AUDIO CLIP: Homeless Veteran Samuel Hall talks about dealing with post traumatic stress disorder.

AUDIO CLIP: Stephen Larson describes life on the streets.

AUDIO CLIP: Thomas Ross takes you back to the first Gulf War.

By SANDRA C. ROA

Amid a steady rhythm of cock-a-doodle-dos and the shuffling feet of residents heading to work, another day unfolds in the heart of Little Haiti, a bustling community in North Miami. About 34,000 residents from Haiti and Central America live in the 5-square-mile neighborhood. And in a place of such diversity, it can be hard to predict what may be found around each street corner.

Once known as Lemon City, Little Haiti still has lemon trees growing on the lawns of hundreds of one-story houses. Buildings are painted in pastel greens, yellows and oranges. Makeshift shacks are built with materials including broomsticks, tarps and tins. Potted plants, filled with mixtures of tropical greenery, sit next to brightly colored leather sofas. And, with the neighborhood just a few miles from the Atlantic Coast, small boats lie scattered and rusted in the front yards of many transplanted islanders.

MIAMI — As the economic downturn worsens, it seems not all businesses are created equal. Several of the more modest mom-and-pop stores and restaurants here, with fewer resources and no national networks to draw from, say they’ve been feeling more of a pinch than the ritzier shops nearby.

Take the mom-and-pop stores in the Asian enclaves of North Miami. Here, small businesses are reporting worsening sales and store owners and managers say they feel pessimistic about their futures.

“Business has been down like 30 percent,” said Abe Omran, a manager at Beauty Supermarket, a beauty supply store on 163rd Street in North Miami. “These months are going to be the worst months” because the economic outlook is bleak and sales are expected to decline further, he said.

Business is already bad. Many are struggling to make or maintain a profit — especially after a holiday season during which shoppers spent 2.2 percent less than they did last year, according to the International Council of Shopping Centers. Holiday retail sales generally make up a significant percentage of a store’s annual sales, according to the National Retail Federation.

Omran said that despite new sales and promotions at his store, profits remain far too low.

Especially hard hit are the area’s newer businesses. They haven’t had the time to establish a presence in the neighborhood or build a loyal customer base, Omran said,

Shing Wang Restaurant on 163rd Street is one such business, having opened just eight months ago. Kelly Sing, the owner, a native of Taiwan, said a general slowdown began in September and never let up.

“My customers are very good, but many customers have been laid off,” Sing said. The business is surviving now, but only because Sing doesn’t pay her employees, all family. “We just have to keep patience. Otherwise, what can you do?”

But just a few miles away at the chic Aventura Mall — the largest mall in Florida and the fifth largest in the country — business remains good, if not great.

“We’ve met all our goals,” said Jixza Mendoza, an associate at Babycottons, a high-end baby clothes store. The shop’s sales have stayed the same over the last year, she said, because of a steady stream of foreign shoppers drawn to the store’s stylish merchandise and attentive service.

The full parking lots and crowded stores at the mall have the buzz and vitality missing at the smaller businesses in North Miami, such as the Bamboo Gardens I Chinese restaurant on 163rd Street.

“It’s been a general 20 percent drop in business for the last three or four months,” said Arthur Pang, assistant manager of the restaurant, which is across the street from Beauty Supermarket. “Everybody’s facing that same situation because of the drop in business.”

Pang said he has seen many local businesses shuttered as a result of low sales. He has also seen more businesses showing up in the “For Sale” section of the local Chinese newspaper.

“And the price is not that high, either,” Chang said of the businesses.

Still, even if things seem bad now, Chang said he believes the situation is temporary. The restaurant celebrated its 25th anniversary in 2008, and as long as it makes it through the current crisis, he said, he expects it to be around another 25 years.

“Hopefully, we’ll be here a long time,” he said, looking out at the empty parking lot.

(Produced by MELISSA TAN)

Nestled in the heart of Little Haiti, Churchill’s Pub welcomes patrons to buy drinks or play a game of billiards. But on Mondays, people also come for the music. From one room, disc jockey Dan Serro, a 74-year-old Manhattan native, plays jazz records from around the world. The pub’s “Monday Night Jazz Jam,” which features live music for a $5 cover, begins at 10 p.m., but Serro always arrives an hour early to play songs from his collection of more than 53,000 records.

“To me, all jazz is jazz,” Serro said. “I want to open people’s ears so they can hear all of
it.”

Dave Daniels, who’s been the pub’s owner for 29 years, says Churchill’s is the only place in town that plays true jazz. But jazz is not all the bar has to offer on Monday nights. Outside, the patio fills with singers, poets and other musicians preparing for open-mic performances.

Among the entertainers on a recent Monday was 73-year-old Nicholas Cole, known as “Nicholas the Storyteller.” Sporting a long, white beard and a green, wizard-like costume, Cole said he enjoyed telling stories to those willing to listen.

“Before I die, all I want is to tell stories,” he said in a deep voice.

For the past six months, Miami native Benjamin Shahoulian, 32, has been in charge of the open-mic performances. “My favorite thing about the night is that it facilitates writing,” Shahoulian said. “People check it out, and more artists come because they can express themselves.”

By TARYN LUNA

At 10 minutes to show time, the stadium doors open at the Miami Seaquarium and hordes of people pour in. Children flock to the tank at center stage, eager to see the star: a 20-foot-long, 7,000-pound female killer whale.

“Look, Mommy, it’s Lolita!” a little girl shouts above the beat of Latin pop as she catches her first glimpse.

Lolita the Killer Whale is the main attraction, but by the time the show is over, what’s fired children’s imaginations is the thought of growing up to be just like Shanna Simpson, the senior whale trainer. After all, she’s the one who gets to swan dive into the water to perform “behaviors” with Lolita.

On a recent Friday, Simpson opens with a “pec stand,” a behavior that has her emerging atop the belly-up whale, her knees on Lolita’s stomach and her hand rubbing the whale’s tongue.

She can still remember the first time she rode Lolita and attempted this move.

“She’s coming at me to pick me up with her mouth open,” Simpson recalls, “and I’m not going to lie, your heart starts beating and it’s very intimidating. Underwater I had 5,000 things going on in my head.”

As a second-grader watching her first whale show at SeaWorld in San Antonio, Simpson, who grew up in Roswell, N.M., could only imagine such a moment.

“I just knew I wanted to do it,” Simpson said. “My family thought I was crazy, of course, but they supported my craziness.”

Though a little wary about her dreams, Simpson’s parents — Joe, a teacher and a football coach, and Janice, a nurse — sent their daughter to a SeaWorld Career Camp in San Antonio when she was 16.

The camp confirmed Simpson’s chosen path. Trainers advised her to major in psychology and zoology. Training animals is Psych 101, she said.

Two weeks after graduating from Western New Mexico University, in 2002, Simpson was hired by the Miami Seaquarium as a trainer working with seals and later dolphins, a career for which people are in high demand.

At 28, Simpson has worked at the Seaquarium for seven years. She met her husband, Brady, here, when he and fellow Coast Guardsmen came to a show. And she spends so much time at work with Lolita — the average day includes nonstop training, feedings and cleanings — that she considers the whale part of the family.

“I have two babies, the whale and my daughter,” she said. When she was six months pregnant, Simpson was performing two shows a week with Lolita.

“I videotaped my show to be able to show my daughter what she was doing when she was inside of me,” Simpson said.

Then she saw the video. “I looked like the other whale,” Simpson joked. “I was so big! I thought, ‘I’m done.’”

She decided to take a break from working with Lolita, but continued to work with other animals at the park until two days before she had her baby.

Now, Simpson’s 2 -year-old daughter lives the life her mother wished she’d had as a child.

“She comes here all the time,” Simpson said. “She just thinks coming here and hanging out with the dolphins is normal.” This year, the family’s Christmas card featured Aubrey sitting on one of the Seaquarium dolphins.

Days off are scarce, she says. Holidays are rare.

“You’re on your feet every day in the South Florida sun; it really takes a toll on you,” she said. “You’re swimming, you’re jumping, you’re flying through the air. It’s very physically demanding.”

And although she doesn’t have much free time anymore, Simpson gives the Seaquarium credit for a life she says she feels blessed to lead.

“It’s so surreal for me because this is what I wanted to be — the one on the killer whale’s face in the show,” she said. “And I am.”

Call it destiny for the little girl whose last name once foreshadowed her future.

“‘Oh, Shanna Whalen wants to be a whale trainer,’” Simpson laughed, recalling her maiden name. “Do you know how many times I heard that joke?”

But it’s no joke: The little girl from Roswell wanted to grow up to be a whale trainer. And now she is.