Tag Archives: Tom Falco

An Open Email To Tom Falco of the Coconut Grove Grapevine — UPDATED

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LAST MINUTE UPDATE

My attempt to send this via email just now was thwarted by a coward who, after falsely attacking me in print, has banned my email address from reaching his.

No matter. I still have several options and almost 2 years in which to get this done. I can still:

  • Find someone willing to deliver this via their email address;
  • Have a hard copy delivered by registered snail mail;
  • Carry an analog version with me in case we find ourselves in the same room again; or
  • Just bite the bullet and accept the proffered help from one of the lawyers.

TO: Tom Falco, Coconut Grove Grapevine
SUBJECT: Retraction vs. Lawsuit
DATE: April 8, 2017

It was so nice seeing you the other day at the HEP Board meeting to vote on the future of the Coconut Grove Playhouse. Too bad we’re not on speaking terms. Otherwise we may have found a way to resolve this by now. But, still, it was nice seeing you take an interest in something that will negatively affect the adjacent and contiguous Black Grove. Oh, wait. You never mentioned that in your article. I guess that will be my job once again.

As you well know, Tom, through the years I’ve tried to school you on grammar — because you’re so bad at it and it’s just so much fun to point that out. Just this week you crafted another delicious paragraph, which was poorly punctuated and bracketed by two fabulous run-on sentences:

At odds all evening was the issue of whether a 300 seat playhouse or a 700 seat playhouse should be built or renovated and that was another major issue, should the whole playhouse be restored or just the front section? The current plan calls for just the front section, while the rest will be rebuilt, not restored. Richard Kiehnel, famed architect of Kiehnel & Elliott, who created the original building in 1927, built it for movies, not theater, in future years, it was retrofitted and changed to house live theater by another famed architect, Alfred Browning Parker.*

Then there’s this gem from another article:

The purpose of this meeting is to interchange ideas for the future use of the Miami Marine Stadium.

Interchange‽ I think the word you’re looking for is AND, YOU CALL YOURSELF A WRITER‽‽‽


Notice you never see Mr. Softee and Tom
Falco in the same room at the same time?

You bring shame upon a profession I have spent a lifetime perfecting.

More seriously, Tom, I have also tried to teach you a little something about Journalistic Ethics over the years. Like the need to mark advertorials as such; or not bartering meals or goods in exchange for advertising and/or positive reviews; doing more than just cutting and pasting press releases you’ve received; and about making declarative accusations without a scintilla of proof.

Sadly, I have been unsuccessful at educating you on grammar or ethics. Now I’m going to try teach you a little something about Libel and Defamation law. I hope I have better results because this is only going to get uglier from here on in.

First things first: It would seem that the legal system has its own set of ethics. Whodathunkit?

One of those pesky rules (and remember, this is a learning curve for me, too, because I’ve never been defamed in print before) is that before one can sue for libel (as opposed to slander, which is spoken and for which I have only hearsay and anecdotal evidence that you’ve done that about me, too), one must take certain actions and pursue other remedies before petitioning the courts for relief. [Tom: That’s just an example of a very long sentence punctuated in such a way as to avoid being a run-on. It can be done.] Chief among them: one must make a legitimate and legal request for a retraction and apology.

Yannow what else I discovered, Tom? Making such a demand on a comment thread on a crappy blog — like I foolishly did on yours — does not rise to the level of a legitimate and legal request. Especially since you deleted the entire comment thread, sending it down the memory hole so you could pretend it never actually happened.

I also learned that my blog post of January 25th, Tom Falco Libels Me Again. Then Runs Away, does not constitute a legitimate and legal request, even tho’ it’s on the interwebs for the entire word to see. One legal argument could be that it’s entirely possible you never saw it, Tom.

I also learned a little something about contingency lawyers recently. If they smell money, they’re willing to take a flyer on a long shot libel case. One asked whether I wanted a registered letter sent to you on stationary with legal letterhead. I declined (for the time being) because I’d much rather do this myself.

We’re gentlemen, right Tom? We should be able to agree on what was over-the-line speech spewed in anger, right? We can get over this unpleasantness without resorting to the courts, right?

That’s why I am sending this to your email address [and publishing it]. It’s a substitute for a letter from a lawyer, but doesn’t preclude a letter from a lawyer in the future. Even if you were to delete this email, there’s an electronic record of it.


I was so sad when this fell
off the All Time Top Ten

Look, Tom, this could have ended in January with a simple retraction and apology. Here we are several months later and this open sore continues to fester. Yet, it’s in your power to put a stop to this, Tom.

All you need to do is post a short paragraph at the Grapevine retracting your baseless accusation of me and apologize. Or, in the alternative, prove your accusations against me. If you do the latter, then I’ll owe you an apology. See how that works?

“Some people say” that all I am really doing is making you famous beyond your piddling local readership. I suspect that’s true because for a while you were #2 post at the new Not Now Silly Newsroom. As of this writing, 155 people have read Tom Falco Libels Me Again. Then Runs Away. I suspect that number will grow after this is published.

Tom, what you don’t seem to realize is that I find this fun. Whether it amuses you — or not — it amuses me to toy with you in public like this. I can easily keep this going for almost 2 years, when the statute of limitations runs out, before I finally have to file a lawsuit.

It’s in your power to end it.

* Like I do with Emperor Trump, when I quote you, Tom, I will use Comic Sans. It just seems appropriate.

Truth, Justice, and the ‘Merkin Spelling ► Unpacking The Writer

A recent meme about Emperor Trump’s payoff pick to head the Department of Education made me literally laugh out loud, or LLOL.

Long time readers know Unpacking the Writer as a semi-regular feature at the Not Now Silly Newsroom. Adressing new readers: It’s never is not about politics. However, this time I’m using politics to reveal the jumping-off point for this Unpacking. *

A meme quickly circled the information superhighway (which is more like a roundabout at times like these) after an internet wag corrected an ass-kissing tweet sent out by Betsy DeVos, Trump’s choice to oversee edjumacation for the entire country. There are many reasons why she’s totally unqualified for the job, not the least of which is this:

 

I felt the need to pass it along because it was simply HIGH-LARRY-US!

My quip at the bottom — what I think of as added value when I’m sharing — was based on an earlier meme. On his very first day in office Emperor Trump couldn’t spell “honerd” [sic] in one of his world famous tweets. It was eventually deleted (possibly breaking the Presidential Records Act) and reposted correctly, but only after the Unclothed Emperor was roasted on social media.

TRUMP VOTERS: Canada is that big place above ‘Merka

But, I digress. This isn’t about politics. It’s about being a writer from Canada. [You can read the entire discussion HERE]. Since I like nothing better than quoting myself:

When I first moved to Canada, all my editors would go crazy because I spelled [my words] ‘Merkin. It took a while, but I trained myself to spell properly to teh [sic] point that the Globe and Mail once printed my Letter to the Editor excoriating them for dropping all the “U”s in what they claimed was a way to save ink.

No. Really.

My complaint was that they could define their internal style guide any way they want, what they could not do is rename Harbourfront as Harborfront. [FULL DISCLOSURE: I worked at Harbourfront at the time.]

Anyway…I now type this way without thinking. When I have to type ‘Merkin ’cause I’m quoting one, my fingers stutter over it until I get it. It’s not smooth at all.

Bottom line: I don’t think I can type “humour” without the “U” automatically ever again.

There are other consequences to typing Canadian.

Recently I was wrestling with some simple HTML code and, no matter how many times I tried, I could not get it to format properly. I’d delete the tag, move the tag so it wasn’t nested in a tag, remove the tag from the nested tag, rewrite the tag, and nothing I did worked.

Until I realized I had been spelling it <centre>.

Similar happens when I use Der Googalizer to search for theatres, because that’s how I spell it. At least one no longer needs the exact case and spelling in search engines, the way it was in the olden days when I wrote for We Compute.

Not that it’s Canadian, per se, but I’m not giving up my Oxford comma either.

Look closely. There’s a divot in the shift key.

Tangentially, when I transitioned from typewriter to computer it took me a long time to give up the double space between sentences, as editors required back in the day. Occasionally, when I get into a Zen stream of unconsciousness, I’ll still hit the spacebar twice, but not that often anymore. I’ve also never adapted to how lightly one can hit an electronic keyboard and still form words. I bang the keys so hard that I’ve worn off the letters on every one I’ve ever owned. It’s a good thing I know where it stores the alphabet. Recently my sister needed to use my keyboard and it took her a few minutes to get acclimated.

However, when I went fully online and digital in 1988, far earlier than many, I embraced everything else about being able to make words out of electrons. I embraced CUT & PASTE most of all. To be fair: I always did cut & paste. In my typewriter days I would literally rip and move paragraphs around before typing a new, clean copy.

That was then. This is now. Paragraphs in this have been moved around.

Speaking of the Newsroom. How do you like the new look?

As long-time readers can attest: Before the New Year, Not Now Silly looked very different. We built a new site from the ground up. While the old site is still THERE, all of that material has been transferred here for your reading pleasure. However, it wasn’t without a few hiccups. One that I am finding frustrating — and the entire IT team is working on it — is that the archival posts were given a new date, the date they were transferred over here.

Another source of frustration is that some of the formatting from the old posts to the new ones are messed up. Worse yet, I recently learned that going back and fixing them — because they offend my OCD — changes the published date to teh day the page is updated. It must be related to the problem above. Until IT can tell me how to make a date stick, I guess I’ll have to live with it these 2 problems. But, they will be solved eventually.

As long time readers also know: I often use UtW to humblebrag about my discerning audience, and today will be no exception.

I am quite pleased with the posts that readers have elevated to the top of TODAY’S TOP TEN and ALL TIME TOP TEN (found in the right column on the front page) since launching the new, improved site.

Judging from the limited analytics we get so far (another thing the IT department is researching) reader faves seem to be the Monday Musical Appreciation, Saturday Morning Cartoons, and my Manifestos. Expect to see more Manifestos because — not only do they seem popular and I always give my readers what they want, unless I don’t want to — but I am getting angrier at Emperor Trump and what’s coming out of the White House, which has never been whiter, if you know what I mean. [Supremacist, if you don’t.]

Something I find very odd. While the ALL TIME list keeps changing, Roy Head has consistently held down the #3 spot, ever since it was posted. I can’t explain that and it feels like a glitch.

Speaking of glitches: Is there a law suit in my future? Seeing Tom Falco Libels Me Again. Then Runs Away as the #4 ALL TIME post gratifies me and reminds me that I need to use one of the 3 phone numbers of lawyers passed along unbidden by 3 separate people who read it. Eenie, meenie, miney, Moe. Was his name Moe?

Tom, if you’re reading this (and word gets back to me that you can quote me verbatim) all you ever needed to do — and still can do, for that matter — is retract your statements that I threatened you and a Miami Herald reporter. Deleting them doesn’t count. You might want to seriously consider that option because contingency lawyers salivate at the words “trust fund baby.” It might also be fun to subpoena the Herald.

Never mind, Tom. Stick to your lack of journalistic principles.

Meanwhile, I’m going to have to cut this short, even tho’ there’s more I wanted to say. I’m prepping for another community meeting on the restoration of the Coconut Grove Playhouse. [Read: The Coconut Grove Playhouse Trojan Horse; Part I, Part II.] I didn’t write about the last meeting because, quite frankly, I was underwhelmed. While I asked a question during the public comment segment, but I didn’t have the information at my fingertips to rebut the answer. That will be part of today’s prep. I want to be ready this time.

And, if I’m not underwhelmed, I may even write about it.

* As sometimes happens, this essay started as a comment elsewhere. This is an expanded version of those original, initial, thoughts.

Coconut Grove Grapevine Addendum

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Nothing about Tom Falco has made me laugh as hard as something I discovered this morning.

No, it’s not another run-on sentence like this:

What’s got me guffawing is that I’ve long maintained that Falco really only cares about promoting White Coconut Grove, because he’s basically an unofficial arm of the Business Improvement District, an organization that ignores West Grove. It’s my long-held opinion that the BID is racist. Otherwise why wouldn’t it mention the long and honourable history of the Black Bahamians that built Coconut Grove, and much of the rest of Miami?

In fact, the entire proud history of West Grove is left off the official BID page called The History of Coconut Grove, except for a single throwaway line: Some of the inn’s early staffers were black Bahamians who created their own settlement along Charles Avenue. That’s 17 words out of 1,529. This WHITEwashing is also evident in the tourist brochures that the BID prints and passes out at every tourist trap downtown. It’s as if they don’t want anyone to find out there are Black people in paradise.

But I digress. We were talking about Tom Falco, who I also believe is racist. [That contention is outlined in If It’s News, It’s News To The Coconut Grove Grapevine. I don’t want to get too deep into the weeds here.]

Anyhoo, dear readers, what got me laughing is that while researching this morning’s Tom Falco Libels Me Again article, I discovered this bon mot in the archives of the Miami New Times [emphasis mine]:

Best Of /// People & Places /// 2010

Tom Falco, editor, Coconut Grove Grapevine
Best Gadfly

Tom Falco’s Coconut Grove Grapevine community blog can be irritating. When he’s writing about threatening to take photos of kids “posing” as school basketball players — only to watch them “scatter like rats” — or railing against a woman in a food truck poaching customers from Grove restaurants, Falco has all the perspective of a Picasso. But Merriam-Webster’s definition of a gadfly is one who “stimulates or annoys, especially by persistent criticism,” which might as well be the Grapevine’s mission statement. There is no louder voice for a community — in his case, the Grove’s business owners — in Miami.

What’s funny is that the Miami New Times is not buying it. Not at all.

While Falco’s sycophants may have stuffed the ballot box, New Times makes it clear through snark that he’s not really a gadfly and is only concerned about the “Grove’s business owners,” which — coincidentally — also happen to be his advertisers.

TO BE FAIR: The Coconut Grove Business Improvement District Walking Tour map includes the E.W.F. Stirrup House. However, the BID stops at Margaret Street. To get a sense of the reality for people who live west of that, please read my continuing series Unpacking Grand Avenue.

Tom Falco Libels Me Again. Then Runs Away.

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Lookie who ruined my King Mango Strut shot

I’ve made no secret of my total disdain for Tom Falco, Head Grammarian (and Trust Fund baby), at the typo-laden Coconut Grove Grapevine.

My contempt for Falco goes back a number of years when I had only just recently discovered the E.W.F. Stirrup House and decided to save it. However, because the blog I created (under a nom de troll) had such a small footprint, I started to reach out to people who I thought could help me save the E.W.F. Stirrup House.

Falco was among the many people I contacted, which included every media outlet I could find. Falco not only declined to help, but did so with comments that I took as racist. Unprompted he brought up the travesty of the Mariah Brown House and said that “whitey didn’t do that.” However, despite how little he cared for the E.W.F. Stirrup House back then, he said this week:

At the [Housing Summit] meeting, the Grove pioneer EWF Stirrup’s House was brought up, and people are bitter about the way the house is being rebuilt and not restored. The house is being rebuilt to look historic and is turning into a bed and breakfast (See that here). I was also curious as to why the building was being rebuilt and not restored, until I realized that the house just sat and rotted for years, termites and lack of care hurt the house (look at it here). It’s costing more to rebuild the place as being historic, than it would have been to just renovate the old house, if it has been kept up. That’s where the city should step in. In my neighborhood they come after you if you don’t mow the lawn, why are old, historic houses allowed to rot without the city fining someone? [NB: I removed all links because Falco has refused to allow me to link my articles on his facebookery and his blog.]

To be perfectly honest: I was stunned that Falco would suddenly echo what I had been saying about the DEMOLITION BY NEGLECT of the Stirrup House after blowing me off years ago when his help may have meant something. So, I decided to leave a comment on his crappy blog.

The following exchange was posted, but then removed by him. I’m glad I saved the text, but I know how slippery Falco is.

MY COMMENT AT THE GRAPEVINE:

Tom, are you kidding?

I tried to interest you in helping save the E.W.F. Stirrup House years ago, before all the DEMOLITION BY NEGLECT, when it would have done some good. You specifically told me you didn’t want to get involved. But now you’ve got something to say?

Furthermore, contrary to your assertion, it actually would have cost more to bring the old house up to code than it did to recreate the house, especially after almost 10 years of DEMOLITION BY NEGLECT. Why do you think the developer allowed it to go that way?

In a run-on sentence you ask, “In my neighborhood they come after you if you don’t mow the lawn, why are old, historic houses allowed to rot without the city fining someone?”

Because I was the only one who cared. Even the Historic Preservation Office didn’t care, although I warned them many times what was happening.

THEN FALCO LIBELED ME:

Headly, I do remember at the time that you threatened me and threatened the Miami Herald into doing what you wanted. The Herald called me to ask me what they should do, you apparently scared their reporter with your threats. I don’t know what they ended up doing, but I don’t respond to threats.

At the time I explained that there was nothing I could do because unlike you, I don’t threaten people. I could not afford to buy the house, not that it was for sale, and I could not persuade anyone involved to take action. Other than that, there was nothing I could do.

I shined light on the house and Charles Avenue many times, starting in 2009. I also posted links to your story in 2012, showing the deterioration. I am not sure what else I could do. I reported and wrote about their canopy destruction a few years back. I spoke with neighbors in the area who have been living there for years. They did nothing.

I am not part of the HEP or zoning boards and I am not part of any city agencies and again, I will not threaten people. I warned the city agencies, I warned the commissioner, I warned many people, as well. Maybe I didn’t report on that, but I do a lot around here that people don’t know about.

I honestly don’t know what else you would have had me do. I write the news here. I shed light on things. I notify the authorities. I just had a conversation with someone yesterday about turning that open spigot on the roof of the Playhouse. He made one call and it was done. I helped someone find housing, I helped another find a job, I stood up to a developer trying to change easements in the neighborhood, I sat through a three hour housing summit to find out the facts, etc. I do that silently and don’t report it all.

I don’t buy houses and restore them. Sorry. And I don’t threaten people to see it my way.

PS. I didn’t want to get involved with YOU years ago, not the house.

January 24, 2017 11:16 AM

SO, I DEMANDED A RETRACTION:

Tom:

This is now the 2nd time you’ve defamed me by falsely claiming I threatened you. The last time it was in an email chain with Al Crespo. At the time I asked you to withdraw the accusation and apologize. You did neither.

Now you compound your defamation by going public with it *and* claiming I threatened an unnamed Herald reporter. Where do you get your alternate facts?

Since I have never spoken to you or any Herald reporter — and all my communication has been by email — you should be able to prove your assertion that I threatened you and a Herald reporter because there would be a paper trail.

Prove it or retract it.

===========================
GOVERN YOURSELF ACCORDINGLY
===========================

FALCO TRIES TO WEASEL OUT:

She and I will not apologize for feeling threatened. That was our emotion at the time, that is why you were put on ignore and spam and I haven’t seen an email from you since.

The Herald reporter vaguely remembers it, but not clearly, she is checking her notes and also with her partner in the morning.

No more comments on this subject. Waste of time. If I get the info from her, I’ll send it to your pal Al Crespo and he can forward it on to you.

THE END.

I ATTEMPTED ANOTHER REPLY:

I’m not asking for an apology. I’m asking for a retraction.

You defamed me, but now are hiding behind new weasel words, that you were “feeling threatened”.

However, that’s not what you said. You said I threatened you and a Herald reporter.

That is libel. I am demanding a retraction or proof. What could I have possibly said that made the little snowflake feel threatened? Put up or shut up.

Falco also pretends to be a cartoonist

However, that comment wouldn’t go through and Snowflake Tommy posted this instead:

I deleted a couple of my own comments here because I decided long ago not to argue with readers or even read the comments.

Then a few minutes later even that little note disappeared. Now there are zero comments on that post and no comments whatsoever will be allowed.

Here’s the important thing: I was still libeled. Consequently:

I am still demanding a
retraction from Tom Falco.

Deleting a comment that remained on his site for hours doesn’t mitigate the libel.

Deleting the comment does not take the place of a retraction.

Deleting the comment doesn’t absolve Tom Falco from damages.

However, this episode does show (once again) that:

  1. Tom Falco is no journalist;
  2. Tom Falco has no ethics;
  3. Tom Falco is a coward.

This is not the first time I’ve blasted Tom Falco
for his supreme idiocy. You may also enjoy:

Go Home, Coconut Grove Grapevine, You’re Drunk! • A Coconut Grove Grapevine Update • If It’s News, It’s News To The Coconut Grove Grapevine  • UPDATED: Coconut Grove Grapevine, Stop the Lies!

If It’s News, It’s News To The Coconut Grove Grapevine

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Let’s have a Tomversation, Tom.

Longtime followers of Not Now Silly can attest, I have been trying to Save the E.W.F. Stirrup House for more than 5 years.

Back in 2009 I tried to get Tom Falco, publisher of the Coconut Grove Grapevine, to help me. We engaged in a series of emails that went south really quickly. I explained my background. Then I offered my early opinion (which has only grown after researching more history) that much of what happens in West Grove is informed by Systemic Racism, I received the following reply from Falco, grammar, lack of punctuation, and misspellings unretouched:

[8/31/2009] Well some of the residents on the block are to blame too.

The first house was given over $700,000 by the city in grant money to renovate and the owner painted it white and took off.

Other areas were to be an arts district, but someone involved and part of the black community bought up all the land cheap and then tried to sell it to the artist for exhorbatant prices, so they just walked away.

You were wrong to place this on the facebook page it is off topic and really if you want to be taken seriously you need to do it by not spamming places. It makes you look unprofessional and people won’t take you seriously.

I do since I have done stories on the subject, but it is best to try to spreaed your info the proper way, and spamming blogs and facebook is not the proper way.

I’m just sayin.. Also it wasn’t “Whitie” who scammed the artists, it was the black something initiative that screwed the hood.

Thanks,
Tom Falco


Tom Falco [L] sharing information in downtown Coconut Grove

Wait!!! What???

I was surprised that Falco was so unconcerned about Charles Avenue and the E.W.F. Stirrup House. His larger issue — one he has to this very day — is about SPAM. All links in comment threads are SPAM, as far as he is concerned. It would never have occurred to me that a post about news in Coconut
Grove would be considered Off Topic on a blog with the rubric COCONUT GROVE’S ONLY
DAILY NEWS.

Silly me!!!

As for professionalism: I’ve been a professional writer-journalist for more than 40 years. While it’s so easy to dismiss that experience in the cyber-world, where anyone can claim to be a writer, at least I spell words correctly and know how to use punctuation properly. Yet, Tom Falco has a sizable readership despite his grammar and run-on sentences. More’s the pity.

Clearly Tom and I have a fundamental disagreement. Falco feels sharing information through a link is SPAM. I believe information should be shared. I’m not sharing the link to get traffic to Not Now Silly. I don’t make money off web traffic, like he does. I am sharing the link in order to share the information contained within. Three days later he wrote to me because I transgressed again:

I asked you in a nice way to stop spamming my face book page.

If you do it again, I will have you blocked from the page.

Thank you.

Falco did eventually block me from his facebookery. I was never successful in recruiting him to my efforts to save the E.W.F. Stirrup House, even when I tried again in 2012, when he dismissed me with:

Hi,

I really don’t want to get involved with that.

I am really trying to ease out of the Grove these days and am not taking on any more causes.

Thanks,
Tom

Nor was I successful in recruiting him to the other West Grove issue that cropped up a year ago, Trolleygate.

Funny story about that. Al Crespo, the great Miami muckraker and publisher of The Crespogram Report, tried to get him involved in Trolleygate. Without knowing of the enmity that had built up, Crespo made the mistake of including in his email a link to one of my blog posts and CCed me. Falco blew a gasket, which was so funny and outrageous that I wrote all about it in Go Home, Coconut Grove Grapevine, You’re Drunk! Hilarity ensued. However, Falco’s yet to apologize for the libelous statements in his email.

That’s why it was so surprising to see the Coconut Grove Grapevine recently take up the issues of both the E.W.F. Stirrup House and Trolleygate. What was not surprising is how he has continued to block my comments on his threads because I continue to link to my blog posts.

However, I recently learned that it’s not just me who is being blocked at the Coconut Grove Grapevine. I am now in email communication with someone else (with Tom Falco CCed). This person has also been trying to get comments posted on Falco’s blog. Falco not only refuses to publish the comments, but has refused the courtesy of a private reply as to why the comments have been blocked.

Let me be the first to defend Tom Falco. Only Tom Falco should decide on what gets published on the Coconut Grove Grapevine. Having said that, no one”s trying to SPAM his blog. We are trying to provide his readers more information on issues of importance to Coconut Grove. A real writer would WELCOME that kind of dialogue with its readers. Falco really should drop the pretense that he’s serving his readers; he’s serving his advertisers.

This advert was out-of-date on
March 1st when the MPA took
over the Playhouse parking lot.

When Falco falsely labels informative links SPAM, it’s a convenient excuse not to publish comments that might lead to criticism of any of his advertisers. F’rinstance: Gino Falsetto (the marauding developer I have written about extensively) has been an advertiser at the Grapevine through various companies, including his (possibly illegal) parking concession at the Playhouse and the several restaurants in the Grove Gardens Residence Condominiums.

With Aries Development Group‘s fingers in so many Coconut Grove pies, much of the reporting Falco does is compromised. His recent two-parter on the Stirrup House, spurred on by the destruction of the trees and the public outcry, is an exercise of saying almost nothing while giving the Stirrup House lip service. Laughably he says in one of those posts:

For some years now, a few people asked me to get involved but I always felt there was nothing I could do. After so many years, the Stirrup family gave up the house, which was given historic designation in 2004.

And, nothing is what Tom Falco did. He ignored the Stirrup House from the day I tried to get him to help until now.

And, nothing is what Tom Falco still does. In neither post does he really come out and criticize the rapacious, marauding developer, Gino Falsetto. Furthermore, he won’t publish comments that do.

TO BE FAIR: Falco’s absolutely right that there’s nothing he can do, unless he’s willing to piss off his advertisers. However, if he wants to serve his readers and the larger community can help me pound the drum to Save the E.W.F. Stirrup House.

Either run as the Unofficial Mayor of Coconut Grove, or do some real reporting.

Even his reporting on Trolleygate is back-asswards. He never comes out in favour of his neighbours against the non-complying Coral Gables bus garage, although he mentions the controversy almost tangentially.

What Falco actually has done is to start a petition to demand that Miami bring its fake trolleys into Grove Center. He takes no position on whether these fake trolleys should loop along Grand Avenue into West Grove. Nor does he mention the latest news in the fake trolley story, that Coral Gables has voted to loop its fake trolleys to the MacFarlane Homestead Subdivision Historical District, but not to Douglas Road, in West Grove, just one block away and where its developer sited the fake trolley maintenance garage.

The MacFarlane Homestead Subdivision Historical District has a fascinating history. I barely touched on it in No Skin In The Game ► Part Three. In short: Coral Gables hid its racism in plain sight by making its only Black enclave, where it ALLOWED its servant class to live, an entire historic district.

Once again West Grove is being frozen out while Center Grove is begging for crumbs from Miami for a fake trolley. However, for a change, Historic Black Coral Gables might finally get served. But, you’ll never learn any of the context from the Coconut Grove Grapevine.

If Falco remains true to form he will next take another wrong position. In no time at all I expect to read him call for grandfathering the illegal, non-conforming Douglas Road diesel bus garage because, with the expansion of the fake trolley lines he’s pushing for, it will be needed, despite the fact that it belongs to the next town over.

I guess what really has me irked, however, is he managed to get quoted recently by other publications who jumped on the both the E.W.F. Stirrup House and Trolleygate issues. He had to be dragged — kicking and screaming — to barely write about these Coconut Grove issues in the first place. Then Miami media quotes him as if he knows what he’s talking about.

Clearly, he’s got a much better press agent than I do and I am jealous of the attention he gets.

However, I’ll warn Falco publicly (again) that he needs to be careful who he says what to. Some of what he says actually gets back to me. In fact, people seem gleeful to repeat it. Some of it sounds suspiciously like slander. People he believes are his friends do not keep his confidences. Who knew FAM would provide so many Friends of Falco a night to unload?

On the other hand: Everything I have said to people in private about Tom Falco, I have also stated in public on my blog more than once:

The Coconut Grove Grapevine is a joke, and Tom Falco is a panoply of a parody of a journalist.

A Coconut Grove Grapevine Update

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It was just a few days ago I took Tom Falco, of the Coconut Grove Grapevine, to task for his nutty conspiracy theories concerning me and Not Now Silly. I called the post Go Home, Coconut Grove Grapevine, You’re Drunk!

In that post I graciously offered Tom Falco the opportunity to retract his crazy accusations. He has yet to do so. I had planned to just leave it alone . . . until I found the following on his failure of a blog, posted just yesterday:

I’ve been drawn quite far into this debate about the waterfront plan. I’ve always taken great pride on debating the issues and not getting personal. I will try not to do that anymore, simply because I don’t like it.

I didn’t like it when Tom Falco got personal with me, either. Despite his having second thoughts, which prompted him to apologize to Ron Nelson, and his wife, I am still awaiting an apology for him for this:

I will not bow to threats by Headly and his crew. I don’t cover events that I am threatened to cover. That’t [sic] how they operate.

The previous Coconut Grove Grapevine logo

As I explained to Tom Falco: I work alone. Not Now Silly has no crew. I have made no threats. I require an apology and retraction, just like Ron Nelson and his wife, because that’t how I operate.

However, Ron Nelson is Chief of Staff to allegedly corrupt Miami Commissioner Marc D. Sarnoff and, therefore, might be important to Falco’s continued access. I’m just a guy with a blog, whom Tom Falco dismissed years ago as unimportant. I tried to bring him on-board to save the E.W.F. Stirrup House for the West Grove Community, not a rapacious developer. However, he dismissed me in emails I have yet to release. [Okay, that’s a threat.] Later I learned that the rapacious developer, through various companies and corporations, just happened to be among the Coconut Grove Grapevine’s advertisers. Imagine that.

Why Falco would jump into the waterfront controversy without any consideration of his bottom line is puzzling. Especially after he returned from his hiatus in January saying he was all done with politics. Opposing what could be the biggest real estate development Coconut Grove has seen in many years, can’t be good for his bottom line. Maybe Falco has found journalism.

A word of advice and something else that Tom Falco should take into consideration: Some of the people to whom he has been trash-talking me, are not the friends they pretend to be. That’s because they turn right around and tell me what Falco has said about me, almost gleefully I should add. What gets back to me sounds an awful lot like slander. Yet, Tom Falco has the audacity to falsely accuse me of libel? He libeled me when he accused me in print of working with some unnamed crew to threaten him because, of course, that’s how we operate.

Will Tom Falco do the right thing and apologize to me or will he continue to spread unfounded rumours about me?

Go Home, Coconut Grove Grapevine, You’re Drunk!

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Tom Falco acting inconspicuous right in the middle of downtown Coconut Grove

Uh oh! I’m involved in another media bun fight with Tom Falco, writer-editor-grammarian of the Coconut Grove Grapevine. And, I didn’t start it this time. The last time we had a battle of wits, he came half-armed. This time he’s come completely unarmed — or unglued, you decide — and I almost don’t have the heart to finish this post . . . the operative word being “almost.”

Before I lay out our latest skirmish, let me first clear up one thing, because this is a discussion I refuse to have ever again:

I have always considered every email sent to me as my property to do with as I wish. Most people know that I am a journalist before they write to me. Consequently, emailing me does not automatically confer confidentiality. Having said that, there’s loads of email I receive that get and deserve confidentiality. I have several sources guaranteed anonymity, as well as a few whistle-blowers who send me documents. They all know I’d never burn a source. I have exchanged email with Tom Falco, on and off, going back to 2009. He’s always refused to join in my campaign to Save The E.W.F. Stirrup House. That he did so with several off-hand remarks that I took as racial, still rankles. [But then, if you’ve been following
Not Now Silly for any length of time, you know that I see racism in almost everything. Maybe I was wrong about why he refuses to cover West Grove issues. Maybe if the West Grove could afford advertising in the Grapevine it would be a whole different dealie, but this parenthetical is already too long, so we’ll leave that for another time.] I even offered Tom Falco the opportunity to be an off-the-record source for my Coconut Grove stories. He declined to even meet with me to discuss it over coffee. Consequently, no confidentiality for you!

Put a pair of sunglasses on Mr. Softee and you would be able to tell them apart.

Not that I feel I need any further excuse for printing Falco’s emails, but just today he chose to print an email on his joke-of-a-blog that wasn’t even addressed to him; it was an email passed to him by a 3rd party. As far as I’m concerned, that makes Falco’s emails fair game.

And, because I simply can’t resist piling on, here is grammarian Tom Falco at his run-on best from today [sic throughout]:

He wanted tot talk on the phone or in person, I wanted a typed answer that I could copy and paste, as most things I write, Ron tells people that I get incorrect, so copy and paste is the answer I would like. So I can have a written copy to verify the answer.

I apologize. Those are the worst two sentences you’ve ever read, I know, but it’s the Internet Age. Nowadays everybody thinks they are a writer, which has devalued a reputable trade I spent a lifetime learning. But, that’s also another argument for another day.

Not only is it worth quoting Falco just for the lulz alone, but also because it proves what I have been saying. I’ve accused Falco of cutting and pasting the press releases he’s sent, which he turns into blog posts that will stroke the ego of his pool of potential advertisers. “I could copy and paste, as most things I write.” It’s like he’s not even trying any more.

Here’s a news flash, Tom: If you cut and paste press releases, you aren’t writing. However, when you’re cutting and pasting, your grammar improves dramatically. You might want to stick to cut & paste. 

Slightly more context: I need to introduce you to Al Crespo, of the Crespogram Report. Crespo is one of Miami’s best muckrakers. I wish I had his guts and his investigatory skills. I tried to get Crespo involved in the E.W.F. Stirrup House too, and he also declined. I never held that against him the way I did Falco. Crespo’s reasoning, which made sense, was (paraphrasing) “the developers got their hands on the E.W.F. Stirrup House fair & square.” However, to give Al Crespo’s due credit, he recognized sheer genius and The Crespogram Report linked to my Not Now Silly post Is Marc D. Sarnoff Corrupt Or The Most Corrupt Miami Politician? That one mention was worth 422 hits, which was much appreciated. However, as I admitted to him, I cribbed some of my info from the Crespogram Report.

The Trollygate diesel bus government maintenance facility
that I’ve been writing about since January

So, now that you’re all caught up: Last week Crespo sent an email to Tom Falco and CCed me on it. Here’s our full exchange as of a few minutes ago:

FROM: Al Crespo
TO: Tom Falco, Headly Westerfield
SUBJECT: TOM I THINK YOU NEED TO COVER THIS
Aug 17, 2013


——– Forward Original Message ——–
Subject:     My latest on Trolleygate
Date:     Sat, 17 Aug 2013 16:47:05 -0400
From:     Headly Westerfield
To:     undisclosed-recipients:;

West Grove Residents Lose ► Polluting Bus Garage Will Go Ahead

FROM: Headly Westerfield
TO: Al Crespo, Tom Falco
Aug 17, 2013
       
Tom doesn’t cover politics. He’s said so himself.

Tom doesn’t cover West Grove because I’ve tried to get him involved several times in West Grove issues and he has always declined.

BTW: Trolleygate was all Sarnoff’s doing. He screwed his own constituents by gifting them a diesel bus garage.If he were not term-limited, he’d never get another West Grove vote.
   
FROM: Tom Falco
TO: Al Crespo, Headly Westerfield
Aug 24, 2013
       
I will not bow to threats by Headly and his crew. I don’t cover events
that I am threatened to cover. That’t how they operate.

If you check the Grapevine, you will probably see hundreds
of stories that take place in the West Grove. You probably
have never checked once to make a libelous comment like that.
I suggest you do a search in the upper left box of the Grapevine
and see every Village West event I have attended and covered.

As for this past story, I was in the hospital for 8 days with
kidney failure. That is why i did not cover it.

Tom Falco
Editor | CoconutGroveGrapevine
www.coconutgrovegrapevine.com
The Daily News of Coconut Grove

FROM: Headly Westerfield
TO: Tom Falco, Al Crespo
Aug 24, 2013

What the hell are you babbling about?

Crew? I have no crew. I work alone. I am simply one guy, living in a different county, who found a house I wanted to save. I tried to interest you in the story. You declined to help me. To be fair, so did Al Crespo. However, that desire to save the E.W.F. Stirrup House has led to all my other reporting on Coconut Grove.

You can take the boy out of the newsroom, but you can’t take the newsroom out of the boy.

Threats? I have issued no threats.

Libelous? I suggest you first look up the word and then retract your accusation that I have issued threats.

Let me see if I have this straight: Because you have a totally whacked out conspiracy theory that I am working with some unnamed “crew” who “threatens” you to “cover events” that don’t seem to interest you, you will leave other perfectly good news items on the floor in a fit of pique because that’s how “they” operate?

Stamp your foot louder. They may not have heard it in Brickell.

I’m sorry to hear you’re not feeling well. Get better soon, so CGG can better serve the West Grove neighbourhood. It could use a voice with your readership. I do what I can, but I’m just one guy.

I doubt I will ever get an apology from Tom Falco. That’s about as likely as Falco covering issues and events of importance to West Grove residents. I alerted him to Trolleygate way back in January, so I’m not really buying his recent kidney troubles as an excuse. Falco made it clear the Coconut Grove Grapevine is no longer COCONUT GROVE’S ONLY DAILY NEWS, when he took down that rubric (after I criticized it many times) and replaced it with Daily updates on what’s up in Coconut Grove and beyond including Brickell, Coral Gables and Midtown Miami.

To be fair: Maybe Falco’s not drunk at all.  Maybe it’s the kidney meds.

Welcome Back Coconut Grove Grapevine

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Despite my minor feud with Tom Falco, it was with great interest that I noted that he’s fired up the Coconut Grove Grapevine again. For those not paying attention, Falco wrote back in September: 


I have decided to end the Grapevine, but maybe not totally end it, I don’t know yet. What I am doing is stopping daily publication for now, only because I feel that I have other things I need to do and I believe that you physically have to shut one door to have another door open. I want to immerse myself into the cartooning world and so that is what I am going to do. I plan on traveling often, my first trip is to New York for the New York Comic Con, where I can mix and mingle and pick up tricks from other cartoonists. I need to promote myself and my comic, Tomversation, full time. While I bought a 4-day pass, I was also given a press pass, so I will be covering the event for publication, maybe for the Huffington Post.

I could keep the Grapevine up and running, but not on a daily basis, but I feel that would be doing it in a half-assed way. I don’t want to do that. I have tried hiring photographers and writers but it doesn’t seem to work. So rather than run the thing into the ground, I will take this break, most likely it will be final, but I am a Gemini and I change my mind often, so maybe I’ll start it up again in a few months, we’ll see. [Editor’s note: That’s a hell of a run-on sentence, Tom.] There are almost 9000 stories here believe it or not, all done in the 7.5 years we’ve been up and running, so you can always go back into the archives and have a laugh or two if you feel like it. [And, again.]

Tomversation, Falco’s cartooning site,
is also part of his vast publishing empire.

However, 4 months later comes word that it’s all been a terrible dream and Bobby was just in the shower for the season. The other day Coconut Grove Grapevine announced:

I’m a bit rusty, but I am thinking of returning to the Grapevine. Why? I need the money. My business has been floundering, like many in this economy, I assume, and I am stopped daily, literally daily, on the street, and asked by people to come back. [Same Ed. note] I am thinking of doing so, but with some changes.

One big change — no politics. I don’t want to get back into that. I really don’t I never enjoyed that part of it and sort of got sucked in years ago and never got out. Most people who stop me on the street tell me they want news but news of what’s going on around the village, you know, what’s new? what’s coming in, what’s going out, etc. I’ll do that. I will also cover events and such, but this is going to be a money making venture now. In the past, I had ads, but 99% of those ads were not paid for.

I’ve been cheated by people, one prominent restaurant still owes me lots of money, oh wait, I said I wouldn’t go there. But most of the ads were friends or trades or things like that. I didn’t make money in the past. I honestly didn’t. Now I plan to make money. I am going to charge for coverage.

No politics? That’s really a damned shame, Tom. As I have been trying to get you to understand since we first made contact, you have (had?) a strong voice in the community and could use it for good. When you gave my blog just ONE mention, I received 122 visits from your readers. That’s still the largest referring URL to my blog (discounting my own front page). That’s a testament to the influence you have (had?).

And it’s not like there are no serious political issues to explore in Coconut Grove, Tom. Certainly the E.W.F. Stirrup House (my own pet project) is one. The Coconut Grove Playhouse is another. That Marc D. Sarnoff runs Coconut Grove like an Imperial and Imperious Emperor is another. You almost touched on politics this morning when you mentioned Emperor Marc Sarnoff’s upcoming meeting on Trolleygate. You’re really missing a trick here, Tom. Trolleygate is a scandal that’s tailor-made for a good muck-raking journalist working for the interests of ALL the people of Coconut Grove. Too bad you aren’t that guy. Hopefully, someone will come along and take up the mantle of Coconut Grove Muckraker, but it won’t be me. I am too far removed geographically from the Grove to do an adequate job, as much as I have fallen in love with the West Grove and would love to be that guy.

SPOILER ALERT: However, I will tackle Trolleygate, Tom, so stay tuned for my new series on the so-called Trolley Garage. Overall it will be about the wisdom of putting a mechanical garage for diesel buses smack dab in the middle of a residential neighbourhood that’s trying to rehab itself with several urban renewal projects — literally — on the drawing boards pending approval. It’s a story I will be able to use to prove my original thesis about Coconut Grove: That its curious development over the years, from Mariah Brown right up to today, is the result of systemic racism. Same as it ever was.

IRONY ALERT: During my previous criticism of the Coconut Grove Grapevine I accused Tom Falco of only writing about topics that would help his bottom line, such as stores in the Grove and community events with an advertising budget. I also accused him of not writing about topics that might hurt his bottom line. F’rinstance, as just one example: writing about the Coconut Grove Playhouse and/or the E.W.F. Stirrup House might anger the rapacious developer Gino Falsetto, who controls both and owns restaurants that advertise in the Coconut Grove Grapevine. Accused (by me) of not wanting to bite the hand that feeds him, Falco denied this most vociferously. However, it appears I gave him an idea. You’re welcome, Tom:

So I’ve come up with a price schedule for coverage, also for running regular, good old fashioned ads that will surround the content.

I am going to offer actual ads in the content area, you know, event flyers, then, there is a price for press releases, photos and also having me actually come out and cover an event. I feel these prices are fair. I went by the monthly circulation to see how many eyes will see the content, keeping in mind that various other publications also pick up and share my content. The Huffington Post links to the Grapevine and also the actual stories are picked up, so many eyes see these Grapevine posts from other publications, too. And keep in mind that once your name or business name is posted, it is picked up by the search engines, which gives you extra cache.

I think by now that we all know that everyone reads the Grapevine and if you want to get your event, business or party noticed, this is the place to be seen. All the other Grove publications are now gone and Community Newspapers and Neighbors stories are few and far between. By the way, you’ll notice the Herald ran a story on the new Pan Am Museum/store last week and it is running in today’s Neighbors in print. My content (your content) gets around.

So, if you want to learn about what all the cool, groovy White hipsters in The Grove are doing, read the Coconut Grove Grapevine. If you care about what’s really happening in the Grove, you may have to go elsewhere.

Welcome back, Tom. Hopefully Coconut Grove politics will get along fine without you.

Unpacking Coconut Grove ► Part Nine ► Good Neighbours and Bad Neighbours

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A recent article in the South Miami News caught my attention. The headline reads “Neighbors hope buyer can be found to preserve historic Milledge House.” The story concerns a house less than 3 miles away from the E.W.F. Stirrup House, the 120-year old house I am trying to save from a (allegedly) rapacious developer.

In short: The Milledge house was built in 1901, on a plot of land less than a half mile away from where it currently sits, and moved to SW 74th Street in 1944 by the Milledge family. “It was historically a cracker farm house,” said owner Lewis Milledge. “Mom put in federal features and changed the window treatments for the look of colonial Williamsburg.”

The good neighbours of SW 74th Street are hoping a rapacious developer doesn’t swoop in and buy the Milledge House, priced at $1,085,200. The house sits on an irregular sized lot several times the size of size of the lots in the general vicinity. This size makes it quite attractive for a developer to snatch up and subdivide the lot and build several houses  Raquel Garcia writes:

The irregular-sized lot on which the Milledge House sits.

It is a tranquil and flourishingly green street where the cardinals still sing loudly in mid-afternoon and the neighbors get together for block parties and holidays. Several area property owners have united to lobby for the uneventful transfer of the Milledge home now for sale at 4700 SW 74 St. The community hope is that a new buyer will also fall in love with the neighborhood and preserve the property and character of the street.

“We all love our block,” said neighbor Jill Kramer. “We want to maintain the charm of our street, it is very important to us. We are afraid of developers that don’t care.”

The Grove Gardens Residence Condominiums peeking out from
 behind the E.W.F. Stirrup House. Note all the garbage allowed
to collect around the tree. Photo taken September 7, 2012.

A developer who doesn’t care could be considered a bad neighbour; concerned only about profits and not about the character of a neighbourhood. One developer that has proven himself to be a bad neighbour concerned more about profits than the character of a neighbourhood is Gino Falsetto, one of the owners/developers of Grove Gardens Residence Condominiums immediately behind the E.W.F. Stirrup House. Falsetto, through his Aries Development company claims to have a 50-year lease on the E.W.F. Stirrup House. According to the memories of residents along Charles Avenue, when the Grove Gardens Residence Condominiums was built, it was expected that the Stirrup House would be renovated for the community as a community center of some sort. However, that never happened and the house has now been sitting idle and empty for a number of years.

The Grove Gardens Residence Condominiums where owners spend nearly a million dollars to buy a unit.
Pile of trash behind the E.W.F. Stirrup House, visible from
the Grove Gardens Residence Condominiums, but not
from the street where by-law inspectors would see it.
Photo taken September 7, 2012

Imagine if you paid close to a million dollars to buy a condo unit in the
Grove Gardens Residence Condominiums. From the street your building — with its two high-end restaurants, old-timey Taurus Bar, and valet parking — looks beautiful. Then you take a look out your condo window, only to look down at the trash
heaps that have been allowed to grow like Topsy on the property of the E.W.F. Stirrup
House. You would naturally think you had a bad neighbour. However, you probably
would never know (unless you’ve done the kind of research I’ve done) that your
bad neighbour is also the same developer that owns the building you
bought your condo in. That would make you a bad neighbour by osmosis.

If you lived along Charles Avenue, especially if you were a property owner, you would have every reason to think you had a bad neighbour. You would have been walking past the the E.W.F. Stirrup House for the last several years, watching the house fall apart due to Demolition by Neglect. If you cared about your own property values, you would be concerned about the weeds allowed to grow on the Stirrup property and the fact that no one cleans up the trash allowed to accumulate. Take note at the garbage allowed to collect around the tree in the picture above left. It takes weeks for that much garbage to pile up. More telling, however, is
this series of pictures taken several weeks apart:

On the sidewalk immediately in front of the E.W.F. Stirrup House was a postcard-sized flyer on August 20, 2012.

The same flyer blown closer to the fence, still on the sidewalk in front of the E.W.F. Stirrup House on August 24, 2012
The same flyer, now faded, closer to the fence, and almost buried by leaves and growth on September 7, 2012.
Graffiti tagged wall on September 7, 2012.

Neighbours walking along Charles Avenue would also be able to see the graffiti tagged on the wall that separates the E.W.F. Stirrup property from the Grove Gardens Residence Condominiums. They would also be able to see the piles of garbage, including carper remnants, nestled up against that wall. These piles have also been growing bigger week by week, even though there’s a dumpster on the property in which this garbage could be thrown.

I would also be remiss if I didn’t point my finger at another bad neighbour in Coconut Grove. Tom Falco is the Editor and Publisher of the Coconut Grove Grapevine. In my opinion he’s far worse than Gino Falsetto. No one really expects a (alleged) rapacious developer to be a good neighbour. Developers generally tend to be out for themselves; to make a profit at any cost. However, that’s exactly how Tom Falco appears to run the Coconut Grove Grapevine. While he pretends to care about Coconut Grove, Falco only seems to care about his pocketbook.

Tom Falco’s logo used under Fair Use laws.

Tom Falco laughingly calls the Coconut Grove Grapevine “Coconut Grove’s Only Daily News,” but that would be a misnomer. It’s only the news that he feels wouldn’t hurt his bottom line. When asked to help me on deep background to better understand the politics of Coconut Grove he told me that he didn’t “want to get involved in that.” However, continued research has confirmed my original suspicions: If it’s something that’s happening in White Coconut Grove, Tom Falco is all over it and promoting the hell out of it. If it appears that a business might have money to spend on advertising in the Coconut Grove Grapevine, Falco is all over that too. However, when it comes to Black Coconut Grove, or Charles Avenue, Tom Falco has little to say. And, what he does have to say, seems carefully modulated so that it will not offend any of his potential benefactors, such as the restaurants on the ground floor of the Grove Gardens Residence Condominiums, also owned in part by Gino Falsetto.

STOP THE PRESSES!!! Oddly enough, just as I was preparing to publish this column, I was also going to say that Falco has written very little about the Coconut Grove Playhouse, when — Lo & behold — it appeared that he did so between my starting this article early this morning and now. Falco says:

I have a theory and I am probably wrong, but this constant stalling and battling tactic [on the Coconut Grove Playhouse] may be taking place on purpose so that the whole thing crumbles in on itself and the structure can then be knocked down and a new structure can be placed onsite, which many people want.


[…]

 One of the entities involved is cheating me out of about $2000 for advertising (that’s another story I’ll post soon), so I am not surprised at this point that crooked hands may be at play here.

That’s always been my theory about the Coconut Grove Playhouse and the E.W.F. Stirrup house: Demolition by Neglect. Falco links to a story in the Miami Herald which mentions Aries Development by name. This is the same company — owned in part by Gino Falsetto — that has also scuttled previous deals to return the Playhouse to the city of Miami and the same Aries Development that claims a 50-year lease on the E.W.F. Stirrup House. If this is the company that has allegedly cheated Falco out of $2,000, maybe he finally understands why I have been investigating Gino Falsetto. If not, who’s been cheating Tom Falco’s Money Making Machine?

BTW: the Miami Herald says:

[Miami-Dade Mayor Carlos] Gimenez was able to engineer a settlement agreement with one of two main playhouse creditors, developer Henry Pino. But the second, Aries Group, which had previously reached an agreement with the playhouse board to redevelop the property, claimed it was owed more than $2 million by the nonprofit group.

I keep trying to tell Tom Falco that I have nothing to gain in trying to save the E.W.F. Stirrup House. I’m not a resident of Miami and/or Coconut Grove. I am not Black. I have no advertising to sell that would impede my journalistic endeavours. I am trying to save a 120-year old house and the legacy of the man who built it simply because it’s the right thing to do. I’ve done a lot of legwork on this story. Maybe Tom Falco is willing to join forces with me to see this house is not lost to a developer to do whatever he wants with it. [Unless that’s not who allegedly cheated Falco out of $2,000. If it’s someone else, never mind.]

Tom, you have my email address. I am always open to talk about how we can work together save this house.

Coming up next: The Broken Window Theory of Criminology.

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