Miami Nights

What do you do in West Palm Beach when Big Ted's Biker Barn is closed by the health department and Silly Sally's Olde Tymey Drinkin' Saloon burns down mysteriously as a result of excessive varmint infestation? Why, you enjoy some quality time with the family dog!

A Palm Beach Gardens man and his mother, a middle school science teacher, are permanently barred from owning or possessing animals, a judge ruled Thursday after watching a short film of the man having sex in his bedroom with a German shepherd. ...
 
Testimony was provided by a detective, county Animal Care and Control officials, including a chief veterinarian, and an expert animal trainer who said the videotape indicates the dog showed signs of submission and pain.

Woof woof. We can't make this stuff up folks.

Well not quite yet but Wachovia bank is moving to forclose on the Las Olas property because:

Las Olas Riverfront's owner isn't paying bills, is neglecting the property, and is not following through on getting city approval to level it.

As a result of the foreclosure warning by the bank all plans to demolish and build the "New River Las Olas" project have come to a staggering halt. Apparently some Boca developers were gonna demolish and rejuvenate the area with condos, skyscrapers, a hotel, and a health club, grocery store, and restaurants. Here's my suggestion to those Boca developers, Ft. Lauderdale sucks, Las Olas sucks and your better off not investing a penny in that crappy area. Let's hope they read our blog and get the hint, if the foreclosure isn't evidence enough.

Hello Ft. Lauderdale. How are you? Last time I was there you showed me exactly why I hate you so. In fact I needed a hazardous material scrubbing when I got home to remove the stench of suck that clinged to my body. Sort of like BO, only on a monumental scale. Apparently McDonalds finally realized the stench was from your county and not their trans fat injected french fries. So naturally they did not renew their sponsorship for the air show. I think the press release said something like "We will now be holding the show in Iraq. Less overhead, all the supplies are already in place and we can include dead Iraqi children in the show."

Why? WHY is this news in the Miami Hurled? Actually I should be asking why this is such a HUGE deal with the people of SoFla? Stuck on the Palmetto has a host of posts regarding the opening and the "Ikea Fanatics", yes you read right...Ikea Fanatics. WTF people?!?!? It's a furniture store. I can understand being a fanatic of Pleasure Emporium because well, sex is great and all the toys and movies never get old. Not to mention the endless selection of flavored lubricants, edible undies, multi-setting dildos, gags and fun-swings. But furniture? Do we really need the Miami Hurled to print a guide on how to handle the Wednesday opening? And this:

about 20 off-duty officerswill direct traffic and provide security Wednesday through the weekend. In addition, four off-duty Florida Highway Patrol troopers will manually control stoplights along major roads near the store.

Score one for the consumer driven society and the off duty cops that will likely end up firing pepper spray and rubber bullets at those middle aged furniture rioters! Tamara Lush over at Riptide puts it nicely:

it's a goddamned store! And really, do we Americans need more cheap crap?

Wait this just in, site founder Lackner has been spotted hiding under the covers of a crib in the infants furniture section of Ikea. Lack is my boy but his love for the little ones is giving me the willies.

UPDATE: You freaking yokels up in Ft. Lauderdale.

''It was all incredibly disappointing. They said they were going to have free stuff and take care of people in line. They didn't do anything. We could have come up this morning and got a free chair,'' said No. 3 in line, Marisol Lopez, 26, of Pembroke Pines.

I remember the first time I went to a beach in Ft. Lauderdale. In the salad days of my youth I figured, being only 20 miles north of Miami, it would be somewhat similar; attractive people, parking, uh, beach sand. Then I discovered that the beach area itself is about 36 inches wide and festooned with all manner of unattractive, cave-dwelling, awkward fat asses. Encroached on the west by obnoxious rat-infested Hollister-sponsored tourist traps and stinky crystal meth-bumping bikerscum, I quickly sprinted back to my Dade-plated automobile and, tachometer pinned at 6500 RPM, knuckles white with fright and dysentery, sped myself back to I-95 (after the obligatory stop at Le Tub). 

And now they've discovered a way to make it even worse. To hasten the physical degradation that accompanies a visit to Ft. Lauderdale beach (the mental degradation knob already turned to 11) they are adding crushed glass to the beach sand. We can't make this shit up folks.

I've been saying this to you for years, whispering it in your ear while you drive down the endless dilapidated stretches of Broward Boulevard (and in your sleep too, but there's not enough evidence to convict me). Your controlling interest in that old timey "world famous" pizza place with airbrushed funny Florida tshirts? Sell, sell, sell!

Broward is going down for the count. There's not enough yuppie scum in all of Manhattan to transform that place into something livable (though they're pretty close, Manhattan being like that body factory in the Matrix, but with yuppie scum instead of regular human scum) and at the moment it's running on the fumes of white supremacy and residual income from Oakland Park Boulevard child-sex brothels. They're going to have to rope off the county line and turn the thing to tinder, a no-mans-land of casino boat tours and live bait shops. 

What do Ft. Lottamurdalites do when their only "scene" venue Roxxane's comes crashing down in a fiery heap of failed hipster destruction by the only opossum arsonist this world has seen? Why they come to Miami tonight for a special love sharing edition of Loop at PS14. Now, I know we get alot of those northerners in the scene already but I don't actually think I've ever met a true Phoenix "scenester". You know, the type that thought they were too good to come to Miami because they thought we were too good to drive way up there for nothing. Well tonight is your chance to catch a different breed of scene the likes of which you have never and will probably see too much of now that their mecca is a stinking pile of ash. DJs SHAUN MINUS and JOHN VINCENT (anyone heard them spin before?) will joining the resident Loop dj's tonight. 2-4-1 cocktails till midnight. Who knows, perhaps I'll swing by to catch the rare breed on film for Vice + Lice to dissect.....

Everyone knows that Broward County is forever playing catchup with its much cooler neighbor to the south, but when they do catch up, boy do they do it in style. I remember back in 1993, when the General Store got indoor plumbing, all the people rode up in their sputtering 1930s Chevys and on the backs of their trusty donkeys, trading in bits of Indian arrow heads, rotting rabbit pelts, and shiny pebbles they found in riverbeds, just to get a look at the miraculous invention.

Hiphop is no different. Miami has been running thangz stylistically in the hiphop game for a few years now (with occasional lapses of judgement allowing Atlanta to dominate from time to time; Port of Miami, I'm looking at you), so logically you'd expect the lame crackers in 954 to eventually get their feet wet. And wet themselves they did. 

I present to you Lolo - Ft. Lottamurdadale:

Not a terrible first effort, but I wish they would have used a less derivative beat. With so many great producers in 305, surely it wouldn't have violated their uppity whiteness to farm out the production to some of our local talent.

I don't usually talk about things that are occurring in Broward for the same reason I don't report weekend yardsales in Hialeah, but this story is worth the slumming. It appears that the foundation of the Broward indie scene is no more. Roxanne's in Oakland Park has burned down. We had been meaning to go up there and take photos but I guess the insurance investigators will be the ones playing paparazzi now. 

Was it drunk scene kids throwing firecrackers? Overloaded Phazon amps blowing a cap? No, this is Broward. It was an opossum. 

Listen, I'm no fan of leather. I don't like it in jacket or pants form. Lucky for me, a sweet leather outfit was one of the few rock cliché not employed by the filthy boys in Black Rebel Motorcycle Club this Saturday. They did, however, writhe with their guitars, dry humping every mic stand in sight, liberally supplying the crowd with a healthy dose of anguished yet pouty-lipped glances and monstrous licks driven by volume to a behemoth’s size. This was done despite the Culture Room's notoriously horrible sound and it's annoyingly high and distant stage; not an easy task.

Black Rebel mounted the boards around 10:30 against a dark stage and a loop from The Doors movie (it's from the part where they're in the desert on peyote playing hippie drums and chanting about, you guessed it, a black-clad rebel, who I imagine might also be a member of an auto club).  Armed with too many guitars each, a pair of industrial sized strobe lights, and a wife-beater wearing additional guitarist to fill in the aural gaps, they kicked out the jams for what seemed like forever. The audience, comprised mostly of the rockinest/ugliest teenagers West Broward County has to offer, was enthralled by the sleazy energy thrust upon them by the pulsing crotches of BRMC. The amps were at 11, the light show was shamelessly psychedelic, and it pretty much carried on like this for about an hour.

After the show, as the kids ran to the merch booth to spend lunch money on overpriced T-shirts, I, an old man was left to ponder the authenticity of such unabashedly effortless and banal music. I could've stayed at home and listened to Electric Warrior, or tracked down the Jesus And Mary Chain tour video someone borrowed years ago and never returned to me. But when I saw the smiles on the sweaty faces of those kids as they drove off in their dad's Prius, a soft spot in my heart opened up for the BR's. They’re just trying to rock, and that's ok with me -- even if a real black rebel motorcyclist could kick their asses.

If you are interested in following BRMC as they tour North America, check out their Filter Magazine Tour Zine. 

Click here for the full gallery.

Photography by Santiago Felipe at Camera Obscura Photography.

So yesterday after getting obscenely drunk at Dirty Disco, waking up to unexpected afterparty in Lackner's loft and not getting home until 8:30 a.m., I woke up two hours later to meet my sister and mom at their house in Pembroke Pines to go to Sawgrass Mills Mall. No matter if you've slept eight hours the night before and stretched out all your muscles and drank nothing but water, Sawgrass is still a pain in the ass. But doing it hungover and with two hours of sleep should be considered cruel and unusual punishment. On top of that I hate outlet malls for many reasons. Don't get me wrong, I love of a bargain and you can definitely get them at outlet stores, but why do all the rules on how to run a retail store go out the window at outlets? I've seen Wal-Mart stores kept more organized than many outlet stores. Things are thrown around carelessly so shoppers forget as well that this is still a store not their homes, so they as well trash and mess things up, forgetting to put things back in their place.

My biggest question is why do items look worn and used by the time they reached an outlet? For example, I was at Off 5th and saw this awesome Mui Mui T-shirt with a nice design and patchwork, but the collar had some stains that looked like foundation. It turned me off that I put it right back -- well, that and it was a small which I haven't fit into a small since I was 8. Which, brings me to my other complaint -- outlets are a tease. You find this awesome item and get so excited only to find out they don't have your size and when you ask a clerk if they have more in the back they rudely roll their eyes and tell you what's on the floor is what they have. Now I find it hard to believe that every single item that is shipped to them is on the floor. I imagine outlet stores like their better retail stores have stock rooms as well. Am I wrong? Feel free to correct me.

I usually try to stick to stores like Off 5th and Last Call Neiman Marcus which the staff tends to keep things in order, but by far the worse was Nordstrom Rack where people don't feel the need to put the shoes back in their respective boxes and instead leave them on the floor for one to trip on.

By the way Sawgrass, the Oasis isn't an oasis when you are subjected to South Florida's high noon heat and humidity. I hate you Sawgrass, but I'll be back when Ikea opens.

Nothing to see here, guys. Arctic seals in Ft. Lauderdale are nothing at all to be worried about. We're just going to pack it in some dry ice and ship the slimey little bastard back to McMurdo.

Bad ass seal photo JOE RIMKUS JR/MIAMI HERALD STAFF

Update: Oops, never mind. It's dead.