Alvin Lee, 1944-2013

Via Billboard.com:

British blues rock great Alvin Lee, a guitarist and singer whose scorching performance at Woodstock propelled his band Ten Years After to wide fame, died on Wednesday of "unforeseen complications" from a routine surgery, family members announced on his website. He was 68.

Your pre-rush hour time waster

A classic Saturday Night Live bit from 1975....which, for some unknown reason, just popped into my head last night.






Saturday night live, franco still dead, chevy chase, generalissimo francisco franco still dead

Your lunch hour time waster

Via earthtouch:

Nature photographer has a close encounter with a lioness in Botswana.

Very close.

The Grand Bay Hotel in Coconut Grove...Going, going, almost gone...

The Grand Bay, then....

Miami News, May 31, 1983.
(Click here to enlarge.)

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GRAND BAY'S GRAND, IF YOU'RE ON THE COMPANY

Miami Herald
Sunday, December 4, 1983

It is billed as a hotel for executives, which sounds like gray-suited pipe smokers sitting next to big spitoons, clearing their throats and checking stock tickers.

So how come this place called the Grand Bay Hotel rises above Coconut Grove like a giant Mayan wedge, with bougainvillea dripping from terraced balconies?

And how come the rooms are filled with baby grand pianos, spiral stairways, canopied beds and bathtubs as big as volcanic craters?

And why has the hotel 's grand opening cocktail party for 1,200 next Friday become, as the Grand Bay 's sales director puts it, "the most coveted invitation of the social season?"
[...]
A room at the Grand Bay isn't cheap. To get a two-level suite with a spiral stairway and a baby grand piano you must have a baby grand expense account. Those top-of-the-line suites go for $375 a night. (Only two of them come with pianos).

A special corporate rate for single or double rooms, sans piano, is all the way down there at $90 a night, and still includes a pretty big bathtub.

That rate, along with the hotel 's style and list of amenities, has inspired nearly 100 corporations to open accounts with the Grand Bay.

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Doormen at Grand Bay Hotel, Jan. 9, 1986.
Photo - Al Diaz/Miami Herald.

Limo driver in front of the Grand Bay in Coconut Grove, Jan. 19, 1989.
Photo - Mary Lou Foy/Miami Herald.

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There was a time when Miami tourists couldn't do better than stay at the Grand Bay Hotel. Now homeless people sleep in the lobby.

Miami Herald
April 3, 2010
by DOUGLAS HANKS

Pigeons live in the barren penthouse nightclub of the former Grand Bay, South Florida's last five-star hotel.

A vagrant recently went to the bathroom in the vacant lobby, where black graffiti colors the walls. The dining room hints of smoke, the remnant of a campfire built on the polished cherry floors.

No local hotel has suffered as steep a fall as Coconut Grove's Grand Bay, which closed two years ago for a $20 million renovation and never reopened.

Now the subject of a protracted foreclosure fight, the boarded-up hotel offers no hint -- inside or out -- that it once epitomized the lavish and libertine Miami of the 1980s.

"It was hot. It was the place," said David Feder, general manager of the Turnberry Isle resort in Aventura and a long-time hotelier in South Florida.

'"If you were thinking luxury in Miami, you thought the Grand Bay Hotel."

Michael Jackson and his entourage occupied two floors during their stay in 1984 before the late singer's Orange Bowl concert. Liberace requested a Baby Grand piano for his suite.

On the ground floor sat the Grand Cafe, where the French chef served Everglades frog legs with sheep's cheese polenta. Waiters offered guests white gloves with newspapers to prevent soiled fingers.

Abandoned Grand Bay Hotel, April 1, 2010.
Photo - Al Diaz/Miami Herald.

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...and now.

"Demolition is almost completed and the pilings and site construction
[on Grove at Grand Bay] will commence between March 15 – April 1.
The vertical upward movement ofconstruction will commence
between mid April and the first part of May."
-via Cervera Real Estate.

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Video by Bill Brothers

'The Incredible Shrinking Herald' ... 2.0

From Miami New Times, June 8, 1995.

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"People are fleeing in record numbers and not being replaced. Morale has hit bottom. News coverage has been severely curtailed. Money is scarce. And the corporate big shots love it." -"The Incredible Shrinking Herald," by Jim DeFede. Miami New Times, June 8, 1995

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The Miami Herald held its "annual meeting" at Jungle Island on Thursday.

The purpose of these yearly affairs is to get Herald staffers together in one room and bring them up to speed on what's going on at the paper.  And to remind them that they're supposed to be "excited" about working at Miami's "24/7 Information Source."

Think Amway convention meets North Korean pep rally

Meeting organizers got the troops in the spirit of things by handing out miniature tambourines emblazoned with the Herald logo. They were also given the chance to take home a piece of the soon-to-be-demolished Herald building: swag bags with chunks of marble from the lobby were handed out.

At the meeting, much of the talk centered around the paper's upcoming move to its new building in Doral.

The affair was catered by Doral-area restaurants which staffers will presumably be patronizing since the new building doesn't have a cafeteria.

There were some light-hearted moments also: A video was screened that showed Herald publisher David Landsberg preparing for the move to the new building by being bound and trussed in bubble-wrap.

Staffers, I'm told, left the meeting with a renewed sense of purpose and a clear vision of their goal in life: Producing South Florida's best newspaper.

And that was in evidence the very next day.

Splashed across Friday's front page was an example of good, old-fashioned American journalism - a hard-hitting, no-punches-pulled, page-one piece on .... Early Child Development.

(Dave Lawrence may have retired as publisher in 1999, but he still knows how to pitch a story.)

"The Herald has developed a great sensitivity, even a skittishness, about offending local leaders. It's hard to even find a news picture on the front of the local page any more. There is just this steady stream of pictures of kids smiling or Smurfs on parade or something else like it." -Kevin Hall, former Tropic magazine editor, quoted in Miami New Times, June 8, 1995.

What wasn't brought up at the Jungle Island pep rally, was any talk of recent departures of key Herald staffers including, Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative reporter and editor Michael Sallah, education reporter Laura Isensee, Caribbean and Latin America reporter Frances Robles, photographer Tim Chapman and healthcare issues reporter John Dorschner....staffers who apparently won't be replaced in the forseeable future. The Herald hasn't made a new hire in years.

Miami Herald employees pose in front of building, circa 2003.

But if you're a Herald reader, there's still reason to be hopeful. 

Sure, the paper's coverage of local stories that actually impact readers' lives is a spotty and haphazard.

But, its coverage of the failed nation of Haiti is second to none. And, if you're like me, you just can't wait to read another page one story about Haiti...after all the important local stories have been covered.

And, the paper still has a dance critic.

Your lunch hour time waster

Ravi the juggler solves the Rubik's cube while.....juggling!