On July 27, 1981, the mother of 6-year-old Adam Walsh left him in the toy section of the Sears department store in the Hollywood Mall while she went to look for a lamp. Weeks later, his severed head was found in a canal in Vero Beach. In 1983, convicted serial…
Elijah Manley says it’s hard to be a kid presidential candidate. Not only does he lack the financial backing available to more prominent candidates, the 16-year-old Fort Lauderdale High junior says he also has to deal with people constantly reminding him that the constitution dictates that he has to be…
Monalisa Weber remembers a 16-year-old boy standing in a Broward courtroom with a blank stare. He had broken his probation. A judge asked the boy why he didn’t attend the mandatory boot camp, and when the boy didn’t answer, the judge sentenced him to prison. “The streets raised him. You…
Every few months, a 38-year-old woman drives to Miami from Broward. She meets with Carlos Franco, a 66-year-old retired drug-rehabilitation specialist turned harm-reduction advocate. He hands her a box with hundreds of new, wrapped syringes, and she then in turn covertly hands them out to low-income intravenous drug users in…
Over 30 activists attended the commission meeting Tuesday evening to discuss the reinstatement of Fort Lauderdale police officer Jeffery Feldewert, who was fired in June over racist Facebook comments and then brought back on the force last month. Six activists took to the podium to explain that officers like Feldewert…
Elijah Manley was daydreaming on the school bus again. The Fort Lauderdale High sophomore wasn’t thinking about homework or quizzes but about the 2016 presidential race. That’s when he decided he was going to run for president. Not school president — but president of the United States of America. Annoyed…
After the Charleston Church shooting this summer, there has been a push around the nation to remove racist symbols like the Confederate flag and monuments of Confederate soldiers. South Carolina removed the Confederate flag from its Capitol Grounds, but locally, as New Times pointed out, Hollywood streets are named after…
Over the last few years, Sherryl Muriente noticed that almost every region of downtown Fort Lauderdale began to flourish with art and culture, except the historically black Sistrunk Boulevard area. She especially noticed the new trolley running between Sistrunk and FAT Village. Even though galleries were opening in Sistrunk, art…
Floridians are a weird bunch. Geographic isolation has leant its way to bizarre habits, like an aversion to indicator signals and a pathological fear of cockroaches. We even have our own twang—we prefer “you guys” to “y’all” and “Publix” to “supermarket.” It should come as no surprise that we e-laugh…
On Sunday, Demetrius Vaugha walked past Plantation Heritage Park, where almost 200 Confederate flag supporters were meeting for a road rally. The 23-year-old was holding signs that read “God Hates Flags” and “Cops Kill.” He was headed to the Black Lives Matter counter-protest that was meeting nearby. That’s when, Vaugha…
Chris Nicolaus used to drive around Fort Lauderdale with a confederate flag proudly flapping on the antenna of his truck. But in the mornings he’d find that his truck had been keyed overnight. He started bringing in the flag in the evenings and putting it back up in the mornings…
On Saturday, at least 50 Black Lives Matter activists took off from the Fort Lauderdale courthouse on Broward Boulevard. They stomped down Southeast Third Avenue, protesting racist police in memory of Sandra Bland, the 28-year-old black woman who allegedly committed suicide in a Texas jail last month. This group of…
“At first, when I heard the Sandra Bland story, I wasn’t sure if I believed it,” Pam Keith tells New Times. Palm Beach County’s 46-year-old democratic Senate candidate, who lives in Juno Beach, knows how scary it can be to be pulled over by a police officer. She’s a woman…
Two years ago, flakka arrived in South Florida provoking a string of bizarre incidents involving paranoid, aggressive naked people under the influence of this cheap, potent stimulant. In January, a naked man was coaxed off a Lake Worth roof by a SWAT team. In March, a man who had taken…
Sixty-five-year-old Anita Mitchell might be Broward County’s biggest fan. She loves living in Broward County. She loves meeting people from Broward County. But she especially loves writing about people from Broward County. Mitchell, a former English teacher turned reporter, recently launched “Broward People,” a site that posts profiles of Broward’s…
A week after the Charleston church shooting, a New Times article pointed out that there are streets in Hollywood commemorating Confederate soldiers. Two weeks later, an anti-confederate flag group calling itself BlackOutWhiteSupremacy sent New Times an email with photos of five Hollywood street signs named after Confederate leaders: two on…
Good thing animals can’t read (or can they?) because there’s a legal definition in Florida’s statutes that would certainly hurt their feelings. According to Florida Statute 828.27, an ordinance on animal cruelty, the term “animal” refers to “any living dumb creature.” Calling any creature dumb, homo sapien or not, doesn’t…
On Yelp, a commenter praised the Taco Bell at 1830 South Federal Highway: “For anyone visiting Fort Lauderdale, I would highly recommend that they make sure to experience Taco Bell not only for the nourishment but also for an experience they won’t soon forget,” Dave. M. from Washington wrote. His…
They’re bringing drugs. They’re bringing crime. They’re rapists. Those words about Mexicans from Donald Trump’s presidential announcement speech have been on a near-continuous loop since the comb-covered one uttered them on June 16. Within nine days, Univision, the largest Spanish-language TV network in the country, declared it would cancel its…
From May 13 to 15, across the state, a slew of “body rub” businesses were busted by the Department of Health for operating without proper massage licenses. Operation Trigger Point lasted only three days but the final count was 64 cease-and-desist orders being issued as a result of the sting…
On Tuesday, longtime curator Jane Hart confirmed that she is no longer with the Art and Culture Center of Hollywood. She was hired eight years ago and the reasons for her sudden departure are unclear as both Hart and Joy Satterlee, Executive Director of the Arts and Culture Center, declined…
With the highest concentration of same-sex households in the country, Fort Lauderdale was the last place Bo Callaway thought he’d fall victim to a hate crime. And especially not on the morning the Supreme Court ruled that same-sex marriage was legal in all 50 states. But on Friday morning, the…
