BEST PLACE TO GO STONED 2003 | Santas Enchanted ForestBird Road at the Palmetto Expressway | Best Restaurants, Bars, Clubs, Music and Stores in Miami | Miami New Times
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BEST PLACE TO GO STONED

Santas Enchanted Forest

Bird Road at the Palmetto Expressway

When you're baked, nothing beats a carnival of lights. Santa's Enchanted Forest, which runs from early November through the first week of January, is a great place to bug out and munch out. First you go through the acid-inspired Christmas displays, enhanced by more than three million flickering Christmas lights draped overhead in the forest of Australian pines. Along the way you encounter the off-the-chain performances of Kachunga the alligator, Dondi the Elephant, and Randall's High Diving Pigs. For the truly adventurous, test your limits by climbing aboard any of the looping, twirling, twisting carnival rides operated by substance-impaired carnies. Talk about a thrill. But best of all, Santa's is a great place to alleviate the munchies. Succulent turkey legs, tangy barbecued chicken, jumbo-size corn dogs, piping-hot ears of corn, and our personal favorite: sweet elephant ears.

BEST PLACE TO LOSE WEIGHT

Inside your car

State Road 836

August

The damn car's A/C broke. Hurricane season has begun, with temperatures never dipping below the average on planet Mercury. And you're stuck in that perpetual traffic jam next to the airport. Life couldn't get worse. But hark! There is a very thin silver lining. Bring on the heat! Bring on the sweat! Bring on the tractor trailer that cuts in front of you and comes to a complete standstill! You are experiencing the cheapest and easiest diet program known to Miami Man. The longer it takes to get to Kendall, the more the pounds will melt away (do carry a water bottle, though, as we want you to remain alive). And remember, if you do happen to gain back a few pounds, September is just as hot!

BEST PLACE TO TAKE

Biscayne Bay

You should, of course, advise visiting friends to arrive on a daytime flight, window seat, the better to appreciate the sparkling azure waters as the plane swoops down toward MIA. Their appetites whetted, sign 'em up for Action Helicopter's 30-minute, 45-mile aerial tour. It lifts off from Watson Island and includes the port, the downtown skyline, Vizcaya, and Key Biscayne before heading up Miami Beach to Bal Harbour then looping around the west side of the bay for just $149 each (a quick, four-minute look will set you back only $35). If you're not feeling that munificent, you can always go asea on one of the Island Queen or Celebration bilingual boat tours ($15) that leave from Bayside Marketplace. Your guests will love ogling waterfront celeb homes (and you might just like it, too). Too touristy for you? Designate your driver and order a libation to ease the pain.

Readers Choice: South Beach

BEST PLACE TO TAKE YOUR VISITING MOTHER

Afternoon tea at the Biltmore Hotel

The South Beach flesh market might be a little intimidating for a woman of a certain age. You can only visit so many malls. And sunbathing at the beach does bring up the ugly specter of skin cancer. The perfect answer to entertain and impress a visiting matron, an activity that will in fact make your mother feel like a queen, is to partake of a proper English tea at the Biltmore. Several courses are involved, beginning with those little watercress sandwiches with the crust cut off, followed by tender scones, clotted cream, and chocolate-dipped fruit. Plus your choice of a series of fine teas, all in the elegant grandeur of a landmark hotel. Everything but the fog. At $18.82, plus tip, it's a bargain. Available from 3:00 to 5:00 p.m. Call ahead to make reservations.

BEST POET

Adrian Castro

Over the past several years the name Adrian Castro has been a frequent sight in this paper as a contributor, as well as a 1994 Best of Miami winner for Best Poet of the Spoken Word. But this bard's work is worth a fresh look if only for the joy of immersion in bilingual verse. Chanting phrases, stitching lines together as long prose poems, then repeating the lot in Spanish, Castro, as demonstrated by his much-reprinted Cantos to Blood and Honey and numerous contributions to literary magazines and journals, is a true stylist on the written page, to say nothing of his talents with the spoken word.

BEST RADIO STATION

WCMQ-FM Clásica 92 (92.3)

You've never heard an oldies station quite like this one. Yes, Roy Orbison's "Only the Lonely" has been played to death by DJs -- but how about Los Locos del Ritmo's note-for-note Spanish-language take on that wistful ballad? Or Roberto Jordán's Spanish cover of Redbone's bouncy Seventies classic "Come and Get Your Love"? Or Vianey Valdez's rousing rendition of the Isley Brothers' "Twist and Shout"? Welcome to the slightly surreal world of Clásica 92, where these Spanish pop oldies happily co-exist with their U.S. cousins. It's a wonderfully elastic format, skipping across decades and genres, making room for the Eagles and the Bee Gees alongside their south-of-the-border colleagues. Whether you're a Latino nostalgic for the homeland radio sounds of your youth, or an Anglo reliving your past in an entirely new way, Clásica 92 is one of our city's unheralded treasures.

Readers Choice: WLRN-FM (91.3)

BEST READING SERIES

Miami Book Fair International

Wolfson Campus

Year in and year out, this November fair demonstrates that South Floridians do have an appetite for intellectual stimulation. Over the course of a week, hundreds of bibliophiles trudge downtown to hear writers present their latest tomes, followed by the thousands who fill the streets around MDCC for the final two-day extravaganza. Organizers bring in nationally and internationally renowned heavy hitters in the realms of fiction and nonfiction, but also provide a forum for up-and-coming literary lights and for local scribes. Kudos are in order too for the growing Spanish-language program. We have high hopes for the 2003 edition, the twentieth anniversary, for which organizers promise lots of excitement. In the meantime we're keeping a close watch on what's cooking at the fair's new parent, the Florida Center for the Literary Arts. The hopeful expectation: more food for thought during the other eleven months of the year.

BEST SAILBOAT RENTAL

Sailboats of Key Biscayne

Crandon Marina

Size really doesn't matter. Nestled along the southern part of the marina, this little rental place gets more fun from less space. Boat sizes range from 22 to 25 feet. There are Catalinas for the faint of heart, Hunters for the more adventurous, and J's for the hard-core speed freaks. If you don't know what you're doing, take a class. Individuals and pairs welcome. After ten hours you'll have a certificate that will let you pilot a 30-footer in an enclosed waterway like Biscayne Bay, and try out your new skills.

BEST SANCTUARY FROM THE FAST TRACK

Ancient Spanish Monastery

We don't know about you, but we've been around these parts long enough to admit to a kind of airsickness and bone-tiredness of all this Starbucks-KFC-Subway-Howard Stern-no money down-fatal accident on the Palmetto-¡tu eres comunista!-we'll pay you to drive this SUV-live on the scene of a drive-by shooting-South Florida ambiance. And sometimes we dream of getting back to a quieter time. When that mood strikes, we're likely to pay our five bucks and slip into the oldest building in North America -- William Randolph Hearst's twelfth-century Segovian monastery (which still operates as an Episcopalian church). Past the gardens and stone cloisters, and onto a smooth oak bench. Aaahh ... starting to feel human again.

BEST SATURDAYS

Surreal Saturdays

PS 742

Deep in the heart of Little Havana, on many a Saturday night, you'll see a strange scene for Miami: people paying to see performance art in this black-box space. Call it a small sign of our growing maturity -- paying for experimental theater, and not just on one Saturday. The surrealness can include lots of things, and in fact it will. Each event is multimedia. A DJ perhaps, with a photography exhibit on the walls, and two short dance works? Maybe a "band" of electronic musicians and a one-woman performance? The thing is, it's not predictable. It can't be. It's surreal, and it makes Miami proud.

Best Of Miami®

Best Of Miami®

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