Your Morning Sift

Good morning.

The South Florida blogosphere has a number of closet lawyers. Just an observation, that's all. Enjoy your morning Sift.

A- Miami Beach 411 says a new video showing the Memorial Day shootings on Miami raises even more questions.

The obvious question after viewing this video is why did police wish to destroy evidence, which is a crime. Benoit said that police had destroyed other people’s cameras as well but nobody else has come forwarded with that claim.

B- Police cannot bar photography on public movie sets, according to Man or Maniac?

So to sum this up for you: if it's a public space, and the public is allowed to be there, so are cameras, and the public can use those cameras to take pictures of anything they see and there is nothing the Fort Lauderdale PD can do about it without violating the law.

C- The Miami Bike Scene posts a video from this weekend's bike polo BBQ event.

D- The South Florida Theatre Scene shares some thoughts on the closing of the Florida Stage and the media stories that have reported it.

Sure, the drop in subscribers comes on the heels of the first season at the Kravis Center, but you have to factor in that a lot of Florida Stage's subscriber base was in their 60s and 70s when the theatre opened twenty-odd years ago, and they retained most of the those same subscribers until this past year - chances are good that as many of them died as simply decided not to make the drive. And a good many have probably found themselves unable to afford theatre tickets; it's not just the unemployed that are finding themselves short of income; a lot of nest eggs have been evaporating, since a fixed income doesn't square well with a steadily rising increase in the cost of living.

E- Check out the Van Dyke's musical calendar for June at Soul of Miami.

F- Bark Bark Woof Woof reflects back on his high school graduation...some 40 years ago.

I was the class speaker at the graduation. I got the job by default. We didn't have valedictorians or such, so the administration asked if anyone wanted to speak, so I volunteered. We were a small class -- 47 students -- at a private school, and I'd been in school with some of my classmates since Grade 3. I don't remember exactly what I wrote -- and I doubt anyone else remembers -- but I do know that I ended with a quote from Bilbo Baggins from the first chapter of J.R.R. Tolkien's The Fellowship of the Ring: "I don't know half of you half as well as I should like, and I like less than half of you half as well as you deserve."

.