It's a pristine spring morning on the remote tip of Big Pine Key, 30 miles north of Key West. The lone paved road is surrounded by dense brush and wetlands that give way to the Gulf of Mexico. On this particular Tuesday, though, the usually silent landscape is dominated by the pulsing whoosh of a brown and tan helicopter that just touched down. Half a dozen workers in neon safety vests, surgical masks, and sunglasses emerge from the roadside and hustle toward the aircraft. Under the whirling two-blade rotor, they form an assembly line and dump bags of a yellowish substance called larvicide ... full story >>
If you order a hoagie in Philly, there's a good chance it will come on a Sarcone's roll. Sure, other bakeries supply bread for some shops around town, but Sarcone's has built a legacy out of its sesame-seed-studded bread and that chewy texture that's a workout for your jaw.
Order a hot dog in Chicago and soon you'll be staring down the end of a Vienna Beef frankfurter. Do other companies supply the vendors that provide the city with its daily allowance of tubed meat? Of course. But the blue and red logo of Vienna Beef is synonymous with Chicago dogs.
This is how it goes: Eve... full story >>
Marijuana keeps Craig Rodgers alive.
With his muscular physique and energetic, fast-talking personality, the 36-year-old Las Vegas resident seems the epitome of health — except for the banana-size scar on the left side of his head.
Rodgers was on a good career track as a trade-show organizer until 2006, when he was diagnosed with brain cancer. Now he's a passionate advocate of medical marijuana, lives on government disability, and earns a few extra bucks making candles that look like brains.
He was one of several patients who attended a conference in Tucson las... full story >>
Less than 24 hours after Loraine Franklin fell on the kitchen floor of her Georgetown home, she was dead.
It was December 29, 2011, and Franklin's daughters say today that, had Franklin, 80, not been prescribed a blood thinner called Pradaxa, she'd have lived to see the new year and subsequently celebrate her 60th wedding anniversary.
Instead, they say, the fall caused a blow to her head, which caused an intracranial hemorrhage, which doctors at the hospital could not stop. All the doctors could do, the daughters say, is make Franklin as comfortable as possible as her ... full story >>
Roger Gonzalez Jr. guides the car full of thieves through the Redland, past the groves of mango trees glowing blood red against the evening sky, toward a beige building with a large yard and a black Mercedes-Benz parked in front. He slows down. His father, Roger Sr., calmly checks the ammunition in his handgun. So do the three other passengers. They've all done this before.
Rosendo Betancourt — a skinny, high-strung ex-con only ten months out of prison — points to the house. There are 20 pounds of yerba (marijuana) inside, he says in Spanish. Then, for the sake of the lo... full story >>
Illustration by Andrew J. Nilsen with photo by Joseph Schell.
Perhaps choicest of the trophies on display inside the SOMA office of videogame designer Tim Schafer is the row of landmark heavy-metal albums, from Sabbath Bloody Sabbath to Painkiller, each bearing the black-scrawled autograph of a megastar who contributed songs to Brütal Legend, Schafer's videogame ode to metal.
"It's funny. Rob Halford signed records for us until his hand got tired, and then he quit," Schafer recalls. "But Ozzy Osbourne signed and signed for hours, talking with everyone, telling ... full story >>
For the past few years, the vast second floor above the former Globe Variety Store at Cherokee Street and Ohio Avenue has been a hive of activity — a jungle of color and clutter and cheap beer, an artists' loft, a music venue/rehearsal space, a shelter for itinerant misfits in need of a place to crash for the night. Ergo the nickname its tenants bestowed upon their ragtag studio space:
Pig Slop.
As of August 1, though, Zak Marmalefsky, Chloe Bethany, Jonathan Muehlke and their fellow Pig Sloppers must vacate the 22,500-square-foot building to make way for a more ambiti... full story >>
