City Life >>

• Best Chatter at a Cafetería Window
  La Carreta Restaurant
  "If you could call this place something, it would be tantamount, in Spanish, to that sitcom in English where everybody knows your name -- Cheers," says Miami-Dade Fire Rescue's Lt. Eddie Ballester. The firefighter and paramedic, stationed five blocks away, is a regular at this window. Over the... More >>
• Best Political Miscalculation
  J.L. Plummer
  Miami Commissioner J.L. Plummer had his re-election formula down pat: Raise tons of cash, glad-hand voters at community festivals, and have his Cuban friends praise him on Spanish-language radio. It had worked seven times before, after all. Upstart businessman Johnny Winton might push him into a... More >>
• Best Unguarded Moment Caught On Videotape
  Henry Fraind
  In his many years as the public face of the county's public schools, Fraind had repeatedly proven himself to be inarticulate, insensitive, and inflexible. When school-board members finally got tired of him making them look bad and decided, at their March meeting, to appoint someone else as their... More >>
• Best Lobby
  Beach House Bal Harbour
  It's supposed to feel like a little bit of Nantucket down here on the lower peninsula. A fresh and crisp Northeastern respite from the scorching Southern sun. But really the lobby in the new Beach House is Florida through and through. This is no rectangular foyer, stop-over-while-you-check-in... More >>
• Best Gadfly
  Daniel Ricker
  "Have Character, Will Travel." So reads the business card of Daniel Ricker, self-appointed "citizen advocate," who spent the past year attending county commission meetings, city commission meetings, school board meetings, and Public Health Trust meetings, all in an effort to better understand... More >>
• Second Best Cheap Thrill
  Black Point Marina
  Every weekend, particularly on holidays, large numbers of people take to the water. The transformation of these landlubbers into weekend mariners is not always smooth. Add alcohol to the mix, and it can be downright disastrous. At no time is this more obvious than at the end of the day, when... More >>
• Best Farmers' Market
  Pinecrest Farmers' Market
  Oddly enough, in an area known as one of the winter vegetable baskets of the nation, it's slim pickings for farmers' markets in Miami-Dade County. Basically there seems to be two options: Pinecrest or Coral Gables. Located in the parking lot of Gardner's Market, the Pinecrest operation offers a... More >>
• Best Local Phantasmagoria
  Lightning strikes, Glades burn, schools flunk, cocaine arrives, Soyka arrives, Elian arrives, Lincoln Road gets malled, Cuban rafters get gassed, code inspectors get bribed, transit tax goes down, Calle Ocho rips up, I-95 rips up, Stiltsville survives, gay-rights law survives, Cuban spies get... More >>
• Best Local Girl Gone Bad
  Sister Jeanne O'Laughlin
  February 11, 1999: Adrian Dominican nun Jeanne O'Laughlin's tireless volunteerism earns her the Sand in My Shoes award from the Greater Miami Chamber of Commerce. She is the first woman to win the honor, just as she was the first female member of the Orange Bowl Committee and of the Non-Group, a... More >>
• Best Hero
  Robert Beatty
  Beatty stood up to the craven Miami city commissioners and mayor who couldn't stand up to their own constituents. And he didn't shrink from publicly admonishing them -- with eloquent directness -- for playing politics with the city's dire financial crisis. That was back in mid-1999, when... More >>
• Best Uniforms
  Toll takers
  Highway coin collectors rarely inspire envy. Imagine handing out change to an endless parade of cars, vans, and tractor trailers, touching thousands of dirty hands each day while sucking down a full shift of lung-blackening exhaust fumes. No envy, that is, until now. Since this past summer, toll... More >>
• Best Bard
  Campbell McGrath
  There is word of a poetry renaissance in America (well, at least sales of poetry books are up). One of the progenitors is right here in our Magic City, née the Great Marsh. A Chicago native who teaches creative writing at Florida International University, McGrath told New Times in 1997... More >>
• Best Place For A Second Date
  The Russian and Turkish baths
  You've had dinner. You held hands when you walked him/her home. You know you want to see each other again. So don't ruin it by doing something predictable. Move with eccentric genius by inviting her/him to the baths. Set in a basement grotto of the Castillo del Mar Resort, the baths are a unique... More >>
• Best Downtown Oasis
  Allen Morris Park
  Only in Miami would a swath of green amid Brickell Avenue's concrete jungle be named for a real estate entrepreneur. But credit must be given where it is due. The late developer L. Allen Morris donated a quarter of a city block to the City of Miami, which wisely (for once) preserved the eleven... More >>
• Best Political Comeback
  Matti Bower
  For a time it seemed as if Matti Bower was destined to be a political bridesmaid but never a bride. She ran for the Miami Beach City Commission in 1995 and lost to Martin Shapiro. (Had she won, she would have been the first Hispanic to sit on the commission.) She ran again in 1997 but was edged... More >>
• Best Not-So-Cheap Thrill
  Helicopter rides
  If purchasing and maintaining your own aircraft is a just a wee bit beyond your means, yet you hanker for an eagle's view of the world, see pilot Philip Shelnut. For a mere $65 you can gain that perspective for about ten minutes. Too little time aloft? Several other tours are available,... More >>
• Best Small-Town Parade
  Santa's Parade of Elves
  Can you imagine anything cuter than hundreds of youngsters, dressed as elves, marching along Sunset Drive and Red Road? Well, truth be told, we can't either. In what has become a South Miami tradition, Santa's Parade of Elves is a glorious start to the holiday season. Heading into its... More >>
• Best Aching Plea For An Intervention
  Brett O'Bourke
  In the few short months since Brett O'Bourke debuted as the "I Love Trouble" nightlife columnist in the Miami Herald's weekly tabloid Street, he's revealed so much about himself that unsuspecting readers have been seen dropping the publication from their hands, their bodies convulsing with a... More >>
• Best TV Reporter
  Mark Londner
  Mark Londner is the iron man of the WSVN staff. You can drop him into the middle of any crisis, any breaking-news event, and be guaranteed the sort of smart and incisive reporting that often is lacking in television news. He's proved himself time and time again, from events as varied as the OJ... More >>
• Best Political Gamble
  Governor's office sit-in
  When state Sen. Kendrick Meek of Miami and state Rep. Tony Hill of Jacksonville decided to park their fannies outside Gov. Jeb Bush's office and refuse to leave until the governor listened to their concerns about his unilateral decision to dismantle the state's affirmative-action program, it was... More >>
• Best New Gridlock
  American Airlines Arena
  Nearly 20,000 basketball fans pouring on to Biscayne Boulevard after the final buzzer gives new meaning to the word jammed. Think that's fun? Just wait till the hoopsters are joined by another 12,000 leaving their concert at Bayfront Park Amphitheater and 8000 more from events at the Performing... More >>
• Best Defense
  Last fall criminal defense attorney Curt Obront argued before a federal jury that his client, who had been arrested for smuggling cocaine into the Port of Miami, was innocent because federal agents didn't actually catch him with the offending kilo of cocaine. Rather the agents found it on the... More >>
• Best Place To Meet Single Men
  The Home Depot
  The best place is over near the lumber. All that fragrant wood is a kind of aphrodisiac in itself. The tool section, of course, is not bad either. Nor the paint area, especially because it can be a long wait in line to get that color mixed. Stay away from home lighting. Follow these simple rules... More >>
• Best Cuban-League Baseball Player Living In Miami
  Camilo Pascual
  Pascual threw one of the sweetest curve balls in baseball history while playing for the Minnesota Twins from 1961 to 1966. The Reds, L.A. Dodgers, and Cleveland also made good use of his right arm, though only briefly. But before his stint in the American big leagues, Pascual played the game in... More >>
• Best Charity
  Food for Life Network
  It's pretty tough to argue with an outfit that feeds the HIV-positive among us. But throw in a few twists -- say, delivering groceries to those who are not ambulatory, providing foodstuffs to victims' families, and even catering home-cooked meals for those who are too sick to cook -- and... More >>
• Best Sanctuary From The Fast Track
  Simpson Park Hammock
  Enter deep into this eight-acre native hardwood hammock and become a witness to the past in all its former glory, a time when banyan, pigeon plums, velvet seed, gumbo limbo, and Gulf licaria trees covered the Brickell area. The park has been undergoing restoration for several months (pesky... More >>
• Best Nonprofit
  Grubstake Resources for Recovery
  Since opening in October, the grassroots Grubstake has helped an estimated 150 women, many of them drug-addicted prostitutes who prowled Biscayne Boulevard for tricks, right their upturned lives. Grubstake and its companion thrift store, Good & Funky, are the brainchild of Heather Klinker, who... More >>
• Best Candidate For Urban Renewal
  NW 79th Street between NW Tenth and NW 27th avenues
  What's up with this boulevard through nowhere? It's sort of like taking a trip down a rural Southern road, where all you see are tarpaper shacks, junk, and mud. This stretch of pavement remains countrified, but with a touch of strip mall here and there. Maybe someone tried to develop the area... More >>
• Best Whiners
  Miami-Dade County Commission
  For almost a year -- and at nearly every commission meeting -- at least one member of the Miami-Dade County Commission grouses about how the whole world thinks they are a pack of corrupt nincompoops, all of whom are on the verge of being indicted. The king of whiners is Dennis Moss, who... More >>
• Best Political Consultant In The Hereafter
  Phil Hamersmith
  Phil Hamersmith More >>
• Best Budget Date
  Miami Space Transit Planetarium
  Sure you could go to the movies, but two hours seems like an eternity if you're eager to make it home and (with any luck) into each other's arms. A trip to the planetarium, where exhibitions tend to run under an hour, is ideal. The shows at the planetarium are even darker than a movie theater,... More >>
• Best Kids' Thrill
  GameWorks
  More than a video-game store, GameWorks is a virtual theme park in which the latest technology is offered exclusively in the service of fulfilling your kid's wildest fantasies. Not only is a youngster's nervous system zapped into a frenzy by the blinking lights, jingling bells, firing laser... More >>
• Best Reason To Stay In Miami For The Summer
  Venetian Pool
  (1) Cool spring water. (2) Two waterfalls. (3) None of those irritating models who pose like bags of bones over the loggias, under the porticos, on the cobblestone bridge. And no professional photographers who consider this particular locale indispensable. Summer in Miami, when the locals come... More >>
• Best Place To Take Out-Of-Towners
  Bill Baggs Cape Florida State Recreation Area
  Be they from purple mountains, fruited plains, or anywhere else, just about all your visitors will appreciate the shining turquoise sea visible from this southern point of Key Biscayne. The only edifice obstructing the splendid ocean view is the restored Cape Florida lighthouse, erected in 1825... More >>
• Best Internet Café
  Kafka's Kafe and Newsstand
  Is your home office lacking some gadgets? Maybe your computer blew a chip and Web withdrawal is taking its toll? Perhaps you've never had a computer and want to see what all the fuss is about? Internet access is not only available at Kafka's, it's cool. Long a ramshackle used bookstore and... More >>
• Best Restoration
  Lyric Theater
  This Overtown theater mirrored its dilapidated surroundings when the Black Archives History and Research Foundation took possession in 1988. The roof bore a massive hole. A fire caused extensive damage to the interior. Birds claimed the abandoned rafters. Thanks to $1.5 million in grants and a... More >>
• Best Politician Convicted In The Past Twelve Months
  Alberto Gutman
  The state senator pleaded guilty in October to conspiracy to defraud Medicare and was removed from office by the governor. Gutman's scheme cost taxpayers nearly two million dollars between 1990 and 1992, according to prosecutors, who alleged that he held a secret interest in a pair of... More >>
• Best Place To People-Watch
  Outdoor patio, Stephen P. Clark Government Center
  Suited men on their way to someplace else get their shoes shined. A woman vends green plantains and umbrellas under the Metromover. Beneath the bench-wrapped trees outside the county government's headquarters, there is shade and a breeze even on the hottest day. In this multiple-ring circus of... More >>
• Best Place To Meet Single Women
  Books & Books reading series
  Miami's most prominent reading series, by current authors of predictably high caliber, is a good way to defy this city's tendency to settle for beauty over substance. And no doubt about it, intelligence more often than not cultivates a singular kind of beauty. In short, good-looking women go to... More >>
• Best Sign That Tom Fiedler Is Spending Too Much Time At The Gym
  In a New Year's Day column, the Herald's opinion page editor asked readers to think of him and the other members of the paper's blandly predictable and pitifully self-important editorial board as "fitness instructors for your intellect." More >>
• Best Local Boy Made Good
  Dan Blonsky
  All Dan Blonsky wanted, he told Regis Philbin, was a date with supermodel Elle Macpherson. All he got instead was the grand prize on Who Wants to Be a Millionaire? Blonsky -- single, 34 years old, a graduate of Palmetto Senior High, and an attorney at a Coconut Grove law firm -- advanced to... More >>
• Best Local Boy Gone Bad
  Alex Penelas
  Not since Richard Nixon declared "I am not a crook" has a politician shoved his foot so far down his throat as Miami-Dade County Mayor Alex Penelas did earlier this year during the Elian Gonzalez crisis. Even Ted Koppel felt the need to fly into town and bitch-slap our sexy little mayor on... More >>
• Best Festival
  The Biltmore Great South Florida Wine Festival
  This isn't your typical South Florida outdoor arts-and-crafts shindig. In fact as far as we can tell, there's nothing like it south of Atlanta. Over three days in May (sorry, just missed it) wine aficionados and food lovers gather at the grand old Biltmore Hotel in Coral Gables for a feast of... More >>
• Best Soup Kitchen (1 Comment)
  Mother Theresa Home for Women in Distress
  The Missionaries of Charity, Mother Theresa's order of nuns, are the motors that run this convent, also a home for battered women and the best soup kitchen in town. On any given day except Thursday (cook's day off), 250 homeless people eat a hearty breakfast or a full-course meal in the... More >>
• Best Monologuist
  Ed Kaplan
  "I'll be with you until two this morning. If you have something you want to weigh in on, maybe the over/under for the Marlins, give me a call. Maybe the upcoming NFL draft. I was just going -- " Anyone with even a splash of radio experience knows how hard it is to fill dead time between... More >>
• Best Herald Writer
  Meg Laughlin
  From the day she began writing for the Miami Herald in 1982, first as a freelancer then as a staffer, Meg Laughlin has wrapped her prose around the lives of some of South Florida's strangest characters and most disturbing stories. We love her for that. At Tropic magazine she chronicled the... More >>
• Best Cheap Thrill
  Party crashing
  Invitations are for the spineless masses and the spiritually lazy. Who are these elite snobs to banish you from their South Beach soirees? What do Cameron Diaz and Leonardo DiCaprio have that you don't? Money? Looks? Fame? Bah! Level the playing field with the one thing you do have over them:... More >>
• Best Protest Du Jour
  Hunger strikes
  Let's see now, in just the past twelve months, there has been a series of hunger strikes to free immigrants held at the Krome Detention Center. "Nobody listened to me," Marta Berros, leader of the group Mothers for Freedom, told the Herald. "My son was being tortured, and nobody wanted to listen... More >>
• Best Promoter Of Cultural Diversity
  John de Leon
  John de Leon straddles the fence -- bravely and proudly. In the past year, the president of the American Civil Liberties Union of Greater Miami dared to write an editorial calling for Elian Gonzalez's dad to raise his own kid. At the same time he listened to complaints of excessive force filed... More >>
• Best Hotel
  The Tides
  It's getting harder and harder to recommend anything on Ocean Drive, especially a hotel. For a night of partying, the crowds and the noise can still be seductive as part of the SoBe experience. But for postparty hours, when quality lounging quarters are required, that cacophonous street life... More >>
• Best Flack
  Don Ungurait
  Ungurait is the spokesman for one of the most overworked and politically perilous government offices anywhere. Yet he remains helpful and straightforward in the face of even the most taxing demands. No question is too small, no fact too obscure. Ungurait will research and promptly report back.... More >>
• Best Local Landmark
  Lazaro Gonzalez's house
  It's far away from the Shangri-la of South Beach, but earlier this year Lazaro Gonzalez's home in the gritty heart of Miami became the best photo opportunity since Gianni Versace gave his life for the benefit of local tour-bus operators. When young Cuban rafter Elian Gonzalez moved into the... More >>
• Best Car Wash
  El Chamba Car Wash
  El Chamba has been around since 1989. Except for one minor detail (it finally has an operating permit), not much has changed at this ramshackle soap-and-suds center for cars. El Chamba's native Nicaraguan owners take pride in the fact that the only machine used on your ride is a heavy-duty... More >>
• Best Lawyer
  Benedict "Ben" Kuehne
  Miami's municipal-bond rating is improving. Mayor Joe Carollo will serve out his term in office. An eerie calm permeates the city's tumultuous political environment. Don't thank government leaders. Thank Miami attorney Ben Kuehne. His courtroom argument was simple: A proposed charter referendum... More >>
• Best Weekend Getaway
  Caribbean Shores
  First things first: There is no beach at Jensen Beach. It's not on the ocean. But it does hug the western shore of the Intracoastal Waterway (known up there as the Indian River). Caribbean Shores is a funky waterfront inn just outside of town, which is just north of Stuart, which is about 100... More >>
• Best Mile Of Miami
  Fourteenth Street from North Bayshore to NW North River Drive
  Can we fudge just a bit? Let's call it the "Best Couple of Miles of Miami." Loosening the definition is worthwhile, for all aspects of life in Miami are symbolically represented along this stretch of blacktop. The journey begins at Biscayne Bay in the shadow of wealth and power: the Miami Herald... More >>
• Best Local Girl Made Good
  Katrina Taylor
  She may be the baddest chick, as she proclaims in her recent hit single, but this 21-year-old Miamian is part of a new breed of female rappers who rhyme as hard as any man and who aren't afraid to talk shit if you get in their face. A graduate of Northwestern High, Trina, as she's known, was... More >>
• Best Convention
  Ancient Egyptian Arabic Order Nobles Mystic Shrine Annual National Convention
  That's right, the Shriners -- polyester blazers and funny little hats (they're called fezzes). What gathering could better symbolize South Beach's transformation from fashion/celebrity hot spot to the more mundane (and sustainable) conventioneers' destination than last August's Shriners... More >>
• Best Magic City Icon
  Miami International Airport
  Say you're in Dallas and you've got a layover in Charlotte. Or make that Detroit with a layover in Chicago. Who would know the difference? Most U.S. airports are as seamlessly generic as fast-food chains and Michael Bolton concerts. But fly into Miami International Airport and whoa! -- time to... More >>
• Best Hidden Neighborhood
  Spring Garden
  Tucked away from view, this triangle of land is wedged between NW Twelfth Avenue, State Road 836, and the north bank of the Miami River. Advertised as the most exclusive subdivision for sale in Miami in 1919, its developer, 49-year-old John Seybold, insisted on deed restrictions to preserve... More >>
• Best New Law
  In October 1999 the Miami-Dade County Commission took another small step in the right direction when it unanimously approved expansion of the powers of the county's Commission on Ethics by allowing the group to initiate its own investigations. Previously the ethics panel could only act if a... More >>
• Best Place For A First Date
  Skyward Kites
  Who wants to go to a smoky bar on a first date? Or a cacophonous dance club where you can't talk to each other? And who wants to risk half-a-week's pay at an expensive restaurant with someone you don't really know yet? Tell her to go fly a kite. With you. Drive to the Haulover Beach and use the... More >>
• Best Public Meltdown
  Mayor Joe Carollo
  "You know, I am disgusted to sit in a democratic country and to have to put up with this kind of sickening anarchy, and this is what this is. This is not about good government. This is not about having a better Miami. This is about just a small group that couldn't get their way in stealing what... More >>
• Best Mobile Car Wash
  Ricky's Detailing
  Miguel Hernandez is on a holy mission. It may not be on the scale of a religious crusade, but it compels him nonetheless. "I happen to believe I work for God," says the 35-year-old car washer. "One of the things I do for a Him is not overcharge. Everybody else is charging $40 for something they... More >>
• Best Tollbooth
  Card Sound Bridge
  For a buck you can take Old Card Sound Road and its bridge home from the Keys and grab a bird's-eye view of South Florida that includes a wide, watery sky rich enough to satisfy spoiled Texans, as well as a shimmering horizon sprinkled with mangrove islands and funky fishermen. Watch out for the... More >>
• Best Local Politician
  Jorge Mursuli
  After leading the fight to have the Miami-Dade County Commission pass a gay-rights ordinance, Jorge Mursuli easily could have retreated from the political stage, content with a single momentous victory. Instead Mursuli, chairman of SAVE Dade, has capitalized on that triumph, slowly building one... More >>