Your Evening Sift

We're already moving into mid-week, readers. This is definitely good news. As is a very decent Tuesday evening Sift. Enjoy.

A- Are pop-up restaurants about to take off in Miami? Eater Miami has one that might signal the start of a trend.

Phuc Yea!, they tell us, is a progressive rendition of Southeast Asian cuisine, which will magically appear next month in the Crown Bistro,19 SE 2nd Avenue in the northwest corridor of the Ingraham Building, from early September until November 2011 serving dinner only from 5:30 pm until 10:30pm, Tuesday through Saturday, and will be closed Sunday – Monday.

B- Vanilla Ice will be this year's Grove Bed Race Grand Marshal, according to Coconut Grove Grapevine, who thinks he's perfect for the position because "Ice is very athletic."

What is it about Vanilla Ice that merits assuming the Grand Marshal reins previously held by famed fast-trackers and Indy Car legends Helio Castroneves and Tony Kanaan? Well, aside from being a long time Miami resident, Ice is very athletic, he auditioned for the X Games after winning three straight Motocross titles at the Grand National Motocross Championships and once was the world’s No. 6-ranked sit-down Jet Ski racer. Plus he's a big Bed Race fan!

C- Great overhead of the swamp, from Go Hydrology! You can almost visualize Michele Bachmann's oil rigs, can't you?

D- South Florida Food and Wine lists some upcoming food and wine events happening in, you got it, South Florida.

E- Wide Lawns and Narrow Minds details her experience at a recent food truck rally in Fort Lauderdale.

The food trucks are a victim of their own success. The event was too crowded for the cooks in the trucks to handle the number of orders they were getting. There were several trucks, but not enough to handle several thousand hungry people at once and really, those trucks aren't meant to serve such throngs coming at them all at one time. The lines were ridiculous and the trucks were all clearly in the weeds, taking more orders than they could get out. This caused a situation where there were two long lines for the starved - one to place your order and one to actually wait for your food to come out. Waits at each truck were averaging around an hour. For a four hour event with many trucks to visit, it just wasn't possible to sample much of anything except standing in line and I didn't see anyone who wasn't aggravated. Worst of all, I didn't see anyone actually eating anything and Gourmet in the Park is supposed to be about food! My husband and my friend's husband thought maybe the beer line would be faster because there was nothing to prepare, but the beer line was over 200 people long.

F- Brickell Life's Sunday morning breakfast.

G- Miamism Pix posts an interesting shot of the Freedom Tower.

H- Blind Mind shares some rare thoughts on politics.

The jockey went on to call out Governor Rick Scott for wasting $178M of taxpayer money on a ridiculous study when the state is struggling to fund other programs and cutting the jobs of teachers, firefighters, and policemen. He ended by saying, "This guy has got to go. People of Florida need to make sure their voice is heard at the next election".

I- uVu Blog links to an associated site that has all 18 Optic Nerve movies for your viewing pleasure.

J- The Republican Party continues to aggressively work against the American public as Bark Bark Woof Woof shows us in a post from today.

K- Eye on Miami comments on the Department of Justice's damning findings regarding Miami-Dade jails.

The Department of Justice's Civil Rights Division has been investigating conditions at Miami Dade County jails for 3 1/2 years. Their findings have been released. Here is the kicker: The County Commission knew about the investigation because they got a memo from Carlos Alvarez on April 4, 2008. Still the Feds found all these problems. They say "a majority of the findings relate to the medical and mental health services provided by Jackson Memorial Hospital's Corrections Health Services."

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