New Times Turns 20

I took Finkel's place as managing editor in 1997. By then the place was maniac heaven. One of the first writers whose work I edited — Kirk Nielsen — penned stories about the Everglades, Cuban terrorist groups, and Coral Gables social clubs — working closely with me on each one. Though we didn't know it at the time, years later Kirk would discover a photograph showing we had attended summer camp together — in Minnesota in 1970 — the same year Lacey started Phoenix New Times.

Miami is a city that reinvents itself every few years. Indeed between the time I left town in 2000 to edit New Times Broward-Palm Beach and my return two years ago, the place went from cultural wasteland to visual arts mecca. Miami New Times, though, has become a constant — brassy, iconoclastic, and, well, sometimes tasteless.