Church Street blues
Without an audience, Rade Zone is dead. Zone, a stand-up comic, doubles as a street performer whose act aims to test the limits of audience interaction. But a crackdown by Orlando police has forced Zone and other street artists away from high-profile spots in the thick of the downtown action to dark, lonely patches of…
Leachman parts the waters – on skis
Jennifer Leachman is the tall, tan, taut thirtysomething mother of a 2-year-old wake-boarder named Taylor. She is also a world-class water skier who dunked records in the slalom division of the World Tour in 1985, 1987 and, remarkably, 10 years later in 1996. And she is the first female professional skier to own and operate…
Kingdom come
Gay Day grows as a party. But a an excuse for raising money, are the locals losing out? The crowd inside Pensacola’s Bayfront Auditorium is hot, but the heat has nothing to do with it. This is the muscled-torso set, all smooth skin and sweat, T-shirts and tank tops stripped off and stuffed into back…
Little white lies threaten civil rights
To John Barry, affirmative action is an abomination. It is unfair, unconstitutional, immoral. It traps African Americans in dead-end bureaucracies and aids the rich. It casts doubt on every person who benefits because people say: He’s only there to fill a quota. Worst of all, it discriminates based on race — the very behavior the…
Ride promoter takes road outta town
Troubled by fund-raising practices that limited profits and likely scared off riders, the primary beneficiaries of the Florida AIDS Ride have canceled their sponsorship, causing the California promoter of the just-completed fund-raiser to pull out after two years running the three-day, Orlando-to-Miami bicycle ride. After a first year when just 18 percent of donations reached…
Affirmative reaction
Metro Savings Bank of Orlando was desperate for cash — lots of it. Otherwise federal regulators had given bank officials an ultimatum: find a buyer or face liquidation. Merrill Lynch and Co., a global leader in financial services, was nearly as anxious to open a federally chartered savings bank offering trust services. ;;Because Metro is…
Reconstructing America
There is a bill in Congress that the media is ignoring … but you and I should get behind. Sponsored by Rep. Matthew Martinez, it’s an emergency jobs bill to begin using the productive capacity of millions of laid-off people who are now flooding America’s job market … and finding zero opportunity. This bill doesn’t…
