Conexión Miami / Taken for a ride, in a Cadillac

We found Eye on Miami’s blog post on David Beckham’s plan for a soccer stadium in Miami quite interesting. The first paragraph says it all:

While explaining why the plan for the new soccer stadium in Miami’s FEC slip (and Bicentennial Park) was so valuable for residents, David Beckham’s adviser David Altschuler recently said that trading a Chevy for a Cadillac should be a “pretty fair transaction.” His comment underscores a fundamentally elitist misunderstanding of the needs of our community under the mantle of attracting a major league soccer team to Miami. Such a notion of status is not the central issue to define this issue, nor is [Miami Herald columnist] Michael Putney’s recent assertion that soccer legend David Beckham strikes him as a “regular guy” as a rationalization for deference. The stadium – in the last open space in downtown Miami – is wrong because it insults any sense of smart urban design in contemporary times by deferring to a soccer legend as a front man for financial backers. How dumb can we be – again?

Shane Battier’s dual personality

At the Arena, seen among the stars of the Miami Heat — Wade and Lebron — Shane Battier looks like just another player, although it might be extreme to call him an average player. His role in the Heat — champion of the past two NBA seasons — is reminiscent of that of a medieval shield bearer assigned to scout the road, with the knowledge that eventually Lebron James will pass, from the left, from below, whooshing from behind, Lebron James will pass and he, Shane Battier, an incorruptible shield bearer, needs to clear that stretch of court, no matter by what means, to clear it all the way to deceptive boundary of what’s possible.

Well, that’s what we thought Battier’s role was, until Saturday (May 24), when he was named the NBA’s Top Teammate, as reported by The Associated Press. But it seems that the efficient Miami forward has been living a dual life, as a shield bearer on the court and a leader in the locker room. Coach Erik Spoelstra knows this well: “I think everybody would agree that you could make a case for a lot of guys in the locker room, but Shane, he’s the ultimate teammate.”

Rick Scott’s austerity

One might suppose, seeing what we’ve seen so far — $10 million in TV ads since mid-March, and the more-than-$2.5 million contribution from the Republican Governors Association, to mention just two examples — that Rick Scott has everything he needs for his reelection.

Challenged by Charlie Crist and six months before the election, we know that the current governor of Florida could amass $100 million for expenses, collected in a thousand-and-one ways, either by money raised as a governor since 2011 or by return effect from the money with which he has supported political committees, or by money he has crammed into the coffers of the political entity to which he owes his allegiance, the humble Republican Party.

There is one fly in the ointment, however. Charlie Crist might not need an unbelievable amount of money to beat Scott, relying only in the symbolic power he accumulated during his five previous state campaigns.

A festival on the beach

Sgt. Bobby Hernández, spokesman for the Miami Beach Police Department. is convinced that the Urban Beach Weekend Festival of hip-hop has proceeded in “a peaceful environment.” And it has, but only if we look at this year’s version while looking at previous versions — something that would be like blessing cancer because it’s just beginning.

Although most arrests were for misdemeanors (drug consumption, etc.), 83 merrymakers were put in jail by Saturday morning, with Sunday and Monday still to come. Compared with the number of arrests during the same time period in 2013 (131), this figure gives us hope, but taken by itself it is, well, barely sobering. At least, there were no shootouts like in previous years.

Zuckerberg joins Welcome.us

Mark Zuckerberg, founder of Facebook, will support the project Welcome.us, whose basic objective is to allow the largest number of people to tell the story that has defined the United States, a country with a deep tradition of immigration. The idea, which hopefully will materialize in June — Immigrant Heritage Month — has been supported by dozens of artists (Jared Letto, Jamie Lee Curtis and Michael Bolton among them), journalists and executives of major companies who have come out in favor of immigration reform.