South Florida Sun Sentinel from Fort Lauderdale, Florida • Page 7

nr Lamj SOUTH BROWARD Sun-Sentinel, Wednesday, October 3, 1990 Section GARY STEIN Staff Columnist City-run cable TV i T' i explored tamDniiit Poll workers lonely as 9 percent vote 2 Live Crew trial an 'unreal' waste I -t a -r- 1. V- is very hard to pick out my favorite part of the latest 2 Live Crew trial, but IH give it a shot. But first, you should be told that what is goine on in Fort Lauderdale this wppIc Staff photoLOU TOMAN Poll worker Mattie Climo awaits voters at Plantation fire house. Pines will study offering own service By JOE KOLLIN i Staff Writer For less than the cost of basic cable television service in Pembroke Pines, residents of the Panhandle city of Valparaiso also can have the Disney Channel. But that's not all.

They also can get a security service that instantly sends police officers or medical rescue crews to their homes at the touch of a button, or firefighters at the first sign of smoke. Storer Cable TV's charge for basic monthly service in Pembroke Pines: $18.50. Valparaiso's charge for basic monthly service: $8.25. Add $4 for the optional security service and $6 for the premium Disney Channel and it comes to $18.25, 25 cents less than Storer's basic rate. Valparaiso is the only city in Florida to run its own cable system.

But the small town near Pensacola may soon be joined by Pembroke Pines. Tired of battling Storer over rates and services, Pembroke Pines officials are considering establishing a city-owned service to compete. SEE CABLE 7B By AMY STROMBERG Staff Writer Tuesday's runoff election drew a collective yawn from voters. Countywide, 9.06 percent of the registered voters turned out to select Thomas McDonald over William Foley for the Democratic nomination to a Port Everglades Commission seat and Jim Minter of Tallahassee over Alcee Hastings for the Democrats' secretary of state nomination. At Precinct 1-S in Dania, five workers spent nearly an hour discussing the woes of the world as they waited for a voter to show.

The topics ranged from the Chernobyl nuclear reactor disaster to earthquakes to the greenhouse effect. Also on their list: voter apathy. While low, the 9.06 percent turnout did not sink low enough to break the 1984 record, when 5.4 percent of the county's voters showed up at the polls, Supervisor of Elections Jane Carroll said. Tuesday's was the second-worst turnout the county has recorded since at least 1976. The next slowest year for voter turnout was in 1982, when 10 per- ELECTION '90 Democratic runoffs party runoffs.

A runoff is held if no candidate in the primary gets more than 50 percent of the vote in a Democratic or Republican primary in September. The winners of the runoffs advance to the Nov. 6 general election. Turnout appeared higher than average at some mostly black precincts, possibly because one of the candidates in the secretary of state race was Hastings, a longtime black activist in Broward. At Precinct 31-Z, Dillard High School in Fort Lauderdale, 53 voters had cast ballots by 11 a.m.

The precinct has 1,485 Democrats, most of whom are SEE TURNOUT 4B cent of the county's voters showed. "It's been extremely quiet," said Mary Womack, operations manager for the elections office. Before the runoff, officials predicted only 5 percent of the county's voters would show up. Of the county's 348,461 registered Democrats, only 31,562 voted in the t't V- 4 isn't the real 2 Live Crew trial. Nor was the trial in June the real 2 Live Crew trial.

That was merely a hearing in which a federal judge said the record was obscene, after Which Nick Navarro immediately sent in the Delta Force to arrest record store owner Charles Freeman, who was terrorizing Broward by selling the 2 Live Crew record to consenting adults. That set up this week's trial, in which a jury will figure out whether the record is obscene, and then decide whether Freeman is either a good guy or should be sent to Iraq. All of which sets up next week's trial, which is the real 2 Live Crew trial. At that time, another jury will decide whether 2 Live Crew's performance is obscene, and whether they should get the chair for having potty mouths. If you want a simple title for this entire sham, I've got one.

Call it "Your Tax Dollars at Work." A party like none other Again, back to my favorite part in Tuesday's proceedings, which wasn't the real 2 Live Crew trial, but you already know that. The big moment actually came in the morning, when defense attorneys without the jury present played tapes by rap groups The Geto Boys and Ice Cube, unsuccessfully trying to get Judge Paul Backman to allow them into evidence as "comparable" to 2 Live Crew's As Nasty as They Wanna Be. For about 20 minutes, people were yukking it up as the rap groups were spewing four-letter words. Trust me, this was not Leslie Gore they were listening to. Attorneys were joking with the judge.

Courtroom spectators were standing, mingling, bopping in the aisle, having a dandy time. The whole bizarre thing looked a little like the Cocktail Party from Hell, or maybe a scene from Twin Peaks. "This is very surrealistic watching people bop like this," said Broward author and teacher Richard Grayson. It was Grayson who earlier this year started Radio Free Broward while spending the summer in New York. To show his opposition to the attempted censorship, he bought copies of 2 Live Crew albums in New York and sent them to friends in Broward who were prohibited from buying the same stuff.

"I saw Nick Navarro lots of times on TV in New York," Grayson said. I don't know about New York, but there are times when I think Navarro is on TV here more often than Ann Bishop. "This trial is really like a freak show," Grayson said. "I almost expect to see the record being brought out in shackles." Yeah, this whole thing would be hysterical if it weren't so ludicrous. And costly.

'A waste of time' This whole sham was started by some pompous, holier-than-thou types who decided the record was dirty. They complained to Gov. Rev. Bob and some other politicians, who didn't have the guts to tell these people to shut up and get a life. So now you have a judge (earning $76,851 a year) and two prosecutors (earning a combined $66,500 a year) at this week's trial, which will take at least three days.

And that's only the time spent in court. Toss in court reporters and bailiffs and judicial aides and again, it's not their fault this thing has gone to trial and you can see what is happening because some moral crackpots yelled about a record. "I think this week's trial is a waste of time," I was told by New York Newsday pop music critic John Leland, who was a witness at the first 2 Live Crew trial and was back in town this week. "People want to give music too much power, that it has this great force on young people. I don't think it does.

"It's very clear 2 Live Crew's record is music. I would like to think that if these two trials end in acquittal, that will put a damper on all of this." Of course, if there is a conviction, the yahoos will be inspired to go after more things they -don't like. Kind of makes you proud to be a taxpayer. Staff photoJOE RAEDLE David Gillis, left, and Crawford Lovett work inside the main theater of the Broward Center for the Performing Arts on Tuesday. 'Phantom' commits to Broward stop City Commissioner Carlton Moore.

stop in the South. "I'm numb," theater Executive Director William Farkas said after a day of meetings. "I think I'm going to go drink some champagne." The signing came hours after theater officials averted the threat of a court injunction that would have halted construction of the center. Minority leaders expressed anger late last week that their community had been shut out of the economic benefits of the $52 million project. Theater leaders, after a weekend of talks, promised to work out a written plan to hire minority employees and firms and to push for more minorities on its board.

"That's a gigantic step," said Michael Robinson, attorney for a new alliance of black business and civic groups that had confronted the theater. "They had not been seeking out minorities. Now they will be." who worked with the group, said, "There are going to be some dollars made, so they've agreed that everyone should make some of those dollars." Theater officials, despite the day of good news, still face five months of nail biting until the Phantom opens its 12-week run on Feb. 26, Farkas said. Contractors promise that they can SEE PHANTOM 7B By BOB LaMENDOLA and JACK ZINK Staff Writers The Phantom Of The Opera will be staged in Fort Lauderdale.

After a year of fear that the Phantom would never materialize, producers of Andrew Lloyd Webber's hit musical committed on Tuesday to make the yet-unfinished Broward Center for the Performing Arts the show's only Album's artistic merit argued Music critics testify 2 Live Crew's 'Nasty' isn't obscene of rap and hip-hop musical and cultural styles for nine years as a critic for Newsday and SPIN magazine. He led jurors on something of a historical field trip through the world of hip-hop and rap, the vocal form of hip-hop. Leland talked about the skill needed to invent new music from fragments of existing songs, which he called the hall- INSIDE LOCAL Hallandale rejects call by mayor for sheriff to take over police services. 3B sale of obscene material for selling two copies of the album to an undercover sheriff's deputy in June. He faces up to one year in jail and a $1,000 fine.

Defense witnesses testified on Tuesday that the album is not obscene because it is not primarily designed to be sexually arousing and because, in its own way, the album is a work of art. "It's really radical musical work," testified John Leland, music critic for Newsday, a New York "It had a really direct relationship with people's lives. I think 2 Live Crew has introduced some real innovations." Leland has chronicled the emergence v. By TOM DAVIDSON Staff Writer An all-white Broward County jury got a lesson on Tuesday in the predominantly black music form of rap an education defense attorneys say they think will show that 2 Live Crew's music is not obscene. Two music critics testified that 2 Live Crew's As Nasty As They Wanna Be has artistic merit even though it is riddled with profanity, sexual references and violence.

Record store owner Charles Freeman is charged with a misdemeanor count of mar oi mp-nop ana rap. He also argued that 2 Live Crew's bawdy lyrics are merely a reflection and parody of'black street talk. Hollywood's Oceanwalk Mall moves a step closer to foreclosure. 4B Staff photoSEAN DOUGHERTY Charles Freeman listens to defense witnesses during his trial. SEE TRIAL 7B.