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Best Movie Theater

Sunset Place 24

Admit it, you like fun movies. It's okay, the artsy types can't hear you; they've moved over to their own artsy theater category. Squinting at subtitles is nice, but truth be told, you find a good high-speed chase, fart joke, or sci-fi calamity more cathartic. Sunset Place offers 24 screens of simultaneous purgation, plus all the goodies: stadium seating, cushy thronelike chairs, more candy than Willie Wonka, and that nifty machine that lets you use credit and skip the lines. Enjoy the flick? The novelization, soundtrack, and promotional plush toy can all be purchased faster than you can say megaplex, baby. (And it's also okay to admit you like the Shops at Sunset Place.)

Best Yoga Class

Michelle Weber

Seekers along the path of enlightenment will be glad to find Michelle Weber, a diminutive yet powerful yogi who floats around Miami to teach more than a dozen classes per week in Coconut Grove, Fisher Island, South Beach, downtown Miami, and South Miami. In addition to four years of training in Ashtanga, the 29-year-old Weber also has a master's degree in applied psychology. She says her knowledge of science, including biofeedback, helps her to see patterns of tension in her students that she can alleviate through yoga. Her classes are rigorous, but they don't have the competitive edge found elsewhere; even Weber's most advanced classes emphasize letting go over struggling. Depending on the location, 90-minute group sessions cost about $12. Private sessions start at $70.

Best Little Haiti Cultural Repository

Libreri Mapou

The very survival of Haiti's richly diverse culture is uncertain, threatened by decades of social, political, and economic dislocation and destruction. It's notable, then, that there are widely thought to be more books written in Haitian Creole on Libreri Mapou's shelves than in the entire nation of Haiti. And by now the number of educated Haitians who have fled their homeland surely exceeds the number still living there. Because of this tragic diaspora, if for no other reason, Libreri Mapou is an important preserver of culture and history. But it's more than a bookstore. Owner Jan Mapou has made his two-story shop into the closest thing to a cultural community center that exists in Little Haiti: a nesting place and workshop for his Sosyete Koukouy (Firefly Society) dance and drama troupe, and for a host of Haitian writers, painters, and artisans. Besides books and periodicals (in French, English, and Creole), Mapou offers for sale all manner of Haitian art and crafts he buys either in Haiti or from artists here. And perhaps more telling, people seem to think of Libreri Mapou as a sort of library reference section -- the place to call when they have questions about Haiti.

Best Cleavage

El Nuevo Herald

The cover photo for the tabloid weekly "Viernes" almost never fails to deliver the goods. Both of them.

Best Lobby

Eden Roc Resort and Spa

305-531-0000

Oh, that aquamarine! No hotel lobby does justice to the Rat Pack era like the Eden Roc does. It doesn't look seedy and it doesn't feel old. It looks wonderfully fresh, as if you just walked through the doors to 1956. The Eden Roc, a Morris Lapidus jewel built in that year, does not offer an icy chrome entrance like so many of the earlier hotels further south on the Beach. No, this lobby comes from a time when cars had big fins and guests carried big drinks (it has blue-green carpeting, for God's sake). It's not just the sea color that makes you want to sink back into this world for hours. It's also something about the shape of the chairs, the placement of the pillars, the rust-and-gold diamonds on the walls, the white-and-green lamps, the piano, all those Grecian accessories. But get your fill of sitting in Eden soon, because starting sometime this summer the lobby will be renovated. The bright and light will be replaced, a spokeswoman says, by "stronger" colors like beige and black. Like all those hotels further south. We've already had to say so long to Frank, Sammy, and Dean. Must we lose this gem, too?

Best Weekend Getaway

Everglades City/Chokoloskee

If you want to kick back in a nature-intensive, Old Florida kind of way, just take Tamiami Trail to within about 30 miles of Naples, then hang a left at State Road 29. Once you cross the bridge into Everglades City, you're on the threshold of the Ten Thousand Islands, a maze of mangrove islets and brackish water between the Everglades and the Gulf of Mexico -- where us city folks get many of our stone crabs. The tiny Twin Cities of southwest Florida have always boasted a curious blend of insularity and bravado, typified by the recently deceased swamp pirate Loren G. "Totch" Brown. Ol' Totch spent most of his life lurking in and around the islands and Everglades National Park, hunting quarry such as "Chokoloskee chicken" (ibis, the killing of which is now illegal) and "square grouper" (bales of marijuana, the trafficking of which landed Totch and many of his neighbors in the pokey some years back). Yet despite the shadiness of his pursuits, Totch wrote a book about his adventures, thus adding to the mystique of his swampy haunts. They're plenty mystical on their own, though. Whether you want to explore the labyrinthine mangroves by canoe, kayak, airboat, flatbottom tour boat, or airplane, Everglades City and Chokoloskee are perfect staging areas. Check with the park rangers at the visitor center (941-695-3311) for boat tours and canoe rentals. The water is jumping with fish, if that's your pleasure. If you just want to gawk at wildlife as you paddle or putter around, you'll see alligators, osprey, pelicans, cormorants, and maybe a dolphin or bald eagle. You can launch your boat from Chokoloskee, and by all means check out the historic Smallwood's Store in the tiny island town, but Everglades City has all of the lodging. There are a couple of charming B&Bs, but why not go whole hog and stay at the famed Rod and Gun Club (941-695-2101). Sure it's a more expensive place to eat and sleep, but hey, presidents have bunked there. You at least need to pop in for a drink and stare at the Barron River as it meanders by the historic, whitewashed inn. Like most eateries in town, it specializes in seafood pulled out of local waters.

Second Best New Law

Local campaign finance reform

In December 1998 the Miami-Dade County Commission adopted an ordinance that bans corporations from donating money to commission races. Although it won't end the influence-peddling at county hall, it is a step in the right direction. In the past politically connected individuals could funnel thousands of dollars to their favorite commission candidates by writing $500 checks from each of their companies. Some individuals even created multiple corporations so they could write more checks and buy even more influence with certain commissioners. That loophole is now closed thanks to Commissioner Jimmy Morales's proposal. Companies wishing to do business with the county will now have to find another way to grease their pet pols.

Best Mile Of Miami

Biscayne Boulevard

Periodically various sections of vice-infested Biscayne Boulevard emerge as the latest darlings of developers and entrepreneurs. At last, these urban-renewal boosters boast, Biscayne is on the verge of moral rebirth and commercial boom. Speculators buy up chunks of the street. And then somehow it just doesn't quite come together; somehow Biscayne is as resistant to reform as, well, as its crack-addicted hookers. Still the signs of new life on this seamy stretch of the boulevard are encouraging. Key is the renovation from 54th to 57th. High-profile restaurateur Mark Soyka, resident of nearby Morningside and originator of the News Café and the Van Dyke, has just opened a new restaurant and gourmet store at 55th, with several other shops to follow. If Soyka can pull off a planned transformation of the gas station of ill-repute at 54th into a coffee-and-croissant market, that just might clinch the turnaround. On the twenty blocks stretching north, many new restaurants and businesses have begun to move in on the kitschy collection of sleazy motels. Wide-open drug and sex sales appear markedly down, though it's still a bad idea to actually walk along the sidewalks at night. You won't be in much danger, but you will almost surely be mistaken for someone -- old, young, churchgoing, no matter the color or sex or sexual orientation -- who is selling or in the market for something illegal.

Best Lawyer

Kendall Coffey

Miami's own comeback counselor, former U.S. Attorney Kendall Coffey, pulled off the legal achievement of the year when he ousted a sitting mayor. Coffey argued in Miami-Dade Circuit Court that Joe Carollo lost the November 1997 Miami mayoral election owing to rampant fraud among absentee balloting. He was convincing. In March 1998 Judge Thomas Wilson, Jr., booted Xavier Suarez, the putative titleholder. The expulsion survived an appeals court hearing. The episode occupies a special place in the tropical hothouse of Miami politics, and not just because of the dead man who voted or the arrest of a campaign worker for buying absentee ballots. This was significant because it also signaled Coffey's return to the limelight. In 1996 the federal prosecutor resigned his post after he was accused of biting a dancer in a strip club. To his credit though, the chagrined Coffey didn't flee town. He stuck around, rightly believing that our collective memory would evaporate like a puddle after a summer shower. Then new opportunities blossomed. It was worth the wait for him. What's getting caught taking a little love bite compared to toppling a corrupt government?

Best Short-Lived Miami Showcase

Sins of the City

Not since Miami Vice has a television show better harnessed the color and character of Miami. Each Saturday night Sins of the City reveled in the rainbow hues of the I.M. Pei's CenTrust Tower and the quaint mansions of Morningside, along with the obligatory Deco decadence of South Beach. The weekly series debuted this past July to scathing reviews, all well deserved: The plots were almost inconceivably stupid and the acting provoked dry heaves among those hearty enough to watch. (Lead "Sinner" Marcus Graham always seemed disarmingly constipated.) Nine shows later, in October, Sins slipped off the air, seemingly forever. For entertainment-seeking cable viewers, that's probably a good thing. But for the beautiful character actor that is Miami, it's a good thing gone.

Best Of Miami®

Best Of Miami®

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