Thursday November 10, 2005
Out on the weekend
- Author, actor, and collector of male nude art David Leddick performs “Quentin and I,” his one-man, one-act play about Quentin Crisp, Saturday at St. John’s.
- Friday, it’s the Dyslexic Postcards at Churchill’s (along, of course, with a dozen or so local punk bands).
- This is it: the big French movie weekend.
- It’s an in-season, fair weather second-Saturday; let’s go see some art, esp. Tommy’s show at Tachmes.
- Need your weekly dose of free classical music? How about some Chopin?
- NODUS is the FIU faculty new music ensemble, purveyors of sutably weird music. They preform, free, next Wednesday at centro cultural español.
- And yes yes, the Miami International Book Fair kicks off this Sunday.
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Thursday June 23, 2005
Cop Cars Torched
In an obviously GTA-VC inspired incident, some kids (?) threw a Molotov cocktail into a police parking lot in Miami Shores, blowing a few of them (the cars) up. Now, we’re all for authority-directed victimless violence (especially when it involves blowing shit up), but there’s something sad about this. ‘Cause we have a pretty good idea of what happened. In fact, Miami Shores is famous for this shit:
We’re guessing we have here a fairly wealthy two-parent family, where both adults work their butts off in jobs they love (say, a mom lawyer and a dad doctor), put in crazy overtime, and compensate for not being around for their kids with money. You end up with spoiled brats. Get a few of these brats together, and shit tends to escalate. Next thing you know, they’re booty-bumping crank, and competing to see who can do the best rampage. Dang. You need a license to own a dog, right?
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Wednesday February 27, 2008
Empire World Towers: It looks like this crazy thing is actually going to get built. It’s over 1000 feet tall, 93 stories, will cost a cool billion, and take at least four years to even break ground. Originally seen here.
Monday September 10, 2007
Rotund World visits Miami, and gives it the skeptical eye of a former resident (with photos!): part 1, part 2. “Seen a certain way, at just the right distance, the Miami of today is a teeming, sky-high toy metropolis, as appealing as a dream. It looks like a sleek urban pleasure craft for the twenty-first century’s captains of industry, or whatever they are these days: real estate moguls, no doubt, on-the-lam financiers from Venezuela, summering drug lords, homegrown art collector-pashas. But the newness quickly curdles.”
Friday April 21, 2006
Rebecca’s got some stuff to do for Earth-Day, which is tomorrow.
Monday July 9, 2007
“Quoting activist/urban theorist Jane Jacobs, Commissioner Sarnoff recently argued (very compellingly) that the problems of the widely disparaged Bicentennial Park stem precisely from the fact that it is a ‘vacuous park.’ Most of the world’s great parks feature additional draws. Art has been a crucial element of great parks since ancient times. I worry that if the park were renovated without the museums, it would eventually fall into neglect once again, and then be turned over for the construction of luxury high-rises.” — In the Diet Newsletter, MAM curator René Morales answers two of the arguments against the new building. (via TnFH)
Thursday March 13, 2008
South Florida: Move here
“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 April 19, 2006
Miami Transit and Overtown USA with some first-hand reporting and reflection on the traffic mess created during the recent closure of Biscayne Blvd. Herald on same, with a little more about the crane accident, which left one man dead and another injured (they were father and son, by the way). Update: Steve Klotz with a related traffic situation…
Thursday January 11, 2007
“[T]he city seems to be spread out over an area larger than Rhode Island. This geography eliminates much of the community feel lots of smaller and even larger cities have. So basically the situation makes it hard for people to meet other people. Kind of counterintuitive to the party scene Miami is known for.” Interesting point.
Friday April 14, 2006
Precious little weekend
Not much going on this weekend that I can see. I guess it’s the
- Miami Light Projects presents Ethel, which takes place either at the Rubell Collection, or at the Miami Beach Botanical Gardens, depending on what part of their page you read!
- A list of movies from the Miami International Film Festival that are still playing locally (unfortunately, the links that promise to take you to “showtimes/venues” don’t).
- Speaking of movies, the Miami Beach Cinematheque will show Oscar shorts nominees from 2005 on Saturday. Info here.
- Check Matt’s thoughts about the NWS program for this weekend. Can we get this kind of writing in classical music programs please?
- Uh, ‘The Rub’ at Studio A [caution: myspace site ahead] sounds like fun. . .
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Tuesday August 1, 2006
Shameful: Study finds disparities in judges’ asylum rulings. In fact, Miami is one of the hardest places in the nation to get an asylum. Update: Trying to find more details about the study. This report says it was conducted by the San Jose Mercury News, but their report is from the AP. Hmm… Update: Here’s the report. (thanks Liz, you’re the best!)
Friday December 21, 2007
Pre-xmas tension weekend
You’re not doint anything this weekend. You’re finishing up your holiday shopping, or, if it’s done, cowering indoors, becasuse everyone else is finishing up theirs. I was out Thursday morning, and the streets and stores were a madhouse. Imagine what Sunday will be like. Ho. Ho. Ho. Don’t say I didn’t warn you. And no Christmas “events” here.
Tonight
- OK, one Christmas event: Seraphic Fire sings The Messiah at Carnival Center.
- BFA exhibition at the Frost Museum, FIU.
- Sheryl Underwood at Miami Improv.
- Yer annual Sweat Stocking Stuffer. Not an uninspired gift shopping opportunity, with cupcakes to boot. Oops, is this a Christmas thing?
- The Steadfast Tin Soldier at PlayGround Theatre, all weekend. OK, I give up.
- Important: began the Miami season at Spiegel Tent.
Saturday
- As long as we’re into the holiday spirit now, how about a gingerbread house decorating workshop at the Ritz-Carlton on Key Biscayne. You get masterful pastry-decorating instruction, refreshments, and a snappy RC apron to keep, for $50. Somebody please take pictures.
- Mano a Mano at the Carnival Center: the new school of clown.
- Plaid Xmas Edition at Churchill’s — the usual 20-odd bands, $5 admission, $3 if you’re wairing plaid.
- Otto Von Schirach and crew at PS14.
- Ursula 1000 at PopLife/White Room.
- Also, if you try hard enough, I am sure you will find The Nutcracker playing somewhere.
Sunday
- Nothing much. Did I mention that the weather will be hot all weekend? Maybe the ocean’s warmed up by today and it’s a good day to head to the beach. Stay away from the mall.
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Friday December 28, 2007
New years eve weekend
Tonight
- Mars is the closest to the Earth it’ll be until 2010. Check it out tonight at Bill Baggs State Park, where the Southern Cross Astros will have high-tech viewing equipment set up for you to check it out on. Also showing: the Orion Nebula. More info here (scroll).
- Jazz at MoCA: Doug Walker.
- Viernes Culturales/Cultural Fridays.
- Plug Miami plus with the supposed last-ever show by Avenue D.
- Tonight and through February: Shows at the Spiegel Tent. Pictures and description of Absinthe theater.
Saturday
- Junior Orange Bowl Parade= in Coral Gables.
- Winter Nights and Lights at the Seaquarium, all weekend through new years’, plus including “a magical winter snowfall every 15 minutes” and fireworks every night.
Sunday
- Watch out, it’s the King Mango Strut. Photos from last year.
- Zen Art Faire at Wallflower.
- DocuSpain presents Balseros, a documentary about the 1994 mass-immigration from Cuba.
- I’m thrilled to tell you that there will be no stupid boat parade this year.
NYE Monday
- Lewis Black at the Fillmore
- R. Kelley at the American Airlines Arena. Catch him now before he goes to prison!
- OceanDance. Hollywood, and where I’ll be.
- Spam All-Stars and ANR at Studio A.
- Chucrchills: buncha bands plus a special edition of Eve Theatre de Underground.
- Bayfront Park’s New Year’s Eve with Conjuncto Progreso.
- Or head over to any watering hole you can find. Mucho events at the Herald, best bets, and more at the Sentinel. Also: New Years dinner options, and New Years parties.
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Thursday March 1, 2007
Michael Lewis is right: making positions such as county property appraiser and elections supervisor electable offices is absurd. This is just the County Commission trying to fight the strong mayor proposal again, and Commissioner José “Pepe” Diaz should be ashamed.
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.
Thursday January 31, 2008
More on the Lyric Theater in this week’s Sun Post. Including this tidbit: the Miami CRA was going to donate a parcel of land to the Black Archives to complete the Theater’s expansion. The County is blocking the donation by laying claim to the land because of something to do with an adjacent housing development, so, I rest my case.
Monday July 23, 2007
It’s all doom ‘n gloom over at Bloomberg, where Bob Ivry predicts a recession for Florida by October, resulting from the condo glut. I see the point, but surely a 30% drop in condo prices has some positive repercussions for the economy as well? The developers will get stung by this, but they can deal. (thanks, KH)
Thursday April 13, 2006
Tapas y Tintos
Ok, I’ll be honest – I stumbled onto this place, which is a couple of blocks from my apartment, semi-randomly, not even really knowing what tapas were. So yes, tapas are a Spanish dining thing: imagine ordering a bunch of scrumptious appetizers for your table instead of regular dinner and you’ve sort of got it. It’s all about sharing, trying new tastes, and a more relaxed, social approach to eating. You can see why it’s big in Miami, yes?
So anyway, Tapas y Tintos [but don’t click – you’ll only cause yourself unneeded Flash-loading stress] has a reputation (I find out subsequent) as the best tapas joint in the county, so it’s no surprise I was impressed. We ordered a “Popeye y Olivia” (garbanzo beans + spinich), a shrimp thing in olive oil with prodigious amounts of garlic-clove-halves, and a goat cheese with marinara sauce, a great bottle of wine (all the bread you can eat is part of the deal) and paid about $75, even after bumping the obligatory 15% tip up a bit. The garbanzo beans were eh, the shrimp was tasty, the goat cheese was an unexpected star, and the wine made everything drift by slowly and with a relaxed ease.
Now, we’d gotten there early, but by the time we left it was obvious what a scene this place is. Outside, the seats are comfy wicker, suitable for relaxing and Española people-watching. Inside, the atmosphere is more intense, and a lot of the seating seemed to be stool-style around a coffee-table type thing – maybe fun, but maybe also less comfortable. Apparently Tapas y Tintos has live music, and is semi-clubby on weekend nights, so this is obviously all part of the fun.
More reading about tapas here, here, and here. Any other tapas places worth checking out?
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Monday April 16, 2007
DeFede on Rudy Crew, Miami-Dade’s Superintendent of Schools.
Thursday May 1, 2008
County commission sells out Everglades
Last week, the Miami-Dade commission approved several developments beyond the UDB, and while the developments are still up in the air pending a mayoral veto, this spells trouble. A Time Magazine article very nicely lays out the compromised integrity of various members of the commission (“One of the Lowe’s project’s biggest backers on the commission is Jose “Pepe” Diaz, who is under federal investigation for allegedly receiving gifts from developers whose plans he’d voted for.”), but it also points out a larger point.
Nominally underway is a $10 billion Everglades restoration project funded by the federal government. In actuality, the whole effort is troubled and behind schedule. How, the Time article asks, can South Florida expect such a huge national investment in the ‘glades when we can’t resist paving more and more of it over? (via TM)
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Monday November 19, 2007
Commitment to place.
Wednesday November 28, 2007
“You get your ass elected to make as much money as you can get away with. Most of the time you won’t even get caught anyway. But even if you do, your fate is in the hands of some dickless entity like ‘state ethics investigators’ who in turn use their own authority to position themselves for future consideration.” — Klotz doesn’t pull punches.
Friday June 9, 2006
South Florida Commuter Services has two blogs(!) – Diary of a South Florida Commuter and Diary of a South Florida Vanpooler. They seem pretty infrequently updated, and might (?) make for interesting reading, if they weren’t #EEEEEE on #FFFFFF (that’s light gray on white). (via Greener Miami)
Sunday May 28, 2006
Yep: a guy threw his two sons off a 15th floor balcony and then jumped after them. All I can say think of is that this shows how delicate a ballance our sense of reality is. You want to be shocked? Be shocked shit like this doesn’t happen 20 times a day. Rick says that the chandelier in the room under the roof they fell to was shattered by the impact.
Monday November 19, 2007
Public records fee
Miami-Dade School Board members have to pay a public records fee — just like anyone else — when they request information about the school district they’re trying to run. Which would be crazy enough even if the fee sometimes didn’t run into the hundreds of dollars.
School District Chief Communications Officer John Schuster: “It’s a process. In some cases, the records are in storage, and we need to get them from a warehouse. In other cases, we need computer programmers. It can be costly and time-intensive.”
Two things: First, get your information storage in order. You know those commercials Xerox runs on TV, where you can scan all your documents (like, thousands of pages per hour) and make then text-searchable and instantly accessible from any computer? They’re talking to you, Schuster. Call ‘em up. Get a quote to ship everything to Bangalore and have it scanned there on the cheap if you have to.
And second (this one’s at a higher pay scale), STOP CHARGING THE SCHOOL BOARD FOR INFORMATION THEY NEED. Jesus Christ on a stick — are you really trying to cultivate the dumbest, least active board possible? I mean, if you’re afraid their requests will become an unreasonable burden, you can give them a budget for this and charge out of that. But you’re better off implementing the system I just described. This is the fourth largest school district in the country, and we at least deserve a shot at having it run decently. The school board can be a bunch of knuckleheads, but let’s not actually try to actively prevent them from making good decision, bokay?
(Also noteworthy from the article: this website, the school board’s “clearinghouse” for public records and information. Seems to be not much more then a collection of links to other spots on dadeschools.net, which itself deserves a bit of my anti-Flash fury, but there you go.)
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Wednesday August 31, 2005
What will become of New Orleans?
[Contributed by Steve Klotz]
“Great Babylon is come up before me. Oh, the wickedness, the idolatry of this place.”
—Rachel Jackson, wife of President Andrew Jackson, on New Orleans
Yeah, you go, girl. Reports indicate that while the former president’s statue is still above water, most of Jackson Square in the French Quarter remains submerged. Has the former first lady reached out from the grave to invoke the gods against the Big Easy?
Probably not, but another president—the one who cut short his extended vacation in response to the emergency (not for that pesky grieving dead soldier’s mother at his front gate)—is coming under fire. Right now, the Philadelphia-based blog Attytoods carries a story, “When the levee breaks” (with well over 100 comments) detailing how projects planned for years to shore up the city’s sinking levees were put on hold, despite the threatening 2004 hurricane season, for lack of funds. And according to the Army Corps of Engineers, the reason for the available money’s drying up is simple: the expensive war in Iraq. One project involved shoring up the 17th Street Canal, source of the major breech leading to the city’s catastrophic flooding. Another, the $750 million “Lake Pontchartrain and Vicinity Hurricane Protection Project,” was discontinued. When billions were diverted to the Iraqi desert, the waters poured into New Orleans.
Gives you a sinking feeling—excuse the pun—when you ponder the next storm and the Everglades Restoration Project, doesn’t it?
New Orleans is (was?) known for its rollicking parties and delight in old-fashioned sin. The Sphincter Police, ably represented back then by first lady Rachel Jackson, and today by, well, damn near everybody among the White House menagerie, stew in their sanctimonious juices while the band plays on. Was the city’s undoing intentional? Nah. Was the disaster allowed to happen? Apparently. Is anybody privately nodding a head, bawling a prayer, and citing god’s retributive will? Sho’ nuff, sweetheart. If you can find it when the waters recede, bet the house.
[See all Articles by Steve]
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Sunday April 23, 2006
All the f-bombs in Scarface
Classic, quintessential Miami, right?
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Tuesday September 26, 2006
You’ve got to love Hallandale. The topic of my framing choices is open to a little more debate.
Monday October 29, 2007
The Jeff Weinsier incident
Last week, Channel 10 reporter Jeff Weinsier was arrested in front of Miami Central Senior High. By now everyone knows what happened, but let’s recap: 1) Weinsier and his cameraman, while shooting from the sidewalk, are ordered, and more or less forced, by police to go across the street; 2) Weinsier calls his station, who calls the police department, and they’re “given permission” to go back; 3) upon returning to the sidewalk on the school’s side, another confrontation with the police ensues, and Weinsier is arrested; 4) upon being searched, he is found to be carrying a concealed weapon, which is illegal on school grounds.
Well, WPLG 10 has now released the raw video of the incident, and C.L. Jahn breaks it down. C.L. Points out the obvious — that the video doesn’t show Weinsier ever setting foot on the school’s property. This misses the rather obvious point that we don’t know what happened before the camera started rolling. Video footage and photography are like that: our brain is tricked into thinking we’re seeing all there is to see. It’s completely possible that Weinsier was standing on the grass before the video we see was shot. And if he wasn’t, the police can certainly claim so, which may give some legal standing to their “lawful order” for him to stay across the street.
The law here is murky: schools are surrounded by a 500 foot “school safety zone,” and in some regards this zone is considered an extension of school grounds. Carlos Miller addresses the various laws that come into play here and here. It seems clear that Weinsier violated the law by carrying the gun near a school. But if that’s the only thing he ends up guilty of, it may very well overshadow the much larger issue: whether the police were right in ordering him off the sidewalk, and in arresting him. Carlos says:
According to Florida Statute 810.0975, which defines trespassing in “school safety zones”, a person is committing an unlawful act if he loiters in the school safety zone, but “does not have legitimate business in the school safety zone”.
The emphasis is his, and with good reason: a possible hinge-point is whether television reporting constitutes “legitimate business.” The common-sense answer would be ‘yes,’ but of course common sense is irrelevant. What’s relevant is how all the various facts of the case, and the relevant laws, are going to be interperted here. If the officer had a legitimate reason for ordering the reporters to leave (despite the fact that he doesn’t give one on camera, he of course had a reason — TV reporters file reports from schools all the time with no trouble), does disobeying the order actually constitute trespassing? Will they continue to insist that Weinsier stepped on the grass? Is it legally relevant that the Police Department’s own Public Information Officer told the station that it was OK for Weinsier to be on the sidewalk?
Perhaps most important: will the WPLG stick up for their reporter, and fight this case hard? On Friday, the station suspended Weinsier for two weeks for carrying the concealed weapon, a violation of their company policy. Fine; they may just be erring on the side of caution in preparation for the fight to come. But barring more information, this is a clear first-amendment issue, and the station — we all — need to pursue it to make sure it’s resolved properly. If the police were not right, there needs to be a major counter-suit. And remember: if the only charge that sticks is the concealed weapons violation, the police were wrong. In this case, that constitutes a technicality, because it wasn’t discovered until after the arrest. We’ve all seen how well police reports can spin police behavior even when it is obviously and clearly wrong. Let’s not stand for that this time around.
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Wednesday July 11, 2007
Florida marrige ammendment
“Inasmuch as a marriage is the legal union of only one man and one woman as husband and wife, no other legal union that is treated as marriage or the substantial equivalent thereof shall be valid or recognized.”
Those words will appear on the November 2008 ballot, a proposed amendment to the Florida state constitution. It’s intended to ban domestic partnership benefits that some cities and counties grant to gay couples (Broward County, Miami Beach, Key West, and West Palm Beach). These bans have passed in 28 states, and have failed nowhere except Arizona.
Now, I disagree with the so-called social conservatives on almost everything, but I grant them that some of their issues have complicated moral and other issues surrounding them. But their opposition to homosexuality has no such complexity — it’s plain and simple wrong. It’s a small-minded fear of the different, lazily tied to a gross misreading of Genesis 19 (which features a condemnation of homosexual rape, and which just as a kicker has the guy offer his daughters up for rape to protect two angels visiting him; but I digress). It’s an attempt to stop people from doing what they very much want to do, when said actions do absolutely no harm to anyone. The fact that a majority of Americans support these bans is abhorrent and, frankly, a little incomprehensible.
Well. Florida Red & Blue is an organization put together to fight the amendment. Because some argue that it could be interperted to stop all domestic partnerships, the group has chosen straight couples to represent them. They have a pretty good shot of success, in part because constitutional amendments require a 60% majority to pass.
But really, can’t we get past this already? Wouldn’t it help the anti-gay crowd to realize that they’re on the wrong side of history, that in the very near future these laws will look the way Jim Crow laws from the 1950s South look today? Wouldn’t it be nice to relax a little bit and, you know, live and let live? What do you say, guys?
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