3 February 22-28, 2024 miaminewtimes.com | browardpalmbeach.com New Times | Contents | Letters | news | night+Day | CuLture | Cafe | MusiC | MONTH XX–MONTH XX, 2008 miaminewtimes.com MIAMI NEW TIMES | CONTENTS | LETTERS | RIPTIDE | METRO | NIGHT+DAY | STAGE | ART | FILM | CAFE | MUSIC | ▼ MIAMI LOCAL CONNECTION OF COURSE BOTH SUPER BOWL LVIII STREAKERS ARE FROM MIAMI. BY NAOMI FEINSTEIN T here is, indeed, always a Miami connection. In the third quarter of the February 11 Super Bowl LVIII matchup between the San Fran- cisco 49ers and the Kansas City Chiefs in Las Vegas, two shirtless fans ran onto the field, briefly disrupting a Chiefs drive before being tackled by Allegiant Stadium security and es- corted off the turf in handcuffs. “Oh, we got people on the field!” CBS sports color commentator Tony Romo ex- claimed as Chiefs quarterback Patrick Ma- homes connected with wideout Mecole Hardman for two yards to the San Francisco 39-yard line on the opposite end of the field. “Oh my goodness, we do! We got a streaker on the other, well...,” added venerable an- nouncer Jim Nantz. Romo: “There’s a partial streaker.... Shirt off.” Nantz: “Partial streaker, yeah.” Romo: “But we can’t talk about it.” Miami’s very own Alex Gonzalez, age 23, and Sebastian Rivera, age 22, were hauled off to Clark County jail and booked on misde- meanor charges of prohibited conduct at an athletic event. South Florida locals may have recognized Gonzalez from social media videos that fea- ture the day trader living a life of luxury, puff- ing on cigars and posing alongside exotic cars with the Miami skyline as a backdrop. Gonza- lez markets training courses on trading through his Instagram, offering students “bootcamp” sessions about wealth-building. As a bonus local connection, Gonzalez teamed with Miami’s cryptocurrency-loving mayor, Francis Suarez, to pump out free gas fill-ups at Charles Hadley Park in Model City during the 2023 holiday season. “We decided to give this as a form of giving back to the community on a Tuesday morn- ing so everybody can go right straight to work with a car full of gas,” Gonzalez said in a video posted Mayor Suarez posted to his offi- cial X account. Following his release from the Clark County Detention Center the morning after his Super Bowl arrest, Gonzalez posted a se- ries of videos on TikTok explaining why he decided to (partially) streak during the Big Game. He said he trained for three weeks in preparation for the sprint and added that it all felt like a blur once the adrenaline kicked in. “One of my goals has always been to streak the Super Bowl,” the 23-year-old day trader said. “And I don’t want to be that guy that I’m rich and I’m 50 years old and then I’m like, ‘Damn, I wish I would have done that when I was younger.’ No, I did it now and I’ll do it again.” In a subsequent interview with TMZ, he conceded that he also did it to make money: At the UFC APEX in Las Vegas a day before the game, he advised celebrity therapist Phil McGraw (AKA Dr. Phil) and the YouTube-fa- mous Nelk Boys to place a prop bet that there’d be a Super Bowl streaker because he was “going to be that guy this year.” “So, all these guys were pulling strings to make that bet happen and it ended up hap- pening that the bet doesn’t exist. Then I’m like, ‘Damn, I’m in too deep at this point that I can’t back out anymore,’” Gonzalez added. True to his word, Gonzalez coughed up $42,000 for two front-row seats. He and Ri- vera went to Dick’s Sporting Goods and pur- chased cleats for optimum traction, then cased the stadium in preparation for the feat. (“I literally just paid $42,000 to go to jail,” he humblebragged on TikTok.) All of which raises the question: How can a 23-year-old Miamian afford to throw away more than $40,000? Gonzalez, known as Alex G on social me- dia, claims he has made $50 million through day trading and now teaches aspiring traders how to follow in his footsteps. As he tells it, he was working at a Dunkin’ Donuts and trading on the side when he finally broke through and netted $28,000 — enough to cover years of losses and allow him to quit his day job and focus on day-trading. “I was losing consecutively for two years, and I hadn’t figured out what I was doing wrong,” Gonzalez said in a “Money Buys Happiness” YouTube video. “I thought it was always a different strategy and I was hopping from strategy to strategy. It wasn’t the strat- egy. It was just risk management.” | RIPTIDE | GET MORE NEWS & COMMENTARY AT MIAMINEWTIMES.COM/NEWS Alex Gonzalez is escorted off the field in the third quarter of Super Bowl LVIII. Photo by Harry How/Getty Images ▼ MIAMI SPARE CHANGE HOMELESS MAN SECURES $45,000 SETTLEMENT OVER PANHANDLING ARRESTS. BY ALEX DELUCA T he Miami City Attorney’s office has ar- ranged for a $45,000 payout to a home- less man who sued the municipality over his arrests under an unconstitutional panhan- dling law. After lifelong Miami resident Willie White was arrested twice last year under the city’s 2010 or- dinance prohibiting “soliciting, begging, or pan- handling” in its downtown business district, he teamed up with nonprofit civil rights group Flor- ida Justice Institute to sue the city. The federal lawsuit filed last December claimed Miami police carried out the panhandling arrests despite a court ruling that made it clear that the ordinance was unconstitutional. The city is now looking to settle the case, with the tentative payout to White up for consid- eration during the commission’s upcoming meeting on February 22. City Attorney Victoria Mendez’s office has urged commissioners to ap- prove the settlement. It remains unclear how the $45,000 would be split between White and his attorneys. Neither his lawyers nor the city has responded to a re- quest for comment. Last year, White was arrested twice within a roughly one-month span — on May 3 and again on June 7 — after approaching people for money in downtown Miami. In December 2023, he sued the city, arguing not only that the panhandling ban was unconstitutional but also that the city had been enforcing it for years in disregard of a Miami-Dade appellate court opinion finding that it violated people’s First Amendment rights. “Requesting donations is speech protected by the First Amendment,” Ray Taseff, White’s lead attorney, said when the case was filed. “The city cannot single out panhandling for differen- tial treatment because it deems that speech un- pleasant.” In 2017, a public defender representing a homeless man named Andrew Toombs, who had been detained dozens of times for panhandling since 2007, argued that Miami’s panhandling ban violated his First Amendment right to ask pass- ersby for money. A three-judge panel in Miami- Dade County Court’s appellate division subsequently agreed. “The City argues that it does not dis- criminate among viewpoints, that no one is allowed to so- licit funds whether they are homeless or members of the Girl Scouts. This is an outdated view of First Amend- ment jurisprudence which was rendered obso- lete,” Circuit Court Judge Miguel De La O wrote in the unanimous opinion in 2017. The decision was part of a wave of rulings na- tionwide striking down panhandling bans in the wake of the U.S. Supreme Court’s opinion in Reed v. Town of Gilbert, a landmark case that strengthened the presumption that a content- based restriction on speech is unconstitutional. Despite the Miami panel’s ruling, the city’s police officers continued to jail people for pan- handling. In 2023 alone, records show, Miami police carried out at least 12 arrests under the panhan- dling ban — several of which were done on the same people, according to WLRN. Taseff called Miami police officers’ actions a “blatant violation of the Toombs decision.” Legal fallout from Miami’s treatment of homeless residents extends beyond unconstitu- tional panhandling arrests. Last week, Miami approved a $300,000 set- tlement in a lawsuit filed by four homeless peo- ple who said the city destroyed their belongings during an aggressive campaign to clear out homeless camps. Among the plaintiffs was Latoyla Cooper- Levy, who said she lost her passport, phone, tent, and an urn holding her mother’s ashes when the city carried out a sweep of the homeless en- campment where she lived in 2021. [email protected] “REQUESTING DONATIONS IS SPEECH PROTECTED BY THE FIRST AMENDMENT.”