No Way Out: The Perplexing Case of Boast Laster, Florida’s Longest-Serving Inmate [Miami New Times] 8 Feb 2023, 7:39 pm

Published on February 8th, 2023 in the Miami New Times: Fourteen miles west of Miami, along the luminous edge of the Everglades, a guard ushers a tall, lanky inmate into an empty room at the state prison known as the South Florida Reception Center. Gaunt, with a snow-and-asphalt beard, the man sits down at a table and gets right to the point: “I been tryin’ to do everything I could, in my power, my will, to get outta here, because […]

Sharking Lots: Private Businesses Can Now Legally Issue Parking Tickets in Miami [Miami New Times 4 Nov 2021, 1:15 pm

Published on November 2nd, 2021 in the Miami New Times. This story won a first place Green Eyeshade award for consumer reporting and helped lead to new statewide legislation: Excerpt: Though private ticketing was indeed illegal in the City of Miami [at the time], that changed a month later, after parking-industry representatives persuaded the city commission that lot owners need a more effective way to enforce parking rules. The result was a new ordinance that legalizes private ticketing — as […]

Bird Key, a trash-tarnished rookery in Biscayne Bay with a regal past, finally shines again [Miami Herald] 28 Nov 2019, 3:17 am

Published on November 25th, 2019 in the Miami Herald: White sand beneath your feet. Clear water lapping at the shore. Cool shade under the buttonwood trees. You’ve landed on Bird Key, Biscayne Bay’s oldest deserted island, where tropical birds chatter loudly in the treetops and piles of trash have, for decades, been the clearest reminder that you’re still in urban Miami. This month, the tide finally turned for this nearly seven-acre sliver of sullied paradise, which sits just south of […]

The True Story Behind Miami’s “Haunted” Former Cuban Consulate [Miami New Times] 1 Nov 2019, 3:47 pm

Published on October 29th, 2019 in the Miami New Times: Autumn rain flowed off Villa Paula’s rooftop balustrades, down the whitewashed columns, and across the colorful Cuban patio tiles. Two statues of Greek gods stood nearby, dripping amid pink bougainvilleas in the home’s garden. Only a concrete sarcophagus in the corner of the backyard avoided a soaking. The thick roots of a ficus tree had grown over it, gripping it claw-like and funneling away the downpour. It would take a […]

Ride-Along [Jai-Alai Books] 23 Sep 2019, 1:50 am

Published in the anthology, ‘Making Good Time: True Stories Of How We Do, And Don’t, Get Around In South Florida’  / Jai-Alai Books, September, 2019: ​We’re speeding along a dark North Miami street in a police cruiser when Luis, the officer behind the wheel, looks at me sideways and smirks. “Watch this.” ​He slows down the cruiser, shuts off the headlights, and drifts toward the curb. A few yards ahead, a young couple is walking on the sidewalk hand-in-hand. Their backs […]

Loathe Thy Neighbor [Miami New Times] 3 Jul 2019, 4:57 am

Published on July 2nd, 2019 in the Miami New Times, where it became the third most popular feature story of 2019. It was also featured on Longreads and RealClear Investigations: Mark Cantor was pulling his green Mini Cooper into his driveway one evening when a pair of headlights jumped the curb behind him and came barreling across the front lawn, straight toward him. The 54-year-old graphic designer was barefoot. As usual, he had slipped off his sandals for the slow […]

A Crown Prince’s Tale: Psychiatrist Lord Lee-Benner says he’s the heir to the throne of a royal dynasty [Miami New Times] 22 Jan 2019, 3:07 pm

Published on January 22nd, 2019 in the Miami New Times: Dr. Lord Lee-Benner has seen the dark side of the Sunshine State: its schizophrenics, neurotics, addicts, depressives, illiterate bipolars, disturbed teens, even psychotic ex-ministers. Many of the indigent patients who come to see him at Community Health Center of West Palm Beach, a nonprofit clinic where he volunteers as a psychiatrist, just want a pill or a refill of psych meds prescribed by a previous doctor. But that doesn’t fly […]

Meet Pepe and Enrique, Male Pelicans Sharing a Miami Nest for Almost 20 Years [Miami New Times] 1 Apr 2018, 6:39 pm

Published on April 3rd, 2018 in the Miami New Times: At Pelican Harbor Seabird Station, a wildlife rehabilitation center in North Bay Village, two birds of a feather do a lot more than just flock together. Pepe and Enrique, both American brown pelicans from South Florida, have spent nearly two decades as a devoted same-sex couple. At the beginning of breeding season this past December, “the boys” — as their caretakers refer to them — built a nest together in […]

Murder In The Pumphouse [Miami New Times] 1 Aug 2017, 6:18 pm

Published on July 25th, 2017 in the Miami New Times: Under a canopy of twisted oaks and fluttering palms, an old coral-rock structure stands just off Biscayne Boulevard on the Upper Eastside of Miami. On a recent balmy Sunday, a small crowd gathered in the terraced backyard for brunch. They dined at café tables scattered amid tropical flora. In the middle of the yard, a mini-waterfall cascaded gently from a two-tiered pond carved out of the limestone, gurgling serenely under […]

Miami’s Oldest Security Guard Is a 90-Year-Old WWII Vet Searching for His Long-Lost Brother [Miami New Times] 26 Oct 2016, 12:07 am

Published on October 25th, 2016 in the Miami New Times: Julius Woods still remembers the Japanese fighter pilot who insulted him. It was 1943, the height of WWII, and Woods and his fellow sailors on the USS Van Valkenburgh had just shot down several Japanese fighter planes over the South Pacific. Some of the enemy pilots survived and were floating in the shark-infested water, but they refused to grab the lifebuoys that the Americans threw to them. They preferred to […]

Punk Activist Justin Wales Wants to Give You the Right to Sue the City of Miami [Miami New Times] 24 Sep 2016, 1:11 am

Published on September 23rd, 2016 in the Miami New Times: “Just look at our skyline and imagine what’s going to be there in five or ten years. If the public knew the extent to which some of those buildings were pushed through, I think it would reflect poorly on the city and the City Attorney’s office.” This is Justin Wales, a 30-year-old First Amendment attorney who describes himself on Twitter as a “lawyer/nerd/punk/activist” who is “changing the way Miami does […]

Monk-Turned-Street Artist Paints the Homeless to Teach New Yorkers Compassion [Tricycle Magazine] 9 Dec 2015, 3:41 am

Published on January 11th, 2016 in Tricycle Magazine (in a slightly shortened form). This original, exclusive profile was one of Tricycle’s top stories of 2016:: On a cold Autumn night in 2013, Pairoj Pitchetmetakul was walking home from the Academy of Arts University in San Francisco, where he was a student, when he came upon an unforgettable scene. On a deserted street in the SoMa district, he saw a young man viciously beating a white-haired homeless man, who looked to be in […]

Meet the Owner of Miami’s Last Floating Home on Biscayne Bay [Miami New Times] 9 Dec 2015, 3:32 am

Published on December 7th, 2015 in the Miami New Times: Fane Lozman wants what everyone in Miami wants: a nice home with a beautiful view and quick access to the water. That real-estate trifecta, however, usually costs a fortune. But Lozman, a six-foot-five former U.S. Marine Corps aviator, figured out years ago how to get those niceties at a fraction of the cost. On a recent Friday, standing on the front porch of his two-story floating home in Biscayne Bay, […]

Inside New York’s First Transgender Modeling Agency [The Atlantic] 17 Sep 2015, 4:49 pm

Published on September 17th, 2015 in The Atlantic. This exclusive original spawned stories in Forbes, The Daily Mail, TimeOut NY, Refinery29 and The Huffington Post: Peche Di, a Thai beauty queen who studied at New York University, spent five years booking occasional modeling gigs and looking for an agency to represent her. “They didn’t understand me,” she says, “so I struggled to find work.” Finally, this past May, she decided to do something about the lack of opportunities for her and other […]

Something Very New at Old Vizcaya [Biscayne Times] 17 Sep 2015, 4:48 pm

Published in the August, 2015 edition of the Biscayne Times newspaper: James Deering, a slight, silver-haired man in a white linen suit and little round glasses, sits in the bright loggia of his Venetian-style mansion in Coconut Grove and watches a crowd of tourists wandering through his home. Servants move among the visitors, preparing for a dinner party later in the evening. They set the walnut table in the Renaissance dining room, bring the shine to a collection of gold-rimmed […]