Category Archives: Miami

I am not ordinarily given to recounting my personal life here, much less to restaurant reviews, but I can't resist mentioning the place I went to dinner last night, “Las Culebrinas.” We wanted to go somewhere new, so we were trawling the Miami Herald restaurant review archive in the minutes before the babysitter arrived, looking for places that were not too far away, not too pricey, and interesting sounding. Then we found this.

I began to think that this might make for an interesting night out when I got to this part in the review, especially because I was pretty hungry:

Our waiter, a fellow with a merry twinkle in his eye and a deft hand with a blowtorch (more on that later), advised us not to order anything beyond the giant tapas. “TOO MUCH FOOD,'' he declared. We pressed on. Great rewards awaited.

But the next two paragraphs really sealed the deal:

There is a regular entree menu underneath the glass tabletop, but you need not look at it. Each night, a sheet bearing some 25 specials is circulated, and it is there that the truly interesting stuff can be found.

It is there that we spotted what no Spanish restaurant ought to be doing without, an entree called “Crocodile Medallions French Style'' ($12.95). This is a must-order, filet after filet of thinly sliced, pearly white, slightly chewy but delicious and virtually fat-free meat. Compare it to a good veal. The “French style'' involves a light egg wash and a bit of white wine and butter in the saute. Julia Child, meet Wally Gator. Served with a nice little row of tasty potatoes and a side salad made of mixed field greens, not the typical pallid iceberg.

Julia Child meets Wally Gator! How could I resist?

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I voted today. The polling place was empty. They seemed very glad to see me. Indeed the man whose job it was to explain how the touch screen voting worked wouldn't stop explaining complex concepts like, “you touch the screen to make your choice”. The machines are lined up in a row with the open side facing the room and thus feel very exposed compared to the old punch card system that had curtains you pulled while you make your choices. I assume the idea is that the screen angle makes it hard to see what you are doing from a distance, but I had the perhaps unjustified feeling that the hovering and underemployed poll worker, or anyone else who happened to be around, could be looking over my shoulder easily if he wanted to.

Our precinct votes in a common room graciously lent for this purpose by an ideally located Catholic church. To get to the common room you have to walk through a little courtyard, which is entered via an archway. Every time I've voted there has been a person, whom I always took to be a volunteer election official, sitting in a chair in the archway. Usually it's a local senior citizen, and they are very cordial, and point out the way to the entrance to the common room, which being on the far side of the courtyard isn't necessarily obvious if you've never been there before. This time, however, the senior citizen in the chair was wearing a bright orange vest that said something like DEPUTIZED POLICE. He stopped me and demanded to see my ID. He then scrutinized it carefully. Perhaps if it had said bin Laden I would have had to run for it.

Voting isn't anonymous — it's obviously necessary for the polling authorities inside to check my identity against the voter roll to make sure I'm registered, voting in the right place, and only voting once. This additional check was not, therefore, a particularly egregious assault on my privacy. But it was obviously pointless, and I didn't like it.

I'm working desultorily on a longer post about strange things that can happen in the classroom, which may be why this story in the Miami Herald leapt out at me over breakfast:

Teacher loses bet over leap out window: A 17-year-old boy jumped out of a second-floor window at Miami Beach High last week after betting his teacher he was strong enough to do it and not get hurt.

He won the bet, landing unharmed. No immediate word on whether he got any money out of it.

The teacher has been reassigned to a non-teaching job at a regional ACCESS Center while police and school officials investigate the incident.

The science class was in the middle of a lecture on evolution on Wednesday when the student — whose name was not released — began talking about jumping out the window to prove his point, according to the police report.

The teacher, Yrvan Tassy Jr., bet him $20 that he would hurt himself if he jumped, police said.

That's when the boy jumped out the window. He landed on his feet — in a patch of dirt and grass — and returned to the classroom, the police report stated. He asked Tassy for the $20, and Tassy said he'd bring it the next day, students told police.

Unlike some other incidents I have in mind, where I can feel sorry for the teacher, this one defies sympathy. I will take a firm stand on this complex question: Autodefenestration has no place in the classroom. Indeed, I'll even go on record against all forms of classroom defenestration, especially from above ground level.

South Florida is teeming with dangerous and weird wildlife, much of it non-native and out of control.

And, no, I don't mean the local lawyers or South Beach nightlife.

Forget the Gators: Exotic Pets Run Wild in Florida: The southern end of Florida, the most tropical state outside Hawaii, is teeming with exotic beasts. As if alligators, panthers and other native creatures were not enough, the steamy swamps, murky waterways and lush tree canopies here are a paradise for furry, scaly, clawed, fanged and otherwise off-putting things that have no business roaming this side of the equator.

“This stuff doesn't happen in New Jersey, it doesn't happen in Ohio, but in South Florida it happens constantly,” said Todd Hardwick, whose trapping business, Pesky Critters, gets 60 calls a day from people with peacocks on their roofs, caimans in their driveways and iguanas in their tool sheds. “Miami-Dade County is probably ground zero for exotic animals that are on the loose and doing very well.”

Then again, that last remark does fit some people I know….

Congratulations to our new (2 year old) neighbors, the FIU Law school, who have just passed a critical milestone on the road towards provisional accreditation. The Miami Herald reports that FIU's site visit went well, and that the provisional accreditation could happen as early as August, which would then allow FIU's first class to take the bar exam.

FIU has done everything by the book. They hired a Dean, Leonard Strickman, who is very experienced at navigating the ABA process, and I'm certain they will jump through all the necessary hoops in the shortest possible time.

One interesting thing, though. FIU is marketing itself as a more practice-oriented law schol, and a very international one, the implication being it's not trying to be like U.M. (although in fact we are very very international). Yet if rumors are to be believed, the folks they are hiring this year are exactly the kind of people we hire here at Miami. Indeed, some of them are people we interviewed.

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