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Oct 6-12, 1999

Oct 6-12, 1999 / Vol. 15 / No. 40

Life sentences

If you’ve never visited a prison, everything you’ve heard about the experience is true. As you walk past the armed guards, deposit your valuables in a bucket and enter the harshly lit halls — the full-length metal detector growing ever smaller behind you — you’re grateful you’re one of the few who can leave whenever…

Steve Schneider

Village people

They say any publicity is good publicity, and it must be true. Prior to last week, I really didn’t care what Disney was doing for the millennium. I’d seen those scary jumbo-puppet people mingling with the Miss America contestants during the pageant on TV, but they just didn’t spark my interest in Epcot 2000. Then…

Ray Kampf

Can you go home again to Celebration?

When Iris Kraft, organizer of the Celebration Book Fair, invited me to the event to speak to the community about my book, “The Celebration Chronicles: Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Property Values in Disney’s New Town,” I hesitated before accepting. In the writing profession, it’s not always a good idea to return to face…

Andrew Ross

Prepare yourself for the hunt

Despite the recent surge in prices, renters can still find reasonably priced apartment in the downtown neighborhoods. However, finding the right place takes more work — and a bit of luck as well. Tenants and brokers know what it takes to find a deal downtown. 1. Check the newspapers. “There’s a huge variety of rentals…

Samantha Mazzotta

Room for rant

In 1992, Amy Perkins paid $400 a month to rent a house downtown on Ferncreek Avenue. That house now rents for $910, and needless to say, Perkins stopped being able to afford the place years ago. Rents in the $600-$800 range are pushing younger professionals out of the downtown market. The median income for Orlando,…

Samantha Mazzotta

Beating ’round the Bush

Jim Hightower is a populist commentator whose zingers — flung both to the left and the right — hit with pinpoint accuracy. As a progressive, he faults not just party-line politicians but a political process that lets corporate execs, lobbyists and wealthy individuals decide who the contenders are by bankrolling them, resulting in choices that…

Jim Hightower

Paying off the interest

A whopping 1.4 million Americans filed for bankruptcy in 1998. While that trend has slackened somewhat in the first six months of 1999 due to rising incomes, the number of Americans declaring bankruptcy is still at alarming levels. In the debate over what to do about this phenomenon, two views stand out. Consumer advocates say…

Orlando Weekly Staff

Great balls of ire

We have all seen and been part of a dreadful yearbook-type group photo. Whether it was drama club, some ghastly wedding or the interdepartmental newsletter’s “What’s up with our gals in the pen-biting division?” piece, we’ve all sat alongside our colleagues wearing a smile we might as well have drawn on with marker, wishing the…

Liz Langley

Kickstart my art

At a May motorcycle exhibit in Stockholm, orchestra conductor Petter Sundkvist waved racetrack flags instead of a baton to guide 100 bikers as they revved their engines at different intensities to perform the five-minute “Wrooom” by Swedish composer Staffan Mossenmark. A critic said the piece had a range from “ominous-and-loud to ominous-and-deafening.” A minor setback…

Chuck Shepherd

Chicago-style game of musical chairs

Over the past five years, the Windy City has produced a countless number of a new breed of bands — Tortoise, Sea & Cake, Brokeback, Directions, Gastr Del Sol, Chicago Underground Orchestra, 5ive Style and DKV Trio are but a few. Created from different combos of a loose family of networking musicians, the resulting sound…

Christopher Howard

J-Sun pushes lingering clouds away

As hard as it is to break into the increasingly competitive local club circuit, it’s arguably more difficult to hang in there, working the same ground, the same crowd, to questionable result. But there’s always change, no matter the sense of stasis. And there’s been nothing but change for singer/songwriter/guitarist J-Sun, both personally and on…

Lindy T. Shepherd

Midday French that delights

Everyone knows the clichés about French restaurants: too expensive, too fattening, too intimidating. But Le Provence is challenging those notions with a new fixed-price lunch menu on weekdays. Starting at $12.95, it includes appetizer, entree and dessert. Some of the selections are healthy enough to earn any personal trainer’s stamp of approval, such as the…

Colleen Moore

Movies

“Ten Straight Years of Queer Film” is the sort-of theme for the 1999 edition of the Tampa International Gay and Lesbian Film Festival. It’s a tongue-in-cheek subtitle, if you will, for the sixth largest event of its kind in the United States. “We called it that just to kind of have fun with ourselves,” says…

Philip Booth

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