Two guys killed in my office parking lot?

[Guest endymion]

I [heart] South Beach, but the curse applies here, and I think everywhere in Miami. I thought it was distracting enough when I spent two weeks of my life stalking a burglar through the stairwells of my office building with a camera in one hand and a stun gun in another. Now I find out that two guys were shot and killed in the parking lot at my office this weekend?

There's this one week every spring when everybody you see on Lincoln Road looks like a supermodel or something. Because they are. Fashion Week. Obnoxiously hot and excessively anxious six-foot-tall girls with portfolios stuff the elevators in my building.

Another week every year, dance beats and wasted club kids everywhere you look. I can't even go kayaking on the bay without running into a floating dance party.

Another week it's strippers and pornographers everywhere you look. I can't go kayaking on the bay without running into a floating porn shoot. I walk out of my office one day and realize that the girl checking me out is my favorite porn starlet.

Spring break is a few weeks because different schools get out at different times. You can really tell when it's spring break because all of the topless girls that you see on the beach are pale white girls with sunburned boobs instead of the normal Latina crowd.

There was also that NFL crowd that one week this year for the Superbowl, the only week this year when you could stand on Ocean Drive and look around and you couldn't spot a hot person anywhere in any direction. I was in the background of the live ESPN show's shot for two hours having lunch at a restaurant.

Oh and the foodies. Tents on the beach full of Hamptons yuppies running around drunk on the sand in gourmet bliss.

This last weekend was another one of those "interesting" weeks in South Beach. I wake up one morning and while I'm reading the newspaper and preparing to head to my office to start the week, and I read that two people were murdered there yesterday. In a spot that I walk through four or five times a day.

"May you live in interesting times."

[Guest pod]

"It is what it is".

2 murders thus far this year, and we're only halfway through it. Guess it could be worse.

[Guest coach]

Annette found a dead guy floating in the drainage canal next to her hotel in Miami Lakes last year. Face down, in his boxers, hand tied behind his back and a rope around his neck. Miami is an interesting city. I'm sure other cities have plenty of crime, but Miami is actually a little like living in a movie.

[Guest pod]

I would say so.

[Guest endymion]

...Miami is actually a little like living in a movie.

Yeah man, it is. Wow.

One time I got lost on the way to the airport. That sentence alone makes anybody who lives in Miami prepare for a bad story, right? I got lost and went down a side street to turn around, and I realized as I was turning around that I was looking at a SHANTY TOWN. Not the "Umoja Village" that was all over the news, but just a plain old Caribbean shanty town of four-foot-by-four-foot huts all crammed together, made out of corrugated metal. Just exactly like I've seen in Jamaica or on the news in Haiti. I had no idea before I saw it that such a thing existed in the United States.

[Guest coach]

Heh, where at?

[Guest obby]

I saw a group of girls which reminded me of a pack of Skittles.

One had a bright yellow outfit on with bright green hair. The other had a bright blue outfit on with bright red hair. The other with a bright orange outfit on with bright orange hair.

[Guest addictedtospace]

Police responded to a mobile home where a mother and three of her daughters were found hanged Tuesday.

http://www.cnn.com/2007/US/05/29/children.killed.ap/index.html

HUDSON OAKS, Texas (AP) -- A relative found the bodies of a 23-year-old woman and her four small daughters hanging in a closet in their mobile home Tuesday morning, all of them dead but an 8-month-old, who was taken to a hospital, the sheriff said.

The woman's sister, who also lived in the Oak Hills mobile home park, about 25 miles west of Fort Worth, found the bodies, Parker County Sheriff Larry Fowler said. He said she rescued the infant when she realized the baby girl was still alive.

Fowlers said the dead children were ages 5, 3 and 2. All had been hanged with strips of clothing and sashes, Fowler said.

"It's terrible, terrible," he said.

The infant was taken to Cook Children's Medical Center in Fort Worth and was in good condition, Fowler said.

"We're still in the process of notifying the next of kin and trying to sort this out and see just exactly what did happen," the sheriff said. He said it appeared to be a murder-suicide but the investigation was continuing.

The woman and her girls were last seen alive Monday evening, Fowler said. Early Tuesday, the woman's sister had stopped by the trailer because the woman hadn't gone to work and found the bodies, he said.

The woman was believed to be separated from her husband, who has been notified of the deaths, Fowler said.

Copyright 2007 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.

I guess we are not that special.

[Guest Marina22]

It's usually us Texas and Florida with the worst/wierdest crimes.

[Guest coach]

I guess we are not that special.

It's all those hip hoppers, I tell you!

[Guest addictedtospace]

I guess we are not that special.

It's all those hip hoppers, I tell you!

See now your getting it, I knew you'd come around.

[Guest tekniQz]

At least it wasnt 3. ;D

[Guest endymion]

Seeing the different crowds come through town every weekend, each with their unique quirks, does reinforce certain stereotypes. Especially when the unique quirks of one of those crowds is a double murder.

Another sad stereotype reinforced here is that apparently none of the victims' own friends would cooperate with police.

[Guest tekniQz]

Seeing the different crowds come through town every weekend, each with their unique quirks, does reinforce certain stereotypes. Especially when the unique quirks of one of those crowds is a double murder.

Another sad stereotype reinforced here is that apparently none of the victims' own friends would cooperate with police.

They will handle it on there own terms. ;)Thats the way it should be!!!OLDWEST STYLE SHOOTOUT!!!!

[Guest endymion]

There is only one weekend each year in Miami Beach when you have to worry about somebody getting shot during a "verbal altercation" between two groups.

[Guest pod]

Don't say that too loud, you might be accused of needing to be fitted for a white sheet.

[Guest endymion]

Well you know what I've been doing for a living lately. For anybody reading this who doesn't, I'm sitting in a law office (driving computers, I'm not the attorney) that handles a lot of hip hop artists and labels as clients. Just before this weekend started I almost posted a thread bitching about racist Miami Beach policy.

A couple of friends of mine were hit with a huge fine last Memorial Day weekend for illegal flyering. They own an indie hip hop label and they were out there trying putting in the footwork to promote their artists. I can't talk numbers or names but it was a four-digit fine for flyering. I happen to know a few things about how flyer promotions work in South Beach, and a FOUR DIGIT FINE for a first violation? That seemed racist to me. Ironically one of the two music producer friends with the hip hop label is Jewish, not black.

Miami Beach was announcing stricter enforcement of all kinds of things before this last Memorial Day weekend, from open containers to flyers. The announcement left a bad taste in my mouth as a Miami Beach resident. It was one thing for Ft Lauderdale to basically say, "we don't want youngsters partying drunk here". It seems different if a town says the same thing to a racial group than to an age demographic.

Miami Beach walks a thin line. Our town makes a lot of money by being a place where hip hop producers live, the fantasy land place that urban tracks idolize in their lyrics and show off in music videos. But the lyrics also promote negative stereotypes and questionable values.

[all4tribal1414779019]

aguacates duros y masios! 3 por 5!!!

[Guest RzO]

But the lyrics also promote negative stereotypes and questionable values.

that is the problem, and the cycle continues..

[Guest pod]

Fat Joe may have been a witness.

Click.

[Guest ClubDiva05]

Craziness! This is a block from my house. We walk over there all the time especially at weird hours since David's is open 24 hours. Sadly this is the only weekend that we have refused to leave the house except to quickly leave the beach to VooDoo on Saturday & Nocturnal Monday morning. I am so sick of pizza!!!

[Guest pod]

Like anything, it's the 10 percent that fuck it up for the 90 percent.

[Guest saintjohn]

10 percent

Ten Percent Nation?

[Guest Buck White]

I walk out of my office one day and realize that the girl checking me out is my favorite porn starlet.

Yeah, she's a salacious little vixen. Def one of my favorites.

[ryan2772]

saw this on the news last night. a friend of talmage's, i think....

http://www1.wsvn.com/news/articles/local/MI49584/

Wendy's manager shot after refusing to give customer all the chili sauce he wanted

MIAMI (AP) -- A Wendy's manager was shot several times in the arm early Tuesday trying to protect the restaurant's chili sauce, authorities said.

A man in the drive-thru argued with an employee because he wanted more of the condiment, police said. The worker told the customer that restaurant policy prohibited a customer from getting more than three packets.

The man insisted on 10, reports said. The employee complied, but police said the customer wanted more.

When the manager came out to speak to the man, the manager was shot, Miami-Dade police spokeswoman Mary Walters said. He was taken to Ryder Trauma Center at Jackson Memorial Hospital with non-life threatening injuries, police said.

The shooter fled with a female passenger.

(Copyright 2007 by The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.)