Best of Miami New Times® 2004

This is the fifteenth edition of the Best of Miami. Fifteen years. Can it
be? Can a decade and a half really have zoomed by since we awarded Best
French Restaurant to Le Festival? Or decided that Little Nicky and the
Slicks was the Best Local Blues Band? Or predicted that the Best Local Band
with a Future would be the Mavericks? Anyone remember the Avenue A escapades
(Best Traveling Party)? How about the Eagle's Nest bar above the Sand
Dollar
restaurant at the Silver Sands Motel on Key Biscayne (Best Place to Drink in
the Afternoon)?

Gary James's Avenue A parties are now the stuff of legend. Hurricane
Andrew
took care of the Eagle's Nest. And Le Festival is just a memory, though
a
delectable one.

But Nicole "Nicky" Yarling is still going strong. Just two months
ago Raul
Malo and the Mavericks appeared before a wildly enthusiastic crowd at the
South by Southwest Music Festival in Austin. And another item from that
1990, inaugural Best of Miami still resonates. Best Miami Euphemism: "It's
never dull. Most commonly employed during conversations between transplants
to Miami and their worried friends and relatives back home. Translation: My
neighbors were just busted by the DEA, my car has been broken into again,
five city commissioners were indicted last week, and someone's been placing
headless chickens at my back door."

Of course there have been other reassuringly immutable objects amid the
turbulent changes that have buffeted Miami over the past fifteen years.
Churchill's is still a great rock club. The black bean soup at Puerto
Sagua
is as savory as ever. El Palacio de los Jugos continues to make killer Cuban
sandwiches, and Versailles is perhaps the world's most famous Cuban
restaurant (in Miami, that is). The Athens Juice Bar on Collins Avenue is
still squeezing fresh fruit. And this year, for the umpteenth time, we
cheerfully acknowledge that Books & Books remains Miami's best bookstore.
Our readers have displayed surprising consistency as well. In voting for
their own Best of Miami winners, they once again have awarded Best French
Fries to (who else?) McDonald's. Best Beach? As always, it's South
Beach,
just as Key West is Best Weekend Getaway. Christy's restaurant in Coral
Gables is the perennial winner of Best Caesar Salad. And for the umpteenth
time readers declared Gloria Estefan to be Best Local Girl Made Good.
You'd think that fifteen years of consistent failure would discourage
potential ballot-stuffers. But nooooooo. Take Rex Art Supplies, for example.
We didn't have a category for Best Art Store, so the good folks at Rex
corrected that with 39 photocopied ballots signed by, among others,
a
remarkable number of full families. Nor did we have a category that was
tailor-made for the Shin Wellness Center. Not to worry. Someone there took
care of the oversight by making it easy for 48 individuals to simply sign
their names on premarked ballots nominating Shin as the winner of Best
Category We Didn't Ask.
Those efforts, ambitious though they may have been, were distant runners-up
to our pick for this year's Best Ballot-Stuffer. Best Gym? Who knows?
We
didn't ask readers to vote on such a category. But according to 157 people
from all over town, we should have. And the winner should have been Zone
Fitness Centers.
Among the many other suggestions for Best Category We Didn't Ask, a few
stand out as emblematic of this weird and wonderful place we call home: Best
Criminal Done Good, Best Spot to Paint Graffiti Illegally, Best Place to Buy
Liquor If You're Underage, Best Way Not to Die From Extreme Heat in the
Miami Summer, Best Reason to Live in This Hellhole, Best Way to Escape the
Latin Influence, and our favorite: Best Local Cross-Dresser.