Perhaps the last thing you'd expect to see next to a coffeehouse might be a Bounce House -- you know, the puffy plastic piece of playground equipment that kids like to jump up and down in. But Cheryl Chamely, proprietor of the Trinidadian coffee shop Café Juvay (9395 W. Sample...
You'd be forgiven if, just by reading the advertisement for the Palace, a two-month-old Indian restaurant on State Road 84 in Davie, you make some assumptions. You notice immediately the large type for the all-you-can-eat lunch buffet. Your eye then is drawn to the box that proclaims that "banquet hall...
Near the end of a barely paved road in Fort Pierce, at the end of an unpaved driveway, a country-style house described by its owner as "Smurf blue" rests on an overgrown lot. High crabgrass and weeds in the front yard have overtaken a wrought-iron furniture set with rust peeking...
Dance music owes a huge debt to British brothers Paul and Phil Hartnoll, who in their Orbital guise helped legitimize electronica as both a live performance art on par with geetar-wielding rock and as a style sustainable in an album format, not just as dance-floor fodder. One of the first...
And so does Jim: First, I would like to thank New Times for Rebecca Gleaves' October 24 story, "Ollie Rides Again." As an old skater out of retirement 1.5 years, it was nice to see someone actually get the complete story about Alan Gelfand and "The Ollie"! I like the...
Michael Piquion, a shy 13-year-old with a soft smile and eyes that dart timidly away from strangers, sits in a Jackson Memorial Hospital room with walls decorated in pastels, polka dots, and Rugrats characters. With his left hand, he curls a crimson cord connected to a plastic bag overhead that...
Leon Braun just wanted to show off his latest enterprise to his friends that Sunday afternoon some 13 years ago. They were driving back to his home in Hollywood after attending a wedding in St. Petersburg. Then in his late 60s, Braun was an engineer, inventor, and venture capitalist; he...
"Are you ready to be liberated/On this sad side city street/Well the birds have been freed from their cages/I've got freedom and my youth! " The whiskeyed snarl evokes Mia Zapata and Courtney Love. The anthemic guitar riff brings to mind Prison Bound-era Social Distortion. It's the Distillers' "The Young...
Daily newspapers in America have been hemorrhaging readers for decades -- nothin' new about that. And for just about as long, head honchos have searched for ways to stem the flow and win back subscribers. Take, for example, The Miami Herald. Its weekday circulation of about 326,000 is roughly 100,000...
Kevin Barnes isn't from Montreal, nor is he from the Florida subtropics, although he did move from Michigan to Palm Beach Gardens at age 15. But he left when he was 21 and never even glanced back. "I don't look fondly on those years. I blocked them out of my...
Here are some things I just don't see in every restaurant: A new hire shadowing an experienced server in order to learn the velvet ropes. A waitress who doesn't need for me to point out the wine I order from the list but rather nods in recognition at the name...
A beloved ficus tree that sprouted from the soil back in the 1920s and boasted a 120-foot-wide canopy has fallen to a rich developer's ax. We blame the Sun-Sentinel. And we're none too happy with Broward Circuit Court Judge Tom Lynch. Back in July, New Times Music Editor Jeff Stratton...
One of the fascinating oddities of theater in South Florida is the offbeat locations where it turns up. Local theater companies are found in some of the least likely places: The Caldwell Theatre and Florida Stage are in strip malls, the Broward Stage Door Theatre sits behind an IHOP. The...
One of the most intriguing mysteries of the whole Election 2000 debacle is this: How many Florida voters improperly lost their voting rights because of a statewide effort to scrub felons from voter rolls? This question was at the heart of a post-election lawsuit filed against the Department of State...
The alligator lay sprawled across the entranceway to the walking path at Shark Valley, as stopped and unmovable as a battery-dead wristwatch, absorbing the distant warmth of the winter sun. The only way around the six-foot creature, if we wanted to even start our stroll through this part of Everglades...
Napster's got x's for eyes now, and the Recording Industry Association of America is a bunch of idiots. They say file-sharing and CD-burning is killing the music business. They insist that it's not Limp Bizkit or Muddles of Pud or Linkin Park; that it's really we music lovers making our...
Theater in South Florida was once the realm of musicals and light comedies, with dramas mighty scarce. Now the scene features theater of all kinds -- fierce as well as frothy. But what remains rare are plays with immediate, topical subjects. Despite the disturbing real-life drama in contemporary America, most...
The politicians and the service staff in South Florida seem to have one terrible habit in common: blind endorsement. In both cases, the perennial bluff has gotten so bad that it's impossible to believe a recommendation that either makes. Local politicos no doubt can speak for themselves -- or have...
Andrew W.K. is the Tiger Woods of rock'n' roll. He has no interest in being a worldwide rock star, although that may be the inadvertent result after the release of his debut album, I Get Wet. When he talks about his plans for the album and himself, he speaks honestly...
People started talking all kinds of mumbo-jumbo about Bob Marley almost before he was cold in the ground, but before he was a conveniently agreed-upon symbol for vague ideas about good times and world peace, he was an uncommonly sharp writer of deceptively simple pop songs. What was more, he...
When most people walk into Sidblu bassist Pablo Lopez's West Palm Beach workplace, they see a corporate office for designing funeral home Websites. But in the top-of-the-line computers, laser printers, and CD-ROM burners, Lopez sees a no-dough promotional palace and compact-disc manufacturer. "Someone has to do it," Lopez understates. After...
At the risk of sounding like a food snob, I too often find German cuisine in South Florida to be akin to writer's block: a big, empty space where creativity and inspiration should be. It's as if our local German-American chefs and restaurateurs invest both hearts and stomachs in dour,...
