Week ending August 15, 2025
Table of Contents
Introduction
The family returned from a 10 day trip to California, home of bomb burritos, excellent pizza, pretty flowers and actually cold waters– if not quite cold enough. It was good to reconnect with family there.
But, I certainly kept my eyes on Florida and noted some things, even I wasn't able to attend much in person (which will change starting around the time this posts!).
Just a reminder that arrests aren't an indicator of crime (convictions can be, though, and even charges filed sort of but not arrests), free speech is beautiful (especially when we disagree with it) and Florida sunshine is intense, especially when compared to Carl, the name locals call the fog in San Francisco.
This week there's more detention center in the Everglades, more restaurants closing in South Florida, more interesting history but lots more pretty photos.
It's also the start of school this week and that means traffic goes from horrible (third worst in the nation!) to somehow worse. Miami and its surrounding area was built without serious city planning and past 57th Avenue (the edge of Coral Gables) is on one giant, monstrous grid. Schools are on every major road, including eight lane streets, causing the traffic to just be awful.
That said, the schools here are, despite plenty of local naysayers, pretty darn good. We're happy with the public school our youngest attends for high school and the public school our oldest attends for college. The kids are happy, they're doing amazing stuff and so, we're happy.
Except during drop off and pick up time at the high school.
If you like what we're doing here with TWIFL please leave a donation if you are able!
Finite
Disappointment
The Detention Center in the Everglades has detained hundreds of Cuban born immigrants
In 2024, Florida became the first state where the majority of Latinos voted for a Republican for President. It was also the only state to do so in 2024. A lot of those voters were Cuban born citizens. Now, their fellow Cubans are making up a large portion of the Detention Center in the Everglades.
Bea L. Hines, the legendary reporter and columnist for the Miami Herald points out that the family separation policies currently being enacted mirror the policies of enslavers before the American Civil War.
Naomi Feinstein
While the governor of Florida is back at giving fun names to horrifying places (a proposed second immigration center is a former prison recently closed for inhumane treatment of inmates), naming a proposed second immigration detention center "Deportation Depot," I personally think there's a possibility he's anticipating the Everglades site being shut down by a judge. After all, the only thing that's remotely legal about it is his right to make such a place under an "emergency declaration" he made during the Biden Administration.
Can you imagine building a playground in your background with a permit and not getting busted for it in the long run? Yet, that's exactly what the state itself did. And that particular land is owned by a county and has unique binding agreements with the Miccosukee Tribe of Indians about its usage.
There were a lot more stories about this but as its dominated this newsletter lately and as, to be honest, I find it depressing, I'll leave it at that.
There is a weekly prayer vigil open to everyone of any (or no) faith. Every Sunday at 5 PM.
And...more sour news for restaurants in Miami Dade County
The Miami Herald compiled a list of the known restaurants to close this year. From James Beard Award winning ones to ones over twenty years old, it's been a bad year for the restaurant industry here– the story about two dozen iconic places that have folded permanently, or in a few cases, claim they might come back. But good news! Playboy is moving its headquarters here. Which is odd given this is one of the states where to view their content at all you need to provide your ID, which may seem like a good idea to protect kids until you recognize a) it doesn't work and b) its an easy way to track usage for other reasons.
Trailer Parks
One of my favorite shirts I've seen in my travels has a bunch of people on it and has the words, "If you mess with me you mess with my whole trailer park." It's a bit of a joke about poverty and unity in spite of poverty and maybe isn't in the best taste, if you think about it too long (as I always do). But a trailer park in Miami Dade County is suing to protect their property because they are being evicted. Long time readers of TWIFL will know that affordable housing is a major concern both with this site and for the majority of residents in South Florida.
While there are jokes abounding about trailer parks, and they have major problems, they can provide affordable housing for residents--until the property the trailers sit on is sold. Mind you, in order to move one of these things costs thousands of dollars and you need a destination and that's contingent on the mobile home not being cemented to the ground.
The Herald does a good job on this story.
Florida
Gonna Florida
Gator devours massive python in Florida Everglades, Near the Detention Center in the Everglades
By "near Alligator Alcatraz," what the Palm Beach Post is trying to say is near the Everglades National Park Visitor's Center at Shark Valley 11 miles from the gate of the detention center.
, The Palm Beach Post
Not to be outdone by an alligator...
Tiffany Razzano
Just a reminder that pythons have never been a threat to humans in the United States (so far, there are zero fatalities– ever, which doesn't mean you should let toddlers run wild in areas trafficked by pythons. They are however a catastrophic threat to every other land mammal that lives in the Everglades.
Historic
Interlude
Following up on last week's note...
As I said last week, crime in the 1980s was worse than (most of) you think. That said, even a lot of the rhetoric of crime in the past was racially motivated, as Matt Brown writing for the Associated Press pointed out this week.
MATT BROWN
Though that piece's end should be calibrated with Philadelphia Enquirer columnist Will Bunch's warning that what's going on in DC is more than just a distraction.
An excellent book by an award winning professor of history, Dr. Elizabeth Hinton, goes into how Kennedy's war on poverty shifted under Lyndon B. Johnson (a Democrat) to the war on crime.
Andrew Preston
100 years ago in Miami Bryan was still being praised and the road to Alligator Alcatraz was contracted to be built
William Jennings Bryan, whose last prosecution before he died in July of 1925 was of a Tennessee man who taught evolution, was still getting praise on the front page of the Miami Herald weeks after his passing.
And the section of Tamiami Trail that connected it to Miami was contracted 100 years ago this week. Today Tamiami Trail is being made world famous for the detention center smack dab in the middle of it bearing the racist name, "Alligator Alcatraz."
Infinite
Hope
More California Dreaming...
Nothing like returning to your roots for a vacation to rejuvenate the spirit.
Pictures taken from Sebastopol, CA (the flower and grapes), Bodega Bay and San Jose's San Pedro Square Market. Copyright Philip Cardella 2025.
Liberty City's Book Store is Planning for a Bright Future
WLRN, the local PBS and NPR affiliate here in South Florida, ran a nice piece on a independent bookstore in Liberty City, home of the first public housing complex for Black Americans ever built, Liberty Square. While massive developments in Liberty City (on the grounds that used to be Liberty Square) and just down the road, literally, in Little Haiti, threaten a wave of gentrification, Roots Bookstore & Market is working to unite the neighborhood.
While looking into it a bit, I found the Miami Times, Miami's oldest Black owned newspaper, did a great piece on the store in June that I missed, as well.
Bookstores, national parks and pizza parlors are my happy places.
Aside from the awesome Books and Books, there's a dearth of local bookstores in Miami Dade County. I hope to visit Roots Bookstore & Market this week.
Sofia Zarran
Where to eat in Miami when you're sad
Gotta love this. Though, be warned South Florida, while almost all of these are local places, Publix is on the list.
Nicole Lopez-Alvar
Bear
the History Hound Finds
Well behaved women rarely make history
Professor of History Heather Cox Richardson goes into the history of Social Security and how the first woman to serve in a President's Cabinet and who holds the record for the longest serving Cabinet member changed history.
Heather Cox Richardson
Foreign Policy Professor Daniel Drezner wants you to know Niall Ferguson is 'Very, very wrong."
Daniel W. Drezner
The Government is Now Deciding What History Museums Can Display
Columnist Parker Molloy on the changes being forced upon American museums.
Parker Molloy