Your Evening Sift

It was another full day of posting in the South Florida blogosphere so we have a packed house for your Hump Day evening Sift.

A- Well, if you ever wanted an idea of what the legendary Michael's Genuine Food & Drink culinary experience is all about, Food For Thought has the ultimate in MGF&D reviews.

Now a little more than two years old, it's refreshing and gratifying to see the restaurant is still regularly finding new and interesting things to put on the menu, still dedicated to local, sustainable and artisanal foods, and still absolutely at the top of its game.

B- South Florida Lawyers has some comments on Republican's reaction to President Obama's Supreme Court nomination.

Have we returned to 2005 and entered Stupidville again?

For example, did you know that if you graduated summa from Princeton and was EIC of the Yale Law Review, that makes you "intellectually mediocre"?

Employing the laziest of stereotypes, it's a proven fact that if you are Hispanic and female you are by definition "temperamental and excitable" and possibly "Che Guevara in robes."

C- I Shot The Chef makes some great looking apple strudel.

D- The PhinPhanatic looks at the recent arrest of Dolphins player Randy Starks on South Beach and discusses whether race could have played into at all as Starks' attorney is claiming.

What is known is that on two occasions the officer tried to get Starks to stop and on two occasions he did not. By law, that is disobeying an officer, in other words try that if your speeding and you will see what happens when you say “sorry officer, I didn’t know you were trying to get me to pull over.

Until the facts in this case come out, if they ever come out, Starks’ attorney needs to sit down with the DA negotiate a simplified plea to a misdemeanor, get the felony dropped and tell his client to use a little more discretion the next time he cruises Southbeach...

E- Random Pixels finds an abandoned shopping bag at a Starbucks on South Beach and analyzes its contents.

Inside the Whole Foods bag was a bag from CVS containing a Right Guard deodorant stick and pack of Marlboro Lights. The cigs and the deodorant had been purchased at 2:15pm. Total cost $8.88. He saved 66 cents on the smokes. Paid for with a credit card.

The mystery shopper then walked 4 blocks to the Whole Foods at Alton Road and 10th Street and bought two bottles of Evian Spring Water 2:30pm. Total $4.98. Credit card used again. (I wondered why someone would care enough about their health to buy overpriced imported water but still smoke cigarettes.)

From Whole Foods our mystery shopper then walked across the street to Starbucks and took a table outside, spending some time and then leaving without their shopping bag.

F- Miamism answers a question many people who read blogs have: "What does $18 million get me on Miami Beach?"

This home is brand new and built in 2009 with 100 feet of water frontage and 24,000 square feet of land. It offers luxury in every way imaginable from custom closets, fireplace, elevator, 2-car garage, summer kitchen …just to mention a few things and was designed by Touzet Studio.

G- Brickell Life continues his glance back into Miami Beach history and tells us the story of former Nazi collaborator and Treblinka death camp guard Fedor Fedorenko.

Seven years later, Fodorenko decided to move to Miami Beach, where he took up residence among the elderly Jewish population, many of which were Holocaust survivors. Eventually his past caught up with him and Fodorenko was charged with falsifying his immigration documents and for not revealing his service as a Nazi camp guard during the war. Fedorenko claimed he was just a poor Russian, captured by the Germans and forced to be a guard to stay alive. But witnesses described in heartbreaking detail how he wore the uniform, carried a rifle, forced people into the gas chambers and even enjoyed days off with pay in nearby towns.

H- Carlos Miller, posting for Miami Beach 411, discusses Urban Weekend and, not surprisingly, takes a negative look at the behavior of police during the week.

Meanwhile, businesses on South Beach are recovering from the festive, but controversial, weekend that sends many of the locals out of town, and many of the tourists to jail.

The 11th Street Diner reported the worst of it.

“It’s a nightmare,” said manager Isabelle Fernandez, who has been working at the Diner for 16 years. “You have people walking out without paying, sending food back after they’ve eaten half of it.”

“While it was less physically violent this year than previous years, it was more verbally abusive,” she said.

One waitress named Bianca said she was physically threatened by a woman who accused her of getting her order wrong.

“The women are worse than the men,” said Fernandez.

I- Foodtastic! reminds us that next week is Coral Gables Restaurant Week.

J- Incertus analyzes the Myth of the Most Qualified Candidate.

One reason that the defenders of the straight, white male judge flame are howling so loudly over this is that this move on the Court is just the latest sign that their (our, since I'm one too) era of unquestioned dominance is over, and our unassailable privilege is leaking away too, and quickly. They don't like that because it makes them actually wonder if their accomplishments came as a result of merit or as a result of an old boy's network that rewarded straight, white masculinity in the way they imagine Affirmative Action rewards skin color or Title IX rewards being a woman or ENDA would reward being gay (if it ever passes). They can't deal with that challenge to their egos, so they lash out and prove themselves to be just what we thought they were--out of touch and frightened of the future, hanging onto a mythical view of the world and thinking that if they just say what they believe long enough and loudly enough, it'll be true.

K- Miami City Diggs profiles The Cosmopolitan on South Beach.

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