Diversions >>

• Best Escape from Reality
  Elliott Key
  Ever sat in bumper-to-bumper traffic, laying on the horn because the ding-dong in front is not moving, and you're in a hurry because you're late for work, and you still have to drop off the kids and get to the bank to deposit some money so your checks don't bounce, but you're almost out of gas... More >>
• Best Moon Over Miami (2 Comments)
  Bike ride at Shark Valley
  Want the moon to yourselfç Haul your bike out to Shark Valley after sunset and have at it. There's nowhere better to check out that massive cheese wheel in the sky than the River of Grass. Cruise around the fifteen-mile paved loop with wind in your hair, bird songs in your ear, and... More >>
• Best Beach
  Third Street Beach
  It's not that the sand is whiter or the sea greener. Nor do those few feet of ocean boast more waves or fewer pesky sea critters. It's just that Third Street — not Second Street, not Fourth Street, but either side of the lifeguard stand on Third — is where the cool kids hang. Week in,... More >>
• Best Public Park (2 Comments)
  Greynolds Park
  Miami is among the worst cities in the nation when it comes to finding peace. The bayfront is privately owned, the streets are jammed, and if you don't own a boat, it's hard to find a quiet place. Greynolds Park, boys and girls, is the glorious exception. There's something for everyone in this... More >>
• Best Dog Park
  Pine Tree Park
  Best friends forever Petey, a Boston terrier, and Loverboy, a (female) yellow Labrador retriever, meet just about every day for a rumble. Baba, a shih-poo (shih tzu–poodle mix), maintains a wary but curious distance, but Pepe, a miniature poodle, isn't shy: Soon he's attached himself to... More >>
• Best Picnic Spot (2 Comments)
  A.D. "Doug" Barnes Park
  It's not easy seeing green in this city — so Barnes Park is nothing less than a 65-acre oasis from the mean streets and concrete deserts of Miami, and a great spot to round up the crew for a picnic. There are dozens of grills available for public use, and the picnic sites are spacious and... More >>
• Best Place to Go Fly a Kite
  Tropical Park
  A quick survey around New Times headquarters about flying kites unearthed a multitude of childhood memories about Tropical Park. Enter through the Miller Road entrance and there's a hill by the lake. Climb the hill, assemble your kite, take a deep breath, and run down the slope. The string will... More >>
• Best Place to Birdwatch
  A.D. "Doug" Barnes Park
  What the hell is pine rocklandç It's what used to cover much of the Miami Rock Ridge and other sections of South Florida. Much of this ecosystem is now gone, but there are still outcroppings here and there where you can get a taste of what this region used to look like. A.D. Barnes Park... More >>
• Best Snorkeling Spot
  Indian Key Historic State Park
  We all know Pennekamp State Park is for the tourists and Biscayne National Park is for the serious snorkelers, but sometimes you just want to swim off the beaten path. A few miles west of Pennekamp is a popular snorkeling and recreation spot called Indian Key Historic State Park. It lies... More >>
• Best Overnight Snorkeling Spot
  Jules' Undersea Lodge
  The future is now! Well, almost. Somewhere along the way, the Jetsonesque future that baby boomers envisioned disappeared. Instead of personal space ships, we got the Segway. Instead of Rosie the Maid, we got the Swiffer Sweeper. Instead of incredibly tall, funky-looking skyscrapers ... oh, we... More >>
• Best Stargazing
  Solar viewing at Miami MetroZoo with the Southern Cross Astronomical Society
  Sometimes the best stargazing happens only in the daytime. The closest star to Earth is, of course, the sun. Its blinding light hides a spectacular show that gracious members of the Southern Cross Astronomical Society (SCAS) reveal for free once a week with their specialized equipment. Flares,... More >>
• Best Day Trip
  Chokoloskee
  It's not so much that time forgot Chokoloskee. It's more like Chokoloskee forgot time. A magical little community of stilt houses and trailers spanning out from a postage stamp-size downtown, Chokoloskee is just south of Everglades City on the far end of the Tamiami Trail. It sure feels like the... More >>
• Best Bus Ride
  Julia Garcia Transit Bus to the Keys
  Fate has chewed you up, spit you out, and left you battered and bruised in the parking lot of the Florida City Wal-Mart Supercenter. You've lost your job, your girl, your car, and your reason to live. You have $3.85 to your name. And then, like an angel out of a Jimmy Buffett song, you see the... More >>
• Best Salty Adventure (1 Comment)
  Bimini Breeze Express
  Bimini, a tiny island where Ernest Hemingway once drank, has great snorkeling in gin-clear water, excellent fishing, and friendly Bahamian locals. Hotels are cheap, too. But how to get thereç Although it's only 50 miles from downtown Miami, Bimini is not easily accessible. Flights leave... More >>
• Best Adrenaline Rush (1 Comment)
  Skydive Miami
  Bored with lifeç Need to inject your miserable existence with a dose of daringç Nothing screams, "Holy shit I'm alive!" like stepping out of a perfectly good airplane 13,000 feet above the ground. It's not for the faint- hearted (or the light-walleted), but if you yearn to embrace... More >>
• Best Activity You Thought You'd Never Do
  Flying Trapeze School
  It's not every day South Floridians are given the opportunity to cavort in the manner of a lithe Russian gymnast. Miami, though lovely, is a city about as alien to aerial acrobatics as it is to snow (and by that we mean the real white powder). That is, until the Irish-born Marcus Gaffney and his... More >>
• Best Tour
  Miami Dade Transit's Black History and Hispanic Heritage Tours
  Normally there's nothing Miamians hate more than taking the Metrobus anywhere — even the more loathsome act of sitting in rush hour traffic day after day seems preferable. (We're not even going to discuss that thing called "walking.") But twice a year some of these same Miamians fight over... More >>
• Best Place to Hike (1 Comment)
  Fakahatchee Strand Preserve State Park
  Okay, so it's in Collier County, but it's close enough (about an hour-and-a-half drive) and the drive is more than worth it. Called the "Amazon of North America," this area is unparalleled for swamp-tromping. Twenty miles long by five miles wide, it's an explosion of flora and fauna, from the... More >>
• Best Tour Guide
  Robert Burr
  Robert Burr was born and raised in the county of Dade. His family came here in 1876, and traces of his ancestors' hard work can be found from Arch Creek Park to Burr's Berry Farm. As you might expect from a seventh generation member of a pioneering family, he knows the nooks and crannies of this... More >>
• Best Way To Get Fit
  Everglades Snowbird Century
  If you have never ridden 100 miles on a bike before, you have no idea (a) how good it feels, nor (b) how difficult it is. Nor do you realize how many billions of calories you'll burn in the process. For those who haven't, the annual Everglades Snowbird Century is a great place to begin.... More >>
• Best Gym
  South Florida Boxing
  When heading up the steep, narrow staircase to the second-floor South Florida Boxing Gym on Washington Avenue, a stale odor wafts into your nostrils. It's that unmistakable smell of sweat, which, though rank to some, is actually the first sign of a good gym. It means members are not busy... More >>
• Best Tennis Courts
  Crandon Park Tennis Center
  Ensconced in the foliage of Crandon Park, the tennis center is not only the most aesthetically pleasing place to play, but also offers diverse surfaces. The seventeen hard courts, seven of which are equipped with lights for nighttime playing, are the very courts used in tournament play when the... More >>
• Best Driving Range
  Crandon Golf at Key Biscayne
  A basket of balls at this public course's driving range doesn't cost any more than one at the other county-run courses, but Crandon Golf at Key Biscayne might as well be another planet. Besides a gorgeous tropical setting teeming with bird life, there is a cafe that serves filet mignon (for... More >>
• Best Basketball Court
  Eaton Park
  Bobby banks in an eighteen-foot jumper over J-Rod's outstretched hand. "You can't stop me!" Bobby taunts. The nineteen-year-olds have been going at it, one-on-one, for the past 35 minutes on the asphalt court closest to the train tracks. They have come out here every other day, around the same... More >>
• Best Place To Jog
  Oleta River State Park
  While the boardwalk in South Beach boasts stunning ocean views, Key Biscayne a mammoth heart-stopping bridge, and the Venetian Causeway calm idyllic roads, Oleta Park offers joggers a little something extra: shade. Runners know that for eight months out of the year in our scorching city, doing... More >>
• Best Road Race for Runners
  Nike Run Hit Remix
  Nike is not an industry leader for nothing. They know what an athlete needs to get the job done. And let it be said that they were the first to recognize that if Rocky Balboa needed a little "Eye of the Tiger" to get him into the ring, then perhaps you and I might also improve our athleticism... More >>
• Best Place To Road Bike (1 Comment)
  Homestead
  Road biking is a lot like driving. Same stretch of road, same rules. But unlike motor vehicles, which afford their navigators a steel cocoon behind which to hide in the event of a collision, cyclists have skin. It's preferable, therefore, to ride along quieter roads — where the likelihood... More >>
• Best Urban Bike Ride
  Both Sides of the Tracks tour
  This ride will take you, both literally and figuratively, across the tracks for a taste of some of the uniqueness, diversity, and, at the same time, radical inequality that Miami has to offer. Start by the County Courthouse, on Flagler Street between West First and Miami avenues, in the heart of... More >>
• Best Rural Bike Ride
  Long Pine Key
  After entering Everglades National Park through the Homestead entrance, Long Pine Key is pretty much the first stop in. It offers a maze of bike paths, ranging from 20-minute joy rides to half-day adventures. Between the Royal Palm Vistor Center and Pine Glades Lake is a mesh of trails that take... More >>
• Best Road Race for Cyclists
  SMART Ride
  Two days, 165 miles, some of the most breathtaking views Florida has to offer. Celebrating its fourth year, the SMART ride — the southernmost HIV/AIDS ride — though not technically a race, attracts hundreds of particpants annually. Approximately 500 cyclists gathered this past March 30... More >>
• Best Heat Player
  Jason Kapono
  With D-Wade brought low by injury — and only recently returned — this honor must now go to a mere mortal. Jason Kapono is most definitely human, flawed by his slow feet and inability to fly. But the 6'8" swingman possesses a laudable knack for pouncing on loose balls, plus an unselfish... More >>
• Best Marlins Player
  Hanley Ramirez
  For any Marlins fan who remembers the 2003 World Series and the insanely good pitching that won it, the name Josh Beckett should be honored. Enshrined. Hell, can we apply for sainthoodç Alas, Beckett was traded away to the Red Sox and left some mighty big cleats to fill. One of the... More >>
• Best Dolphins Player
  Jason Taylor
  Number 99, Jason Taylor, came oh-so-close to retiring, following the Fins' abysmal season, and treacherous Nick Saban's absconding to Alabama. Thank goodness he didn't. Despite participating in an excruciating 6-10 losing record, the NFL's defensive player of the year recorded... More >>
• Best Boxer (7 Comments)
  Alex Brenes
  Some need lesson after lesson, but Alex Brenes used the hardscrabble streets of Costa Rica to polish his boxing skills. It sounds trite, and it's the same thing most fighters say, but hanging out with the wrong crowd made him take up the sport. Sixteen years ago he took his street-fighting... More >>
• Best Hurricanes Football Player
  Anthony Reddick
  The 'Canes didn't do so well this year, at least in the traditional sense, so we decided to choose our favorite player using nontraditional criteria. After his stellar freshman season, the Hurricanes selected safety Anthony Reddick as one of two defensive rookies of the year. The ACC dubbed him... More >>
• Best Panthers Player
  Nathan Horton
  In a 5-2 victory over the Tampa Bay Lighting, Florida Panthers center Olli Jokinen passed on an opportunity to score an empty netter, sliding the puck to Horton, who notched his 30th goal of the season. In a way it symbolized the franchise's established superstar passing the torch on to its... More >>
• Best Street Fighter
  Kimbo Slice
  The last time we heard the name Kimbo Slice, it came out of the mouth of an Italian freelance journalist who'd flown all the way to Florida to write about our illicit champion. Apparently bambini in all parts of the boot were pounding one another in their back yards, tussling for no apparent... More >>
• Best Hunter
  Ray Casais
  You may have seen him around town: an imposing, ranchero-outfitted bear of a man with puffy, chubby cheeks and a clean-shorn head that he keeps warm under his trademark cowboy hat (indeed his business cards read "the man in the hat"). His shins are covered in scars. He has been bitten by a... More >>
• Best Sports Coach
  Roland Smith, Miami Northwestern Senior High School head football coach
  Early during their undefeated run, the Bulls outscored five opponents by a score of 235 to zero. By the eighth game of the season Northwestern had smoked the competition 359-41. Even then school alumnus Roland Smith couldn't rest easy. Anything less than the school's fourth state championship,... More >>
• Best Sports Trend
  Hip-Hop Coaches
  You've likely heard about Snoop Dogg, who, when his son came of athletic age, took to coaching small-fry football. Miami's Luther Campbell has been at it for more than two decades, coaching Pop Warner football and thus creating a paradox: The man who has long sponsored, coached, and generally... More >>
• Best Tourist Trap
  Little Havana To Go
  For South Florida visitors seeking retail therapy after being sardined on a tour bus with a bunch of strangers they can't understand, Little Havana to Go offers a welcome respite. Located smack next to Calle Ocho's famous Domino Park, this shop isn't your average carved-coconut and strung-shell... More >>
• Best Library
  Hialeah e-libraries
  Give Hialeah's political leaders credit where it's due: They've put together an impressive electronic library system. Anchored by the John F. Kennedy Library at 190 W. 49th St., the e-libraries also have three satellite locations in the northern (7400 W. Tenth Ave.), eastern (501 E. Fourth... More >>
• Best Author
  Malika Oufkir
  Malika Oufkir's life has been a twisted mix of fairy tale and nightmare, brought to life in her haunting memoir, Stolen Lives: Twenty Years in a Desert Jail. First published in 1999 in French as La Prisoni?re, the book (which later became an Oprah's Book Club selection and New York Times... More >>
• Best Book by a Local Author (1 Comment)
  St Lucy's Home for Girls Raised by Wolves, by Karen Russell
  "Ava Wrestles the Alligator." "Z.Z.'s Sleep-Away Camp for Disordered Dreamers." "The Star-Gazer's Log of Summer-Time Crime." "Lady Yeti and the Palace of Artificial Snows." If the names of her short stories (including the titular tale) aren't enough to entice you, the prose of Coral Gables... More >>
• Best Poet (1 Comment)
  Howard Camner
  Howard Camner, 50 years old, is nothing if not prolific. He has published sixteen books of poetry and written 1500 individual poems, and his name is listed on a staggering number of Websites (640 at last count). But here's why we like this shaggy-haired, bearded bard: He's from Miami, and often... More >>
• Best Periodiquito (1 Comment)
  Argentina Hoy
  Unlike some local Spanish-language weeklies, edited by ink-slinging politicos trying to hamstring competitors for a city or county commission seat, this rag actually reports local, national, and world news with a critical eye. Recent issues included thoughtful coverage on the Iraq War, citing... More >>
• Best Website
  Critical Miami
  Don't mistake the "critical" part of the name for more run-of-the-mill blog snark. Rather, Critical Miami features some of the most concisely written, clear-headed commentary around on the city's life and culture. You're as likely to find updates on major construction as anecdotes about visits... More >>
• Best TV Station (1 Comment)
  Mega TV
  Launched on March 1, 2006, Mega TV broadcasts a mix of Spanish-language talk shows, political analysis, comedies, and documentary specials. Spray-tanned dancing girls are at a minimum here: With a stated mission of providing quality programming at a local level, Mega's targeted demographic may... More >>
• Best TV News Reporter (4 Comments)
  Jeff Burnside
  A typical local television rundown of a South Florida newscast may go something like this: car accident, pot bust, fire, and some type of weird news or terrorist connection. But at WTVJ NBC 6 they have a jewel, and his name is Jeff Burnside. He's a veteran newsman who goes the extra mile,... More >>
• Best Weathercaster (2 Comments)
  Phil Ferro
  When Phil Ferro moved from Telemundo 51 to WSVN in April 2005, bilingual news addicts wondered whether the suave, Cuba-born meteorologist would successfully make the transition from chubascos to "squalls," or be forced to discuss weather conditions at American Idol tryouts. Thankfully within a... More >>
• Best Radio Station (1 Comment)
  WVUM-FM 90.5
  With the rise of satellite radio, the local FM band is not only bland, it's doomed. Looking for classic rock comfort foodç You can tune in Pink Floyd's "Comfortably Numb" pretty much any time of day at Big 105.9. Fancy yourself an alt-rocker, ca. 1994ç The Stone Temple Pilots are... More >>
• Best AM Radio Personality (3 Comments)
  Eddy Edwards, host of Caribbean Riddims
  It was difficult enough explaining to out-of-towners in the Eighties that the synthesizer tones of Jan Hammer didn't blare on every Miami street corner. Now it's next to impossible to get anyone to believe that salsa doesn't permeate every waking moment of life in the city. Thankfully Eddy... More >>
• Best FM Radio Personality
  K. Foxx
  It's 6:15 p.m. and you're driving home from work, shoulders tense from hovering over a computer or an incompetent coworker all day. You flick on 99 Jamz (WEDR) — 'cause what's a better stress-buster than some bass-thumping hip-hop? From your speakers pours The Takeover, Miami's most popular... More >>
• Best Spanish-Language Radio Personality
  Yamile Machin
  Perhaps you've seen this sultry vixen, her voluptuous cleavage and her boadacious curves wrapped tightly in a mini spandex police uniform, purring at you from a billboard off the Palmetto Expressway. Her gorgeous hazel eyes and flowing black mane beckon your attention away from the traffic snarl... More >>
• Best Place to Play Dominoes (3 Comments)
  Habana Cuba Cigar Lounge
  Cigar smoke clings to the air inside the Habana Cuba Cigar Lounge like two teenagers on senior prom night. The baseball game on the giant plasma screen TV set is drowned out by the din of men decked out in guayaberas and dress slacks playing bones on the two tournament tables. They munch on... More >>
• Best VideoGame Center
  Scorpico
  Despite being tucked into a nondescript second-floor corner of the godforsaken Shops at Sunset Place, Scorpico Gaming Center has a homey atmosphere for a room stuffed with computers. Owners and gaming buffs Cesar and Dany Feghali founded the company seven years ago with the idea of re-creating... More >>
• Best Artist
  Wendy Wischer
  Weaving an Ariadne's thread between nature and technology, Wendy Wischer's luminous and thought-provoking sculptures and installations explore how a single set of principles governs the universe. In Night Air, her poetically evocative solo show at the David Castillo Gallery last November, she... More >>
• Best Art Museum
  Museum of Contemporary Art
  Jazz grooves on the lawn; flashing neon lights; donkeys fashioned from recycled shredded cloth; a puppetmaster's beguiling vision of an underwater kingdom; and a historic exhibit showcasing Merce Cunningham's collaborations with contemporary visual artists, celebrating the dance legend's first... More >>
• Best Art Gallery
  Kevin Bruk Gallery
  Located on a strip arguably housing some of the city's most stellar art spaces, this gallery stands out for the consistent quality of its exhibitions this past year. Kevin Bruk, who may have Tommy Lasorda's eye for spotting major-league talent, has been hitting back-to-back homers during a... More >>
• Best Outdoor Art
  Skywalkers Parade
  During Art Basel Miami Beach, the competition among local artists to catch the eye of the cognoscenti can seem like the machinations of those early PR hucksters like Jim Moran, who took the publicity stunt to an extreme. Moran's finest hour came when he tried to send three midgets attached to... More >>
• Best Movie Theater
  Regal Kendall Village Stadium 16
  The scent of popcorn that embraces you as you enter this cinema might take you back to the old days of moviegoing, but there's nothing old-fashioned about the Regal Kendall Village Stadium 16. Opened in 2004, the theater has every amenity the modern movie watcher craves, from digital... More >>
• Best Film Festival (3 Comments)
  Women's International Film Festival
  The Women's International Film Festival is an infant compared to the big boy FLIFF, but if this year's lineup was any indication, the new girl in town will be around for years to come. The scope and ambition of this festival is to be admired. This year's four-day extravaganza featured more than... More >>
• Best Night at the Movies (3 Comments)
  Movies by the Bay
  Jostle your way through the box office and concession lines, and find a seat — if you arrive early enough — somewhere where you won't get whiplash. Try to ignore the crying baby, the ringing cellphone, the oblivious conversationalists behind you, the pounding noise from the action... More >>
• Best Cuba Documentary
  Casa de los Arabes
  In the past year filmmakers have produced several notable documentaries about Cuba. Nat Chediak's Habana Abierta: Boomerang chronicled a Cuban rock band in exile, while Jauretsi Saizarbitoria and Emilia Menocal's East of Havana looked at inner-island democratization through hip-hop. But local... More >>
• Best Movie Shot on Location
  Cocaine Cowboys
  Say hello to my leetle friend — a modest, homegrown documentary that tells the grisly tale of Miami's cocaine wars of the late Seventies and early Eighties with gusto. Scarface and Miami Vice ain't got nothin' on Cocaine Cowboys, which vividly — even gleefully —captures Miami in... More >>
• Best New Drama (1 Comment)
  Defining Code Red, by Justin Koren
  Defining Code Red was the gutsiest play performed in South Florida this year, a drama that didn't so much penetrate the fourth wall as exist outside of it from the beginning, intersecting with its audience in dangerous and unpredictable ways. On the morning of February 3, 2004, seventh-grader... More >>
• Best Live Theater
  The Ziff Ballet and Opera House
  Architect Cesar Pelli's most famous creation may be the Petronas World Trade Center in Kuala Lumpur, for a time the world's two tallest buildings, but the Ziff Ballet and Opera House— one of two major performance venues at the Carnival Center for the Performing Arts — may be just as... More >>
• Best Director
  Joseph Adler for Pillowman
  Imagine this: You were viciously abused as a child, and now you're a writer. You are totally unsuccessful. Your major subject matter is the torture and murder of children. You're really into it. The children in your stories eat cookies filled with razorblades or are dispatched with power drills... More >>
• Best Actor
  Odell Rivas in Three Angels Dancing On a Needle, Square Peg Productions
  In Three Angels Rivas's part consisted primarily of a monologue called "God's Greatest Invention," in which his character confessed to being madly in lust — not love, just lust — with a man. The whole performance was one long scream of trembling, jittering need, with lots of big,... More >>
• Best Actress
  Miriam Kulick in Three Angels Dancing On a Needle, Square Peg Productions
  The third actor to accost the audience in Assurbanipal Babilla's Three Angels Dancing on a Needle, Miriam appeared as the wife of a man who'd killed himself by jumping off a bridge. She hated him a lot, and his death had done little to soften her rage. For an interminable time — truly... More >>
• Best Supporting Actor
  Matthew Glass in Romance
  In a play full of plus-size performances, little Matt Glass dwarfed everybody. David Mamet's filthy courtroom farce was one of the year's funniest shows, and Matt was not only its funniest character but also the most sympathetic. The love-starved boyfriend of the prosecutor, he pranced into the... More >>
• Best Supporting Actress
  Marcus Davis in La Cage aux Folles
  Marcus Davis is not, in fact, an "actress," nor is he even a woman. It doesn't matter. From the moment he stepped to the footlights at the Actor's Playhouse in its production of La Cage aux Folles as "Jacob," a maid/butler done up in lurid soubrette-cum-Mozart drag, he established himself as the... More >>
• Best Acting Ensemble
  Three Angels Dancing On a Needle, Square Peg Productions
  Assurbinipal Babilla called his play Three Angels Dancing on a Needle, but Merri Jo Pitassi, Odell Rivas, and Miriam Kulick did a lot more than dance on that needle — they got skewered on it. If you were lucky enough to be hanging out in the Deluxe Arts complex this past January, you'd have... More >>
• Best Theatrical Production
  Three Angels Dancing On a Needle, directed by Michael Yawney for Square Peg Productions
  There was a handful of productions this year that will stick in audience's memories for a long time, but Three Angels is probably the only one that will have those audiences doubting their memories. Scant days after the fact, it already felt like a dream: the kinky Catholic-voodoo-gothic rituals... More >>
• Best Choir (10 Comments)
  Unity on the Bay Choir
  Unity on the Bay's music ministry says its mission is to "heal, enlighten, and minister through music in order to inspire and transform our world." A very pious aim to be sure, but don't expect Gregorian chants with a hymn or two thrown in on holidays. Unity's choir members tithe ten hours a... More >>
• Best Set Design
  Lyle Baskin for Fat Pig
  The set of Neil LaBute's tale of aborted love between a sweet fat chick and a not-so-sweet skinny guy was lovingly, elegantly, exactingly, and simply rendered by Lyle Baskin, a designer who regularly sends GableStage's brilliant shows rocketing to the next level of awesomeness. Fat Pig was a... More >>
• Best Opera
  Florida Grand Opera's La Sonnambula
  Two giants of twentieth-century opera launching a new star for the 21st: That is just part of what happened in this new production that celebrated — and made — Miami music history. The first collaboration between the great Renata Scotto and Richard Bonynge, this local staging of... More >>
• Best Drag Queen
  Geraldine
  Every once in a while since this past Independence Day, an Amazonian goddess runs from the beach to the steps of the Palace Bar & Grill at 1200 Ocean Dr., a sparkly gold tiara holding up her flowing black mane. She dials in her invisible plane from a pay phone on the street, whips around her... More >>
• Best Professor to Jam With (2 Comments)
  Armando Tranquilino
  FIU's rock and roll professor, Armando Tranquilino, teaches all the usual music theory and history courses, but what really caught our attention was a class called "The History of the Beatles." Tranquilino brought a sample lecture to an audience of eager baby boomers — and some of his... More >>
• Best Wandering Troubadours (25 Comments)
  Mariachis Miami
  An eight-song serenade is $200, but abuelita will cry when she hears "Cu-curru-cucu Paloma" or "Aquellos Ojos Verdes" played by four musicians with sombreros, ascots, trumpets, and gold-filigree suits. If her birthday happens to fall Monday through Thursday, the same set played by three... More >>
• Best Convention of the Past Year
  Exxxotica Miami Beach
  All of the town's cheesiest couples flock to the Convention Center to roam the carpeted aisles, eyeing naughty doo-dads with a mix of shock and boredom. (Then there are the guys who show up with brusquely amorous messages on their T-shirts: "I FUCK ON THE FIRST DATE," et cetera. Who do they wear... More >>
• Best Place to Throw a Party (3 Comments)
  Area 61
  Sure you could have a house party, but then there's the cleanup. Clubs are exciting, but snobby doormen and expensive drinks can put a damper on your night. Area 61 is a hidden gem. Located at the end of a winding road, it looks like any one of many surrounding warehouses. But inside the... More >>
• Best Activity to Do While Intoxicated
  Calling a Cab
  Reville Veillard, employee of Flamingo Taxi, has driven many a drunk partier in his day, and it hasn't always been pretty. "Sometimes they throw up in the car," he says. But despite the cleanup, Veillard doesn't mind chauffeuring the extremely inebriated. Even after twenty years of crappy tips... More >>
• Best Place To Go Stoned
  The Barnacle
  The Barnacle Historic State Park is the perfect environment to enjoy a relaxing high. After you smoke that Philly, step into Old Florida. Walk through the gated entrance, drop some change in the donation box ($1 is suggested), and get a glimpse of what Miami looked like when it was first settled... More >>
• Best Place to Get Offered a Dildo and Some Blow (1 Comment)
  Miami Beach Marina
  We're pulling out of the Miami Beach Marina's parking lot on a recent Friday evening. We've pounded a few libations at Monty's Raw Bar, so we're not quite sure what to make of the portly man in the denim overalls and T-shirt. His right hand is clutching something inside a plastic bag. Is it a... More >>