He waits alone, a small man made seemingly smaller by the restricting force of this place and the pressing weight of the crime that holds him here. Jose Enrique Melendez leans forward across a small table and extends a hand to a hand offered. His palm is damp, his shake...
This summer is going to be a test of survival for our restaurants. Labor costs have gone up. Food costs have gone up. Utility costs have gone way, way up. What has gone down? Disposable income. So smart restaurateurs, those who have eateries that will make it in the long...
In May of last year, state legislators and bureaucrats traveled around Florida to tout a new "Tough Love" package for delinquents that Gov. Jeb Bush had signed. The carnival of suits and ties who stood smiling for photo ops included Department of Juvenile Justice (DJJ) secretary W.G. "Bill" Bankhead, whose...
The red neon of Rio Vista Plaza overpowers the radiant colors of the setting sun. A tiger lurks on a side street, but it's just a mural on an apartment building wall. Here, among the jumbled jungle of power lines and fast-food signs along Federal Highway in Fort Lauderdale, the...
Shake, rattle, and roll: Was Jeff lonesome that night? Your article on Elvis (Bandwidth, May 10) was a waste of space. Whoa, man! On one hand, you're denouncing him as "The King" had logical merit. But you are not the first, or second, or twentieth writer to do so, and...
Anyone who's ever been in a band knows the deal is as precarious and passionate as any marriage. Groups break up, members are replaced, and creative differences tear folks apart, but politics is usually not a top reason for strife among working musicians. Unless you're in the complicated universe that...
The incident was so bizarre it could have been a macabre April Fool Day's prank. Shortly before dawn on April 1, 1998, Marie Bellabe, dressed in a bloody hospital gown, staggered down a Fort Lauderdale sidewalk. She wheeled along a urinary catheter and an oxygen tank, both connected to her...
With five minutes remaining until game time, a traffic jam outside the Orange Bowl makes everything come to a halt on Miami's NW Seventh Street. At the main entrance to the parking lots that surround the historic stadium, two men bark conflicting orders to the fans. And to complicate matters...
Every once in a while, I'm reminded that the rest of the nation's food media simply don't understand the South Florida eating scene. For instance, a couple of seasons ago, Epicurious.com contacted me about reporting on our farmers' markets for a special countrywide feature that would run from May to...
A TV turns to static. A young girl lies motionless on a bed. A man in a suit enters a dark kitchen, loosens his tie, and opens a refrigerator. These scenes could be indiscriminate snapshots of anyone's daily life, but placed in one of Michael John Garces's plays, they become...
Step into the first gallery to your left at the entrance to "Sophia Vari: Volumes of Poetry," now at the Boca Raton Museum of Art. You'll see pedestal after pedestal, display case after display case featuring the gleaming, curvaceous sculptures of the Greek-born Vari, who typically works in bronze, often...
Three very different solo shows currently share the spacious galleries of the Coral Springs Museum of Art: "Clyde Butcher: Visions for the Next Millennium," "Len Janklow: Kinetics in Light & Color," and "Leo Kaplan: Nostalgic Gatherings." Butcher, of course, is the South Florida photographer celebrated as the "Ansel Adams of...
Everything is overlabeled now," Against All Authority guitarist Joe Koontz asserts during some rare downtime at a chiropractor's office where he works as a masseur. "In the '80s, bands like the Circle Jerks and Bad Brains would play together -- bands with totally different sounds -- and no one would...
On an otherwise quiet, balmy night in Auburn, Alabama, in an otherwise empty, over-air-conditioned Taco Bell, three young, blond women huddle over a fast-food dinner. Suddenly, the door to the restaurant swings open and about 50 people -- mostly young women -- burst inside, chanting in unison: Hey Taco Bell...
Perhaps it's the Miamian in me, as I reviewed restaurants for Miami New Times for five-plus years before taking on Broward and Palm Beach. Or maybe it's the purist in me, or the nitpicker in me, or even the snob in me. But when I walk into a Latin-American restaurant...
If you think you're having a tough time making ends meet, consider the plight of Jim Kane, one of the shrewdest political players in Broward County. Here's a guy who knows all the right people and does all the right deals, yet court records indicate his net worth is that...
The attorney wears a simple blouse, and her straight brown hair is as no-nonsense as her demeanor. She rests her head in her hands and, in a monotone, cross-examines a man as if reading from a list. He looks fortysomething and vaguely collegiate in a sagging tweed jacket and argyle...
A little girl, her pouty lips slightly parted, lies stretched out provocatively in shadows that fall like a lattice across her body, while a ghostly TV image hovers above and behind her. In another picture the same girl sprawls on the floor in a blue bikini and a platinum blond...
If translation is treason, as Argentine author Jorge Borges said, then adaptation might be considered assassination -- especially when it comes to reviving a Tennessee Williams work, which more often than not results in catastrophe. Not in the case of the attempt by Cuban-born director Rolando Moreno, whose sensitivity to...
Classic noir is the color this season in West Palm Beach. The Cuillo Centre for the Arts' current production, The Betrayal of Nora Blake, is a musical comedy billed as "musical noir." This spoof of the film-noir classics of the '30s and '40s takes all the late-night B-movies you've ever...
Give kids a chance: I am currently a guardian ad litem in Palm Beach County. My heart goes out to Mr. Reisfeld as I, too, have experienced negative actions for "speaking out" ("Guardian Gone," Wyatt Olson, April 26). The Department of Children and Families, the courts, and the attorneys are...
If John Steinbeck and John Ford had ever decided to quit their day jobs and team up for a career recording jazz albums, the resulting collaboration would probably sound a lot like Bill Frisell's latest, Blues Dream. The guitarist's newest record unfolds like a trip through time, covering the great...
