5/3/13
TALLAHASSEE At the close of the work week, when the stars come out and the Christmas lights twinkle on and the headlights start to race through the pines and past the KEEP OUT signs, you'll find Gary Anton in his pop-bottle glasses and hippy hair-halo rushing around the Bradfordville Blues Club like a monk on Adder …
HOMESTEAD
In South Florida, where burglar bars are as common as alligators, nervous clerks store their trusty 12-gauges behind the counter. Terrible things have happened to Robert Moehling, no doubt about it, but that's not a Glock loaded and ready under the cash register.
It's a power drill.
What happens when you send a muggle to a quidditch match? Something magical, of course.
TALLAHASSEE
At the close of the work week, when the stars come out and the Christmas lights twinkle on and the headlights start to race through the pines and past the KEEP OUT signs, you'll find Gary Anton in his pop-bottle glasses and hippy hair-halo rushing around the Bradfordville Blues Club like a monk on …
By Amy Wimmer Schwarb
Times Correspondent
LARGO — Two years ago, Bob and Connie Cain bought a two-bedroom, two-bath house in the suburbs. They added a porch swing and painted it a pleasing shade of green, with cream trim.
Some years ago, when my wife and I were still a cat family, we had three of the critters living with us. And then, after a particularly awful weekend, we didn't.
Vintage irony
Back in 2005, Florida billionaire William Koch bought 24 bottles of ostensibly vintage wine — you know, old-timey Bordeaux like Chateau LaTour from 1864 and a magnum of 1921 Chateau Petrus. He paid $355,000 for the lot and never tasted a single one. He likes his wine, but …
BY PETER JAMISON
The wake for Coleen Ellis' terrier-schnauzer mix was well attended. Mico had been a small but strong-willed animal, displaying the noblest traits of a blended ancestry. Her terrier's air of authority was enhanced by the schnauzer's characteristic beard, white and wiry like that of a kung fu …
Easter every day
Want to stroll through the Garden of Eden? Rest on a rock outside the Garden of Gethsemane? For $40, you can.
BY SABRINA ROCCO
SARASOTA — Nikki Rodriguez stares in the mirror and smooths the wedding dress with her fingers.
T.D. Allman's new book Finding Florida is subtitled "The True Story of the Sunshine State" because it's supposed to correct all the myths and mistakes in the other Florida history books. But while reading it we kept finding forehead-slapping errors. You'd forgive a couple of goofs in a 500-page book, but after a …
CLEARWATER -- Terry Power's face tightened as he listened to his wife's attorney tick off their assets on the final day of his divorce trial. He sat in a leather chair at a glass-covered table inside a paneled judicial chamber and he thought not for the first time that her voice annoyed him.
TAMPA — The alarm blared just after 6 that morning, but Jean Azor was already up. He showered, then rushed into his closet. He pulled on a pair of black slacks and a beige polo, his uniform at St. Joseph's Hospital. Behind his bed table, a newsletter was pinned to the wall. A photo on it showed him crouching next …
MAYPORT
Let's talk about the voice, which hurts the ears like a tenor sax with a bad reed — loud, squawky, piercing. Even when B.J. Hart is standing on the deck of the last public ferry in Florida, the voice cuts through the great throb of the diesel that propels the Jean Ribault across the St. Johns …
Divorce bores me. I'll cop immediately to a deep personal bias here brought on by too many family splits with too many decades of low-level emotional radioactivity. But even when the stories involve bold-faced names and gobs of money, they have never managed to overcome my sense that divorces generally are pretty …
Reggie, my ball-crazy golden retriever, had a lump removed from his lip in late November. It turned out to be malignant oral melanoma. Even with surgery, some dogs live only six months.
By ROBBYN MITCHELL
Times Staff Writer
Filmed in Pinellas County in 2012, Harmony Korine's film Spring Breakers hits theaters on March 22. Alien, a lead character played by James Franco, was based on Russ Curry, a 26-year-old rapper who grew up in south St. …
He sailed from Puerto Rico, searching for new land. He wore striped pants. He named Florida. On that all of the accounts seem to agree.
Nobody has ever needed to find the Fountain of Youth more than J. Michael Francis. Okay, Ponce de León's famous fountain is probably nothing but bushwa. That said, he needs to fill his wineskin from those make-believe waters just in case.
It is commonly believed that Spanish conquistadors first stepped foot on this continent in 1513 near what is now St. Augustine. Juan Ponce de León claimed possession of the new world for Spain and anointed this new land La Florida. Now, on this same land 500 years later, re-enactors — some paid, some …
The woman shuffled from the snack stand at Siesta Key toting cheese fries. She wore a head covering, a green modesty swim dress and the footwear that transcends religion and culture, Crocs.
I first noticed it in Publix.
I wasn't getting carded for PowerBall tickets anymore. When I was 25, that made me indignant; at 35, I only hid a smile.
Man of the moment
On Feb. 2, a single tweet — Florida Man Arrested After Pocket-Dialing 911 — launched what has become the hit Twitter profile of "the world's worst superhero," @_FloridaMan.
Roses are red, violets are purple, Carrabba's has a two-hour wait.
I had not lived in Florida in 18 years.
I'd spent most of my childhood in Tallahassee and Fort Walton Beach, done college at the University of Florida for the cheap in-state tuition (I hear it's not so cheap anymore), and fled as soon as I graduated.
Three. That's how many seconds it took me to decide to sign up, from my home in Colorado, when I saw the news about the python hunt.
TAMPA — Oaklawn Cemetery contains the graves of a governor, cattle barons and mayors, along with servants, pirates and victims of yellow fever. Yet for all its seeming egalitarian sentiment, it still reflects the rigid race and class divisions of its era — gentry over here, riffraff over there.
Truly, I was not expecting this call.
"The members of the Singles Social Dance Club in Sun City Center, which is very significant, are very insulted about your recent article that was in the Floridian magazine," said the person on my voice mail. "It has been a detriment in our community. It is not a very good …
WASHINGTON — Ana Navarro, a blunt and sometimes outrageous GOP operative from Coral Gables, sounded miserable last month amid Washington's frigid winter, running around in her Jimmy Choo heels between CNN appearances and gala parties surrounding the president she wanted to defeat.
HOMESTEAD — Unlucky in love, Ed Leedskalnin went about his life quietly and sadly while building the most peculiar home on the edge of the Everglades. It was going to be a valentine to the woman who had jilted him. And who knows? Maybe she would hear about his grand monument to her and come back to him. She would …
The crowd gathered on the grass around the man with the bag. In the bag was a 13-foot Burmese python. This was last month, a hot, sunny Saturday morning, in Davie at a University of Florida research center, the official start of the state-sanctioned snake hunt in the Everglades called the Python Challenge.
A collection of head-scratchers and heart-warmers that shed light on our Sunshine State.
The nation's punchline
