You may remember how last Memorial Day, Miami Beach police officers gunned down black tourists and seized the cellphones of anyone recording the cops in action. (Spoiler: the shot bystanders, ignored for a full year now, are suing!) Well, Urban Beach Weekend is back again this weekend, and the city is ready! They've installed a "one-time" DUI checkpoint, some watch towers, scanners that record everyone's license plates, some "light towers," some road blocks—and a whites-only bridge. Oops sorry, "residents-only" bridge. (Ahem: "tourists will be given the impression that they can’t get in.") Let's look at some notable quotables from the Herald today, which are likely [...]

"How do conditions compare locally to when the Reagan administration was asking for a second term. Statistically, have we seen the same kind of recovery from the 2007-to-2009 recession as we did from the 1980-to-1982 recession? Not to ruin the suspense, but the charts below suggest the answer is 'no.' The Miami area enjoyed a much more robust recovery at the end of the Reagan first term than it has under the Obama first term." —Well, there you have it then.

Millions-selling, Grammy-award winning, penguin and Kate Bush-loving rapper Big Boi appeared in a Miami court room yesterday to accept a plea deal in lieu of jail time for the felony drug charges he received after being arrested upon disembarking a cruise ship in August. If he passes three months of drug testing, completes fifteen hours of community service, and donates $2,000 to charity, the charges will be dismissed. Between the outfit he chose to wear to court, though, and his unsolicited sign-off at the end of the proceedings, it seems like he was maybe having a bit of fun at the expense of Dean Wormer [...]

The official Miami Herald line on The Heat, in light of last night's game 4 victory against the Bulls? "Deal with it, haters." Okay it's mostly over (the series is 3-1) but it ain't over yet, and it did go into overtime, and now they're off to Chicago, so maybe hold off just a little, Gloatsy McGloats-a-lot?

Pop quiz: what's America's seventh-largest metropolitan area and also its number-one most crazy? Here's a story, though, as these sort of things generally are, it's a bit impenetrable. The distilled version: Miami's police chief agreed to let the department star in a docusoap pilot about the hot and steamy life of cops in the City. But then he saw a cut of it, and saw that it was totally crazy—and learned it was produced by the Mayor's son!—and withdrew his participation. What a good guy! Except that was all lies, as his emails later proved. He had already known that the Mayor's son had recused himself from the [...]

Quite so: "Drew Carey: Gloria Estefan Chicago: Havana Empty factories: Empty condos Crippling unemployment: Crippling unemployment"

You know, I read all the reviews of Art Basel Miami, and I didn't link to any of them, because they bored me. Finally, late-breaking, here is an account of the art fair that I actually enjoyed reading! "It all began when some friends took me to a party where I ultimately met a very well-known German artist. Aside from the fact he was three times my age-and weight-there was something very seductive about being force-fed bumps, champagne, and chocolate. The German artist asked me if I wanted to come to his hotel room for a nightcap, and even though my vision was blurred-in this case that was a [...]

This time it's Newhouse/Advance's turn to destroy a newspaper: the New Orleans Times-Picayune, to be specific, which will fire a bunch of people, stop publishing daily and generally be suckier. (Also: "a new company, NOLA Media Group, will run the newspaper and its website, and another new company will print and deliver the paper." Innnntriguing.) Enjoy your new life blogging on this hot mess! Your move, McClatchy! Oh wait, Jake Gyllenhaal's uncle has got the destruction covered, okay, great. The whole thing about corporate reorganizing is most interesting: "Tribune and Advance are creating subsidiary companies for their newspapers." Hey, that's what I would do if [...]

Last night, Occupy Miami was rousted from their encampment, with a few arrested (including photographer Carlos Miller). They have negligible local support, and are remote enough from the rest of the Occupy movement that they're pretty much on their own. (Good news: the camp-clearing was "carried out almost completely without violence," except for when they clubbed a dude.) The small organization will have to regroup without an encampment; it's a hard movement to sustain in isolation, though they say they'll try. (Hint: what a prime American location for an Occupy movement to move homeless people into foreclosed houses!) That's the opposite of Oakland, where Saturday's large [...]

"A former Miami-Dade police officer, convicted of shaking down a motorist during a traffic stop, admitted Tuesday to violating his probation—because he got busted for allegedly hawking an illegally kept monkey." —Florida!

Oh yes: you probably do not know this, unless you read all of the papers. (And if you do read all the papers, that means you got to enjoy "Recall election could trigger change," a real doozy from the Herald, though they also have this brisk and informative thing for those unfamiliar. Trigger change! It sure could. Or could not. Anyway!) Today the mayor of Miami and also a Miami-Dade county commissioner are up for a recall vote, which is notably the work of one man. One billionaire, no less: Norman Braman. Now… the squeaky thing here is: he's right! There should be an ability to recall these [...]

"I have a plan for the schools. We need to have three types of them: one for kids who plan to attend college, one for those who don't, and a third for the knuckleheads. A big reason F-schools exist is that you have a lot of knuckleheads bringing good students down. These are realistic goals. If our leaders don't see fit to implement them, then I'll be forced to run for mayor myself." —It seems harder and harder for something to register as remarkable in American politics, but if 2 Live Crew founder Luther Campbell was to run for mayor of Miami, that would probably do it. [...]

This weekend, Thrillist sponsored a junket of media influencers on a trip to Miami, where they stayed at the Fontainebleau. While junketeers were responsible for their own airfare, the hotel and liquor and sponsored dinners were on the house. This is a collected oral history, in chronological order, of their stories from arrival to departure.

"I landed and immediately met a bunch of great people who were ready to get it popping. We get to the hotel and instantly the Thrillist special check-in had gift bags with so much swag that as it was handed to me I think I felt my bicep rip." -Richard Boehmcke.

"State probation officials are aware of the sidewalk camp — in fact, the men there say their probation officers directed them to the corner after leaving prison. Because of a strict Miami-Dade County law, the camp is in one of the few areas where sex offenders may legally reside." —If only we could put these GPS-tracked sex offenders to use somehow….