Courtesy of Bill Whiddon

​This weekend marks the opening of "Surfing Florida," a visual romp through the history of hanging ten in the Sunshine State. From bodacious beach babes of yesteryear to a teenage Kelly Slater, there's bound to be something that'll catch your attention. More >>

Lisa Rab

​The sky was gray and cloudy; the wind whipped through and briefly brought a chill rain. Yet by Sunday afternoon, Lake Worth's streets were filled with crowds admiring the 18th-annual Street Painting Festival. Artists came from as far away as Santa Barbara, California, and St. Louis, Missouri, to conjure beauty with chalk on asphalt. Organizers claim this is the largest street-painting festival in the world. Judging by the hordes of people munching kettle corn and peering at the ground, it was a rousing success.More >>

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This week's cover story dove into the pitfalls of Mavericks High Schools -- a for-profit charter school company that hands out promises of aiding at-risk kids.

Check out our behind-the-scenes look at how illustrator extraordinaire Peter Ryan made this week's cover.

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ICE

Christ Carrying the Cross Dragged by a Rascal -- not exactly stolen by Nazis.

​"Nazis. I hate these guys." -- Indiana Jones

Government agents seized a 500-year-old painting from the Mary Brogan Museum of Art & Science in Tallahassee on Friday, a work of art the U.S. Attorney's Office says was stolen out of France by friends of the Nazis in 1941.

Christ Carrying the Cross Dragged by a Rascal, by Girolamo de' Romani -- believed to have been painted in 1538 -- was seized and sold at auction in 1941 and eventually made its way to Tallahassee around eight months ago.

Despite some news headlines saying the piece was "stolen by the Nazis," it was actually taken by France's Vichy Regime, which collaborated with the bad guys during World War II. Still, we suppose it's sexy to say the Nazis stole it.

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Skip to minute 2:30, and you'll see the white-haired, 71-year-old Bill Koch place the winning, $2 million bid for the only known photo of Billy the Kid earlier this summer. The crowd at the Denver Merchandise Mart stands up and cheers, and Koch, after a moment of indecision, grins and commences shaking hands. "I'm Bill Koch. I now own the authentic Billy the Kid photograph. This has been a true West moment," he tells an interviewer.

Koch, a Palm Beach billionaire who is the subject of this week's New Times feature story, More >>

Photo by Eric Barton

The Cinema Paradiso board: Nope, no problems here.

​If you read this June 7 article on problems at Cinema Paradiso, you might be a bit concerned about Fort Lauderdale's arthouse theater. Problems with finances, complaints from former employees, a decrease in membership -- all things that indicate things aren't going well.

If you continued on to the comments field, well then, you might be downright worried the place was headed for trouble. Many of the dozens of comments described a place where CEO Gregory von Hausch has chased out good employees and caters his cinema to just a few friends.

A commenter who called himself Former Employee wrote: "All in all, yes, the theater is great... if you're within 6 years of being 6 feet under, on oxygen or have Alzheimer's. To most anyone under the age of 65, I caution you, as the events which may have held something of worth have long sense been cast into the abyss."

But despite the detailed complaints from many employees and patrons, members of the executive board that oversees Cinema Paradiso apparently aren't willing to acknowledge
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newmexico.org

Bill Koch's new prize: The world's only existing photograph of Billy the Kid.

​Bill Koch, one of the poorer Koch brothers -- by "poor," we mean he's worth $3.5 billion, compared to Charles and David Koch's $21.5 billion fortune, according to Forbes -- dropped a cool couple of million on a rare portrait of Billy the Kid over the weekend.

Koch, head of the energy holding company Oxbow Group in West Palm Beach, adds the tintype photograph to a ridiculous collection of top-shelf collectibles -- which you can get a taste of from this profile of his part-time home in Cape Cod, Massachusetts.

Apparently Koch really wanted this photograph, since he dropped $2.3 million on the piece at a Denver auction on Saturday, a bit higher than the $400,000 maximum it was expected to go for, according to New York Daily News.

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Photo by Eric Barton

​If you hit Cinema Paradiso's Italia Film Festa this past weekend you might have been lucky enough to catch Come Undone, a steamy flick about an adulterous affair set in Milan. After seeing it in December, Village Voice reviewer Nick Pinkerton wrote: "The hot sex has the rhythm of actual hot sex, and quotidian life is rendered convincingly in every detail."

Since that review, Netflix reviewers haven't been so generous, giving it on average just two stars out of five. "The sex scenes were so tame you did not even have to watch," one viewer commented on Netflix.com after renting the DVD or streaming the movie live over the internet.

Here then lies the problem with the Italian film festival and Cinema Paradiso itself -- many of its movies nowadays have been out on video for months, sometimes years. Because of that, membership to the downtown Fort Lauderdale theater has fallen off in recent years, insiders say, and the non-profit that owns it has seen a steady decrease in donations.

At the heart of all these problems is Gregory von Hausch, president and CEO of the
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Michael McElroy

Doug McCraw, FAT Village landlord, behind the Collide Factory's former space.

​Our feature story this week tells of the life and times of FAT Village, an eclectic little arts neighborhood tucked into a sliver of downtown Fort Lauderdale. The people who work there are extremely talented, and word of mouth is spreading quickly, especially when it comes to the art walks on the last Saturday evening of every month. But some tenants have packed up and left -- for lower rents, more foot traffic, less crime.More >>