Orchestra once again rolled into town this week for their all-too-brief Miami season. They performed a concert last night in honor of Israel’s 60th anniversary, and perform a second program this Friday and Saturday. Last night’s program, a nod to Leonard Bernstein’s historic performances in Israel in 1948, included Beethoven’s 5th Symphony, a Mozart Piano Concerto, and Prokofiev’s Overture on Hebrew Themes.

The show opened with readings of the US and Israeli national anthems, which musically work very well together, the latter’s sombre slow build a nice counterpoint to the Banner’s usual pomposity. This was followed by a rather lengthy curtain talk by the executive director of the Greater Miami Jewish Federation (at one point, he launched into a list of technologies invented in Israel!).

Originally composed for clarinet, string quartet, and piano, Prokofiev transcribed Overture on Hebrew Themes for orchestra himself, and it does as advertised, running medley-like through Klezmer and other recognizable ideas, toe-tapping one moment, morose and swooping the next.

So, how do you get a piano to the front of the stage in the middle of an orchestra performance? Like this, my friends — you break down as many of the band risers as you need to wheel that puppy out. I’m not sure they needed to bother, actually. Mozart always sounds like Mozart, but the Piano Concerto No. 21 is almost a self-parody, the most Mozarty construct ever, a summation of every fun idea out precocious Austrian buddy ever had. Well played by the 31-year old Shai Wosner, who’s nervous tics complemented the music pretty well. He fidgeted with the height-adjust on his piano stool, made motions as though wiping dust off the keyboard and shaking it onto the floor, and shook his head quickly during the more stirring piano-less passages. A couple of times I caught him sort of shaking his fist at the keyboard before launching into one of his slow phrases. He seemed to take less relish in delivering these than the 32nd note runs and trills, which he handled with commanding smoothness. Don’t let me mislead you, though — Mozart is always a delight to hear, and this was a big, delicious slice of Mozart (who, first and foremost a keyboardist himself, is arguably better represented by this concerto than by, say, one of his symphonies or operas).

But it was all preamble, because after intermission came LvB’s Symphony No. 5, one of the most gripping pieces in western music. It’s on pieces like this, that you’ve heard 100 times before, that you truly begin to appreciate the unparalleled mastery of the Cleveland Orchestra and the rich sound of the Arscht’s concert hall. Sounds and details I’d never noticed before snuck out at every turn, and the whole thing was alive in a way which few things are. Opening with the heavy, stark, almost modernist first movement, the symphony has light moments, but they are few. Mostly it’s dramatic and full-throttle, and fainting and heart attacks do not seem like inappropriate responses. A friend once explained to me that while the string quartet is his favorite sound in terms of timbre and nuance, the appeal of an orchestra is its sheer visceral power, and that power was in full force last night.

Well, you missed it. No worries — you can catch the Cleveland Orchestra this weekend, in a program built around a Tchaikovsky violin concerto. Tickets available for Friday and Saturday, tho only Saturday has some of the cheaper seats left.

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Quick note about the crane thing, just because I’m curious what people have to say about it. I’ll say this: the “cause of the accident is still unknown,” but speculation is pretty easy — sloppiness caused by cost-cutting and rushing on the job site. Also, you probably heard this already but the building the crane fell on was the house that was in Something about Mary, and the specific room it destroyed was being used as the construction site’s Safety Office.

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Michael Lewis writes a plaintive appeal to Chief Timoney to testify before the CIP, which he has been refusing to do on the cynical “principle” that he can’t testify before them because they report to him (a notion that Lewis expertly refutes).

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Wednesday March 26, 2008

Hey everybody, the Cleveland Orchestra is performing Beethoven’s Fifth, tonight only.

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The ‘get the fuck out of my lane’ law is getting another shot in Tallahassee. Yay!

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In 1988, John Dorschner wrote a long piece for Tropic, the Miami Herald’s now-defunct Sunday magazine. He pretended to be writing in 2008, looking back over the last 20 years. Henry Gomez dug up a copy of the magazine, and compared the predictions with what actually happened, in a 4-part series of posts. There is some very dramatic stuff here that never happened (e.g. Mariel II, 1998), but Dorschner gets a lot of stuff right. Too bad Babalu’s italicized blockquotes are so hard to read.

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Rag Trade is for sale. I agree with Lizza — hopefully somebody will come up with the money, because this is too good a thing to not continue.

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The North Shore Community Garden, around 73rd Street on Dickens Avenue, Miami Beach.

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Tuesday March 25, 2008

’cause dj hottpants is everywhere, bro.

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Liz goes to the opening of The Vagabond, in the former location of I/O, and notes that the stage is gone, indicating that there probably will not be any live shows in the space. Bummer, that was a really great spot to see bands. Update: Three commenters in 12 minutes confirm that a stage can be set up on an as-needed basis, and bands will in fact perform. This is cool, because as I recall the space is a nice smaller-scale/more intimate alternative to Studio A.

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Home prices continue record declines, with Miami and Las Vegas in the lead, each with 19.3% drop over the last year.

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A zip through the Florida Keys

keys

So, the plan was simple: bike down to the Keys over Thursday and Friday and back Saturday and Sunday. I wasn’t sure how far I’d get, but as the weather seemed to be agreeable I decided Friday afternoon to go all the way to Key West. Unfortunately the way back was marred by technical difficulties with the bike (part of the reason for doing this was just to work out these sorts of problems in preparation for the longer trip) resulting in total breakdown at MM(Mile Marker) 69, and rescue. So, here’s the long, heavily annotated slideshow.

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Monday March 24, 2008

The West Palm Beach sheriff’s department sent in 100 deputies to break up a fight at the Sunshine Flea Market yesterday. That’s how you do it, folks: nothing beats a small army.

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Miami city commissioner Tomás Regalado appears to be on a mission to sink Miami 21. He sneakily canceled a meeting of the commission to consider the zoning codes, and has promised not to give the consultants on the project another dime of funding, all the while calling for “more input,” “more clarification.”

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A nice article in the New York Times on Bonnie Clearwater and MoCA, which is about to build that big new building. (via)

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Back from the Keys. Whole story later, for now, here’s a picture from somewhere around Marathon. Life would be easier if they put mile markers on maps.

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Thursday March 20, 2008

‘n i’m out: I’m leaving for a couple of days for a bike trip down to the keys. No idea how it’ll go, or how far I’ll get. No regular updates until Monday, but I’ll be Twittering from the road, and I’m adding the updates to the top of this page. You people in the comments behave yourselves.

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Wednesday March 19, 2008

RUMP

Haha.. someone stole Trump’s ‘T’. (Tagged ‘activism’?)

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New cars for Metromover, too. Bonus factoid: 25,000 riders on the mover daily.

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So, you want to know why South Florida has crappy drivers? Well, I managed to pull the answer out of this seemingly innocuous article about DUI checkpoints. Peep: “One out of every four people stopped by a [Florida Highway Patrol] trooper has a suspended license,” BUT “when you make an arrest, you’re taking a police officer off the road for a couple of hours.” Those are quotes from FHP spokescop Lt. Pat Santangelo, and what he’s telling you, folks, is that when they pull over someone with a suspended license, they let them get right back on the road.

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Oh, man: the barbecue menu at North One Ten sounds absolutely amazing. I’ve been wanting to check that place out anyhow.

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Tuesday March 18, 2008

The information booths in the Grove are turning out to be somewhat less then useless. So much for tourists seeking advice.

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Check out John VanBeekum’s beautiful photos of Metrorail maintenance. And btw, we haven’t been keeping up with the heavier aspects of maintenance, so we’re looking at buying all new cars.

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What's up with a Florida primary?

It was decided yesterday that there will not be a re-vote for Florida’s Democratic primary. The story so far (skip to next graff if you’ve been following the news): Last year, the Florida legislature decided to move our primary up to January 29th in this primary season. The Democratic National Party had previously decided that no state, except four that have historically had early primaries, could have a primary before February 5th (Super Tuesday), and threatened to not seat Florida’s delegates at the convention, i.e. to not count our votes. The conventional wisdom at the time was that since most candidates are determined on Super Tuesday, Florida’s primary would count where it mattered — by giving a candidate “momentum” — and that actual delegate votes at conventions haven’t decided a nominee in decades. Except that the subsequent primaries have been very close, and there now appears the very real chance that Florida could have been the deciding vote, leading everyone to look for a way to fix the mess.

The response that you hear often to this is, “well, Florida knew the rules when it made the decision to have an early primary.” It’s shocking how often statement to this effect are repeated without being questioned. “Florida” is not a sentient being. The decision was made by one group (Florida state legislature) and impacts another group (Florida voters). To say that our elected officials disenfranchised us and that’s all there is to it reeks. So what now? Well, counting the vote goes against the rules that were established at the beginning of the process (= not democratic). Not counting the vote disenfranchises Florida voters (= not democratic). And re-voting has been determined to be unfeasible, not to mention an affront to those that voted on January 29th (so also = also not democratic).

So what’s the solution? Well, there is none; not for this election. The whole thing is dominated by realpolitik self-interest (e.g. I’m a Barack Obama supporter, so I should be happy that Florida isn’t being counted, as it was won by Hillary Clinton). There are lessons to be learned, however, starting with the fact that the whole primary system is an anti-democratic catastrophe in need of overhaul. Other then “because it was always so,” why should Iowa, New Hampshire, Nevada, and South Carolina have a more influential voice in selecting the president then any other state? Why do some states hold “caucuses,” some “elections,” and some (I smell Texas) such convoluted combinations that nobody even tries to explain them? And what’s up with “super-delegates,” anyway?

This, my friends, is no way to elect a president. The whole system is screwed (you can tell, in part, by looking at the men it has elected for the last 40 years or so). There are lots of ways to have an election, all with their valid criticisms, but all better then this. (Interjection: And what about Ralph Nader? What’s up with him??) Let’s pick a system and go with it. Do I think that’s going to happen? No, not yet. It’s going to take a few more disasters like this first. But it’s on the way.

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Monday March 17, 2008

Damn, have y’all seen Wormhole lately? Get down with the MySpace-fabulousity, Jose!

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museum park

A new design for Museum Park has been released. Basically, they cut about $10 million out of the grove area, the southern part of the park (where a lot of the interesting stuff was, it should be noted). Current projected price: $49-54 million. All together now: yeah, right!

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If you’re going to review which restaurant bathrooms are best for doing blow, do it right and provide the criteria on which you judge: “7) Bidet? (Only problem is, you might never come out).”

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Retirement age for US Border Patrol money-sniffing dogs? 9 years.

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A week of sunshine

A Week of Sunshine

Thanks, Brent Cutler.

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Saturday March 15, 2008

Space Saturday

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Friday March 14, 2008

Saint Patrick's weekend

St. Patrick

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Thursday March 13, 2008

A crocodile lives by the Coconut Grove Sailing Club, and that’s where he’s staying, because a “normally acting crocodile under six feet does not pose a threat to people’s safety.” Ahh, man and nature living side by side in perfect harmony.

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South Florida: Move here

miami sykline

“It’s too expensive to live here. We’re suffering. And you can help: don’t move here. If you’re thinking about it, just don’t come. If we can deflate this housing bubble, we can afford to live here once more. It might take years. But in the meantime, it sucks here anyway: don’t come.” — Amy, writing at Incertus (via)

Amy lives in Ft. Lauderdale, and the article that quote comes from concerns a story in Palm Beach. I’m not sure whether her logic makes any sense at all, but it for sure doesn’t apply to Miami. Look, keeping people from moving to your town (as if you could) might make housing there cheaper, but it for sure is not good for the economy. You want people to buy stuff, go to restaurants, create the demand for more stuff, and get the economy going. When your local economy is doing good, you have a chance, more then likely, of getting a better job. The above logic may work if you’re on a fixed income, but it’s a downer anyway you slice it.

More importantly, though, what we have here right now is an oversupply of new housing. Have you noticed? Maybe it’s not as acute for our neighbors in the BPB, but here in Miami we have tens of thousands of vacant condo units with no buyers. Thousands more, like the one bought by this poor sap, are facing the near-certainty of foreclosure. So you have all these cumulative effects driving down housing costs. Now, this is great for locals who have been waiting to buy a home. I told you over two years ago to sell your house. The market was at the top then (just starting to decline, really), and if you listened, you have some fraction of a million bucks sitting in CDs right now. Well, the bottom we’ve been waiting for will be upon us in early 2009. If you played your cards right maybe you can re-buy your old house and bank a 6-figure profit. Or buy one of the spectacular new condos and make even more (and join us in our new space-age metropolis from the future). If you’ve never owned a home this goes for you too — start saving now, have your twenty grand ready for a down payment a year from now, and you’ll thank me later. (Check out Housing Tracker: between August/05 and March/08, median home cost dropped from $425,000 to $316,900. That’s more then 25%, but the decline is still accelerating.)

But I digress. The point is that even if all the renters in Miami suddenly started buying condos we’d still be in a jam as a city. Empty buildings are good for laughing at greedy developers, but they are not so good for the economy. We need folks from out of town here to soak up a bit of the excess. I want them here adding to the economy, because I want a fancy new job with a 6-figure salary.

So, come on, folks, we’re looking forward to a brief window of opportunity. And you can help yourself, too: move here. If you’re thinking about it, just come. The bubble’s popping, and you can get in on the ground floor with the rest of us.

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Wednesday March 12, 2008

Jonathan just posted a bunch of new photos. I particularly like this one, of a tractor trailer tower pulling a tractor out of the bay.

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Yeah, what is it about Florida and voting? I mean, we can’t even have a vote for best burger without “voting irregularities.”

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miami.com: out of beta.

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Jesus Christ, the fucking police in Palm Beach. I mean, really? (via) Update: Carlos deleted the post. Here’s why. The gist was that he was on assignment to photograph a mansion, cops were called in and told him he couldn’t stand on the sidewalk and photograph the house, and issued him a written warning.

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This year’s winter is the hottest since 1932. (They’ve been keeping records in Miami only since 1895.)

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Coppertone Girl

Coppertone girl miami

In the Biscayne Times last from week, Margaret Griffis has an article about the search for a new home for the Coppertone girl, above (not the first time she’s written about this). The gist is that the original location doesn’t want her anymore, so they’re looking for a new spot, possibly the MiMo area of Biscayne, and also the sign needs serious restoration. Which is all fine, but do any old-timers out there remember the much cooler, much bigger, and mechanized version of this sign that hung over the Golden Glades exit onto 163rd Street in the 80s? Can’t seem to find a photo or reference to it anywhere…

Image: fucking useless.

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First Chihuly. Now Botero and Lichtenstein. I hope Fairchild gets the obvious stuff out of it’s system asap and gets down to some interesting and non-obvious artists.

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Tuesday March 11, 2008

The Charles Deering Estate

Deering Estate

The Charles Deering Estate is a nature and historical preserve in South Miami. It includes two historical buildings, and the largest virgin coastal tropical hardwood hammock in the United States. The wooden house was built in the late 19th century, the stone house was built in the early 20th. Here’s the aerial view, and you can clearly see the key-shaped dock, main lawn, and the huge mangrove forest surrounding the property.

Deering Estate

A photo at the site shows the buildings after hurricane Andrew in 1992. The wooden house was about 60% kindling, but was restored. South Miami was ground 0 for Andrew.* By the way, Aramis and Pepe have studios at Deering (part of a relatively new artist residency program), and were kind enough to provide a lot of information about the estate.

Deering Estate

A boardwalk snakes through the hammock . . .

Deering Estate

Not that much to see, actually. But you appreciate the people that originally lived here — getting around was not at all easy. Marsh, thick foilage, and woody root-fingers sticking up everywhere. Oh, and cottonmouth moccasins.

Deering Estate

Kind of a swank place. This is incidentally the sister estate to Vizcaya, which was built by Charles Deering’s brother(!). Unlike Viscaya’s lush gardens, Deering is all-native, and a lot more rustic (all things being relative, here).

Deering Estate

The obligatory Historic Kitchen. The interior of the buildings is about a 7 on the interestingness scale, a fact acknowledged by various spicing-up measures, including a great little exhibition of contemporary Miami artists in the wood house.

Deering Estate

Fancy doors in grand staircase of the stone house.

Deering Estate

So, Deering apparently has back-to-back weddings lined up most weekends of the year. At $6,000 a pop, they’re booked over a year in advance. Here, they’re just setting up, but check out that key-shaped dock and big lawn. Perfect.

Deering Estate

Prohibition-era wine cellar. The cool thing is that the cellar is behind a regular door, a steel-bar door, an uber-serious bank vault door, and a swing-away bookcase because, duh—it was built during prohibition, of which ‘ol Charlie wasn’t going to get in the way of his appreciation of wine.

* Not technically true, as a commenter points out — Andrew hit Homestead, about 10 miles south of the estate. However, even my parent’s house, another 40 miles further north, was trashed and without power for over a month.

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Monday March 10, 2008

Update on the Edison Case: the school police are so disgusted with the way the situation was handled they’re holding a vote of no confidence in the chief. In other news, the arrest records from the brawl are a mess, which will make it almost impossible to try any of the students. To me, the latter news suggests the police arrested way more people then they should have — had they cuffed only those they knew had done something violent the records would be easy to produce correctly.

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Another video of an Alley Cat Bike Race. Looks like fun. (via)

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Port of Miami, from Miami Beach.

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miami.metblogs is “back,” with a curious new look and a new writer, currently serving up synopses of films at the Miami International Film Festival. Meh. Meanwhile, a more interesting writeup on the Miami Underground Film Festival (MUFF!) at Riptide.

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Friday March 7, 2008

Hey, I have an idea! Since wlrn.org is such a clusterfuck, here’s a link directly to the listen now service. (It’s also in the navbar under “Links, general interest.”)

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Filmz weekend

film canisters

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Thursday March 6, 2008

South Beach: The Novel. Based on real life people (Diddy! Paris! Versace!) in thinly veiled fictionalizations.

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Photography equipment rental: I stopped by Word Wide Foto this morning to ask about renting my signature lens (which is currently in the shop after suffering a nasty fall). They were out of stock, and I asked the dude if he knew of any other place I might try to rent it from. “No… not right now.” Whatever. The nice folks at Dale have it, let me reserve it over the phone, and are only charging me for one day ($25) for Friday to Monday. Anyone else know of good places to rent photo equipment? I’d like to borrow a 5D (fever’s weapon of choice) sometime to play around with.

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Florida bicycle adventure

florida bike route

I’ve been considering a bike vacation, and I’m throwing this out in case anyone has any suggestions or advice. My current thinking is to take a train to Tallahassee, then spend two weeks biking back along route above or something similar. Pass through Gainesville, then swing over to the east coast for Cape Canaveral, then south along A1A, possibly with a detour toward Lake Okeechobee. 540 miles isn’t too much for 10 days or so, but the idea is that it be leisurely. I’d want to follow the quietest side-roads possible and see as much of what there is to see as possible. FerfeLaBat already had some suggestions — anyone else? Of course I’ve ridden through the state any number of times, but presumably this would be a fresh perspective photos would follow, along with updates as often as I could get to an internet window (probably not that often) and numerous twitter updates. I’m also wondering whether to try to bring camping gear along, or whether to stick strictly to motels (thinking the latter — nothing sucks more then a day of biking without a shower, and campgrounds with such facilities are few, and who wants to have such strict targets). Thoughts?

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Wednesday March 5, 2008

“I will NEVER patronize Taverna Opa South Beach for as long as I live, because I actually like to EAT food and not have napkins strewn all over the table while I am nibbling, much less have some skanky ho from Baltimore purloining a Mediterranean ethnicity while shaking her ass over my tzatziki.” — Manola, who was charged $3 more for a drink when a woman bartender served it to her then when a man did.

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Tuesday March 4, 2008

talkingnightlife: a discussion board dedicated to the Miami club scene. In “Alpha,” but appears to be pretty well populated. Slick design, too, with image sidebars that appear and disappear with browser width. (via Nefarious, who is a contributing photographer)

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South Florida roadkill gallery

Roadkill gallery

Here are some pretty troubling pictures. I took most of these late last year, and have been giving serious though about whether or not to run them. In the end, though, this is a slice of reality which we miss zipping around in our fancy cars, but it deserves a little bit of examination. Follow 14 pictures of what happens when nature intersects with our car culture. No cats or dogs — I was spared seeing any, and I wouldn’t have photographed them if I had. Pretty gruesome anyway, though. Click for slideshow.

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Monday March 3, 2008

“ahh! miami!” “do you watch nba?” “miami heat!” “shaq!” — Things that people in Beijing tell Silvia when they hear she’s From Miami.

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“The tenth grader said a pizza was thrown over his head at an officer and that he was then told by an officer he was not getting out of the way fast enough. He said an officer slammed him off a table.” — Incident at Edison High School. A confrontation between a vice-principal and a student on Thursday led to a sit-in protest by many students in the lunch hall Friday, for which over 60 police were called in, resulting in a violent melee. Update: Does this look like “nothing more than a classic example of kids fabricating a story to justify their own misdeeds”?

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