Wednesday September 26, 2007
Swimmers in Sunday’s triathlon.
Monday August 13, 2007
Somewhat relevant to our discussion about beating the heat, the Herald profiles the Hash House Harriers. “Not runners with a drinking problem, but drinkers with a running problem.” Turns out that running and drinking is a global thing. The lesson is clear: you gain more hydration from drinking beer then you loose through the alcohol. (thanks Steve)
Wednesday June 27, 2007
LOL: The Miami Dolphins sent an e-mail to hundreds of their season ticket buyers in a way that revealed all of their e-mail addresses
Wednesday June 6, 2007
How beneficial was the Super Bowl for South Florida? South Florida CEO magazine takes 2,000 words to say that nobody knows. The high estimates are in the hundreds of millions of dollars. One thing’s for sure — the indirect TV publicity is priceless. (Ok, not priceless: “the report by Sports Management Research calculates that just the region’s exposure thanks to the Super Bowl — Miami, South Florida and Dolphin Stadium hometown Miami Gardens were mentioned 65 times during the game broadcast — was worth $48.5 million.”)
Monday May 14, 2007
Rick does a great homage to a golf course that’s just closed, Raintree. Now if only I had a blogroll, you could go see it.
Thursday April 12, 2007
What’s the Miami connection with the Don Imus flap? Bob Norman lays it out, along with an analysis of why the Miami Herald failed to report the story. (Thanks, Steve)
Tuesday April 10, 2007
The Miami Dade College chess team has been scoring among the nation’s best for years.
Monday March 12, 2007
Yikes: Miami is #98 out of 100 on a list of the most walkable cities in the US. The main criteria was the percentage of people who walk for exercise. Contrast with an older study (no date) which looked at people who walk to work — Miami was #79 there. (via TM)
Wednesday February 28, 2007
Everybody knows that building baseball stadium with public funds is a terrible idea. Currently a proposal for a Marlins baseball stadium (total cost: $450 million; Marlins ownership contribution: $45 million; public contribution (city, county, and state): $405 million) is being seriously considered. Miami Vision tries in vain to justify the concept with some interesting ideas. “A few million here, a few million there, it all adds up.”
Monday February 26, 2007
“Republican leaders in the new Legislature have enthusiastically exhumed the oft-snuffed plan to throw away $60 million of public funds on a Major League Baseball park in South Florida.” Hiaasen lets us know how he feels about it.
Friday February 16, 2007
Nighttime sports, Flamingo park
Nighttime baseball, Flamingo park. See also nighttime soccer, right next door. There’s a fence along the infield edge, but the improvised soccer field extended past it a little, and at one point the the soccer ball got kicked deep into the baseball game. This resulted in a fun interaction, with joking from the second base ref and maybe slight defensiveness from the soccer player who retrieved the ball. Flamingo park was humming, with another baseball game and another soccer game going on other fields, each of which was a notch more “serious” then these.
These baseball teams had uniform t-shirts and mismatched pants. The players were men and women of all different ages. The serves were underhand, and there were two referees. The soccer players were at least as good, but there was no way to tell who was on what team, so less interesting to watch. The teams included some teenagers, and the goals, fairly hardcore at maybe five feet wide, were marked by piled-up jackets.
Permalink · Comment [1] · Tags: photos, sports · Post to del.icio.us, digg, reddit
Thursday February 8, 2007
Via the radio yesterday, one of the main complaints that out-of-towners had about Miami during Superbowl weekend was the overzealous and unreasonable measures taken by the Miami police. They specifically quoted someone with ESPN, though I’m not sure if he was specifically referring to Miami PD or the County department. Sort of related: Miami’s Operation Tornado results in 101 arrests.
Tuesday February 6, 2007
Over at Fast Company, the business of hosting the Super Bowl. A sober analysis finds the official figure of a $350 to $400 million impact on South Florida’s economy is probably overstated by $260 to $370 million. Oops!
Wednesday January 31, 2007
Volleypalooza: the models of South Beach play volleyball. Will the wonders never cease? Christian wonders (jokingly?) where in the tori anus (.com!) Shulaville is. This reveals it: “Shulaville [is] Sprint’s ceremonial name for Lummus Park.”
Wednesday January 10, 2007
Here we go again with the Marlins stadium
Oh my God, here we go again: Plans for a new Florida Marlins baseball stadium in Miami include the use of community redevelopment money. Let me quote the first few paragraphs:
The latest plan to build the cash-strapped Florida Marlins a new stadium in downtown Miami involves using millions of dollars of money meant to improve blighted neighborhoods.
It also calls for the city of Miami to deed property to Miami-Dade County so the Marlins — which would lease the stadium — could receive a tax break. And it requires money, once again, from the state Legislature.
“They’re looking at the Park West/Overtown CRA boundary that stops a block from where the site is,” said Miami-Dade tax collector Ian Yorty, the county’s point man for stadium negotiations. “The city has plans to expand the boundary.”
Money from a Community Redevelopment Agency, by law, must be used to spur economic development in “blighted” neighborhoods. Tax money created from a CRA stays inside the district.
Word of the new stadium plan infuriated some community members, such as Overtown’s Irby McKnight, who said the CRA has yet to build a single home in Overtown.
“I’m just looking at this in amazement,” he said. “We’ll remember this on Election Day.”
Miami Commissioner and CRA Chairwoman Michelle Spence-Jones declined to comment.
But Miami Mayor Manny Diaz described using CRA money to build a new ballpark as money well spent. He believes a baseball stadium would anchor redevelopment on the downtown’s western flank, much like the Carnival Center for the Performing Arts, which receives $1.43 million yearly from the CRA, has spurred development on the city’s eastern edge.
I have to say that I share McKnight’s amazement. The nerve of these people — and then the head of the CRA has “no comment” when the newspaper asks her about it? How’s that for a big middle finger to the taxpayers?
Let’s review. Baseball is a business; the government has no more business supporting it then they do paying McDonalds to build restaurants. Plus, they’re cynically bending the whole point of the CRA by expanding the boundary to include their chosen site! And if we didn’t have ample local proof that sports stadiums in fact don’t “anchor redevelopment” for jack shit (Hello Miami Arena? And the Orange Bowl was built in the 1940’s . . . last time I drove by it was located in a nice quiet residential neighborhood?), we could turn to the research, which shows overwhelmingly that government spending on stadiums is a big waste of money.
Permalink · Comment [5] · Tags: cra, money, politics, sports · Post to del.icio.us, digg, reddit
Wednesday January 3, 2007
The MiamiSportsDude had a busy day today.
Tuesday August 8, 2006
Miami will host the Superbowl in 2010.
Wednesday July 12, 2006
Oh crap, Critical Mass already happened. I guess I need to get out ahead of this stuff a little.
Wednesday July 5, 2006
Nevermind soccer. How about kickball? In Miami? Christian says that the WAKA Founders Cup World Kickball Championship is on July 22 in Bicentennial Park. Meanwhile, White Dade tells us about drunk Kickball in Brickell. In an odd convergence, both of these posts refer to the same kickball league. Go figure.
Thursday June 22, 2006
Right before launching into a discussion of zoning that made my eyes glaze right over, Rebecca Wakefield reveals why the Heat won. “Props go out to the lithesome gold-diggers at the Forge (you know who you are) who did their hometown proud last week by keeping several members of the Dallas Mavericks, ah, occupied, well into the night before a critical game 4. ... The Heat’s championship is due to the dissipating forces of South Beach at least as much as Dwyane Wade’s bank shot.”
The Pulp’s interesting little meta-tidbit about the Heat/Mavericks championship. “Don’t believe a friend of a friend who claimed to have heard the Dallas Mavericks owner yell profane accusations.”
There is no shortage of Heat victory celebration posts and articles around. The only one remotely worth it is Christian’s post about the impromptu parade on Washington Avenue Tuesday night (ever the generous one, he also uploaded his full 457 picture roll). I’m sure the official parade will be great. But c’mon – a celebration three days after the victory? And only for people who can take a half-day off work?
Update: Oh, and read Christian’s hilarious reflections on posting the images, a comment that’s longer then any post he’s done on fanless in months.
Wednesday June 21, 2006
Hey, everybody: the Heat just won!
Wednesday May 17, 2006
Heat playoffs tickets presale passwords. I don’t care about the Heat; in fact, I have no idea what this is all about. Might be interesting for the b-ball fans, tho.
Thursday April 13, 2006
Let’s test this out: Steve Klotz rolls his eyes at the latest name change of what I still call ‘Joe Robbie.’
