BEST PEDESTRIAN EXPERIENCE 2004 | Flagler Street from Twelfth Avenue to Biscayne Bay | Best Restaurants, Bars, Clubs, Music and Stores in Miami | Miami New Times
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BEST PEDESTRIAN EXPERIENCE

Flagler Street from Twelfth Avenue to Biscayne Bay

Power up for your stroll with a pinolio purchased at the Nicaraguan cantina on the corner of Twelfth and Flagler. A cold cocoa drink made with sweet milk, it's just the jolt you'll want to get you on your way. Heading east on Flagler, you'll pass street peddlers and homeless immigrants working hard to collect those nickels and dimes for their main meal of the day -- a sixteen-ounce can of Schlitz Malt Liquor. At Tenth Avenue, Central American families are drawn to La Ideal, the Burdines of East Little Havana. The next few blocks feature empty lots and forsaken office buildings ripe for redevelopment. Then you traverse the Miami River via the Flagler drawbridge and head into the murky dead zone created by Interstate 95. As you emerge from the behemoth overpasses, signs of urban life beckon: the Miami-Dade Cultural Center, designed by famed architect Philip Johnson and quickly denounced for its intimidating, fortresslike isolation. But it's still home to the main library, the Historical Museum of Southern Florida, and the Miami Art Museum -- at least for the moment; the museums are plotting to abandon the place. Moving past the stately courthouse, you plunge into the teeming commercial center of the city. With its cacophony of blaring music, display-window strobe lights, luggage and electronic and shoe and jewelry and perfume stores, plus the street vendors and the alluring aromas from open kitchens, this stretch of Miami's signature thoroughfare could easily be mistaken for the main drag of most any Latin American capital city. Your journey ends at the entrance to Bayfront Park and the magnificent, panoramic views of Biscayne Bay. It's been less than two miles and a couple of hours or so, but you'll feel as though you've just toured the entire Western Hemisphere.

BEST BUS RIDE

Miami-Dade Metrobus Route 3

Nobody truly escapes reality via public transportation, not even on a long day's journey from Government Center to Aventura via Biscayne Boulevard (and on to Miami Beach if you want). Go surreal: Put the L'Avventura in your field trip to Aventura and turn this ride into a mind film. Friends afeared you've vanished to the point no one will ever find you, a cast of thousands, sights to behold or be filmed. Like Antonioni's dense tableaux, you may judge your encounter with mass transit as aggressively alienating and maddening in its slow pace, but by using your Truffaut-informed imagination (after steering clear of an aisle seat) and pretending you're chilling at Cinecitta instead, the vehicle transforms in that day-for-night way. As the Bluebird diesel rumbles north, downtown's hectic sets fall behind and the windows frame unbroken vistas of on-location neighborhoods -- housing, strip malls, construction sites, restaurants. Interestingly costumed extras appear, some more than once, making ominous eye contact or uninterpretable gestures. When you disembark at the mall, you will be astounded to discover that neither David Hemmings nor Monica Vitti is waiting to accompany you to the Gap. Ask the old woman in the heavy coat and sweater or the teenager appropriating black culture with his wardrobe but holding tight that platinum Visa just in case. Maybe Fellini should be your mental guide. At least until you enter the mall and walk head on into its 24-screen multiplex. A comedy turned tragic. So new wave.

BEST DISAPPEARING ACT

Grand Prix of the Americas

The event's original presenters -- Miami architect Willy Bermello, attorney Peter Yanowitch, and racing celebrity Emerson Fittipaldi -- fled the scene like a torqued-up Porsche when they sold their interest in the three-day extravaganza to Championship Auto Racing Teams (CART) for $1.2 million. Then, after wreaking havoc on the Biscayne Boulevard streetscape by removing architecturally significant pavers and relocating palm trees that had lined the boulevard since the Twenties, CART pulled the plug on the Miami race, citing losses of nearly ten million dollars. Left behind: a two-million-dollar oil slick of bills and debts owed to the City of Miami and other public agencies.

BEST DISAPPEARING ACT

Grand Prix of the Americas

The event's original presenters -- Miami architect Willy Bermello, attorney Peter Yanowitch, and racing celebrity Emerson Fittipaldi -- fled the scene like a torqued-up Porsche when they sold their interest in the three-day extravaganza to Championship Auto Racing Teams (CART) for $1.2 million. Then, after wreaking havoc on the Biscayne Boulevard streetscape by removing architecturally significant pavers and relocating palm trees that had lined the boulevard since the Twenties, CART pulled the plug on the Miami race, citing losses of nearly ten million dollars. Left behind: a two-million-dollar oil slick of bills and debts owed to the City of Miami and other public agencies.

BEST LOCAL GIRL MADE GOOD

"Jacki-O" Kohn

Before Jacki-O's first album was even released, her hit single "Pussy (Real Good)" ("Nookie" in the clean version) was catching airplay and attention. The release of the album, Poe Little Rich Girl, by South Beach's Poe Boy Entertainment has been delayed, but the reviews are still hot: VH1 called her "the high priestess of the ghetto"; Rolling Stone said "she shows cocksure flow over sterling beats ...", and Vibe announced that "now the rest of the world has taken notice of the tune that's been whetting the South and Midwest for months." Even the New York Times indicated that Jacki-O doesn't appear to be a one-hit wonder, noting that while she had a "breakthrough single with 'Nookie,' ... her latest, 'Slow Down,' [is] even better." She's picked up the baton from fellow Liberty City rappers Trina and Trick Daddy (who appears on the album) to make sure Miami's presence continues to be felt in the hip-hop community.

BEST LOCAL GIRL MADE GOOD

"Jacki-O" Kohn

Before Jacki-O's first album was even released, her hit single "Pussy (Real Good)" ("Nookie" in the clean version) was catching airplay and attention. The release of the album, Poe Little Rich Girl, by South Beach's Poe Boy Entertainment has been delayed, but the reviews are still hot: VH1 called her "the high priestess of the ghetto"; Rolling Stone said "she shows cocksure flow over sterling beats ...", and Vibe announced that "now the rest of the world has taken notice of the tune that's been whetting the South and Midwest for months." Even the New York Times indicated that Jacki-O doesn't appear to be a one-hit wonder, noting that while she had a "breakthrough single with 'Nookie,' ... her latest, 'Slow Down,' [is] even better." She's picked up the baton from fellow Liberty City rappers Trina and Trick Daddy (who appears on the album) to make sure Miami's presence continues to be felt in the hip-hop community.

BEST MOVIE SHOT ON LOCATION

Stuck on You

When gross-out auteurs the Farrelly brothers were looking to jump-start their decade-old project, the Siamese twins comedy Stuck on You, where did they go? To Miami, of course, a prime shooting location for such "Hollywood" schlock as Bad Boys II and 2 Fast 2 Furious. Granted, this would-be plea for greater understanding of physically conjoined persons starred slumming A-listers Matt Damon and Greg Kinnear, and audiences gave it respectful reviews when it opened in December of 2003. But really, when is Hollywood gonna start taking us seriously enough to shoot some Academy Award-potential films down here? When Accounting starts asking questions about why movies that have nothing to do with Miami are being shot in Miami? "Because it has great weather, even better dope, and abundant nightlife" is not an acceptable answer unless you're, say, Oliver Stone. Or, apparently, those crazy Farrelly boys.

BEST FILM FESTIVAL

Rewind/Fast Forward Film & Video Festival

South Florida does have a history, and it's damn rich, especially considering the city's relative youth. It begins about the same time Edison invented the movie camera. That's good news for the Florida Moving Image Archive, which collects and restores film and video to add to its visual storehouse -- actually a large, crammed-with-stuff bunker beneath the main library -- of local history. The annual Rewind/Fast Forward fest celebrates the archived celluloid with a show featuring a broad spectrum of works that all use old footage. There was the mind-bending independent feature The Subversion Agency, the Oscar-nominated documentary The Weather Underground, the locally produced 3-D classic Creature from the Black Lagoon, and a slew of entertaining shorts involving creative use of archival film. Never a dull moment when the past meets the present in this forward-thinking but reflective festival.

BEST LOCAL GIRL GONE BAD

Denise Calvo

She was the wife of wealthy Coconut Grove businessman and philanthropist José Calvo, until his September 2003 murder by a gunman during what appeared to be a straightforward robbery. By all rights Denise Calvo should then have worn the mantle of grieving widow. Instead police and the media began asking questions, and her life didn't do well under the scrutiny. For instance, it was revealed that her father, Michael Angelo Caligiuri, was an alleged mob figure who went to prison for racketeering and cocaine possession. Police had arrested Denise herself in 2002 for cocaine possession -- while she was pregnant! (The charges were dropped.) And when police finally apprehended a suspect in her husband's murder, Anthony Craig Lee, it turns out she had allegedly bought crack cocaine from his mother and had called Lee's cell phone several times. The case is still under investigation.

BEST LOCAL GIRL GONE BAD

Denise Calvo

She was the wife of wealthy Coconut Grove businessman and philanthropist José Calvo, until his September 2003 murder by a gunman during what appeared to be a straightforward robbery. By all rights Denise Calvo should then have worn the mantle of grieving widow. Instead police and the media began asking questions, and her life didn't do well under the scrutiny. For instance, it was revealed that her father, Michael Angelo Caligiuri, was an alleged mob figure who went to prison for racketeering and cocaine possession. Police had arrested Denise herself in 2002 for cocaine possession -- while she was pregnant! (The charges were dropped.) And when police finally apprehended a suspect in her husband's murder, Anthony Craig Lee, it turns out she had allegedly bought crack cocaine from his mother and had called Lee's cell phone several times. The case is still under investigation.

Best Of Miami®

Best Of Miami®

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