#BecauseMiami: The Crosswalks Are Making Us Gay

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Alligator Alcatraz on Friday afternoon where things looked quiet.

On Thursday, operations appeared to be winding down.

This after a federal judge ordered ordered the detention center be dismantled.

The Department of Homeland Security says it's complying with the order and moving detainees to other facilities.

A new report from the Associated Press shows Florida taxpayers could be on the hook for $218 million spent by the state on the facility.

It could cost another $15 to $20 million to shut it down, and another $15 to $20 million if the state is allowed to reopen it.

It was not a good use of taxpayer dollars.

It could cost, you know, to the top of about $240 million for the two months that they were operating.

I take a couple weeks off from the show, and they closed down my favorite club in Toronto.

Florida's hottest club is Alligator Alcatraz.

Comedian or is it Comedian?

What do we say?

Oh, do not.

I said it's comedian.

It's exactly.

It is.

It's comedienne because I tell Joquettes with my Vagines.

So.

Comedienne.

Comedienne.

Comedienne.

Comediana.

Is it the feminine?

The feminine?

Comediana?

It's court jester.

Comedienne O would be the masculine.

Comedienne O.

Comedian.

Court Justine.

And if you're my ex, it would just be manic disaster.

But you pick whichever one that you're into.

In Miami, we pronounce it Brittany Brave.

I believe it's pronounced Brave.

Legitimately, my kindergarten teacher in West Kendall said Britanni Brave when she did roll call.

And then I had a reminder that I have the whitest name ever.

I sound like a proud boy.

Hashtag because my aunt.

You look like a proud boy, too.

Actually, you look like an escaped Alligator Alcatraz

prisoner.

That's what you look like in a hat.

I thought this was stylish.

Very stylish.

Thank you.

I didn't know that they had in-house hair and makeup at Alligator Alcatraz either.

They don't have food.

And I love your hat, and we will talk about that later.

But first.

That's first.

That's signs.

That's what I needed after two.

I just did a Kegel.

A Kegel or is it a Kegel?

It's a Kegel.

It's a Kegel?

I do them, so I've been doing them this entire time.

Comedian.

Comedian.

Yeah.

My vagina sounds like the doors from Law and Order.

Klunk Klunk.

We can say that now.

So I've been saying this a lot on this program, and it bears repeating because I think it's true.

And if it's not, I'm sure the commenters below will chime in.

They will.

But the enduring message here of this era, this golden age of grift, through the demagoguery, through the hatred, the misogyny, the homophobia, the transphobia, the anti-Semitism, through all of the quackery, the death of expertise and professionalism, the anti-science that has hijacked the country, the proliferation of guns, through all of it.

The ultimate takeaway from this era is it is just a heist movie.

They don't believe in anything.

They're not ideologues.

They are just Hans Gruber.

Exactly.

It's just like Die Hard.

It's just Die Hard.

All this horrible shit that I just told you about, the death demagoguery is a distraction from the robbery that's taking place.

They're just buying their time.

You have the President of the United States just generated five

billion with a B dollars.

in imaginary coins, in crypto assets this week.

What are we talking about?

So for the Epstein time, this is just the golden age of Grift.

This is all this is about.

And to that end, Alligator Alcatraz, I resent that we even call it that because it was talk about demagoguery.

This was just a fing grift.

Analysis by the Associated Press shows that Florida has signed at least $405 million in vendor contracts to build and operate the facility, which officials initially estimated would cost at least $450 million

a year to run.

And now at least 200 and I don't know, 20 million, 50 million is gone.

Just gone.

In the eight days it took to build it and the two months or so that it was running to dive into it all.

Independent journalist and trial lawyer and friend of the show, Katie Fang, is joining us.

Katie, where do we begin?

I mean, obviously, the decision has been made to, apparently for the time being anyway, to wind this operation down and shut it down, but that don't get us our money back, does it?

Where did the money go?

No.

And by the way, let's be clear, the grift didn't just start with Alligator Alcatraz, which is essentially a concentration camp smack dab in the middle of Big Cypress Preserve.

It started before 2023 when Ron DeSantis mysteriously plucked some bullshit emergency out of the air to justify the grift that you're talking about, Billy.

And, you know, it's, I call it pop, P-O-P.

It's profits over people.

It's public pop, private pop, public, private partnership pop.

I mean, you name it, it's pop.

It's always profits over people.

And we see it now wholesale to the tune of, what, $250 plus million dollars.

I mean, I don't know if they think that they're going to get some type of slap on the back and a good job, boys, because you came in under the $450 million estimate.

But we all know that but for a very smart federal judge putting this shit to an end, it would have kept on going and that bill would have kept on getting higher and higher.

So where did the money go?

Because clearly there was no RFPs.

They didn't put it out to bid to get the best deal for these services.

Did they just go right to their donor list to find people?

Were some of these sort of shady fly-by-night new companies, like where did the money go?

Yes, yes, and yes.

I mean, what do I, I mean, you, can we finish the show now?

I mean, you solved the mystery.

It's like, we don't need Scooby-Doo anymore.

I mean, right now we know that people that were giving money, people that started businesses just a month before Alligator Alcatraz was launched, businesses that are offshoots from those that have had litigation issues, criminal investigations, because they were giving money to the DeSantis campaign, to James Utmeyer, the current Florida Attorney General.

Those companies, because of this pay to play scheme, were able to make money off of all of us as Florida taxpayers.

And the thing is, a dollar is a dollar.

A dollar doesn't know a political political affiliation unless it's being used in a pay-to-play scheme.

Let's talk about this headline of the Miami Herald.

Alligator Alcatraz contractors have links to allegations of fraud and price gouging.

Who vetted these?

What is this?

I really hold out hope that they were angels on earth.

I really held out hope that they had integrity.

Oh, you mean the people that helped open up the concentration camp?

Yeah, I just want, you know, benefit of the doubt.

I'm kidding, obviously.

Who the hell are these people?

Who are these companies, Katie?

So these are companies like ARS.

So let's kind of like tick, tick, tick off of ARS, right?

So ARS is Access Restoration Services, Billy.

And in 2022, this is why I'm saying that this grift began before DeSantis declared his bullshit emergency concerning, quote, unauthorized illegal immigrants flooding our state.

ARS began giving money as far back as 2022.

So we know that it started with at least 100 grand back in 2022, and now it keeps on graduating every year with a 50 grand more.

And all in, so far, we've seen more than $400,000 given by ARS to Republican officials here in the state of Florida.

But then you get this offshoot company from ARS called IRG, which was launched in February of this year.

IRG has also been giving money as well.

But when we talk about the kind of quid, the pro and the quo here, the quo is pretty pretty hefty.

We're talking tens of millions of dollars of contracts and purchase orders that are inuring to the benefit of these companies like ARS and IRG.

They are so brazenly obvious.

You do not have to scratch the surface in any capacity to be able to see that the money flow is a very direct, let me help you, you help me energy.

And the thing that's crazy about this is you should have a vetting process.

Any objective procedure would be able to weed out people that have litigation over ripping off law firms and employees, people that have been investigated for the commission of fraud.

Those are people that should not be receiving tens of millions of dollars from our Florida taxpaying coffers.

And yet DeSantis doesn't give a f.

He doesn't care, especially because he's on his way out.

So for him, he's like, look, if you're going to sit here and make me look good for my dear Furur, the cult, you know, the cult leader convicted felon Donald Trump, he's all in and then some.

Nazis are his face.

And these are not like incidental contracts either.

This is big money like this company.

Questions are swirling about the mysterious local company being paid $78.5 million to staff Alligator Alcatraz.

Critical Response Strategies took down its leadership page sometime after May 13th.

But using an online tool called the Wayback Machine, Action News Jax was able to track down its leadership team.

Among them, local businessman Will Adkins, former Duval Emergency Director and current JFRD Lieutenant Todd Smith, and former GOP Michigan gubernatorial candidate Tudor Dixon.

Matthew Fenner is listed as the manager of CRS.

Fenner is also the CFO of Kaplan Ventures.

The contract between CRS and the state was pulled down off the Florida Department of Financial Services website within the last 24 hours.

Action News Jax was able to find more than $86,000 in campaign donations associated with Kaplan Ventures CEO, Ricky Kaplan, made to political committees and campaign accounts tied to Governor Ron DeSantis.

To your point, Katie, not only would you hope that there would be open and transparent bidding process and vetting of the competency and legitimacy of these companies, but now you have a company clearly made up of a bunch of insiders, some former government officials, a former Republican gubernatorial candidate

in another state, obviously donors of DeSantis or his PACs or the Florida Republican Party.

But also this lack of transparency once these contracts to the tune of $78.5 million have been signed.

Material like disappearing, people's LinkedIns being switched to private, all this crazy shit.

Like, is this legal actually to sign a $78 million contract with the state of Florida for our taxpayer dollars and then to like make it disappear?

Which part?

Make the people disappear?

Make the money disappear?

I mean, make your information disappear?

Listen,

at this point, the human rights violations are almost incidental to this just craven, cynical, like grift and robbery that went on here.

Yeah, listen, the due process civil rights violations, that's just icing on the fascist cake for these people, right?

Like they don't care.

And let me be very clear.

When y'all were going through that

video right now, there seemed to be a whole lot of white people that were involved in that company.

I just want you to know from what I could tell, unless my video screen was doing me dirty.

Here's the thing.

When you have the ability to negotiate on a contract and that gets signed, it's binding, right?

So if the state enters into this contract and they have to pay this company CRS $78.5 $78.5 million, they have to.

Now, there's no quality control though.

So putting aside that there's no objectivity and being able to vet whether or not you have competent vendors that are providing a service, when they're actually doing it, nobody's quality control or checking to see whether or not they're actually doing what they're supposed to be doing because nobody cares by that point.

When the money has been delivered, it's done.

It's out the door.

And the thing is, in order to have a kind of clean, forward-facing look, you end up having good press.

You end up having good comms.

You end up hiring people like Ballard Partners, like that other company.

Are we name checking?

Are we name checking them?

We're going to name check like a bitch.

ARS hired Ballard Partners and Ballard Partners has been paid $193,000 last year alone.

Ballard Partners hiring a whole bunch of former DeSantis people and they're lobbying hard for these companies.

We're in Tallahassee and others, right?

I mean, it's not just this one-way kind of energy.

It's the total, you scratch my back, I scratch yours.

And hey, by the way, we'll have a whole whole back scratching orgy going on with everybody helping everybody out, but it all costs money to enter the game.

So it goes both ways, but enough about Andrew Gillum.

So the Katie, I.

Lord.

Sorry.

Hey.

We can say that now.

Back scratching orgy.

Back scratching orgy.

That's what we talk about.

Another thing I've been saying for many, many years in this program, even before the state started building concentration camps in the middle of the swamp with stolen land, incidentally, from Iamme-Dade County.

I've been talking about this kind of quarter of a century mission by the Republicans, really starting with Jeb Bush.

Police clap.

To privatize, subsidize, and brutalize.

It started with the education system and has continued into almost every facet, including now obviously prisons and law enforcement.

But you privatize businesses and services that were ordinarily done by the government.

You subsidize them, of course, with our tax dollars.

And then you brutalize.

Well, how do you brutalize a lack of transparency?

Because a private entity is not subject to public records laws under the state.

So now that a government entity isn't doing it, they don't have to be transparent.

They don't have to necessarily have the kind of hiring standards.

I mean, this is why you have to see a lot of charter schools getting shut down because they have literal child molesters being hired at their schools.

And brutalize, in this case, now that we have concentration camps in the great state of Florida, literally brutalizing people and violating countless of their constitutional rights.

And somebody could have helped stop this.

And I want to talk about that before we go.

Katie, after this judge, this federal judge made the decision to shut down Alligator Alcatraz, Miami-Dade Mayor Danielle Levine-Fifa, I'm sorry, Danielle Levine Cava, had this to say out front of the concentration camp.

I'm here at Alligator Alcatraz, and we are uplifting the courageous decision of Judge Williams from yesterday that orders the state and the federal government to bring no new detainees and to shut it down within 60 days.

I'm so grateful.

I've been grateful to the judge for being so diligent, recognizing the threats to our beautiful natural environment.

I'm so grateful to the Miccosukee tribe who always fought for this area.

And I'm grateful to all of the advocates and activists who've called attention to these issues, not only to the environment, but to the humanity.

So thank you.

Thank you, everyone, for your advocacy.

Stop this, stop this, stop this, stop this.

I'm sorry, Katie, I'm no lawyer.

You are.

Is it me or was Danielle Levine Cava, who is the CEO of Miami-Dade County, a defendant on the opposite side of this lawsuit?

What am I missing here that she's out here celebrating that she lost the lawsuit?

What is happening?

Yeah, so that's what's so wackadoo about that social media clip there.

So the Friends of the Everglades, the Center for Biological Diversity,

they were the original lawsuit that was brought against not only the DeSantis administration, but the Trump administration for the construction and the operation of Alligator Alcatraz.

And a lot of people, Billy, poo-pooed this lawsuit initially because they were like, oh, it's about the environment.

No one cares.

Well, a lot of us care.

And a lot of us, including the federal judge, Kathleen Williams, said, no, no, no.

And that is the case that ended up having Alligator Alcatraz shut down and dismantled.

In that lawsuit, though, there was an additional defendant, Miami-Dade County.

And the mayor, Daniela Levine Cava, was adverse.

She was on the opposite side of this case, of the litigation, from the Friends of the Everglades and the Center for Biological Diversity.

So what's absurd is, and let me be very clear.

As a lawyer, you advocate for your client.

And Miami-Dade County has the entire office of the county attorney's office to be able to handle its litigation.

When you're sued, you have to respond or else you're defaulted, meaning that the court will say, yeah, you didn't respond.

I guess that means you don't want to fight it.

So we'll just tag you for whatever the hell happens.

But Miami-Dade County fought against the plaintiffs in that case.

actively.

They went so far as to oppose the idea of entering an injunction, meaning a block against alligator Alcatraz.

Dade County was on the side of DeSantis and the Trump administration to allow them to continue to put stuff up, erect new buildings, put more shit that's damaging our ecological system out there in Big Cypress.

And yes, inhumane civil rights and due process violations.

That is the side that the Miami-Dade County was on.

And what's astounding to me, Billy, is that the mayor could have, on behalf of Miami-Dade County, instituted litigation before anybody else did because the county, you, me, others that are a part of Miami-Dade County, the county owns that land, that parcel of land that they put Alligator Alcatraz on.

But instead of suing the Trump administration or the DeSantis administration, ostensibly because there was this issue of trying to get your budget approved by the go by the state government there was no litigation that was commenced so I want to take it and I want to compare it to the following if you're living in your house and DeSantis comes knocking on your door and tells you that he's going to erect a gigantic dog cage on your front lawn where all of the filth the waste the shit and the piss is going to run off basically into your house that the people that are going to be put into there are not going to be fed they're not going to be housed.

They're not going to be able to take a shower.

They're not going to be able to have access to counsel.

They're not going to be able to see their loved ones.

They're going to be eating food with maggots.

And you're just going to sit there and let DeSantis put that cage on your front lawn.

You're not going to take action.

That's exactly what the mayor did.

She could have taken action on behalf of the county.

And let's be very clear here.

Even if the futility of that litigation may have been very evident, you still fing do it because you do not allow this to be the stain on your legacy.

If you are the mayor of the place that technically owns that land.

And I don't want to hear about DeSantis' emergency powers because we all know that that's a crock of shit.

Danielle Levine Cava, mayor of Miami-Dade, was on the wrong side of this case.

She's on the wrong side of history.

And just the cynicism of her coming out to celebrate a victory that was not only somebody else's victory, but that she was fighting against is just absolutely.

Politicians do that all the time.

But this is next level because she had an opportunity.

She had more standing, arguably, than any of the other plaintiffs in the now three, at least three lawsuits against the state and the feds over Alligator Alcatraz.

Also the nerve to call it, what, a courageous decision.

Courageous.

It's like if you turn the audio off, she looks like an influencer who's telling her followers to come to Alligator Alcatraz, this hot news spot that she found.

She flip-flops more than a chocleta.

Yeah.

Hashtag Because Miami.

Katie Fang News is her channel on YouTube.

It's fabulous.

Follow her.

Katie, come back and see us sometime.

We'll talk more concentration camp talk here on Because Miami.

I just want to make clear that the Kagle is not a Kugel, even though, Billy, you may be excited for that.

And I just did a quibby.

Yeah, I like

my Kaggles with cream cheese.

It's a classic New York breakfast.

This episode is supported by FX's The Lowdown, starring Ethan Hawk.

Allow us to introduce you to Lee Raybon, a quirky journalist/slash rare bookstore owner/slash unofficial truth seeker who's always on the tail of his latest conspiracy.

This time, his most recent expose puts him head to head with a powerful family that rules Tulsa.

Meaning only one thing, he must be onto something big.

FX's The Lowdown premieres September 23rd on FX.

Stream on Hulu.

Hey, listeners, it's Mike.

Hey, Billy Gill.

Hey.

Hey, Billy, as a proud member of your inner circle, remember when we were hanging out last weekend?

Oh, yeah, fishtail palms.

The fishtail palms, the great memories we made, kids playing in the pool, and in our hands, a nice ice-cold can of Miller Light.

It was so hot out.

I know, but it was so cold in my hand.

We took that first sip.

It was crisp.

It was refreshing.

Oh, man, there is nothing like cracking open a Miller light with your crew and your inner circle bones.

Hell yeah.

We fist bumped.

Whether it's we actually really did.

Whether it's that touchdown.

It didn't make a sound, but it just thought BAM!

Boom.

Whether it's that touchdown you didn't see coming or just arguing about fantasy lineups, you and I did plenty of that.

Miller Light has been the taste that you can depend on for 50 years.

Brewed for flavor with simple ingredients, rich toffee notes, and that iconic golden color.

And here's a kicker, Billy.

What?

It's just 96 calories.

What?

3.2 carbs per 12 ounces.

The original light beer since 1975 and still hitting different five decades later.

Miller Light, great taste, 96 calories.

Go to millerlight.com/slash dan to find delivery options near you, or you can pick up some Miller Light pretty much anywhere they sell beer.

It's Miller time.

Celebrate responsibly.

Miller Brewing Company, Milwaukee, Wisconsin, 96 calories and 3.2 carbs per 12 ounces.

In Florida, rainbow crosswalks are being removed, including outside Orlando's Pulse Nightclub, honoring the 49 people gunned down in the 2016 mass shooting, targeting the LGBTQ community.

The Florida Department of Transportation, the same agency that first painted the art, erased it.

Three protesters were arrested outside the Pulse nightclub over the weekend.

The Florida Highway Patrol accused them of defacing a traffic device by covering the crosswalk with colored chalk.

Orlando police and state troopers have been stationed there since last weekend.

In the last week, Key West, Tampa, and Tallahassee have received similar requests from FDOT.

Delray Beach Mayor Rob Long called the move political.

This crosswalk on famed Ocean Drive in Miami Beach could soon disappear.

Florida says it's following a new federal directive from the Trump administration to keep crosswalks and intersections free from distractions.

I hit the wrong cart right out of the gate.

Good job, Joe.

The crosswalks are making us gay.

The crosswalks are making us gay.

The crosswalks are making making us gay.

I don't know.

I'm having strange urges just having crossed the street, Brittany Brave.

How about you?

I was looking at those rainbow crosswalks, and I suddenly had this huge urge to eat.

It was crazy.

We can see that now.

Oh, my God.

Holy shit.

Guess Britney Brave is here, folks,

in case you forgot.

What if you jaywalk?

What happens then?

I think that's it.

You're trans.

I think you're.

I think you're, it's called, yeah, you're, it's called gay walking, first of all, yeah.

Not jaywalking.

And you, you get a ticket for that.

And

it falls right off.

You're just, you're trans.

Exactly.

Exactly.

Florida's square dance into fascism continues.

And Anne Escamani is a Florida state rep.

She is a candidate for city of Orlando mayor, which has kind of become ground zero in a way for this controversy that is engulfing the entire state of Florida.

But what's happening in Orlando, of course, is it was a memorial for the victims of the Pulse mass shooting.

Very traumatizing.

Approved, of course, by the Florida Department of Transportation.

This was not some random protest or unpermitted act.

This was something that was done in conjunction with the state as a memorial.

It has now been

covered over and then repainted by protesters and then covered over and repainted with chalk by protesters.

And now they've been arrested

some of these folks and now they have guards, like eight troopers, state troopers, making sure that nobody, God forbid.

Representative Escamani, let me just ask you this.

Where does this rank as far as the issues facing the people of Florida right now?

Is this top 10, top five, top three, top 50?

Where does this rank as the issues that matter most to your constituents and us Floridians?

I mean, before DeSantis made all the shitty decisions around it, nobody talked about it.

I mean, The Crosswalk was, as you mentioned, originally established with support of FDOT as a spark of joy as a as a piece of art to add on to what will be a permanent memorial at the pulse site and of course nobody talked about it until the state erased it and what what point i i want to emphasize this point because it wasn't just erased it was erased in the middle of the night with no warning

we woke up the next day realizing it was gone until literally the state of florida with didn't even tell us they just snuck in and that was the first crosswalk they decided to erase.

I mean, it's just absurd.

And obviously, I also have to argue that it was timed out because the night they did it, the next morning was when we were all expecting the court decision to come out about the so-called Aligarh Alcatraz.

It was that same Thursday when we woke up to this news.

So, I mean, the DeSantis administration, they're so insidious.

It's always about optics for them and timing communications to distract from their losses.

Just like the most recent announcement about vaccines, right?

I mean, they just, they're always coming up with ways to deflect and distract.

And this was one of those examples.

Why do they always do this?

Why do they always do it under the cover at night and at midnight, do these stupid, ridiculous things?

It almost kind of sounds like they're really terrified of these gays and these allies.

They're like, oh, we're going to do this in the middle of the night.

The crossbows are making us gay.

Yeah, so a drag queen doesn't come out with a stiletto and beat the shit out of me.

It's funny you say that because when I was, I was out, I've been out there a lot of days, right?

With the activists, with the protesters and with all these FHP troopers.

And we're just like, y'all,

we are basically a bunch of gays and girls holding chalk and clack fans.

Like we are not dangerous.

And yet.

They have this army of folks waiting for us.

I mean, it's just so silly.

Well, it's funny because we continue to target a movement, the LGBTQ movement, that is literally based on love and acceptance and equality and showing up exactly as you are.

And DeSantis and the administration is terrifying.

You use the term erase, and I know you did that on purpose.

They came out in the middle of the night and erased this memorial, not just a sidewalk chalk or paint on the ground, this work of art, this memorial designed and approved for a very specific purpose.

Because, I mean, speaking of erasure, I mean, 49 people, am I right, were slaughtered in what was very deliberately a targeted attack, a hate crime against the LGBTQ plus community there in Orlando at the Pulse nightclub, but they're talking about this under the guise, the state is, of safety.

This is what they're saying.

So, because this is going to make it, because these are distractions is what's happening here.

So silly.

Yeah.

I mean, the data speaks for itself that decorative crosswalks increase public safety.

It helps remind drivers that people walk here.

And so you look out for them more proactively.

It also increases walkability in general, because if you are expecting to encourage someone to walk in the hot sun upwards of a mile, if not more, to get from point A to point C with the B as the walk in the middle, then you have to give them interesting things to look at, interesting things to see.

And these decorative crosswalks have played a part in supporting local artists and increasing safety, but also increasing walkability, which apparently all these maha folks I thought wanted more people to exercise and walk.

And so at the end of the day, this was only about politics and it is about an eraser eraser because the state of Florida has shown itself time and time again.

Governor Ron DeSantis has already demonstrated a deep disdain for people who are different from him.

And

he has pushed for policies that erase queer people from literature, that

restrict access to health care, that allow medical providers to deny you access to care if you are gay.

I can't wait for the day that this man inevitably comes out of the closet.

Can we all agree?

Was his wife.

Hang on.

Remember, he had those rain boots, so you don't have to do that.

That's what I'm saying.

I mean, remember the don't say gay bill?

My first time when I heard about the don't say gay bill, I was like, this is pretty gay, not to be a middle schooler.

Like, he's projecting.

It's some closet case kind of shit.

I definitely think so.

But you said that there is evidence that painted crosswalks actually make these intersections safer.

From 2022, a Bloomberg philanthropy study found that there is a 50% drop in crashes involving pedestrians or cyclists in the U.S.

and a 27% increase in drivers yielding to pedestrians in areas where asphalt was installed.

So 50% fewer crashes.

That's not incidental.

No.

I mean, there's a lot of your fellow politicians who would be thrilled to win an election with 50%

of a vote.

I mean, that's a pretty overwhelming...

I mean,

that increases public.

That's like off the charts.

Yeah, but Billy, what you're forgetting is the very important and legitimate statistic that rainbow crosswalks also increase desires for homosexual makeout sessions by 120%.

Obviously, that's the statistic.

Don't forget to mid-stat.

I mean, I'm looking at her beautiful earrings and all the rainbow colors.

I'm having feelings right now, not to make it inappropriate, but it's not simple to say.

No, they need to stop this because they want to stop people getting rear-ended at these intersections.

Exactly.

Oh, no, no.

We can say that now.

The crosswalks are making us gay.

The crosswalks are making us gay.

So also a great snippet from Lady Gaga's new house.

Also, in terms of public safety here, how many armed guards are there now at this intersection?

Guarding a crosswalk.

Stopping people from sidewalk chalking National Guard.

What is happening right now?

I mean, I have to tell you, there's been some really important commentary around the police presence because there was not ever this much police when it was a gay club to protect those who were celebrating and to protect those.

Right.

And so there's, it's just such a sad contrast of all the resources to protect a crosswalk from being chalked compared to no resources to protect LGBTQ plus people who are overtly targeted for who they are and who they love at places like nightclubs.

So it's been sick to see.

I wonder what's going to be more dangerous in our classrooms for our kids at this point, guns or crayons?

Well, we have to get the AR-15s into classrooms and those vaccines out of the classrooms is what we really need to do

here in Florida.

Good news, they're not just trying to erase the LGBTQ plus community, they're also doing this.

Two pastors were arrested by St.

Pete police and are charged with obstruction and hindering traffic.

Reverends Andy Oliver and Benedict Atherton Zeman learned F-DOT crews were targeting the Black History Matter street mural in front of the Woodson African American Museum in St.

Pete.

They arrived and began to pray on top of it.

Part of my vows that I took as

part of my ordination and my baptism is to resist evil, injustice, and oppression.

We have the values of interdependence, of love, and I really couldn't just stand on the sidelines.

I had to kneel in the street.

Can I say something?

Please.

Those two mugshots of those two pastors, the one on the left, well, the one on the right looks like the one on the left after an episode of Queer Eye.

Can we just agree?

I mean, his hair is jellyfish.

Oh, yeah, look at that.

Right?

Like, I thought that was like the same man who just like had a glow up in prison

because he got rear-ended.

Oh, no.

Oh, no.

We didn't say that now.

They're coming all over the place.

Representative.

What, what, what, why, why?

What are we doing?

And this is in front of like a black history museum.

This wasn't just a random street that they just kind of threw this mural on.

Everything's kind of thematically appropriate here.

Like, you know, South Beach, we have one, which is like probably one of the most gay-friendly communities historically in the world.

And what else do we have to make disappear now?

Other than children and their vaccines.

I think women are next.

I think it's over for us, I think.

Well, that was a long time ago.

Yeah, that was predestined when they

got rid of that.

That ship sailed.

That's true.

Yeah, when they banned abortion in Florida.

I mean, I think, first of all, like much love and gratitude to our faith leaders who are showing up in solidarity.

Reverend Andy in particular, I've known him for a long time.

And I think this is a space for more faith leaders to step up, whether it's on immigration, whether it's on inclusivity and so forth.

So I'm grateful for the leadership on that.

But I also want to acknowledge that the DeSantis administration, their intention is to erase

communities and topics they don't like.

But because of First Amendment concerns, they have to remove all the decorative artwork, right?

Because they're trying to avoid accusations of content.

And so I think it's important to note that their intention is to go after specific content.

That's where they're targeting first.

But they are getting rid of local artists and

in our case of Orlando, Swan murals, you know, all these efforts to beautify our city that we've spent hundreds and thousands, if not millions of dollars on.

They are going after that too.

And it's just, it's a slap in the face to what FDOT used to celebrate.

I mean, literally, FDOT gave out an award to Tampa for creative crosswalks for school safety.

So you have a state agency that has been encouraging us to do this.

And of course, Complete 180.

And there was no new law that gave them permission to do this.

It was a rule change with the Green Book.

They did it with no public oversight.

And

of course, evading legislative oversight has been another MO of the DeSantis administration.

Before we go, 30 seconds, breaking news this week.

DeSantis and our, I mean, I can only describe this as like borderline mass murder.

The Surgeon General of the State of Florida, Latipo, will end all vaccine mandates in Florida law.

Your comment, 30 seconds.

I think it's important to note not only how extreme this is, but how people with money and insurance will be able to get their children vaccinated.

And those who don't have those resources are going to be most at risk of not only getting sick and ill, but spreading disease within different communities.

And of course, potentially even dying.

So this is a dangerous precedent, and we have to do everything we can to fight back.

That's an interesting point.

Because of no mandate, then that means the insurance companies don't have to provide it.

So this doesn't just affect parents who don't want their children or choosing in the free state of Florida to not have their children vaccinated.

Parents who want their children vaccinated may not be able to afford it because insurance won't cover it anymore.

Yeah, and DOH might not require it, might not provide it for no cost.

You know, I grew up in a working-class family in Orlando.

My mom took us to the Department of Health to get our vaccines at no cost.

And so, if you remove the mandate, what's next is not providing them excess at all in our departments of health.

So, where do those families go?

The good thing is, though, now that vaccines aren't mandated, we're going to have a lot less gay people because that's what was making people gay from what I heard.

No,

the crosswalks are making us gay.

The crosswalks are making us gay.

And the crosswalks are making us gay.

And Eskimani, thank you so much for joining us.

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Hi, everyone.

It's comedian Brittany Braight.

And some of you may remember that in late 2022, I had the Dolulu idea to make an entire movie about Miami's comedy scene.

Movies need help.

Movies need support.

Movies need

your money.

Puchacha is basically my love letter to Miami.

And if you know anything about me, ill, gross.

I don't do those.

Whenever Miami does something, it doesn't exactly do it on a small scale.

Pitbull could have just been Mr.

Kendall, but he decided to be Mr.

Walt Bye.

Daddy.

Any donation is appreciated, and I want everybody to see what we call the 305 Magic City.

And no, that's not code for cocaine.

Not always, at least.

Excuse me just a moment, Brittany.

The U is back, baby!

The U is back, baby.

Don't you clap your hands like that.

I've been creating a little frickin'.

I've been holding that in the whole episode.

It's a gator chump.

The U is back, baby.

Yeah, I hear Tourette's.

How about them pains?

Tourette's bad.

How about them pains, you and your gator.

Chomp, Chomp.

You and your gay, the fighting GED.

I couldn't f ⁇ ing afford UM.

Come on.

Bright futures, baby, had to go to UF.

Yeah, you know what UM and UF students have in common?

What?

They both got into UF.

Oh, no.

That's not even.

Okay.

That's not even.

That's not factually correct.

You know what?

The crosswalks are making us Gator.

You know?

Oh, no.

It kind of feels weird to say go Gators because then people might think I'm like.

No, it's Go Getter because you don't say gay.

Go getters.

Go getters.

Go getters.

Go getters.

Go getters.

Go Gators feels weird because then it feels like I'm a fan of Alligator Alcatraz.

You know what the average UF student gets on their SATs?

Drool.

Cool.

That's what they do.

Leave the jokes to the comedians.

No, these are my Florida dad jokes, is what

they are.

Yeah, you wrote them while on bats faults.

That's why they hit the way they do.

What a meth.

Oh, crap.

I left that one.

I have a little bit of a lift.

I have a little bit of a lift.

A little bit of a lift.

Do you know?

Now you sound like people.

Do you know why?

I have a little bit of a list than you.

A crosswalks are.

Hey, hey, hey, don't give me that look, Roy.

Hey, man.

We can say that now.

Also,

if men in your life start developing a lisp, it's because the crosswalks made them gay and they've been exercising their right for fellatio.

Brittany.

I didn't know you knew Italian.

Brittany.

Poquito.

Brittany or your stripper name, Delulu.

Can we talk about this Indiegogo?

You have been working on this documentary, as it says on your hat.

Let me read it aloud.

It says much.

Exclamation point.

It is a noun.

It means

tiny bitch.

You can say that now.

Yes.

That was one of the first jokes I wrote.

But enough about Donna Shalala.

Or enough about David Sampson.

You're going to have a lot of hate.

Keep on going.

You're going to have, I mean, there's going to be dwarf organizations that are going to be coming after you after this episode.

Dwarf organizations.

Yeah.

The lollipop guild.

Who's going to protest outside?

Quit listening to the

unions.

They're walking off.

That's it.

Can't even see them.

So tell me about this documentary.

I started it in 2022.

I have never made him.

This is my first go at filmmaking.

My first indie go.

My first indie go,

exactly.

I wanted to capture what was happening in Miami comedy.

Oh, so it's a short film?

It's a very short film.

Yeah, exactly.

It's a short film.

It's documentary style.

There's live stand-up tapings.

There's interviews.

There's

BTS, there's B-roll.

And I said, I want to capture something and put my friends in it and make a movie to bring it to the industry if the industry won't come to us.

And over the last two and a half years, we've been shooting and I have been banging my head in the wall, but we are finally in post-production and we are raising money to get through.

Congratulations.

To get through it, we're done.

I have an interest in the form of documentary filmmaking.

And so I think I know what a pain in the ass it is and how much work it is.

And it is not a surprise to hear three years later, you still, you know, pounding the pavement and working on it in post and in financing.

Very, very common.

But I'm curious, though, because this is what happens when you're doing a dock or a Verite kind of follow-doc style thing and you're trying to document a scene.

In this case, the comedy scene in Miami, shit changes.

So, how has it changed?

For a while, like Miami comedy scene was not a thing.

Like, you couldn't even really say that Miami comedy scene.

Sure.

So,

the through line, the thing that we're kind of noticing with all this footage, because we do have characters past, present, and future of Miami comedy.

So, if you follow the comedy scene at all down here in Miami, a lot of familiar faces.

Billy's actually in it too.

There's footage of him.

I'm in it.

Yeah, when you did my Big Yikes podcast, we had a comedy.

Yeah, yeah.

And I dressed like a Tura and I made Billy sit on an inflatable couch in Broward County.

She made me slept all the way up to

unbelievable.

I should have been in it.

Yes, yes.

Because I don't know if you know this, but Roy lives in.

Broward!

Oh, that's embarrassing.

I'm sorry.

Come on now.

You should fire him.

Whoa, whoa.

I need the job.

Easy.

It's going to go scream in the bathroom.

Exactly.

Punch him.

Roy.

The kind of common denominator that we're finding is that Miami has had a lot of opportunities to have a renaissance with comedy.

There's been a lot of booms and then a lot of crashes.

So, a lot of different moments across the last 10 to 20 years.

It's had some heat on it.

We had the South Beach Comedy Festival here at one point.

It was fun.

Super fun.

I love that.

Comedy Central was involved and produced it.

It was Amy Schumer's first big festival look, Joe Rogan's first big festival look.

And then we kind of watched the momentum go away because of a lot of factors, because Miami will Miami.

And because comedy is still a relatively new thing in this very young, vibrant city.

It's hard to pay attention to jokes when you've just got fat asses clapping.

and where?

Where?

Exactly.

Where?

See?

Where?

See?

You see?

Where do you?

Where?

I'm being silenced.

You see?

Okay.

I'm sorry.

Or you have crypto being thrown at you or corrupt business plans being thrown at you or bottles being lit on fire.

It's not exactly a city that's, it's not conducive conditions for good stand-up comedy.

And I think that anybody that takes it seriously has found they need to kind of leave at least for a little while to go establish themselves and then can kind of leave leave Miami on the back burner if so.

So which is what you've done.

And now you're coming back and you're finishing this documentary.

And how do people support it?

Indiegogo, Muchacha, Britney Brave, Google it.

At the top of this year, I got a new executive producer on board, Allie Edwards.

She's a badass.

She's worked on projects for Netflix and HBO and Paramount Plus.

And Transparently, two years ago, you and I had drinks and I picked your brain and you were very kind to give me two hours worth of advice.

And you were like, I don't even know if what you have as a doc, as much as a short, as much as just a special about Miami comedy.

But you told me to keep shooting with a couple things in mind.

And I gave it to Allie at the top of this year.

And I said, am I out of my fing mind?

Do I have anything here?

Is there a story to be told?

Should I scrap this?

The last thing I want to do is scrap it because I've worked hard on it for the last three years.

And Allie believed in it.

Yeah.

And she said, I think, I think there's a story with you.

There's a story with these comedians.

There's a story with just exploring Miami because people are so perplexed by our wonderful dystopian tropical paradise that we live in.

And she said, there's something here.

And so she's been helping me kind of get this thing across the finish line.

And we just need a little bit of money to make sure it gets edited and colored and taken care of.

Go to Instagram at Brittany Brave.

You can find the info there or Google Indiegogo Muchacha.

Indiegogo Britney Brave.

You will find it.

Brittany, thank you so much for being here.

Thank you.

Before we go, our Miami moment.

It is the world premiere this week of the trailer for my new pop doc, which I produced with Dear Gen and Neon, the company that brought you Anora and Parasite.

They won two Oscars for Best Picture.

Remarkable.

It's a really young company.

This is a bat shit tale of Florida ferry about a U.S.

Green Beret war hero who helped plot Operation Gideon, which was dubbed Bay of Piglets by the press.

It was an epic failed coup to overthrow Nicholas Maduro in Venezuela, and they schemed out of a WeWork in Brickle, of course.

Classic.

Of course.

But of course.

Hashtag Because Miami.

It will be available September 9th on premium video on demand.

So wherever you rent movies digitally, cocaines.

In May 2020, I was raided by the FBI

because I planned and executed an operation to invade Venezuela in hopes of liberating 30 million people.

How'd that go?

No subueno.

The self-proclaimed architect of an infiltration into Venezuela, Florida, contractor and ex-Green Beret, Jordan Goudreau.

Everybody and their mom was trying to liberate Venezuela back then.

We are fighting for 23 years.

Jordan made statements that he was in direct contact with people within the administration.

Hola, I'm Mike Pence.

We discussed the nature of the operation and I was going to catalyze change of government in Venezuela.

I had the military in place.

All we needed to do was coordinate.

I figured, you know what?

I'm good to go.

Really?

You decided you're going to save the country?

Venezuela is an extremely resource-rich country.

Let's suppose that we are interested in that.

It was the first business contract I ever signed.

So the contract was for $212 million.

Who's paying for that?

I didn't ask.

There had been camps set up with training going on.

I'm a man of my word.

And if I say I'm going to invade a country, that's typically what I do.

Who is him to even give an opinion?

Stick at it.

There was no U.S.

government involvement in this operation.

If we'd have been involved, it would have gone differently.

When those guys are in jail, it's like a knife in my heart.

I don't know if we have one foot in reality and one foot in delusion.

We checked the earth, and that was red flag after red flag.

It wasn't in their best interest to liberate Venezuela.

This is like Firefest the Army.

This had no chance of working.

I still have the element of surprise.

His name was on TV.

The contract was on TV.

Was I in over my head?

Yeah.

But I'm always in over my head.

I'm in the over-your-head business.

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