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Best Baby Store

Lavin Baby Center

Forget the chain stores. This is the place to buy everything for that special kidlet. Need a stroller? They have dozens. A crib? You can get the lace-covered kind, the traveling sort, or an old-fashioned one. Lavin's is even better if you speak Spanish; its name is taken from a prerevolutionary baby store in Havana and the help habla Español. As a bonus there's enough technology to satisfy even the most geeklike dad. Try the gizmo to help stop bed-wetting. When the baby pees, a light goes on. The cost: $39.99. Or there's First Sounds, which lets you listen in on the womb. Also for $39.99. The best of the best is the Little Havana store, which has a bizarre, covered parking lot and a quirky design. But you can also try the larger shop in the Falls. Either way, infantile fun awaits.

Best Way To Stick It To Your Pet

Dr. Robert Ferran

Dr. Ferran certainly is not a wild-eyed new-age kook. He's a pedigreed vet, having directed the Miami Beach Animal Hospital for nine years and run his own practice for a decade. So if he wants to insert sharp needles into your doggy, let him. This guy is a certified acupuncturist for both humans and animals. Clinical studies and 8000-year-old manuscripts support the approach of opening channels and redirecting chi with needles, for the four-legged as well as biped. Acupuncture works particularly well in relieving pain. "Sometimes we overmedicate animals," he says. "In conventional practice we treat what the animal was brought in for. But my interest is in treating the entire body.... Conventional approaches have their place, and acupuncture has its place. I use both. Acupuncture won't save the world, but it has helped in remarkable ways."

Best Junk

Flamingo Plaza

If one man's trash is another's treasure, then Flamingo Plaza is where the late Mel Fisher should have spent his time. There's more junk here than there is sand in the ocean. This L-shaped stripmall has thrift stores and junk shops selling stuff you never dreamed you needed or knew you wanted. One quick stop at a place called Red White & Blue yielded a miniature gumball machine; plaster molds for casting concrete statuary; a red bra-and-panties set with matching plumage; a contraption designed to decorate a mailbox with silk flowers; a three-foot-high purple toucan; and a Scooby-Doo lunchbox. At the neighboring Community Thrift Store we found enough furniture to outfit a dormitory, plus pinball machines, exercise bikes, old stoves, air conditioners, fridges, and even a waterbed. Save More, Inc., a few doors down, stocks new and used items including party supplies, tools, a life-size plastic yard tortoise, clothes, and toys. The scene is completed by a 99-cent store, a discount outlet for baby items, a beauty-supply store, and a Winn-Dixie. No need to bother with a detritus-seeking metal detector; the goods at these joints have been sorted, coded, and labeled to make the pickings easy.

Best Indoor Nursery

Gold Coast Hydroponic Greenhouse

To many in the agricultural set, the essence of growing the best fruit, vegetables, and flowers is perfect soil that is rich in nutrients and well aerated. But a better way might be no soil at all. Hydroponics, feeding plants via a flow of water filled with nitrogen, phosphorous, potassium, and a number of trace minerals, is well established in Europe and Asia. The cultivation technique even works indoors with high-intensity lights that replicate the sun's rays. All of the lights, trays, fertilizers, supplements, testing equipment, growing mediums, irrigation systems, and information you need can be found at Gold Coast's two stores. The service is professional and subdued. The stores are clean and well organized. The only negative is that the prices are a bit, um, pricey. But note that commercially grown tomatoes go for about a dollar per pound. Hydroponically grown tomatoes (blemish-free and consistent in taste, texture, size, and shape) go for triple that. A sample system set up in the window of the Bird Road outlet boasts bushy growth, brightening the dreary stripmall where it is located. Indeed considering the proliferation of stripmalls, freeways, sidewalks, and basketball courts, soilless gardening may someday be the only method available.

Best Nursery

Canterbury Farm & Nursery

Those in the know, such as professional landscapers, and those who know almost nothing, such as the new homeowner do-it-yourselfer, will both do well to visit Linda Hunter's five-acre spread down in the land of nurseries (mostly wholesalers), mango orchards, and the place with the big "mice, rats, and rabbits for sale" signs. After Hurricane Andrew destroyed her family's litchi tree grove, Hunter and her former partner (a Jordanian-trained agriculturist named Burhan Imran, who now runs his own tree farm) germinated the idea of a boutique nursery. A lifelong plant lover who spent fifteen years living in a Coconut Grove house whose yard she recalls as "a rain forest," Hunter has some 200 species of plants, many natives, some shelved within her five greenhouses and one shadehouse, others lined up on tarps in full sun. No pesticides, no fertilizers, no tools: just plants, all priced to move. The variety is spectacular, with tropicals and bromeliads adding to the typical ferns and palms and ground covers. She trades plants, and has breeders bring in collectibles and rarities. That means the options vary from visit to visit, and that also means Canterbury is a fun place just to browse. Hunter says her customers are about half professionals and half do-it-yourselfers. Her operation is 100 percent delightful.

Second Best Dungeon Masters

Sunshine Roleplayers

Sunshine has been in business for some twenty years, selling the games that allow the mentally gifted and socially awkward to sit around a table, roll twenty-sided dice, and imagine they're elves, wizards, barbarians, vampires, Klingons, Wookies, or other fantastic characters. Like many in the role-playing game trade, Joel ("What's your last name?" asks New Times. "Why do you ask?" he shoots back.) once sold comic books. Unlike many others in the biz, he built up a big enough clientele for Advanced Dungeons & Dragons and other similar pastimes to weather the downturn in the comic biz. He now devotes his little storefront across from Tropical Park solely to gaming books, adventures, and other fantasy-related resources. His narrow, slightly dingy but well-ordered store offers titles from the familiar (AD&D) to the not-so-familiar (GURPS). If you want to sample a particular system, Joel will rent you a rulebook for about ten dollars per week. He's got two groups meeting in the store now (AD&D and Vampire: The Masquerade), but there's always room for another hardy band of adventurers at the folding table in the back -- provided an experienced gamemaster comes forward to referee. "Everybody wants to play, nobody wants to GM," he gripes. Ain't that the truth!

Best Neighbors

Harriel's Tobacco Shoppe of Suniland

Both of these retailers are excellent at what they do; the bizarre thing is that they do it side by side. Richard Fishman, owner of the health food store, says: "The smell comes through the walls and our customers aren't smokers. But hey, that's part of life. We stopped worrying about it a long time ago." The even more easygoing Harold Klein, proprietor of the tobacco shop, adds: "We get along with them. They have a sign that says 'health' and I have one that says 'death.'" Excuse us while we enjoy our cigar.

Best Dungeon Masters

Lizards On Ice

No, it's not pest control Miami style or a new South Beach lounge. So what's with the name? It's an obscure D & D reference. When school lets out, this one-and-a-half-year-old gaming store next to the West Kendall Regional Library resembles the New York Stock Exchange -- for prepubescents. Its backpack-wielding Lilliputian traders, mostly boys, clamor around a godlike clerk in a cacophony of soprano voices. Care to go a few rounds with the Souldrinker? Think you can handle the Rats of Rath? Sure you can. But bring your imagination; there are no virtual-reality helmets here, no high-tech computer screens or Game Boys, just good old-fashioned mind games. The store carries a large selection of cards, figurines, and other accoutrements for fantasy games, as well as trading cards, comic books, and animated Japanese videos. Popular right now are two role-playing card games: Pokemon, which is from Japan, and Magic: The Gathering. Magic tournaments are held Sundays. Check for other scheduled tournaments, such as Warhammer Fantasy. Pickup games run seven days per week around worn green billiards-like tables. And if there's no one to run the game? "That's where we come in," says John, a cheerful employee. In the immortal words of Lyna, a Thalakos Seer from Magic: The Gathering: "You see our world when you shut your eyes so tightly that tiny shapes float before them." That's one approach. The store is open Monday and Tuesday, noon to 8:00 p.m.; Wednesday through Friday noon to 9:00 p.m.; Saturday 11:00 a.m. to 9:00 p.m.; and Sunday noon to 6:00 p.m.

Best Hockey Shop

Hockey World

Mike Gurowitz is a hockey pioneer. The Chicago native began playing hockey in South Florida way back in 1983, when he joined a North Miami street league. Since then an ice rink opened in North Miami, the Panthers nearly won a Stanley Cup, and a dozen roller-hockey rinks debuted across the county. Gurowitz launched Hockey World to serve the area's expanding roster of players. He knows the needs of ice- and roller-hockey competitors, and he assists both groups expertly. The depth of his passion is literally written on the walls of his small shop. Any space that is not covered with sticks, elbow pads, and gloves is papered with autographs of his beloved Chicago Blackhawks. Among the rink-related John Hancocks: Bobby Hull, Stan Mikita, and Chris Chelios (signed before the recent trade to the hated Red Wings). Inside a display case rests a rare trading card of Boston Bruin legend Bobby Orr ... in a Blackhawks sweater. Gurowitz's knowledge along with his reasonable prices have helped him outlast several competitors. Lately he's been filling orders from South America. Having conquered South Florida, he is entering the next frontier.

Best Soccer Shop

Soccer Locker

You're driving your kid across town to the big tournament when he suddenly realizes he's made a tragic mistake: He left his shin guards at home. Or you're on your way to a local pickup game and need a new ball; the last time you played was ten years ago and yours is dead as grandma's cat. Or you decide to invest in season tickets to Fusion games, but feel foolish because you don't have the necessary regalia. Or you just like to flip through the latest Umbros, inhale the hand-stitched Brine that cost more than your last dinner out, or try on the Diadoras that make you think you could show that ungrateful Carlos Valderrama a move or two. Whatever your reasons, practical or nostalgic, Soccer Locker won't fake you out. Just make sure to brush up on your lingo before you get there or the staff will shake-and-bake on your wallet.

Best Of Miami®

Best Of Miami®

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