Residents near the new Marlins ballpark unleashed their fury and frustration on the city and its major-league ballclub Thursday evening, saying a newly unveiled parking plan for the neighborhood will make their lives miserable.

The plan sets aside a few blocks near the ballpark where area residents can park. But it bans residential parking on many more stretches — to accommodate baseball fans coming to the watch a game.

People who live on those banned blocks will have to find somewhere else to park on the 81 times a year — mostly night games — when the Marlins play at home.

"Identity theft is really becoming an epidemic. It's out of control," said Sgt. Patrick Murray, who oversaw Thursday's sweep. "We believe these businesses are playing a role in that epidemic."

Approximately 35 tax service providers have opened makeshift offices in Oakland Park since the beginning of the 2012 income tax season, according to officials.

[...]

Federal, state and county investigators have said they believe some illegitimate tax preparers are taking customer information and using it to either file phony tax returns or selling the information to others.

Apple iPad fans ready for a new tablet may want to get to stores early this morning.

[...]

The new focus is understandable, considering 40 percent of iPad owners have a household income of $100,000 or more, according to The NPD Group.

In my teenage years in the 1950s, blacks were not allowed to eat in restaurants with whites, had to sit in the balconies at the movies, couldn't drink from "white" water fountains, and more. Through the years, blacks gained their rights, attended "white" colleges, became professionals and eventually blended into the "white" community.

They have come a long way, and now the president is dividing us again with his African-Americans for Obama agenda in his re-election campaign.

Most young people today have no idea what Obama's true agenda is, as they spend most of their time texting, sexting, tweeting, twittering and whatever else they do with those smartphones. Thus, I am preaching to the choir.

It's frustrating, as I have been investigating the president for four years now, and what I have discovered is frankly devastating for this country.

[...]

Fox News is the only network that will tell us anything about Obama, and I feel it's not enough. I say to the left-wing liberals, one day you will wake up and wonder where your freedom went — too late.

Andrew Breitbart, the conservative activist who died at 43 of "natural causes" the day (March 1) that he was going to release damaging videos of Obama, said that racial division and class warfare were essential to how "hope and change" was sold us in 2008. He was a prophet.

Florida was named the top tornado state in the country with 12.3 tornadoes per 10,000 square miles, according to The Weather Channel's tornado expert Dr. Greg Forbes.

Residents heard a noise and called police, authorities said. When they arrived Thursday around 1 a.m. police saw Dwyer running from the area on foot.

After a short chase by foot, police said Dwyer jumped into the Poppleton Creek and began swimming away toward the St. Lucie River.

Police said a resident from Overlook Drive volunteered to take officers on his boat to help with the pursuit.

Officers said Dwyer tried to swim away, until he became so fatigued that he gave up and boarded the boat.

C- Six things Vice President Joe Biden should avoid saying to the Class of 2012 at Cypress Bay High School in Weston, courtesy of Salty Eggs.

Vice President Joe Biden will visit Florida this spring to deliver the commencement address at Cypress Bay High School in Weston. In a battleground state, with President Obama’s re-election on the line, it is — to paraphrase Biden himself — kind of a big fucking deal. So mark June 4 on your calendar. Biden will be a guest of the local congresswoman, U.S. Representative (and key Democratic buck-raker) Debbie Wasserman Schultz. He will no doubt go in with prepared remarks. Only, this is a guy who, as has been amply chronicled, never met a script he couldn’t toss. And it wouldn’t be Biden if there weren’t a chance for some impromptu comedy gold.

D- It appears that Miami's Cuban-American exiles may be working to disrupt the Pope's visit to Cuba...at The Cuban Triangle.

I have no idea if this Cuban “occupy” movement and its day of protests was hatched in Miami or by activists in Cuba. But my bet is that opponents of the Cuban government will continue to distance themselves from it. The protesters have every right to request of the Vatican whatever they wish. But the Pope, Cuba’s church, and Cuba’s Catholic laity are also entitled to celebrate a pastoral visit as they wish. The protests accentuate the image of a movement focused more on actors outside Cuba than within, and they do the cause of opposition to the Cuban government no favors.

E- Jimbo's letter to the City of Miami is up at Eye on Miami.


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A- Wrestling photos from the Miami-Dade County Fair....at Nikon Miami.

B- Pictures of cakes from Epicure Market...at Miamism Pix.

C- Eye on Miami claims that Miami-Dade County Commissioner Lynda Bell is pissing off fellow commissioners.


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A- Some Blogging Guy details an alternative to the iPad.

B- Fly high above the Everglades with Go Hydrology! for yet another lesson on the swamp.

C- Man or Maniac? posts yet another example of how Republicans intentionally and, in this particular case, maliciously distort facts to enact legislation that affects all of us.

D- Coconut Grove Grapevine shares a few images from the Indian Fest that is going on in the Grove this weekend.


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Sometime in early 2011, Beached Miami started accepting advertising. Not too long after that, the "Beached Miami" branding began appearing on their superb video productions and at local concerts that they were helping to promote. I vividly recall the time I visited O Cinema in Miami and was amazed to see the Beached Miami logo on the screen as one of the theater's sponsors. They also began sharing their content with the Miami Herald and Open Media Miami.  In an email to me last week, Jordan commented...

On the content side, we realized that we needed to expand and increase our coverage. So when we had the opportunity to partner with Open Media Miami to provide our readers with hyperlocal community news, we jumped at it. While the partnership is still evolving, we are currently covering community news every week (e.g. our coverage of the Midtown Walmart debate). This is not only sorely needed in Miami, as the larger local media outlets offer less community news everyday, but it is a conversation starter, and conversation is the lifeblood of a site like Beached Miami.

In mid-2011, Beached Miami started the Sketchy Miami project and received a lot of attention from the local media and fellow South Florida bloggers for this unique endeavor that further diversified their online portfolio. They were the darlings of the South Florida blogosphere and they were on a roll.

But the Beached Miami of 2010 was changing. There was more promoting to do, more Sketchy Miami events to organize and there was little time to write the personable and unique posts that had been the mainstay of the blog. Jordan explains...

In truth, it has become harder for me to do this kind of writing for Beached as I have dedicated myself to the site as an editor first, writer (a close) second. I love to do that kind of writing and I do sometimes regret that I am not doing more of it, but there is only so much time in the day and Beached Miami will never be what we want it to be if we don't think long term and make sacrifices.

A number of Beached Miami blog posts are now being outsourced to other South Florida bloggers, writers and Open Media Miami. Jordan and Robby still contribute on a regular basis but their posts are mostly limited to concert or event promotions that Beached Miami is involved with. It should be noted that one of their essays was recently published in The Atlantic...a piece they mentioned and linked to at Beached Miami.

I miss the Beached Miami of 2010. What was a gregarious, personable and easygoing effort by two Miami guys trying to "squeeze the orange dry," has ballooned into a kind of aggregate blog business venture that is drawing a certain amount of its content from various contributors who are often times unknown to the Beached Miami reading community. Gone is the unique and distinctive personalities that used to be present in the posts, videos, and podcasts that were produced by Robby and Jordan.

Is this is a necessary evil of growing, maturing and "taking it to the next level?"

I don't know. I only know the way it feels.



-photo courtesy Miami Beach 411


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-via LikeCool


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A- Sun-Sentinel: Probably has nothing at all to do with the quality of our drivers.

Two women were struck and killed in separate but similarly fluke-like car accidents on Sunday, both crashes taking place far from busy streets and intersections.

One woman, who was pregnant, was lounging in a poolside cabana at a hotel in Fort Lauderdale. The other was leaving morning Catholic mass in Deerfield Beach.

"Our thoughts and prayers" are with the families of the victims of the chance crashes, said Matt Little, spokesman for Fort Lauderdale Fire Rescue.

Two children were also run over and killed this weekend, a 14-year-old boy who was skateboarding and a 5-year-old girl riding a toy car.

Police are seeking the driver of the white van that killed the 5-year-old, as he fled the scene without stopping after striking the child.

B- NBC Miami: Welcome aboard. Don't mind the blood splatters.

The same Florida East Coast Railway train struck and killed two people in two accidents just over 10-hours apart on last Friday, authorities confirmed.

Early Friday, authorities say a man stepped in front of Train 210 in Fort Lauderdale.

Later in the day, another person stepped in front of the same train in St. Augustine.

C- WPLG: SoBe shooting caught on video.

D- WPTV: Life in South Florida.

BOYNTON BEACH, Fla. - Friends and family have been stopping by the house where two sisters were murdered Saturday.

[...]

Detectives say two people opened the front door of the home on Northeast Second Court around 10:45a.m. on Saturday night carrying high-powered semi-automatic rifles and began shooting at the women.

A woman across the street was shot in the leg.

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B- Random Pixels takes a look at Miami Herald photojournalist Chuck Fadely.

C- Liam Crotty shares some photos from Spring Break 2012 on Miami Beach.

This last week was the peak of college Spring Break here in Miami and I can personally attest it was quite rowdy this year. I rode my bike down to Ocean Drive, the epicenter of the partying which is just 7 blocks from my apartment. I went once at night and once in the afternoon just as everyone was leaving the beach.

D- Beer Snob Bicycle Pub Crawl images and a video are up at The Miami Bike Scene.

E- Transit Miami notes the large number of tragic car accidents this weekend.

Even by our region’s dubious standards, the events of the past 24 hours reveal a wickedly toxic, over-motorized culture that is creating not just “traffic accidents” but rather a public safety crisis that demands urgent attention at the highest levels.

F- The price of gas is on the mind of Bark Bark Woof Woof.

The meme is that while gas prices have a thousand reasons to go up even when there's an abundance of supply and we're even exporting it, the blame usually falls on the president... except when he's a Republican. I remember paying $4.15 a gallon in July 2008 and all the Republicans were saying that it wasn't President Bush's fault (but then, nothing ever was). Now that it's President Obama and we're getting close to averaging $4.00 a gallon, it's all his fault and Mitt Romney is passing along the whack-job conspiracy theory that the president wants the prices to go up. That was enough to get even the usually-sycophantic Washington Post to call him out on that howler.

G- Eye on Miami says that the Miami Circle is an over-priced dog park.


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A- Artlurker takes a good look at the Wedding Crashers exhibit that was part of the annual Sobay Festival of the Arts at the Deering Estate.

This year Special Projects Curator, Ralph Provisero decided to focus on the estate’s popularity as a wedding venue. The “wedding crashers” are the works of art that impose themselves onto the lush, natural, bayside landscape that is so attractive to wedding planners. For Provisero, “[w]eddings can be iconic images of momentary time. The preparation, the party and the aftermath are often based on grandiose images of fantasy or skewed reality.”

B- Kind of a cool photo off the causeway of Cruise Ship Alley from Miamism Pix.

C- Political Cortadito describes the scene at The Rusty Pelican as U.S. Congresswoman Ileana Ros-Lehtinen kicked off her re-election campaign this weekend.

“This election is more important than any election I can think of because we need a new leadership,” [House Majority Leader Eric] Cantor told the crowd of more than 200 people. “And we need to send back the strongest Foreign Affairs Committee leader we’ve ever seen,” he said, referring to Ros-Lehtinen, who chairs the committee since last year. Because he was preaching to the choir, I guess, he used the rest of the time to bash President Barack Obama as former U.S. Congressman Lincoln Diaz-Balart (Rep., District 21) and U.S. Congressman David Rivera (Rep., District 25) nodded like bobbleheads.

D- Florida Keys Girl loves 2¢ for brunch.

I ordered the poblano relleno, which is a beautifully grilled poblano pepper stuffed with oil poached tuna, avocado, queso blanco and served with black beans and a salsa verde, of sorts. The avocado lent a creaminess to the dish without making it heavy. The whole dish really is well balanced, not to mention delicious.

E- Arterpillar posts a slideshow from the Imaginary Friends exhibit in Fort Lauderdale this past weekend.

I was really looking forward to checking out Imaginary Friends at 1310 Gallery in Fort Lauderdale, and the event, featuring three solo exhibitions on three floors of the gallery, did not disappoint.

F- A number of lawyers are happy that the gambling industry has come to town, according to South Florida Lawyers.

G- Miamism's wrap up of the Midtown Miami real estate scene for February is ready for your review.

Midtown continues to be hot and anything that comes on the market for under $200,000, sells in just days! There are still a few distressed sales to be found, but that inventory is dwindling down. Of the 20 properties listed for sale in the multiple listing service, only one is distressed (foreclosure) – that’s 5% of the total inventory!

H- I know you all have been waiting for Miami Beach crime stats for last year...now you have them, at Random Pixels.

I- Transit Miami gets a lot of the changes they wanted from FDOT along Coral Way.

The analysis led District 6 staff to include five additional crosswalks across Coral Way; 4 with flashing beacons, and one new full intersection. In addition, the City will be able to financially contribute to enhanced crosswalks at major intersections, to include raised pavers and timed crosswalk signals. These measures will be accompanied by a reduction in the speed limit to 35 mph (throughout), and the inclusion of bicycle “sharrows” along the entire corridor from 13 Avenue to 37 Avenue. While not all of the recommendations were followed, FDOT agreed to a majority of what Transit Miami recommended.

J- Soul of Miami shares some photos from this weekend's Brickell Bazaar and Farmers Market.




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