August 18, 1996

Ross Perot wins Reform Party Presidential nomination with 65.2 percent of over 49,000 votes cast by mail, phone and Internet to 34.8 percent for Richard D Lamm; party national coordinator Russell J Verney announces result at party convention, Valley Forge, Pa; Perot aides say he will take part in Presidential debates and mount aggressive infomercial drive; Lamm comments, news conference; photo (M)

Robert Lipsyte essay on his civil scuffles with smokers, sidewalk bike messengers and dog owners; drawing (M)è

Miami, Fla, has come to be entertainment capital of Latin America, the home or frequent visiting spot of many actors, singers, athletes, models, writers and others from Latin America; it is also place where, increasingly, they must come to film television shows, make records, shoot videos, submit to attentions of swarms of paparazzi and huddle with executives who control their careers; photos (M)

BOB DOLE'S fellow Republicans extolled him last week as a man of convictions rooted in the sturdy heartland of America. He presented himself to the convention that nominated him (and the electorate to which he was appealing) as the champion who could restore to government old values like ''restraint, honor and trust in the people.'' He depicted the Clinton Administration as a crew ''who never grew up, never did anything real, never sacrificed, never suffered and never learned.''

People looking for cooperative apartments in Manhattan are showing new interest in 'plain vanilla' postwar apartment houses, whose flat-fronted, often white-brick exteriors and low-ceilinged interiors have put buyers off for a number of years; rising rents and dearth of fine prewar spaces are only part of reason; low prices, views, garages and lenient boards are also factors; photos (M)