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Best Tollbooth

Broad Causeway

Maybe it's the unobstructed view of the Intracoastal Waterway one gets driving along this winding strip of road that connects Bay Harbor Islands to North Miami. Perhaps it's the fact that, with relatively little traffic coming through, the tollbooth operators will take not only your money but the time to wish you a nice day or a good evening. Whatever the reason we don't mind that it costs 50 cents each way. Really.

Best Turncoat

Alex Penelas

"Hence! Wilt thou lift up Florida?"

"Great Gore --"

"Doth not Alex bootless kneel?"

"Speak, hands for me!"

"Et tu, Alex? Then fall, Gore."

Best Way To Get Around South Beach

If you absolutely, positively must go to South Beach, leave your car in the municipal lot at 45th Street and Collins Avenue, then walk to the nearby Eden Roc or Fontainebleau, where you can grab a cab any hour of the day or night.(Aside from the airport, these are the only places in Miami-Dade where taxis line up ten deep.) Head to South Beach. At the end of the evening, cab it back. You won't spend half the night looking for parking, and you won't have to worry about tooling around under the influence. Now if we could all just stop going to South Beach.

Best Way To Renew Your Driver License

By appointment

True, we renew our licenses only once every six years, but on that fateful day (which, cruelly, comes on our birthday), most of us would rather wake up dead than confront the idea of three hours at the DMV. No more. Thanks to the forward-thinking folks at the division of driver licenses, you can now schedule an appointment at the office nearest you, usually from one day to the next. In and out in about an hour. (What, you expected better?)

Best Impromptu Intervention

Opa-locka. Dusk. The parking lot of an abandoned housing project. The potholed lot is empty save the car of a reporter, who has pulled over to take a cell-phone call. Up ahead a round-faced man wearing a black Martin Luther King T-shirt slowly winds toward the car. He is sipping from a longneck bottle of Budweiser. When he reaches the car, he smiles, revealing a bridge of gold teeth.

"Hey man, you live here? Damn that's nice! I'd live here myself if I could. You're on the phone? Oh man, I know what you're doing. I know exactly what you're doing. You're talking to your girlfriend! Your wife doesn't get off work for another hour, so you're talking to your girl. Don't say no, man! Don't tell me you got no wife. I'm smart. Ah, yeah, that's what's happening man.

"Hey man, seriously. Don't be doing that. You got to stop that. Go home to your wife and kids. I know exactly what's going on here. This is what you do: You call your girl tomorrow, you tell her that you've talked to the Lord and he told you this wasn't right, that you've got to go back to your wife, that your kids need you. I'm smart. I'm smart. And I know. Every month you get more bills. Paying for your girl adds up. Then you get another bill, and you say, “Damn, another bill!' Then you have to look at your kids. Man, I'm tellin' you there's nothing worse in the world than to have to look in your kids' eyes and tell 'em you're a deadbeat dad. You hear me? Hang up that phone, brother! I love you. I want you to do the right thing.

"Oh man, my back hurts. You mind if I lean in here a little bit? You see how I walked up here, all slow and all? That's how I know what I'm talking about man, 'cause my wife shot me in the back. Look here, I'll lift up my shirt. Let me just turn around here. You see that? You see the hole? You don't ever want to be denying no child support. Listen to me! You're going to hang up that phone, brother. You're going to do the right thing. I can tell. I know. I'm smart, man. I'm telling you I'm smart. And I know."

Best Locally Produced Television Comedy

El Mikimbin de Miami

Mikimbin is Cuban slang for tacky, shoddy, lowbrow. Which perfectly describes the show and its completely tasteless hosts, Miguel "El Flaco" Gonzalez and Gilberto Reyes, a.k.a. Los Fonomemecos. They've been a fixture in Spanish-language Miami comedy circles for years, two Cuban immigrants earning their bread and butter with live appearances, principally at Club Tropigala at the Fontainebleau Hilton, and really awful television commercials. Their El Vacilon de la Mañana stint during morning drive on El Zol (WXDJ-FM 95.7) was largely responsible for the salsa station's long-time high ratings. When the duo left last year over a contract dispute, they wasted no time in putting together Mikimbin. If you don't watch Spanish-language TV, you won't get all their jokes, and not every skit is funny. But the good ones are screamingly hilarious. Gonzalez does the best Fidel Castro anywhere, and a recent parody of the truly mikimbin Laura en America (a Peruvian version of Cristina -- strange but true) was to die laughing for.

Best Shrine

Elian's house

This past November, when Delfin Gonzalez announced he had bought the modest Little Havana home where Elian stayed, and that he planned on turning it into a shrine, some people thought it would only serve to perpetuate -- even institutionalize -- the tensions that had split the community into warring factions. But that evening, when the winning numbers came up on the Florida lottery, even skeptics had to pause. Maybe the kid does have some kind of supernatural powers after all. The Cash Four drawing paid off $5000 to 192 players who picked the numbers 2319. The Cash Three drawing paid $500 to 913 people who picked 023. Even the number of people who won were combinations of Elian's address. Now what was that story about dolphins saving the boy's life?

Best Supporting Actor

Ray Lockhart

This year Ray Lockhart proved that maybe you can trick the Devil, but you can't fool an audience. As Lem, the man who murdered Robert Johnson, Lockhart was not only pivotal to the play's denouement but also essential to the emotional chemistry onstage. Portraying a long-absent and embittered husband, Lockhart filled M Ensemble's tiny set with the emotional intensity and stage presence of a man who has spent the past few years splitting rocks and returns to find his wife bedding down with a handsome, mysterious stranger. Lockhart's raw physicality and confident stage presence elevated the quality of this drama immensely, without overshadowing the rest of the cast. Finding the balance between rage and passion, this quarry worker turned out to be the gem in this bitter tragedy.

Best Actor

Paul Tei

Theatergoers found a lot of reasons to dislike Paul Tei this season. He played a cold-blooded child killer in New Theatre's Never the Sinner and a hot-blooded serial killer in GableStage's Popcorn. But he is so good at being bad that you can't really hold it against him. Tei is the kind of actor who looks at a role not only as an opportunity to perform but also as an opportunity to create a role. Consequently he can portray several different degenerates, and his performances never overlap. As Wayne, the gun-toting redneck in Popcorn, Tei kept us riveted to our seats -- appalled and laughing. As Richard Loeb, a wealthy young Chicago man who, along with his lover, kills a young boy on a Nietzsche-inspired whim, he was equally appalling. But Tei never let audiences simply dislike his characters. With his willingness to take risks and push the boundaries of character definition, he could make Ted Bundy funny. For example, in Never the Sinner, he dared to play this insolent, arrogant murderer as childlike and capricious -- clubbing a kid in the head one moment and going out for hot dogs the next. Tei's topnotch acting transformed these two good plays into excellent ones.

Best Departure

Rick Sanchez

What more is there to say than "farewell"?

Best Of Miami®

Best Of Miami®

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