People & Places

The scene: A messy Harvard dorm room. A young, drunken student chugs beer at his computer.His handsome, dark-haired best friend wanders in.

“I need you,” the first young man says.

“I’m here for you,” his friend replies earnestly. “No, I need the algorithm you wrote to rank chess players.”

“Are you OK?” the friend asks.

“We’re ranking girls,” the drunk at the computer answers.

And so Facebook was born — at least according to The Social Network, the Oscar-nominated film that took American theaters by storm last fall.

That drunk at the computer, of course, was Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook’s brash, oft-criticized founder. His handsome friend, played by heartthrob Andrew Garfield, was none other than Eduardo Saverin.

The lesser-known half of Facebook’s founding duo has had a breakout year thanks to The Social Network, a film largely based on Saverin’s version of the website’s founding — and his acrimonious split with Zuckerberg — as told to author Ben Mezrich.

Long before Saverin was fighting Zuckerberg for Facebook’s billions, he was growing up in the Magic City, the son of Brazilian immigrants from São Paulo. Before heading to Harvard, Saverin cut his teeth at Miami’s Gulliver Prep.

Now everyone knows the rest of his story: founding the business end of Facebook, getting screwed out of his shares by the devious Zuckerberg, and eventually getting the last laugh by winning an estimated billion-dollar court verdict against Facebook and literally writing the book on the website’s incredible inside history.

Not a bad year for a local kid.

Call it “Obamarail” all you want, you freaky-looking doppelganger to the creepy preacher from Poltergeist. The plan to build a high-speed rail system through Florida was championed by Gov. Charlie Crist, your Republican predecessor in office. And your rejection of $2.4 billion in federal funds to build the system — which would have created thousands of jobs — will bite you in your luminescent, bony ass. If there’s one principle constant among state politicians of both red and blue ilk, it’s this: Money from Washington is glorious. It is to be accepted with no argument. It is an oatmeal cookie from Mom. You would never tell her: “What’s the calorie count in this cookie?” You would not inquire as to whether the cookie was gluten-free. You would take the fucking cookie and then figure out what to do with it. Florida has seen a lot of different kinds of morons in office, Rick Scott. But none dumb enough to turn down a giant cookie when the state is suffering from some seriously low blood sugar. That’s why you were sued by Florida senators from both sides of the aisle. That’s why your approval rating is doing its best impression of Emilio Bonifacio’s batting average. And that, dear sir, is why you need to climb back into the fiery hole in Hades from which you emerged.

Only in Miami could a billionaire with an empire of auto dealerships be the underdog. But that’s exactly what happened when 78-year-old Norman Braman took aim at Carlos Alvarez. The Miami-Dade mayor never saw it coming. How could he? Considering that — unlike most of his predecessors — he didn’t break any obvious laws, Alvarez was probably already designing the statue of himself to go up in Little Havana. But when the South Florida economy tanked, each Alvarez mistake became a stone in Braman’s ever-growing arsenal. With all of that ammo, Braman couldn’t miss. He announced a recall campaign against the mayor and pumped more than a million bucks of his own money into the effort. When the results came in, it was a victory of biblical proportions for the billionaire: Almost 90 percent of voters decided to oust Alvarez’s ass. But like any other Banana Republic coup, it left everyday citizens wondering which despot is next.

Unless you support terrifying cyborgs sent from the future to eliminate state government with just their laser eyes (cough, cough, Rick Scott) or count yourself a member of the Marco Rubio Tea Party Pretty Boy Army, the past 12 months have been a dismal time to be a South Florida voter. A terrible year, that is, with one bright, sequined, outrageously colorful-hat-wearing exception: Frederica Wilson, Miami’s newest rep in the U.S. Congress, is pretty much the bomb. Wilson made a name for herself by winning unlikely battles: first as a Miami principal who closed a fume-spewing plant near her school, then as a state representative and senator taking down everything from high school dirty dancing to HIV testing for prisoners. Now in Washington, she has brought some much-needed visibility to a Democratic freshman class overshadowed by the boisterous GOP, earning a cover photo on the Washington Post Magazine, and backing controversial legislation, such as a ban on cell phones while driving. Down with the cyborgs! Up with blinged-out cowboy hats!

When big shows roll into town, there is usually only one person who can grant media access to ink-stained wretches. His name is Woody Graber. Want to cover the Bob Marley Festival? Call Graber. Want to hit up the South Beach Comedy Festival? Call Graber. Bruce Springsteen is playing at the BankAtlantic Center, and Girl Talk is headlining at the Fillmore Miami Beach? You know who to call. Same Woody you call to, ahem, interview porn stars Dylan Ryder and Phoenix Marie at Exxxotica. A cantankerous old-school publicist who doesn’t show any shame in cutting off access to reporters who annoy him, Graber is the dean of the concert promotion scene. You could be the second coming of Hunter S. Thompson and he would still freeze you out.

When your husband’s profession depends on a steady influx of criminals needing legal representation, hosting a charity event to raise funds to help juvenile offenders stay on the right side of the law is no way to increase business. But criminal defense attorney Roy Black and his wife Lea understand that true socialites make time to look out for children at risk of being chewed up by an ambivalent, failing criminal justice system. For the past 17 years, the Blacks have hosted an annual star gala that raises millions of dollars for Consequences Charity and Foundation, which uses the donations to fund education programs for more than 7,500 at-risk youths. With 100 percent of the proceeds going to the charity, guests are more than willing to generously pony up $10,000 per plate. The fundraiser usually features a surprise performance by a famous entertainer, such as Barry Gibb of the Bee Gees or Pharrell Williams. During Lea’s starring stint on The Real Housewives of Miami, television audiences across the nation got a glimpse of the Blacks’ celebrity Rolodex when rapper Rick Ross casually dropped by their home for a visit. Roy and Lea began dating following William Kennedy Smith’s acquittal of rape charges in the early ’90s. Roy represented Smith, and Lea was a juror. They married in 1994.

Fearless is a word journalists love to toss around at each other: fearlessly taking on the establishment, fearlessly reporting on crime, fearlessly writing a negative column about LeBron. But let’s be honest. It’s time to call a fearless moratorium on anything less than the kind of work Jacqueline Charles has been churning out of Haiti ever since an earthquake devastated the island January 12, 2010. The Miami Herald correspondent has lived and worked amid death and destruction on an unimaginable scale, covering cholera outbreaks, election riots, lawlessness, and humanitarian miracles. She has attended friends’ and relatives’ funerals, including that of a beloved aunt who died of a heart attack during an aftershock. And through it all, she has produced extraordinary journalism week in and week out, often by putting a human face on Haiti’s miseries. Who could forget her scoop that President René Préval after the disaster had been left with only a single white shirt, which he washed and rewashed daily while he tried to keep his broken nation afloat? Her dedication to Haiti’s story made her a Pulitzer finalist and winner of the National Association of Black Journalists’ Journalist of the Year Award. More important for all of us, she is already back in Port-au-Prince, writing about the tough transition to a new president and the sputtering rebuilding efforts. Fearless? You heard it here first.

How can you tell when your relentlessly pesky attacks on your small town’s leadership are hitting their mark? Here’s one surefire sign: When the mayor personally sends building inspectors to try to shut you up. That’s exactly what happened to Stephanie Kienzle, a furiously grouchy online critic of North Miami Beach Mayor Myron Rosner. From her feisty blog, votersopinion.com, Kienzle has waged an escalating war against Rosner — and gotten results with hundreds of posts blasting city hall. When she knocked Rosner for plastering his face on “Happy Holidays” signs around town months before campaign laws allowed electioneering, the Miami Herald picked up the case. When she trashed him for allegedly accepting free ad space from a city vendor, the Florida Election Commission opened an investigation. And when she whacked Rosner for spending hundreds of dollars on hotel stays in nearby Hollywood and downtown Miami, the mayor himself finally had enough. In February, Rosner retaliated, asking his building inspectors to check out “several violations” at Kienzle’s house. If his goal was to silence the legal secretary and 20-year North Miami Beach resident, Rosner struck out big time. The very next day, Miami’s best gadfly was back on her computer, blogging about Rosner’s crackdown and demanding his head. What a pain in the ass! (That’s a compliment, Stephanie.)

You know how kids say the darnedest things? Well, it turns out closeted Christian junk scientists — snicker — say even darneder things when questioned by reporters at an airport about why they’re traveling with a male prostitute. We’ll back up and tell you the whole story just in case you spent spring 2010 holed up in a French bed-and-breakfast, boinking the homosexuality right out of a rent-boy and didn’t catch the news the first time. George Alan Rekers was on the founding board of NARTH (Naked and Ready to Hump? Naughty and Randy Twinks and Hunks? Neighborly Ass Reaming Is Totally Hot? OK, sorry — it’s the National Association for Research and Therapy of Homosexuality, which somehow sounds gayer than all of those other options). It’s one of those creepy Christian organizations determined to “cure” homosexuality through Angry Jesus, ice baths, and repeated viewings of Baywatch VHS tapes. Rekers was once paid $120,000 by Florida Attorney General Bill McCollum for expert testimony in defense of the state’s gay adoption ban. Then Rekers, returning through Miami International Airport from a Paris vacation with a male prostitute nicknamed Lucien who advertised his “perfectly built 8-inch cock (uncut)” on Rentboy.com, was confronted by two enterprising New Times reporters. The rest — including Lucien’s later statement to this rag that Rekers enjoyed the “long stroke,” which does sound like it would feel kind of nice — is beautiful, karmic history. Rekers resigned from NARTH. And Stephen Colbert said of the self-hating homophobe’s amazing “luggage”-lifting excuse: “Technically, I believe he was looking for someone to hoist his sack.”

There’s a simple equation to explain which criminal cases touch our emotional nerve: The more heinous the crime, the sweeter the justice. By that measure, the conviction handed to Grady Nelson last December stands as one of the most gratifying in Magic City history — if only because his crime, and the years of warning signs leading up to it, were so horrific. Back in 1991, Nelson was convicted of brutally raping a 7-year-old girl who lived in his neighborhood, yet he earned only ten years of probation. Soon thereafter, he was hit with an eight-year term for cocaine possession — but served only two years. Then in 2000, despite all of that gruesome history, Miami-Dade’s Human Services Department hired him as a social worker’s aide. In the next four years, everyone from the police to the State Attorney’s Office to the Department of Children and Families received reports that Nelson was sexually assaulting the children of his wife, Angelina Marcel Martinez. On January 6, 2005 — hours after Martinez obtained a protective order against her husband — Nelson entered her home, again sexually assaulted both of her children, and then fatally stabbed her more than 60 times, leaving her with a slashed throat and a knife sticking out of her head. He also stabbed her 13-year-old son and 11-year-old daughter, though both survived. Nelson’s first court hearing in 2009 ended with a mistrial. Would he again escape punishment? Not this time. Last July, a jury convicted him of first-degree murder. In December, he was sentenced to life behind bars. Sweet justice? You bet.

According to the vintage superband Chicago, “everybody needs a little time away.” Unfortunately, though, sometimes you just can’t pick up and hit the road or even sail away, but you can still find serenity within the confines of South Florida. We’re not talking another cheesy staycation at a beach hotel so you can rub elbows with tourists and share your expertise on all things local. Instead, take a breather from the average day thanks to the county’s Eco-Adventures program. The Miami-Dade Parks & Recreation Department (fabled to be the inspiration for the NBC comedy) is the third-largest county park system in the United States, consisting of 263 parks and more than 12,848 acres of land that might or might not include highway medians and the cute little trees planted there. Eco-Adventures include Redland bike tours, snorkeling at Crandon Park, moonlight kayaking along Key Biscayne, camping expeditions in the Everglades, and swamp field trips to Fakahatchee Strand State Preserve. Prices range from $25 to $165. You can go alone for some much-needed solitary refinement or plan a group expedition and prove “you’re the inspiration.”

OK, OK, so Rick Sanchez was never particularly good, in any quality-connoting sense of the word. As a hyperkinetic, airheaded anchor for WSVN-7, the Hialeah kid was famous for squatting over a floor map while discussing the Gulf War and getting into an accident that paralyzed a pedestrian near Joe Robbie Stadium. (Sanchez, whose blood alcohol content was .15, pleaded no contest to misdemeanor DUI.) He rose from those humble beginnings to national prominence on CNN as the Hyperkinetic, Airheaded Anchor Who Thinks Hawaii Is Off the Coast of Peru and Writes Dumber Tweets Than Justin Bieber. But then in September, this sparkling reputation self-destructed when Sanchez declared on a radio show that Jon Stewart was a “bigot” and intimated that Jews control the media. He was canned from the cable network and has responded by launching a disingenuous comeback crusade, backed by a website called Friends of Rick Sanchez and holding a $25-a-ticket public meeting with “America’s Rabbi” Shmuley Boteach. In fact, this publication was supposed to gain access to Sanchez during his glorious return to glorious glory, but that ended when his “people” got pissed that we suggested Friends of Rick Sanchez was written by Rick Sanchez. He did tell us this over the phone, concerning his comments about Jon Stewart: “Some days I wake up and I just want to find the highest mountain and scream, ‘That’s not me!'” OK, Rick, but do us all a favor: Stay up there on that mountain — where you can’t get Twitter on your phone — and spend the rest of your days foraging for berries and anchoring a Forest News show. Maybe you’re just meant for the squirrel world.

At some point in their subtropically tanned lives, Miamians inevitably flip on the TV set and linger momentarily on a strange scene: a lithe, young athlete on skis slaloming among snow drifts during the Winter Olympics, knees snapping up and down like pistons in a hot-rod engine. But few here realize that to re-create the challenge, all you have to do is drive south on Indian Creek Drive in Miami Beach. As the street winds erratically alongside tiny Lake Pancoast, manholes protrude every 20 feet, forcing a constant stream of SoBe-bound taxis to swerve like Lindsey Vonn in and out of lanes. As in the Olympics, wipeouts are common on Indian Creek — only without soft powder to cushion the busted bumpers or shredded shocks. And just when the road straightens long enough to make you think you’re home free, you spill onto the almighty clusterfuck that is Collins Avenue. That’s where, stuck behind lowriders blasting bass at 5 mph or a cab with its door open for a puking passenger, you realize your Olympic aspirations are as fake as the boobs strutting past you. But who cares? The only gold we need is on our grill.

Miami seems like a relaxing place. We have the blue skies, the long beaches, the nightclubs. The thing is, when you’re driving to work in a suit, the A/C isn’t working, and the drinks you had the night before are revisiting your throat, it’s almost as if the parrots’ squawks are mocking you, the sun is your natural enemy, and the beach is giving you the middle finger. Stop partying like a Kardashian on South Beach, take off your suit jacket, and explore a shady environmental gem hidden right near downtown Miami. Earth’n’Us Farm in Little Haiti is a sanctuary in an unexpected neighborhood. This urban paradise is a permaculture farm with dense tropical greenery, bees making honey, and organic food growing. The residents include goats, emus, chickens, and a lucky bastard who gets to live in a tree house. Check them out as you stroll on the wooden walkways that connect little picturesque houses. In this perfect natural retreat, you can get married, take a yoga class, or attend a permaculture workshop with native edibles. Sure, you live in a land known for its superficiality and nightlife, but hanging out at a sustainable farm is always way cooler than clubbing.

Miami is a stylish city — so stylish, in fact, an entire postwar architectural movement sprang up in the Magic City during the ’50s known as Miami Modern, or MiMo. And at the forefront of the architecturally artistic uprising was Norman Giller, the legendary architect responsible for designing more than 10,000 Miami-area buildings, including the original New Yorker on Biscayne Boulevard. Designed as a traditional roadside motel in 1953, the two-story property relied on then-popular neon signs and “space-age” design to lure road trippers. Over the years, the area around the New Yorker declined, succumbing to Miami’s seedy underbelly of streetwalkers and crackheads. But then a cultural revolution manifested a few years ago, and the MiMo district rehabilitated itself with the help of Miami’s artistic community. It’s quickly becoming one of the city’s most sought-after neighborhoods for its retro design and overall 305 history. Last year, New Yorker owner Shirley Figueroa and her husband Walter renovated the property and transformed it into a boutique hotel — a damn good one. They spruced up the exterior with traditional white paint, redesigned the rooms for a more contemporary feel, and outfitted the place with some subtle pieces of pop art. They added a free breakfast buffet and complimentary Wi-Fi — plus, most important, they made it affordable. Summer rates start at just $65, and you’re a short cab ride from everywhere. It’s the perfect off-the-beaten-path getaway for the anti-tourist — the person who wants to eat, sleep, and breathe the real Miami.

Chuck a Frisbee from the east edge of Belle Isle, and if you have a halfway decent arm, you’ll hit South Beach. So how can a neighborhood this underrated, this cool, and this historic be hiding in plain sight of Miami-Dade’s most famous hood? Belle Isle, the easternmost tip of the man-made Venetian Islands, was once home to retail zillionaire J.C. Penney’s exclusive estate. Today, unlike its stuffy, rich-kid siblings, it marries the Venetian’s quiet, exclusive vibe with a more bohemian, South Beach cool. Sure, there are million-dollar luxury lofts in the eye-popping Grand Venetian, but there are also charming, squat waterfront apartments that once housed military barracks and quiet, sandy lanes with palm-shaded one-bedroom houses. The island’s center is a newly renovated park, and a footpath on the perimeter leads to clear-water views of Biscayne Bay reefs. Just to top it off, Belle Isle is home to hipster paradise the Standard, an über-chic hotel with South Beach’s best spa, an Anthropologie-approved lounge, and the Lido Restaurant, a vegetarian-friendly eatery with ridiculous bayside table views. Next time you’re in SoBe, take the hike across the bridge — your new favorite neighborhood has been hiding in the middle of the bay all this time.

You see her every time you travel on the MacArthur Causeway to and from Miami Beach. She’s so popular that when TV networks broadcast big games featuring the Heat, Hurricanes, Dolphins, or Marlins, she gets a lot of air time, showcasing her immense beauty as she basks alongside the shimmering waters of Biscayne Bay. Some 4.1 million people a year stop by to say hello to her on their way to the Caribbean aboard whimsical vessels straight out of a sun-drenched daydream. And she’s quite the workhorse, pumping out an annual 6.8 million tons of cargo from around the globe. This gal is quite the moneymaker too, creating an economic impact of approximately $17 billion for Miami-Dade. She is the enchantingly beautiful Port of Miami.

The last thing you think you’d want to see in our-shit-don’t-stink and don’t-park-pickup-trucks-overnight-in-our-city Coral Gables is a museum celebrating how wonderful, rich, and cultural the City Beautiful is (even the town’s moniker is annoyingly narcissistic). But you’d be wrong. Turns out the recently opened Coral Gables Museum, which was built in the city’s old police and fire station, has exactly what the Gables so often tries to fabricate: legitimate history and great architecture. Built as part of the Works Progress Administration (WPA) in 1939, the museum boasts a coral-rock façade and architectural details, such as busts of two real-life Gables firefighters, on par with the most ornate buildings in the area. And even better are the historical exhibits on display inside a structure that itself tells the story of the city’s rise to prominence — which wasn’t always pretty. As well as housing firemen and fuzz, the building also held the city’s first court, witnessed the murder of a police officer, and suffered through a fire that almost killed prisoners. How’s that for history? After the police and fire departments relocated to a larger and uglier structure in 1975, the building went through a number of uses before city officials realized it would best serve as a museum. They added a 3,000-square-foot wing and a 5,000-square-foot plaza, which will feature traveling exhibits and open-air concerts, respectively. The museum’s location, adjacent to Books & Books and across the street from the new Coral Gables Art Cinema, might make this block the single most culturally significant spot in South Florida.

Ever since he hung up his shingle in the late ’70s, Fredric Snitzer has been a driving force behind the South Florida contemporary art scene. The graybeard dealer and Wynwood pioneer has long been a mentor to homegrown artists. He also has been a staple at Art Basel since it parachuted into town a decade ago and remains the sole Miami representative on the über-exclusive Swiss fair’s selection committee. Ground zero for the sizzling Second Saturday arts crawl, Snitzer’s Wynwood gallery boasts top-drawer talent, including big names such as Hernan Bas, Bert Rodriguez, Luis Gispert, and Naomi Fisher. The kingmaker’s exhibits have always been edgy and polished and often leave viewers’ heads spinning. An artist himself, Snitzer has always given those in his stable the freedom to follow their vision without caving to the bottom line. Not to say Snitzer’s reward hasn’t been big. He is a shrewd businessman who is both respected and envied by competitors who covet his blue-chip list of collectors and willingness to endure long waiting lists to snag his artists’ works. But at an age when others at the top of their game might slow down or spend more time on the golf course than at the office, Snitzer is still punching the clock and nurturing emerging talent, such as Michael Vasquez, and regularly selling out entire shows. Thanks to Snitzer’s homegrown hustle and uncanny eye for talent, Miami is now a serious contender on the international stage.

If you haven’t been to the Bird Road Art District, you’re missing out on the walk that does away with galleries and takes you into the working studios of two dozen professional artists who have turned an industrial strip near train tracks into a hotbed of Latin American art. See the paint-dripped warehouse walls where their work is created, and the sketches, tools, and muses that inspire them. From live, custom glassblowing at Matthew Miller’s Nickel Glass studio, to massive sculpting at Esteban Blanco’s space, radical art at Luis Fuentes’s, provocative installations at Ray Azcuy’s, and Latin expressionism at Mano Fine Arts, you’ll find a full range of emerging and established artists hard at work. Free parking, a complimentary shuttle service looping through the district, food trucks, and free wine make for a convenient adventure in a creatively thriving district. Check it out every third Saturday of the month.

Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day? Better not. For starters, no one appreciates being called stifling and sticky. Besides, Miamians aren’t down with such poetic metaphors, right? Wrong. O, Miami, the inaugural monthlong poetry festival, proved otherwise, which is a big deal for a city whose reputation as a party town eclipses any literary scene. Organized by University of Wynwood director P. Scott Cunningham and self-proclaimed “culturologist” Pete Borrebach, O, Miami had a mission to make sure each of Miami’s 2.5 million residents encountered a poem during April 2011. And considering the ambitious street-level and highbrow programming, we think the festival came pretty close to its goal. O, Miami brought in U.S. Poet Laureate W.S. Merwin, National Book Award finalist Anne Carson, the Merce Cunningham dancers, Brooklyn Rail publisher Phong Bui, and Broken Social Scene’s Andrew Whiteman, among others. The organizers also employed a couple of guerrilla tactics to expose the uninterested to great verse — dropping biodegradable poems from an airplane over Sweatstock, printing poetry on menus, and broadcasting it on DMV monitors. O, Miami poets drove around Miami in a red Ferrari and shouted verse from megahorns. And when über-star James Franco was delayed for an appearance alongside his poetry professor Tony Hoagland, a remarkable thing happened. The audience’s visible anxiety over the 127 Hours actor’s absence soon changed to rapt attention as Hoagland read his own verse, which eulogized everything from blowjobs to Britney Spears.

Ocean Drive has two very distinct personalities. On one hand, she’s a noisy tourist trap, filled with giant mojitos, food that tastes cheap yet costs $100, and too many bodies trying to navigate teeny-tiny sidewalks. But look up and you’ll find some of the most intriguing architecture in the world, dating back to a time in the not-so-distant past filled with flappers in fringe and men in top hats and tails. The Art Deco Welcome Center provides daily iPod-led audio tours of these architectural gems. For a mere $15 (the price of one cocktail), you can spend the entire day exploring these pastel wonders (though the tour itself runs about an hour and a half). For added enjoyment, grab a beverage and some friends and imagine what the Miami Beach of the jazz age must have been like.

Despite what you’ve heard, the best place to fly in the 305 is not Miami International Airport, Kendall-Tamiami Executive Airport, Richards Field, Opa-locka Executive Airport, or even Homestead General Aviation Airport. Nope, the best place to soar midair is at the South Florida Circus Art School in North Miami Beach. You still might have to take off your shoes, but rest assured that no clowns will frisk you or confiscate your liquids. Instead, master-level circus performers teach contortion, trapeze, aerial fitness, and flying yoga. Learn how to glide through the air using a single strip of fabric and no safety line. Spiral, drop, or climb higher and lower using only key grips and your killer core strength. Laurie Allen, who owns and runs SFCAS, says she acquired her first crop of instructors at a Cirque du Soleil audition. She also says that because circus performers practice every day, you never know which visiting big-top artists will be strung up next to you. But don’t let that intimidate you. The classes are filled with just as many fitness freaks as those collecting Barnum & Bailey paychecks.

There’s nothing more entertaining than watching underage kids escaping from late-night raves and wandering near the bus terminal during Ultra Music Festival. Typically standing around and waiting for someone to give them a ride home, these kids are easy to spot even in the darkness: lanky, sweaty teens wearing shit-eating grins, loads of rubber or string bracelets, and such a mix of fluorescents, patterns, and ill-fitting spandex accouterments that make them look like refugees from an American Apparel store in the Harajuku district.

The sold-out event atop the Herzog & de Meuron-designed 1111 Lincoln Road parking garage transformed the exposed concrete structure into a whimsical playground of sweets. But while this candyland featured delicious cakes by Jacques Torres, Ron Ben-Israel, Duff Goldman, Lori Karmel, Colette Peters, and others, there was more to the sugar rush than baked goods. The celebration, which highlighted the South Beach Wine & Food Festival’s tenth anniversary, featured an open bar that included Moët & Chandon, 10 Cane Rum, Hennessy, and Grand Marnier. And if partygoers needed a break from the sweets and alcohol, Shake Shack was there with burgers to soak it all up. Did we mention Martha Stewart and Emeril Lagasse hosted? Perhaps it’s because we were too busy watching ice sculptors transform blocks of frozen water into the biggest birthday cake we’ve ever seen.

You might not think women who actively write and read are automatically attractive, but one day you will want your children to be literate. You know who’ll teach them to read? Your intelligent woman. But it’s not always easy to find smart ladies when you’re boozing at Mansion like it’s your full-time job. Brainy gals are busy doing other things besides lines of cocaine. Miami Poetry Collective’s Miami Squares helps bring quality females out of their hiding places. You’d be hard-pressed to find a group of dummies who came out for a night of playing with words. The evening of poetry isn’t your typical reading (snoozefest); rather it involves interactive and evolving formats and playful poetry games. Miami Squares breaks down the usual reading/listening formats that make verse unsexy and creates fun times through outrageous and elaborate ways of dealing with language. The exercises are funny, goofy, and interactive. Nothing has changed since high school — poetry is still the best way to meet smart women.

Sweat, sawdust, Budweiser, and brains. These are the ingredients for a panty-dropping potion. All are in abundance at the Little River Yacht Club. This place isn’t a yacht club at all, but an artists’ association, studio, workshop, and gallery situated amid the warehouses and barking dogs of the Little River neighborhood. The Little River Yacht Club shows artwork that other galleries might deem unsafe, which is kind of hot, no? During the exhibit “That’s Not a Knife,” a giant crossbow shot wooden projectiles through a wooden target, and “Can You Feel It?” by Los Angeles artist John Burtle made us feel it. The artists who rent studio space here aren’t all men, but they include manly dudes such as Justin H. Long, Richard Haden, Emmett Moore, Robert “Meatball” Lorie, and Orlando Estrada. These guys are engineering masterminds who forge contraptions and artworks out of wood or metal. They also wax philosophic at Salon Theory Night, when matters of the mind and art are explored every other Tuesday. Don’t be intimidated, though. Women are welcome — and also welcome to bring their own Bud Light or even a bottle or box of wine.

Any mathematician, gambler, or Google employee will tell you it’s a numbers game. A-holes like Mystery and the rest of the pack of Pick-Up Artists/ Game devotees understand the formula: Hit on a lot of girls, and eventually one will be a winner. Yes, numbers are important. So where can you tip the ratio in your favor? Start with the basics: Find a place where a large number of women flock. If you’re thinking a Victoria’s Secret sale or Zumba class, you’re on the right track, but you risk being perceived as a creep. So instead, prove your modern-day savvy and go online. No, not to Match.com; sign up for daily deal site Gilt City. Soon enough you’ll find an event filled with women in their 20s and 30s with a penchant for the finer things in life at discounted prices. Cue the polished, well-dressed, money-saving, girly girl who loves manis, pedis, cosmos, and small dogs, designer bag included. You’re likely to be one of the few straight men at these events, mingling with the young, pretty, and professional set. Face it: You’re outnumbered, and you love it.

Hot as hell, dripping with sweat and money, all worked up from wielding their big sticks, and speaking with accents so sexy they could make any mare melt. These are the men who come to Miami annually for some polo play. Don’t bother looking for wedding bands — they don’t wear them for fear of blisters. Sure, they might have a woman back home in Argentina, but for now they’re free. Should they ask if you want to pet their ponies, just go along. And that’s just the players. Sitting in the stands are sponsors, team owners, and all-around pinkies-up types who will be happy to explain the finer points of the sport to any lady dressed in a cleavage-baring ensemble. Yes, ladies, and dudes who like dudes, the Miami Beach Polo Cup is the match-play event of the season. Saddle up.

Imagine: She has her hair pulled back in a taut bun and is wearing short heels and an even shorter skirt. The stem of a (we hope) thornless red rose is clenched between her teeth. He has his hair slicked back and is dressed in tight jeans and a shirt that won’t show too much armpit sweat. The heavily rhythmic music begins and off they go, dancing so closely that only a body condom could stop the pheromone exchange. Now is that a hot first date or what? Taking a tango class is the best way to cop a cheap feel and show your partner that you aren’t afraid of a cultural education. Lessons are held every Monday through Thursday from 8 to 10 p.m. and Friday from 8 to 8:30 p.m., and even beginners can walk in anytime, so there’s no need for much advance planning. The cost for each class is only $15, and there’s no obligation to join. What else do you want? A freakin’ bed, some baby oil, and a candle?

If Mark were a frigatebird, we’d know he likes us when he inflates his red throat sac into a giant heart balloon. If he were a snail, he’d shoot love darts at us. If he were a porcupine, he’d waddle up and pee on us. But Mark is an evolved 21st-century human, complete with opposable thumbs, a poker face, and a questionable Gap wardrobe. And his interest level and personality are about as expressive as his beige chinos. No big deal. We already knew we weren’t into him the moment he opened his mouth and said howdy. But here we are on our second date at Drinking & Drawing, a sort of happy hour meets doodling meets musical chairs. Every few minutes, we move down a seat and continue the drawing of the person ahead of us on little note cards. Our neighbor leaves us a sketch of a lizard waving; we draw a rabbit hive-fiving him. Next card, the same lizard is holding a sign that reads, “Ditch.” We doodle a rabbit holding a shovel. The one after that, the sign reads, “Ditch That.” Now our rabbit is scratching her head. One more chair scootch and the lizard’s sign is complete: “Ditch That Tool.” The rabbit points questioningly at the shovel. The lizard drops the sign and points to the right, where Mark is sitting. By the time all the note cards are photographed, turned into a two-minute animation, and projected on the white wall of the bar, we’re already out the door.

It’s so easy in these techno-saturated times to break off a relationship via text or Facebook message, but a true lady or gentleman never takes the simplest way out. Even if you’ve been dating someone for only a few weeks and decide you’re not feeling it, you have to do it in person. Luckily, we have the perfect place. Ask your soon-to-be-former flame to meet you some Sunday afternoon at Lummus Park — yes, the most crowded strip of sand on South Beach. Be a dear and make sure you look your most grotesque. No need to rub your hotness in the poor schlub’s face. Then calmly do your best “it’s not you, it’s me” and make the break. You’re in public, so things likely won’t get too heated. Plus the park is always crowded, so you can easily escape into the horde. If your now-ex needs to cry, at least those sunglasses will hide the tears. And the hypnotic sound of waves crashing is calming. Plus with all the hotties regularly populating the sands, it’s not hard for your dumped one to find a quick rebound. So, sure, maybe the relationship didn’t result in much, but at least you’ve both ended it with nice tans.

It makes sense that a woman born in the only major American city situated between two national parks would become one of the most important voices in environmental policy. Carol Browner, the daughter of two Miami Dade College professors, climbed the political ladder by working as a legislative aide under the likes of Lawton Chiles and Al Gore. After a brief but important stint as head of the Florida Department of Environmental Regulation, Browner was named administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency under President Bill Clinton and recently served as director of the White House Office of Energy and Climate Change Policy under Barack Obama. During her tenure, she pushed for cleaner vehicle emissions and became the Obama administration’s point person during the Deepwater Horizon oil spill. Unfortunately, her tireless push for legislation to address climate change never came to fruition, and Browner stepped down this past March after attacking the president’s habit of appointing czars. Still, environmental activists will surely miss her, and even one of her toughest opponents, Sen. Jim Inhofe, a Republican from Oklahoma who still refuses to acknowledge global warming, wished her well. “I would say that I’m happy to see her leave only because she was so effective in advancing her side,” Inhofe told Politico.com. “Given her considerable knowledge and experience in navigating the bureaucracy, she will be irreplaceable.”

There are plenty of estates and mansions in Miami perfect for I do’s. Unless you live in one, though, you’ll probably never get hitched in their majestic gardens. But there are some exceptions: Vizcaya, Deering Estate at Cutler, and now Thalatta Estate in Palmetto Bay. What was a private residence for most of the past century was snapped up by the Village of Palmetto Bay when the property went up for sale in 2005. It cost a third of the city’s budget. After spending a year renovating the Mediterranean-revival home and grounds, Palmetto Bay opened the estate this past February, and now the park is ready to take its place among South Florida’s best venues to tie the knot. Thalatta Estate’s four acres stretch from Old Cutler Road to Biscayne Bay and afford breathtaking views of the water. There is a plethora of photo-op locations for wedding parties: a reflecting pool, a gazebo, the home itself. Village officials — expecting that bridezillas will flock to the spot — created a second-floor bridal suite (so she can keep an eye on the groom) and added a prep kitchen for catering companies. The estate is picturesque, boasts all the amenities needed for a wedding, and is much more affordable than Vizcaya and the Deering Estate. Rates range from $155 for a weekday waterside site to $3,500 for use of the entire property on Saturdays. But our favorite feature has to be the old boat ramp. It is an ideal spot for newlyweds to hop onto a wooden Chris Craft and sail away to marital bliss — or a good place to stash a Jet Ski for a quick escape if there’s a last-minute change of heart.

Sure, it’s ugly, and being situated a mere six blocks from the gorgeously designed 1111 Lincoln Road garage doesn’t help. But you just can’t beat this behemoth, city-run parking garage. Rare is the day you cannot find a spot to park in one of the 1,460 spaces. The first six hours cost only $1, with the rate jumping to $2 after eight. After that, it’s only $15, with a max of $20 for a 24-hour period — which is a bargain in parking-space-starved South Beach. Then there is the location. Lincoln Road, the Fillmore Miami Beach, the Miami Beach Convention Center, and the New World Center surround the five-story structure, and areas such as Collins Avenue and the beach are only five blocks away. Quick tip: If you are leaving a major event or concert, pay before you return to your car for a faster exit. Otherwise, take a 30-minute stroll on Lincoln Road while the mad rush dies down.

Every landlocked mile in Miami-Dade County has a fatal flaw. Ocean Drive: Yeah, yeah, Lamborghinis, neon, fake boobs — what are you, from Ohio? Miracle Mile: It’s fun if you’re a South American multimillionaire with a pastel sweater on your shoulders and an Iglesias CD in the stereo of your Bentley. Being an alt-weekly, we could have chosen some gritty stretch of urban hyper-realism — we’re talking to you, Biscayne Boulevard between 50th and 70th streets — but then you’d probably get stabbed with an infected syringe, and besides, we did that last year. Clearly we’re fed up with people of all ilk, so we’re devolving, sprouting fins — or at least donning some rubber ones — and heading back to the primordial soup. Located just off Miami Beach — but far enough away that the Jersey Shore camera crew is but a distant nightmare — is the Wreck Trek, an artificial reef of sunken barges and tugs. Fish dig that kind of shit, and who doesn’t dig fish? All colorful, happy, and free, none of them wearing tank tops or getting tribal tattoos or running Ponzi schemes or yelling about Obama’s birth certificate. Go there with a scuba instructor. If our ratios are correct, an hour underwater will allow you to tolerate two months on land.

Good luck looking for last year’s winner in this category. There wasn’t one. Past Kendall Drive heading south, you might as well have left your cultural sensibilities behind. But, finally, it’s boon time in the boonies. The South Miami-Dade Cultural Arts Center opened earlier this year and raised one giant middle finger to its highfalutin northern neighbors. The $39 million, Arquitectonica-designed, 966-seat performing arts center is primed to become the epicenter of all things cultural south of the county’s Mason-Dixon Line. It’s barely been open a couple of months, and already the venue has hosted high-profile guests from both coasts. Credit should go to the county’s Cultural Affairs Department and center general manager Eric Fliss for making sure to include the surrounding southern neighborhoods and communities in workshops with the traveling dance and theater companies visiting the center. There’s also a concerted effort to use the venue for community gatherings such as farmers’ markets and other events outside the strict definition of performing arts. We wouldn’t be surprised if the venue could soon challenge the Adrienne Arsht Center for best cultural venue in the whole county, pound for pound. After all, Kimbo Slice, Dada 5000, and back-yard brawling were born in the southern stretches of Miami-Dade, so we like their chances in any fight.

Remember your high school days? Funny hair, funnier fashion sense (JNCOs were the bomb!), great friends, prom. The only thing that really sucked was having to go to class. But it was a great opportunity to nap in a pool of your own drool until your Ben Stein-look-alike teacher dryly called your name during attendance. And regardless of whether you were a brain, an athlete, a basket case, a princess, or a criminal, you were a John Hughes fan. The historic Olympia Theater at the Gusman Center in downtown Miami brings back its Flickn’ Summer movie series for a third year, and this time it will pay tribute to Hughes, the ultimate teen-movie magic-maker. With monthly screenings of much-loved Brat Pack classics Pretty in Pink (June 23), Sixteen Candles (July 28), The Breakfast Club (August 25), and Ferris Bueller’s Day Off (September 22), it’s enough nostalgia to make you want to bust out your Psychedelic Furs albums, claim you’re the Sausage King of Chicago, eat sushi in detention, and give the class nerd your panties. Tickets cost $10, and each screening ends with a totally gnarly onstage afterparty set to an ’80s soundtrack so you can step-touch-kick your way over to your own personal Jake Ryan, and maybe, just maybe, he’ll have cake — and a kiss.

Do you believe in ghosts? Does the thought of the paranormal make you shudder more than the cover charge at a WMC party? If so, a Key West ghost hunt is for you. Check in at the La Concha Hotel on Duval Street, home to a half-dozen apparitions, including a waiter who fell down the elevator shaft and a girl who jumped off the roof on New Year’s Eve. Some guests feel a strange tapping on their shoulders, only to find no one there. The Original Ghost Tour starts in the La Concha lobby and ventures out to haunted churches, movie theaters filled with ghost children, and the original home of Robert the Devil Doll. After dinner at the Hard Rock Café — visited by the spirit of the original owner, a malicious man named Robert Curry — grab a drink at Captain Tony’s Saloon, where the original Key West hanging tree still grows and Hemingway is said to roam in search of one more drink before last call. When you wake up (if you wake up), head to the East Martello Museum on your way out of town to meet Robert the Doll face-to-face. Take a picture if you dare, but remember to ask his permission. The museum walls are filled with letters begging Robert to lift his curse on them. Then get the hell out of Key West before anything follows you home.

Ever since you moved to Miami from Cleveland, you’ve been emailing your friends and family back home photos of flaming-pink bougainvilleas and palm fronds silhouetted by gleaming blue skies. You artfully cropped out all the eyesore condos and empty strip-mall storefronts. The jig is up, though. Ma, Pa, and Sis are coming for a visit and will finally realize that your 305 life contains about 10 percent tropical paradise and 90 percent ugly urban sprawl. Here’s how to maintain the illusion a tad longer. Pick them up at Miami International Airport, blindfold them, and drive swiftly to Venetian Pool in Coral Gables. Don’t take off the blindfold until they’re safely inside its pastel stucco walls and wrought-iron gates. Built in 1924 from an old coral rock quarry abandoned in 1921, the lagoon-style pool is as classic-Miami beautiful as it gets. Designed by architect Phineas Paist (who also gave us the Miami Federal Courthouse), it features a Venetian-style bridge, mooring posts (no gondolas though), coral rock grottoes, a waterfall, vine-covered loggias, shady porticos, and three-story lookout towers. Every day, 820,000 gallons of water rush into the old quarry from underground artesian wells, making it the largest freshwater pool in the United States. But all the crisp, blue-green water isn’t what will impress your relatives. It’s Venetian Pool’s lush Mediterranean atmosphere. They’ll be squealing, “I can’t believe you live here!” within 15 minutes of arrival. Milk it while you can. By the end of the day, you’ll have to drag them around construction, road rage, and foreclosed homes en route to your crumbling duplex in Doral.

An emblematically obese owner of an awesomely rustic bowling alley in Cleveland, Ohio, once told us: “A true bowler will not go to a martini bar.” He was referring to the yuppie ten-pin establishments that have been popping up in cities all over the country, where the lanes are impossibly glossy, the lights are strobing, and some rapper with Lil before his name is droning over heavy bass. Listen, that’s not America. That’s not even bowling. It’s some bastardized farce of the sport that Rush Limbaugh will be forced to play in Hell. We miss that solemn, old, oak-laned Cleveland temple to the converted 7-10 split. And here in Miami-Dade, the martini bars posing as bowling alleys outnumber the real thing by a count of, oh, six to one. No slight to Coral Gables’ Bird Bowl, a fabulous place, but it’s often overrun by teenagers, with their cell phones and their hair and their dastardly chewing gum. It’s enough to make a true bowler sojourn a county north to Manor Lanes Bowling Center, where the lanes aren’t too waxed, domestic brew comes $8.50 a pitcher, and — we aren’t nearly cruel enough to make this up — on Tuesday and Thursday nights, unlimited bowling costs $10. Until 2 a.m. There’s no catch. Welcome to America.

If Jaime Bayly is to be believed and the Peruvian ex-presidential candidate is actually dying of a mysterious liver ailment, his nightly talk show is a helluva Irish wake. First, there are the free tickets and booze for the 30 or so audience members. More important, however, is the production itself. The hourlong mix of witty monologue, biting political commentary, and saucy interviews (all in Spanish, we should add) is spectacular in the strictest sense of the word: Past guests have ranged from a man with two penises to Bayly’s pregnant 22-year-old girlfriend. If Jaime doesn’t leave you laughing, fuming, or choking on your arroz con pollo, he’s had an off night. Rare are the episodes where the bisexual novelist doesn’t divulge a scandalous secret about the rich and famous, or delve into his own soap-opera lifestyle. No one analyzes Miami’s gaudy absurdity better. Si tú hablas español, tienes que ir. If not, what the hell. Show up anyway.

There’s nothing like a trip to the park in the summer when you’re hurting in the wallet and your kids are driving you bananas. Unfortunately, most parks around town are flat, raccoon-infested wastelands where there’s nothing much for tots to do but broil their flesh all day on unkempt playgrounds. Sure, parks are pretty. But you didn’t bring them here to compose a sonnet. You came here to pry them away from their PlayStation games and SpongeBob episodes and give them a thrill that takes place outdoors. That’s where Amelia Earhart Park comes in. What Earhart lacks in beauty, it makes up in activities. There’s a barn where youngsters can meet a real-life pony and then ride it. They can pet goats and donkeys and see sheep get sheared, horses get their shoes changed, and cows milked. For older kids (or moms and dads), there’s a huge lake where the family can water-ski, wakeboard, or rent paddleboats. There are plenty of open picnic areas, including tables and barbecue pavilions. There’s also a convenience store selling refreshments. The entire park is an oasis from the humdrum, hot summer days, and best of all, it won’t burn a hole in your wallet. Weekend pony rides cost $2 per child. Park entrance costs $6 per car on weekends.

Forget Jon Stewart, the Onion, and Wonkette.com. Victoria Jackson is simply the finest political satirist working in America today. When the Miami native and former Saturday Night Live star lampoons the Tea Party and other right-wing fringes, it’s simply mesmerizing to watch such a fine comedienne commit herself so fully to painting a picture of an unhinged political partisan. The way she hilariously cites false information (like the time she claimed Muslims wanted to tear down the Statue of Liberty), carelessly throws around terms without context, plays ukulele songs declaring the president a communist, clings to outlandish conspiracy theories, and occasionally incites a cultural war (like she did when, in character, she called a gay kiss on Glee “sickening”) is pure parody gold. Clearly no actual conservative activist behaves this way, and Jackson takes things way over-the-top for comedic effect, yet like all great humor, it rings true. Wait. What’s that? This isn’t a dedicated Andy Kaufman-esque act? She earnestly believes all the things she says? Never mind, then. This woman is clearly bonkers.

We don’t know about you, but when we drive around Miami-Dade, we prefer to cruise in nothing but Superman Underoos — windows down, Bon Jovi blaring, higher than Charlie Sheen on the set of Hot Shots thanks to Pop Rocks and Mr. Pibb. Police might consider it “suspicious behavior,” but we prefer to call it freedom of speech. So imagine our relief when we learned that the Turnpike was going electronic. Sure, we feel for the 200 or so workers who lost their jobs — particularly the 10 percent who were actually nice. Yet proponents argue the change will save money, gas, time, and lives, because drivers no longer will have to switch lanes or slam on the brakes at the last moment. But our reasons are more selfish: no more quizzical looks from tollbooth attendants, and no more interrupting our sugar-fueled renditions of “Living on a Prayer.” Amen.

Even if you can’t afford real estate in SoBe’s chic SoFi neighborhood, at least you can take a dump there — in style. Other than being brand-new and showcasing an attractive, modern design, the public restrooms at South Pointe Park are pretty much the same as any other public potties. What’s remarkable about these johns are their environs. When you’re finished doing business, you can head to the roof of the bathroom, relax, and gaze at the beautiful view of the water from an elevated standpoint. Yes, that’s right, these bathrooms come complete with their own shaded, rooftop VIP lounge. And once you’ve drained your bladder, you can begin the refilling process by hitting the new organic juice and fro-yo bar next to the facility. It’s surely the most beautiful and pleasant spot to relieve yourself in all of Miami.

Sometimes animal and man clash, especially in a city as close to nature as Miami, where careless boaters and fishermen leave lines to get tangled in and hooks to swallow. Seabirds are often the victims. Pelican Harbor Seabird Station on the 79th Street Causeway takes in not only injured seabirds but also all wild animals (except cats and dogs) 24 hours a day, seven days a week. An on-staff vet sees to it that the animals are cared for and rehabilitated. Most of them are released. Some, like resident pelican Fred, decide to stay for life, enjoying the free fish and plush (for a pelican) accommodations. The station is open for private tours by appointment, when visitors can meet the various temporary and permanent residents of the facility — and perhaps leave a donation.

One day, you open your closet and realize you can’t stand to look at the same clothes anymore. Also, you have no idea why you bought five of the same shirt in different colors. Sickened by your own overconsumption, you think of your elderly grandmother sitting in a nursing home, wearing the same kind of hospital gown every day. Go visit her. And while you’re at it, instead of throwing out a bunch of clothes and restocking your drawers with new T-shirts, donate your old goods to Douglas Gardens Thrift Store, a huge shop that benefits the Miami Jewish Home and Hospital for the Aged. You might even find some great button-downs in five different colors for yourself.

Scoring a quick shot of Internet fame is pretty easy if you have a high-speed web connection, giant fake boobs, a perfectly trashy pseudonym, a massive backlog of sex stories about famous people, and absolutely no sense of shame. That’s exactly how Miami’s favorite smack-talking ex-stripper Kat Stacks (née Andrea Herrera) skeezily seized her 15 minutes atop the weird, wild, and STD-soaked world of hip-hop groupiedom. Straight outta Aventura, the pornographically proportioned Venezuelan princess hit the scene in April 2010 when she unleashed a series of supersleazy gossip bombs via YouTube, Twitter, and her now-defunct blog. She claimed to have done the dirty with every rapper in the universe, from Lil Wayne to Soulja Boy to Bow Wow. And almost immediately, her vids went viral. Her Twitter account blasted past the 200,000-follower mark. And the promotional club gigs came pouring into Stacks Central. But then the hip-hop ho’s time ran out in Nashville on November 5, 2010, when the Davidson County Sheriff’s Office busted her for being in the country illegally. She was charged with a felony, dragged to court, and locked up. Seven months later, Stacks is still in jail, her Twitter account is locked to anyone other than pre-approved followers, and the supergroupie seems to have mellowed. Instead of constantly slanging scandalous shit, she now issues short, inspirational nuggets such as “better locked up than dead,” “tomorrow is not promised,” and “ill go under the table and give you head while yo mama cooking.” Just keep tweeting, Kat. And we’ll see you on the outside.

Apparently some people never learn. Last year, Miami-Dade Mayor Carlos Alvarez increased property taxes so he could hand out raises to his top executives and ride around in a sweet BMW Gran Turismo. Appalled by his gall, multibillionaire car dealer Norman Braman launched a recall against the mayor, whose tone-deafness to voters’ wrath was his greatest weakness. When it was too little too late, Alvarez allowed County Manager George Burgess to use taxpayer resources to tout all of their accomplishments in making Miami-Dade a “better place” and set the record straight on his budget. If that wasn’t enough, taxpayers had to foot the bill for a group of bus drivers to take paid leave so they could campaign against the recall. Alvarez claimed he had no idea the transit workers were stumping on county time, but his denials rang hollow with voters, who kicked him out of office in spectacular fashion this past March 15.

God bless the fed-up little man. Or in this case, woman. As auto magnate Norman Braman wrestled Miami-Dade Mayor Carlos Alvarez to the ground and made him eat his paisley tie, activist Vanessa Brito gingerly stuck out her pinky toe and sent evil commissioner Natacha Seijas reeling off a cliff to her dramatic political death. Brito founded Miami Voice, a political action committee (PAC) run on a shoestring, and targeted for recall commissioners who voted to approve Alvarez’s budget plan, which raised property taxes despite plummeting property values. Seijas, a smug and sinister politician whose own PAC raised more than ten times the cash of Miami Voice and who had successfully stared down a recall campaign in 2006, taunted, “Been there, done that. Bring it on.” But on March 15, as Alvarez lost his recall battle against Braman, Seijas was walloped by a resounding 88 percent vote to recall. Even without any political affiliations or a businessman’s billions, Brito helped oust a corrupt Miami politician. The word huzzah seems appropriate here.

In 2005, Jean Monestime suffered a stunning defeat. He lost the mayoral election in Haitian-American-rich North Miami by 22 points to an Anglo, openly gay candidate named Kevin Burns. Two years later, Burns again clobbered Monestime in a rematch that all but relegated the moderate former city councilman’s political career to the sidelines. Not for long. Last year, Monestime capitalized on voter discontent with then-county Commissioner Dorrin Rolle, whose district includes parts of North Miami, Little Haiti, and Liberty City. Monestime rallied Haitian-Americans and won a sizable portion of Rolle’s traditional African-American support to become the first candidate to beat an incumbent county commissioner since 1994. Despite raising only $74,845 to Rolle’s hefty $329,785 war chest, Monestime beat his opponent by more than 2,000 votes. The real estate broker has already hit the ground running, rescinding affordable-housing funds on questionable projects until he comes up with a comprehensive economic development plan for his long-forgotten district.

The summer of 2010 was billed as the biggest free-agency class in NBA history. Highlighting the class was Cleveland’s LeBron James, Toronto’s Chris Bosh, and Miami’s own Dwyane Wade. There were other big names, to be sure, such as Carlos Boozer and Amare Stoudemire. But none bigger than James, Wade, and Bosh. The national media’s speculation about where the three biggest fish in the pond would end up began as early as the 2009 off-season. Most had LeBron going to the New York Knicks and Bosh joining him. Others had Wade taking off to his hometown Chicago Bulls and joining forces with Derrick Rose. And through it all, there was Heat president, mastermind, and dynasty-making genius Pat Riley, biding his time and plotting his moves behind the scenes. With his seemingly Jedi mind-trick powers, Riley was able to re-sign Wade, brought Bosh into the fold, and, in what will forever be deemed the ultimate sports coup, persuaded LeBron James to bring his talents to South Beach. All three superstars accepted less money than they would have made elsewhere. All three dedicated themselves to putting aside their egos to form the first NBA superteam, much to non-Heat fans’ chagrin.

After growing up in gang-infested Little Haiti and fighting insurgents in Iraq, Mackens Semerzier is now chasing MMA glory. The 30-year-old fighter is the first Haitian-American to compete in the Ultimate Fighting Championship, making his debut this past March 26 by defeating opponent Alex Caceres with a submission rear-naked choke hold. In five of his six victories since turning pro in 2008, Semerzier has choked out his adversaries. In a Miami Herald profile last year, Semerzier credited his mother Rose for keeping his nose clean even though he had friends who stole. “My mom would’ve kicked my butt,” he told the Herald. The up-and-coming mixed martial artist was a wrestler in high school, placing sixth in the Class 6A Florida high school wrestling tournament in 1999. A year after graduating, he enlisted with the U.S. Marines. In 2003, while deployed in Iraq, the Corps instituted a martial arts program that taught soldiers, including Semerzier, how to apply submission-like guillotine chokes. The Miami native now resides in Chesapeake, Virginia, where he is training to become the top featherweight MMA fighter in the UFC.

With opulent mansions facing the aquamarine waters of Biscayne Bay as your backdrop, you might feel like your silky ball-handling skills are being mapped for the next version of an NBA Street videogame. Tucked next to a kiddie playground and a tennis court for the wealthy residents of Palm Island, the park’s basketball court is usually vacant except for enterprising ballers with a knack for finding a secluded net for a quick pick-up game. And because the City of Miami Beach maintains the park, don’t expect any hassles over exclusive rights from the island’s rich inhabitants. It is free and open to the public, with ample gratis street parking as well. Just take the MacArthur Causeway to Palm Island and make an immediate left after rolling through the Miami Beach Police-manned guard gate. But get there before sundown. The park has no lights.

Traditionally, Miami hasn’t been soccer central. Cubans brought their passion for pelota — not fútbol — when they fled Fidel, while most South Florida Anglos would rather go fishing or watch NASCAR than take in this beautiful game. In recent years, however, hundreds of thousands of soccer-crazy Central and South Americans have flooded into South Florida. Strangely, good, reliable games are still few and far between. Unless you want to trek to Kendall, you’re usually shit out of luck. Now, however, a flurry of new fields in the heart of the city offers hope. A block from the Miami River in Overtown, the new Downtown Soccer complex offers six-on-six games on soft synthetic turf. Hourly field rental rates vary from $120 in the evenings to $100 late at night. At $8 to $10 per person, the price is competitive with other venues around town, but what sets Downtown Soccer apart are the well-organized tournaments and relaxed atmosphere. Founded by Colombia-born brothers Randy and Pablo Rendón on an empty lot, Downtown Soccer offers weekly pick-up games or, for the more competitive, costlier tournaments that see the winning team take home as much as $1,500 cash. Most important, the field is open until 2 a.m., much later than most of its competitors, and serves snacks and beer. Neighbors might complain about the noise, but Downtown Soccer is a much-needed slice of South America in this Cuban-centric city.

You’re probably wondering what business an alt-weekly like New Times has setting foot in a fancy golf resort. Don’t let appearances fool you — we’re a classy bunch and love nothing more than 18 holes on a warm spring day. However, we’re amateur at best and need all the help we can get. Twenty bucks at Doral gets you unlimited range balls, access to its putting surface, and the opportunity to work on your short game. It’s a world-renowned facility as well as home of the WGC-Cadillac Championship and the Jim McLean Golf School. Don’t feel like carrying a bucket of balls to your practice tee? No worries — the balls are already set up for you. Plus they’re Callaway balls. Not to condone petty larceny, but they come in handy when your golf bag’s ball pouch feels a little light. Oh, c’mon, your bags are probably filled with range balls. Don’t judge.

The Kirk Munroe Tennis Center has no pro shop to get your racket strung or vending machines with Gatorade and Evian to parch your thirst between sets (a couple of old-school water fountains serving tap will have to do). The practice/warm-up wall looks pretty beat up, and there’s no dedicated parking — only meters. But if you like to play tennis without the pretense that surrounds the sport, you can’t do better than the five hard courts smack-dab in the middle of Coconut Grove. All the basics are covered — correct tension on the nets, ample lighting, and no holes in the surrounding fences — but what this court does better than any other in the county is mix player levels and backgrounds. You get a smattering of tourists and uppity folks from affluent parts of the Grove, but you also get working-class grinders from the surrounding neighborhood. Like to play early or late into the night? Good luck finding better hours and prices. From 8 a.m. to 10 p.m., seven days a week, City of Miami residents pay only $3 per person per hour, and nonresidents pay only a dollar more. Senior-circuit ballers get an hour for just a buck, while juniors (anybody under 17) can spare-change their way to 60 minutes of tennis for just a couple of quarters. The center and surrounding park received a face-lift a couple of years ago, with a vita course and playground added so you can make a family day out of your match. Or lose the fam and make the short trek to Sandbar for a Heineken after you dispatch your foe.

“Where is the damn hole?” The question echoes again across the scorched grass of the 18-hole disc golf course inside Amelia Earhart Park, a rolling expanse of forest and lakes on the north end of Hialeah. In theory, that query should be a bad thing: Disc golfing — which is like regular golf but with flying discs instead of balls and metal baskets rather than holes — should be about hucking drivers into the distance (and sipping beer as you watch), not hunting for the next, poorly marked hole. But the challenge in Earhart is a testament as much to the creativity of the course’s designers as to the park’s lack of signage. On the front eight, holes are scattered amid shady pine trees and dense shrubbery, while the back eight loops around a wide, rippling lake. Best of all, the last hole sits atop a huge man-made mound of earth and tires surrounded by trees, requiring a crazy trick shot from a high berm across the forest. Along the way, especially on sunny weekends, you’ll also deal with a uniquely Miami hazard: hordes of families barbecuing while blasting merengue and reggaeton along the lake. Think of it as an extra degree of difficulty, and you’ll have one of the best disc golf rounds of your life. Just try not to hit abuelita on that par 5.

There’s nothing more important to Miami’s ecology than mangroves. These swampy forests provide nutrients to depleted waters, cover for endangered critters, and even build land. But unless you fish, it’s hard to get up close and personal with mangroves. That’s why the next time you take to the pavement for a jog, head to Matheson Hammock. This 351-acre park, located just off Old Cutler Road and adjacent to Fairchild Tropical Botanic Garden, has a path that takes you through some of the deepest mangrove brush in the city. You can see, smell, and feel nature in the subtropics. The park is more than just mangroves, though; the trail proceeds through a picturesque picnic area complete with lakes and old coral rock shelters, and on to Matheson Hammock’s atoll pool on Biscayne Bay. The path wends around the pool, which looks more like a beachfront lake filled with seawater (also an underrated sunbathing spot sans pretense), past a marina, by a boat ramp, and even alongside the best kite-surfing spot in Miami. If you feel overheated during your jog, cool off with a dip in the bay or pool, or hop into one of the public showers. There’s also a concession stand. Don’t forget to bring bug spray, or be prepared to run really fast, because mangroves are breeding grounds for skeeters. Parking at Matheson’s entrance is free but costs $5 next to the atoll pool. Park hours are sunrise to sunset.

The more polite sectors of society might frown upon alcohol consumption before 5 p.m. But what if you combine it with physical exercise and an essentially green activity? That kind of virtuousness cancels out the points you lose for the day-drinking, right? Good thing we have the Beer Snob Bicycle Pub Crawl, an occasional Saturday group ride, usually through South Beach and downtown, that cancels out the perils of drinking and mass commuting in one fell swoop. Join your fellow two-wheeled warriors from the afternoon to early evening for a tour of fine establishments that are not only bike-friendly but also wallet-friendly. Stops on the circuit have included sudsy SoBe staples such as Zeke’s Roadhouse on Lincoln — where everything is $4! — and the Abbey, as well as newcomers on the mainland, including the DRB, Elwood’s Pub, and the Filling Station. Zip past all the car-driving losers burning gas, stuck in traffic, and blowing money on parking, and use the cash you save for an extra brew. And hey, let’s be real — there’s a lot less of a chance of getting a pesky DUI. Still, the organizers of this informal jaunt would rather the complete scofflaws stay at home. If you want to get down on this ride, you’ll have to drink responsibly, bring a bike light, and obey all traffic laws — this isn’t Critical Mass, so there’s no corking of traffic. Other than that, sip and enjoy. Check the Miami Bike Scene blog for upcoming dates.

Miami has plenty of glitzy, high-end strip clubs where your clique can celebrate a buddy’s birthday in style, but Secrets is where you go when you want to fly solo and down-low. Even the sign outside admonishes patrons: “Shhh!” Inside, it looks like one of those seedy, shady strip bars in a movie — you know, the one where the bad guys make deals and good guys unintentionally make trouble. As you get your bearings in the dark, smoky room, you’re transported back to a time when strip clubs were relegated to operating outside the city limits and patrons were still ashamed to be seen in them. The girls are friendly and happy for the business; the drinks and lap dances are cheap. After a bad day at work or a fight with your significant other, you can sit at one of the worn-out tables while flinging dollar bills and knocking back shots on autopilot (without worrying about your upcoming bar tab or unbearable boss).

For many years here at New Times, this award has been like Donald Trump’s hair to a barber: We had absolutely no idea what to do with it. Dwyane Wade was clearly the best player, but we didn’t want to keep naming him every year. So we gave the award to beacons of mediocrity such as Mario Chalmers and Michael Beasley, and quietly melted in shame. But last summer (cue Michael Bay movie music, sounds of explosions, footage of thousands of panicked people fleeing on foot as the Cleveland skyline burns behind them), everything changed for the Miami Heat. The team was no longer a one-pony trick. It was a three-horse carriage of flames, hurtling toward Hades with a maniacally laughing Pat Riley riding bareback while holding aloft the severed head of that sorry Zen hippie Phil Jackson. Which is to say this award is suddenly relevant — and thought-provoking — again. We’re giving LeBron the trophy (editor’s note: there is no trophy) because he’s half-gladiator, half-Greek god, half-lion, and 100 percent magnificent, arrogant, supernaturally talented asshole. Of course, now that both Wade and James have been named, we’re worried about who’ll get the award next year. Bosh? Is that a Dutch bath product?

There’s so much naked flesh out on Miami streets that it takes more than just pasties, boas, and fishnets to get us excited about a burlesque troupe. Enter Hellion Burlesque with its riot grrrl aesthetic, perverse sense of humor, and capsules full of fake blood. Dancers Hellion, Ginger Bardot, and Betty Pickle might look like typical burlesquers thanks to their pin-up-girl good looks, but their routines are anything but. First, consider their range: They sashay seductively to classics, such as Edith Piaf’s “La Vie en Rose,” and to darker fare, such as Depeche Mode’s “Personal Jesus.” Next, note their tricks: Pickle has been known to swallow a three-foot balloon. Then there’s the blood. Their rendition of Eyes Wide Shut ended with the trio squirting blood, we hope fake, onto the pale chest of a fellow dancer. The experimental troupe performs regularly at Churchill’s Pub — as if any other venue could handle their deliciously grotesque burlesque.

For old-school queens, the art of drag is all about female impersonation, but for a new breed of queens, all of those wigs, cosmetics, and sparkly costumes are meant less to signify feigned femininity than to celebrate a vision of pure fabulosity. We’re talking glitter-bitch incarnate, honey. Take, for example, Leslie Quick, the alter ego of actor Danny Santa Cruz. Quick is one of the few queens in South Beach you might actually spot without a wig — or at least a full one. But even if she is proudly displaying a bald head, Quick isn’t slow to accentuate with LCD-nightmare-hued makeup, rhinestones, and all sorts of imaginative getups. Quick might be bending gender in a new way, but she’s not above the sacred drag tradition of paying homage to the strong female singers. She took her show “The Same Mobster” — yes, a tribute to a certain fame monster — on a tour of Miami clubs last summer.

On this night, you decide you’re tired of the bright gallery lights, the soulless corridors of corporate event spaces, and the stale cigarette-scented couches of megaclubs. You go in search of the rabbit hole — a place where art freaks can wander aimlessly through a maze of exhibits, indie-electro fans can bang heads to the beat all night long in a warehouse garage, and New York City transplants can collapse on beanbags in a 10,000-square-foot garden to watch video projections like they’re at a Central Park concert. You drink the magic potion and realize that Wonderland is really Wynwood and that the Mad Hatter tea party could take place only at Awarehouse. You quickly make friends with past partiers: electronic-norteño accordion players from Tijuana’s Nortec Collective, funk-heavy hip-hoppers from N.E.R.D., American Apparel enthusiasts freaking over a rummage sale, and a plethora of experimental painters and photographers who love to watch disco lights roam over their canvases. Eventually you’ll pine for the real world once again. But tonight you’ll happily settle for life through the looking glass.

Two of Miami’s finest art stars, Jen Stark and Alvaro Ilizarbe, both listed as Miami New Times‘ 100 Creatives, aren’t just a couple of the most talented folks in town. They’re also delightfully pleasant party guests. What makes someone a great shindig attendee? Let’s look at the qualifications through Jen and Alvaro: (1) Sometimes when people are good, they think they’re too good for other people. This is never the case with these two. They’re never grouchy and always stop to say hello. (2) They always seem like they’re enjoying themselves. There’s never a moment when one is weeping in the corner while the other is punching someone in the head. (3) They’re the first ones dancing. This is Miami, and you better get on the floor and move when you’re tardy to the party. (4) At theme parties, Jen and Alvaro always dress to impress. One Halloween they arrived as dead surfers, complete with detailed makeup of exposed intestines. A sense of humor and a sense of fun — this pair will always bring these essential elements to your big bash.

At just more than three hours long, Tracy Letts’s Pulitzer Prize- and Tony Award-winning August: Osage County is ferocious playwriting at its best. Elaborate and epic in its operatic scope, the emotionally charged and darkly funny play puts family psychodrama center stage. As a result, the unflinching view of a dysfunctional family forced to deal with some thorny baggage packs a palpable punch. It boasted an outstanding cast and a mercurial performance by Annette Miller, who portrayed family matriarch Violet. Comedy and tragedy are present here in all of their forms, and Letts’s characters are both complex and provocative. Actors’ Playhouse pulled it off flawlessly. It’s the kind of play that breathes new life into the Miami theater scene.

Alliance Theatre Lab has quietly garnered a reputation for showcasing rising local talent — not only actors but also playwrights. In a hilarious, irreverent, and sentimental look at family, friendship, and the abandoned challenges of growing up, Brothers Beckett furthered that trend. Written and starring New World School of the Arts graduate and Alliance Lab Theatre alumnus David Sirois, Brothers Beckett laced sharp banter with the dark and sardonic humor that recalls classic sitcoms such as Seinfeld and The Odd Couple. Kevin and Brad Beckett are brothers, roommates, and best pals. But when Yale grad Kevin decides to propose to his longtime, long-distance girlfriend, jobless slacker Brad’s world gets turned upside down. Just before Kevin’s girl arrives for a weeklong visit, Brad does everything possible to prevent his brother from moving out of their bachelor pad and upsetting the order of things. It’s a simple plot with a familiar outcome, but the blend of wit and heart shows us a glimpse of a bright future for Sirois and Alliance Theatre.

As with the best operas, The Tales of Hoffman, a 19th-century three-act work by German-born French composer Jacques Offenbach, is a stirring story that involves forbidden love, ominous symbolism, and tragic, untimely deaths. But unlike other operas, it also features enchanted mirrors, trippy magic goggles, and animatronic sex dolls. Based on the short stories of German fantasy and horror author E.T.A. Hoffman, with a French libretto by Jules Barbier, The Tales of Hoffman follows the poet’s drunken odyssey of love. True to its creatively ambitious ways, Florida Grand Opera delivered a fast-paced epic production exceptionally conducted by Lucy Arner and featuring stirring performances by tenor David Pomeroy and soprano Elizabeth Futral. A fantasy opera such as The Tales of Hoffman can easily stall and languish under its own weight, but FGO produced a well-crafted spectacle that effectively captured the opera’s grand scale and convoluted plot.

GableStage at the Biltmore has had its share of critically acclaimed and controversial plays — some comical, others surreal. But GableStage really shines when it comes to theatrical drama. Its small and intimate setting is perfect for productions such as last year’s provocative Fifty Words and this year’s moving A Round-Heeled Woman. Because the auditorium is packed tightly against the stage, the audience is right on top of the actors, lending a unique perspective. And the intimate space nurtures a more honest performance than the exaggerated belt-it-to-the-last-row screaming required in larger theaters. But the company’s choice of plays, such as the politically driven Farragut North and the controversial Blasted, is what makes GableStage such a rich place to catch varied, diverse, and engaging dramas.

Gary Marachek is a whole actor. He acts with his voice, his shoulders, his extraordinarily malleable face, and his quick fingers and feet. He acts so completely and with such acute physical instincts that his whole body seems to change shape from role to role. In 2007’s La Cage aux Folles, he appeared rotund and with shortened arms, resembling a flamboyant tyrannosaur. As Fagin in Oliver!, Marachek became spindly — the miserly thief-master’s nervous, calculating intelligence reflected in the tiny manipulations of his suddenly elongated fingers and in the softness of his fast, mincing steps. His grin, usually warm, stretched across blackened teeth to become ghastly and sepulchral, and his careworn face was twisted into a representation of long-frayed nerves — a sign of anxiety that has for so long overtaxed his adrenal glands that there is no longer a difference between giddiness and fear. Marachek did all of this while dancing and singing, and night after night he delivered perhaps the greatest version of “Considering the Situation,” alternating between three or four distinct character voices to reflect the mercurial mental states of his poor, confused character.

Sharon Gless is best known as Cagney in the ’80s cop procedural Cagney & Lacey and to modern TV audiences as the neurotic, chain-smoking mom in Burn Notice. But Gless made her mark on the South Florida theater scene as Jane, the semiretired 66-year-old divorced schoolteacher looking for some nooky in GableStage’s provocative and humorous production of A Round-Heeled Woman. As the sexually repressed but always amiable Jane, Gless owned the stage via a humorous and earnest performance that had audiences laughing and suffering with her. Employing an even mixture of emotion and vulnerability, she was equal parts innocent and sexual adventurer, and her genuine openness and underlying heartache pulled viewers in while Jane’s coital odyssey unfolded. In a 90-minute play sans intermission, Gless grabbed hold of her uninhibited character and put on an exceptional performance that conveyed Jane’s repressed angst, struggles, and irrepressible hope.

Sure, the Dolphins don’t have a viable franchise quarterback. They don’t have a field-spreading deep threat. And they don’t have a very competent coaching staff. But they do have a skull-crushing, quarterback-mauling sack machine in linebacker Cameron Wake. He was drafted by the New York Giants out of Penn State in 2005 but failed to make the roster. He then went to the Canadian Football League, where he led the league in sacks for two consecutive seasons. That’s when the NFL took notice, and in 2009 he signed a four-year deal with Miami. During his two seasons with the Dolphins, Wake has amassed 19.5 sacks, 14 of them coming in his first full season last year, and has quickly garnered a reputation around the NFL as one of the most feared pass rushers. Wake will be releasing the kraken all over NFL offenses for the Dolphins for years to come.

Sharon Gless’s outstanding turn as Jane in A Round-Heeled Woman was made all the better by a terrific cast that portrayed multiple characters. Antonio Amadeo in particular stood out with a versatile performance in which he brought humor, tragedy, emotion, and sympathy. He was slick, sexy, and hilarious as a dance teacher. He was obtuse and romantic as the imagined literary character John Ball come to life. And he was charming and hopelessly smitten as the amiable Graham. But his portrayal as Jane’s troubled son Andy really had Amadeo digging deep into a turbulent bag of emotion and intensity. Playing such varied and wide-ranging roles in one performance could lead an actor to lose his way or to simply mail it in, but Amadeo nailed it. His characters ran the gamut of outrageous to tragic, and the actor pulled it off brilliantly.

Watching Aubrey Shavonn’s angry, undifferentiated performance in last year’s In Development (in which, to be fair, she wasn’t given much to work with), one would never have guessed she could play a character as weird, complex, and soulful as Trixie — a seedy Southern belle with a deep and abiding love for our national drink, Coca-Cola, in Rogelio Martinez’s Fizz. This love would lead her to threaten Coke CEO Robert Goizueta at gunpoint and take him on an exploration of what it means to be an American. In Rodriguez’s imagining, to be an American is to be untamed, street-smart, sentimental, hard-edged, tackily artful, and impulsive yet moral. And everything Goizueta learned in the play, Shavonn embodied in a performance full of genuine warmth, touching intricacies, and grand, funny gestures. Trixie was Aubrey Shavonn’s first major role on a Florida stage, and we hope to see much more of the actress soon.

A three-act, three-hour Pulitzer Prize-winning play featuring 13 actors tasked with embodying all the wrenching emotions of a monstrously dysfunctional family while displaying great comedic timing and unyielding stamina is a huge undertaking. Yet director David Arisco was more than up for the job when Actors’ Playhouse brought Tracy Lett’s emotionally charged August: Osage County to the Miracle Theatre stage. A darkly funny and epic play, August tells the tale of the Westons, a large family forced to come together at their pastoral Oklahoma homestead after the boozehound patriarch disappears and the 65-year-old matriarch pops pills to ease her pain and burden. In the midst of the turmoil, the Weston clan must deal with some thorny issues. The challenge of such a massive and bold play can be fraught with problems and hiccups. But with the help of an amazing set piece by Sean McClelland, terrific lighting by Patrick Tennent, and a superb cast led by Annette Miller and Laura Turnbull, August has become David Arisco’s masterwork.

Sharon Gless’s brilliant and charming portrayal of the sexually repressed Jane in A Round-Heeled Woman needed an equally brilliant supporting ensemble to play the crazy lives she encountered throughout her journey. And director Joseph Adler surrounded her with five costars playing multiple roles to do just that. Antonio Amadeo’s versatile performance as a dance teacher, John Ball, Graham, and Jane’s troubled son Andy ranged from outrageous to tragic. Stephen G. Anthony lost himself in his characters as the exceptionally ignorant douchebag Eddie the cabbie, the tragically displaced Robert, the deviant soul as Jane’s father, and the emotionally detached drunk John. Likewise, Howard Elfman was both likable and loathsome as Jonah, Mr. Rubb, and Sidney the old perv, who hungrily tells Jane to place her tits on the dinner table during a date. The always-fiery Laura Turnbull portrayed Jane’s pal Celia, but she really dug her teeth into Jane’s disapproving mother with her finger-wagging criticism throughout the story. Kim Ostrenko, who played Jane’s other best friend, Nathalie, saved her strongest performance for Margaret McKenzie, Jane’s imaginary friend from her favorite Trollope novel. Many local ensembles feature actors who come from the school of I-smell-a-fart-acting, where every emotion is conveyed with the same squint and arched brow. The cast of A Round-Heeled Woman, however, was decidedly not one of those ensembles.

An exploration of African-American culture and identity as seen through the eyes of a young black woman and conveyed via the various church hats (or “crowns”) donned by her family, Crowns was a full-on spiritual celebration with rap, gospel music, and dance. The entire cast, led by the incomparable Tony Award-winning Melba Moore and the fiery Lela Elam, was flawless, bringing Regina Taylor’s exquisite script to soul-stirring life with verve and power. Old-timey gospel tunes such as “Marching to Zion” and “That’s All Right” gave the show its heart and soul; “None but the Righteous” had the audience clapping and stomping along; and “Eye on the Sparrow” made sure there wasn’t a dry eye in the house. Few theater productions transform into a full-on spiritual awakening. And that’s exactly what the M Ensemble did with its production of Crowns.

Nery Saenz: Knock-knock.

Miami: Who’s there?

NS: Nery Saenz.

Miami: Mary Signs, who?

NS: No, no, Ne-ry Sa —

Miami: Hold up, is this Mary, like Mary-Mary? ‘Cause I straight up told you I don’t care what Maury Povich says — that baby ain’t mine!

NS: No, not Mary. Nery, you know, the comic.

Miami: Oh, you’re a comic?

NS: Yeah.

Miami: So tell me a joke.

NS: OK. Telling someone he’s a lucky guy is just another way of saying, “I want to bang your girl.”

Miami: Ha-ha, so true, bro! Tell me another!

NS: I’m 26 and live with my parents.

Miami: What’s so funny about that?

NS: Dude, never mind. So can I come in now?

Miami: Who are you?

NS: I’m Nery Saenz.

Miami: Mary? Didn’t I just tell you to leave?

NS: No, it’s Nery Saenz, just Nery Saenz!

Miami: Knock-knock.

NS: Yo, why are you knocking?

Miami: I like to knock.

NS: But you’re already inside. I’m supposed to be knocking so I can come in.

Miami: Are you a cop?

This is the life of Nery Saenz. So funny but with such a funky-sounding name that most of us who live in this magical city (brimming with a magical herb that enables us to magically forget everything) can never remember the name of this talented, young stand-up who has the magical ability to force last night’s coke straight out of our nostrils. Such is the reason why homeboy had to set up a website with an address that reads, “whatwashisname.com.” But once you experience his Miami Improv act, pumped full of genuine and likeable Sweetwater swagger (not to mention memorable jokes about long-term commitments to online girlfriends, cupcakes, and blowjobs), this Nicaraguan-American’s name becomes a lot easier to remember.

Karen Russell’s debut novel is so impressive that Miami should drop the nickname Magic City and go with Swamplandia. Her book of the same name follows the Bigtrees, a family of gator wrestlers struggling to keep their Everglades tourist attraction open. Orphaned by cancer and poverty, teen daughter Ava ventures deep into the Glades to rescue her sister Osceola, who has run off to elope with a dredgeman’s ghost. Ava’s trek down the River of Grass becomes emblematic of the murky period between youth and adulthood, the blur between the supernatural and the natural, the dizziness of a place in flux. Russell’s prose is impressive, and with Swamplandia!, she plows new literary ground. If it had a name, the genre might be called “swamp gothic” for its traces of Joseph Conrad, Flannery O’Connor, and even Hitchcock. Russell is also quick to recognize South Florida’s notorious eccentric side, something she describes in interviews as our “pretty short commute to strangeness.” But unlike Dave Barry and Carl Hiaasen, Russell doesn’t just jeer at Miami’s weird characters and mores. She eulogizes them. If you’ve ever zigzagged your bike around the gators in Shark Valley, Swamplandia! will make nostalgia well up in your throat: “A tumor-headed buzzard cocked its head and looked at us behind the café glass, not quizzically like a sparrow or a gull, but with a buzzard’s bored wisdom,” she writes, “and I imagined then that this bird, too, must also know the story, and that all the quiet trees and clouds had always known the story.” When people ask you what it was like growing up in South Florida, just hand them this book.

Short is not always a shortcut. In fact, it takes real balls to write something as abridged as a haiku. After all, three lines and 17 syllables leave few places to hide. It’s strange, then, that the Japanese used the potent form to wax poetic about spring’s first cherry blossom. The nuggets seem so loaded for satire. Consider Hialeah Haikus, the amusing and insightful poetry collection by local author collective Foryoucansee. Instead of evoking nightingales and harvest moons, these haikus parody Miami bros, Miami hos, and disapproving abuelas. The collection is now in its second printing after selling 300 copies in its first month of publication and 1,000 soon thereafter. It all started when the authors — a merry band of Miami artists, writers, and actors in their 20s and 30s — began sending each other haiku text messages. The playful exchange led to not only an ingenious book but also live readings where the authors, faces painted as if by a poor man’s Romero Britto, recite their five-seven-five verse. “I hate Abuela./Why she gotta call my girl,/’La Tira-flecha'” or “Cool Water and gel —/We roll like 20 heads deep./Belen spring formal.”

Two of Edwidge Danticat’s books (Krik? Krak! and Brother, I’m Dying) have been nominated for the prestigious National Book Award, one (The Farming of the Bones) won an American Book Award, and Brother, I’m Dying won the National Critics Book Circle Award. Danticat is the recipient of a MacArthur genius grant, and her books have been translated into a number of languages, including French, Spanish, Korean, German, Italian, and Swedish. And she lives right here in Miami. At a time when Haiti is deeply suffering, this Port-au-Prince native has been one of its most eloquent voices, chronicling the daily struggles and triumphs of her countrymen both here and at home. Danticat began writing as a “lonely little girl” on a “notebook made out of discarded fish wrappers [and] panty-hose cardboard” on an island where “writers don’t leave any mark in the world.” Don’t believe everything you read. At age 42, this writer has already left her mark.

At the same time writer Chenjerai Hove’s acclaim and success were growing in his native Zimbabwe, his popularity with strongman Robert Mugabe was plummeting to levels that could prove fatally dangerous in a virtual dictatorship. And no wonder: His political novel Masimba Avanhu? (Is This the People’s Power?) directly took on Mugabe’s rule, and his followup, Sister Sing Again Someday, tackled the power of disaffected women in Zimbabwean culture. As the work found more and more readers, Hove’s home and office were burglarized, his unpublished works were seized, and his name crept up a government list of enemies of the state. In 2001, he was forced to flee Harare for refuge in Europe. Now, thanks to a program called the International City of Refuge Network, Hove has found a new home to create his art in Miami. Based at Miami Dade College, Hove has used his time in Florida to speak about political violence in Africa, to tackle new works about life as a political refugee, and to explore from abroad the turmoil in his homeland. It shouldn’t be a surprise that Hove — whose fellowship lasts until 2012 — has found Miami a fertile place to craft a second chapter in his life. The Magic City, after all, knows a thing or two about how to treat el exilio.

The ball exploded off the bat with a crack like a car wreck and then traced a ballistic trajectory over the outfielders’ heads. It screamed like a bullet until a scoreboard some 500 feet from home finally got in the way and earned a crater-size dent for its effort. Until he took the swing that authored that destructive missile of a homer, there was still some doubt about just how ready Mike Stanton might be for the Marlins’ 2011 season. He was undoubtedly the brightest spot in the Fish’s 2010 campaign, which saw beloved outfielder Cody Ross shipped to San Fran (where he promptly won a World Series), All-Star Dan Uggla traded to Atlanta, and franchise cornerstone Hanley Ramirez parked firmly in the doghouse for not running out fly balls. All Stanton did as a 20-year-old rookie, meanwhile, was bang 22 home runs (including a grand slam as his first-ever dinger), play killer defense in right, and knock in 58 runs. But when he missed most of the Grapefruit League this spring with a quadriceps strain, some observers worried he might face a sophomore slump as the premier power source in Sun Life Stadium. Or at least they did until his very first game on March 24, when he demolished that homer to center in his first plate appearance. And just for good measure, he hit another one out of the park in his next at-bat. Did we mention this kid just turned 21?

To call the Lowe’s origins humble is an understatement. Its foundation began in three University of Miami classrooms back in 1950, until a free-standing facility opened to the public two years later. The museum’s original holdings were donated by local philanthropists Joe and Emily Lowe. The initial gift has grown to include ancient artifacts and Native American and Asian art, as well as contemporary works and an expansive photography collection. In 2008, the museum added the Myrna and Sheldon Palley Pavilion for Contemporary Glass and Studio Arts, featuring a dazzling collection of works by Dale Chihuly, Richard Jolly, and William Carlson, among others. It marked the Lowe’s first expansion in more than a decade. The research and teaching institution is the top ticket in town, a place where viewers can catch Jewish mosaics from the Roman Empire and ancient Greek urns alongside contemporary Cuban paintings, pre-Columbian sculptures, African art, and Renaissance and Baroque paintings during one visit. It also hosts the popular LoweDown Happy Hour events, which regularly draw national lecturers to the museum and give visitors an opportunity to mingle with artists and curators. More impressive, South Florida’s oldest museum has blossomed from its modest genesis in those three musty classrooms to a whopping 17,500 objects in its collection today.

When he’s not dumpster-diving or rifling through the shelves of his favorite thrift stores, Pablo Cano can be found in the garage behind his Little Havana home turning junk into art while listening to Cole Porter songs, Tin Pan Alley tunes, and other favorite ditties. Like the toy maker in Pinocchio, this conceptual Gepetto creates enchanting marionettes out of the trash he collects or the sundry castoffs his friends from all over the world bring to his back-yard studio when they visit. Inside his refuse refuge, Cano creates his own version of the Mona Lisa using a candy box for her head, a birdcage for her torso, and bits of rope for her joints. His Cecil B. DeMille-esque cast of characters might include oceanic sirens, ’20s flappers, or dancing ants. To make a bull shine in the ring, he coated the animal’s hide with a stash of gold cigarette foil paper he regularly receives in the mail from a growing legion of fans. Exhibited in museum shows across the globe, each of his puppets is a complex sculpture all its own. But for more than a decade, Cano has also produced fantastical operatic opuses in which his beguiling creations roar to life. Every year for the past 12 years, the Museum of Contemporary Art has commissioned Cano to create lavish productions that combine his marionettes with elaborate stage sets he paints or draws and the music he loves, conjuring magical displays that mesmerize art lovers both young and old. The Cuban-born artist says his productions — which employ choreographers, dancers, actors, and musicians — spring from his imagination in the surrealist tradition while his work is rooted in dada ideals. Whatever the source of his inspiration, Cano is the rare artist who, like Peter Pan, can transport spectators to otherworldly realms and help them rediscover a childlike wonder through his unforgettable characters meticulously rendered out of trash.

If you need an actual boombox, check Sony. If you need a building painted like some sort of fantastic cartoon boombox, check local artist Sonni. As part of the annual Primary Flight installation of murals throughout Wynwood during Art Basel week, Argentinian-born Adrian Sonni set out to turn an abandoned two-story building into a whimsical boombox, complete with grinning musical notes, painted in bright shades of primary colors. The makeover keeps the building from falling prey to less aesthetically pleasing graffiti and, by virtue of being clearly visible from I-95, gives drivers a reason to smile during a painful commute.

Cinephiles, rejoice! Though it sucks we’ll have to wait another year to see kick-ass local films at the Borscht Film Festival, with the recent rise of art houses in SoFla, we’ll be able watch indie flicks from all over the globe on the reg. Right here in Miami, ogling at handsome leading men such as Cary Grant, fashion weathervanes like Bill Cunningham, new cool crap from Cannes and Toronto, and crazy foreign zombies on the big screen is becoming the norm. This new wave of art-house openings is bringing classics and future classics to all corners of the city. O Cinema has staked its spot in the trendy art center of Wynwood, the Tower Theater has Little Havana under control with artsy films in Spanish and English, and Gables Art Cinema is spicing up the City Beautiful with some serious and controversial films. Bill Cosford Cinema isn’t just for University of Miami students — it has what movie nerds need — while the Miami Beach Cinematheque screens the widest variety of fancy stuff at its new home inside the historic Miami Beach City Hall.

Well, you’ve finally done it. You’ve let your optic nerve atrophy. Now your vision is dim, colors seem faded, and your neighbor caught you trying to pet a brick you thought was a cat. The worst part is you’ll never get to bask in the heady visuals of the Museum of Contemporary Art’s Optic Nerve Festival. For ten years, the short-film fest has screened Miami’s most cutting-edge video artists. Last year, the 22 films were so inspired that MOCA chose three instead of just one for its permanent collection. Gold lamé-clad alter egos exercise in Susan Lee-Chun’s Let’s Suz-ercise! A beachgoer encounters an aggressive sea horse in Justin H. Long’s In Search of the Miercoles, playing off conceptual artist Bas Jan Ader’s In Search of the Miraculous. And artist Autumn Casey purges her closet’s contents onto blighted Miami streets in Getting Rid of All My Shoes. With each film clocking in at under five minutes, the night is a dizzying onslaught of sound and light, and every year hundreds of viewers cram in to give their optic nerves a workout.

The Aragon Avenue block between Salzedo Street and Ponce de Leon Boulevard already boasts Books & Books and the Coral Gables Museum. But with the arrival of the Coral Gables Art Cinema across the street, the strip has become a mini cultural mecca. And among the recent boutique movie theaters opened in Miami in the past couple of months, the Gables art house stands out for doing just about everything right. It threw open its doors last fall with the Florida premiere of Freakonomics and continues to nab indie and foreign flicks before they hit the multiplexes. But the programming extends beyond the silver screen via special events. Canines were invited to the opening night of My Dog Tulip, an animated movie about a man and his German shepherd. And when Phil Ochs: There But for Fortune opened, Coral Gables Art Cinema paired the doc with an open bar, free food, Folk Club of South Florida performances, and an interactive, live telecast with Ochs director Kenneth Bowser. The theater even has small-scale stadium seating (just enough to give unobstructed views but not so much as to induce vertigo), and films screen for a week or more — meaning there’s ample time to hear about a great flick playing and then get your procrastinating ass to the theater.

Codependency is normally considered a bad thing, but sometimes, when it allows people to produce creative ventures or share their smarts, it becomes a dysfunction that’s kinda sweet. The End/Spring Break is a nomadic art project and proud enabler of Miami’s grassroots cultural scene. Organizers Domingo Castillo, Patti Hernandez, and Kiwi Farah have created an innovative project that is accessible, productive, and amazing — plus money-making. Spring Break takes place during South Florida’s busy season (winter), and the End happens during the sweltering summer, when no one wants to be here. Launched in the past year, the project has hosted more than a hundred events for thousands of people. The End/Spring Break’s organizers fill unused spaces with traditional and innovative events. They’ve hosted film screenings of high- and lowbrow flicks (think Werner Herzog and Encino Man), kimchi-making demonstrations in an art gallery, poetry readings (one was from Ballerz, a journal of basketball poems), talks about the history of punk in Miami, and live musical performances. The locations are offered to the project for free and have included spots such as the Bas Fisher Invitational and a booth at the Miami International Art Fair.

Whatever is playing on the outdoor screen of New World Center’s 2.5-acre public park, Soundscape, is probably better than the romantic comedy you’re thinking about watching at Regal. It’s also cheaper — as in free — and easier to sneak in a bottle of wine. In fact, bring a whole picnic basket and really impress your date. Maybe even surprise that special person with tickets for a postdinner orchestral performance by the New World Symphony inside the Frank Gehry-designed architectural masterpiece. Hello, culture.

Little Haiti is a hood notorious for crime and impoverishment. Every block seems to have a dope hole, a church, a school, and a liquor store. The truth is, although criminal activity abounds on the streets, it’s also a working-class neighborhood full of law-abiding people. All the drugs and guns, however, leave young residents with a dilemma: Thug it out and get rich or die trying, or work toward something greater. No movie has so realistically depicted Little Haiti, its citizens, and their customs as American Zoe. The fictional film’s documentary style and its success are a direct result of producer Jonas Antenor’s involvement. He and his friends, all Little Haiti residents, along with award-winning playwright Susan Kari, collaborated to achieve a socially realistic vision of the streets with a powerful narrative and a happy ending. That 17-year-old Antenor and four other teens were found dead of carbon monoxide poisoning in a Hialeah motel December 28, 2010, is tragic, but this great movie lives as a tribute to the community they loved and the story they chose to tell about it.

Sure, scripted series such as Burn Notice and Dexter might do a stand-up job of representing rich and interesting but ultimately fictionalized versions of the Magic City, but it’s been a long while since the small screen has captured a more realistic and recognizable side of the city. You know, the side obsessed with image, status, gossip, and catty back-biting. The side that slips itself into a tube dress two sizes too small and paints its acrylic nails fuchsia only to have them broken off later that night during an impromptu bitch-slap fest. For that, you have to turn to VH1’s Basketball Wives. The cadre of groupies, exes, and wives of NBA players assembled by executive producer (and Shaq’s ex) Shaunie O’Neal doesn’t make for the most intellectual programming on television, but these folks sure are more entertaining than all of those other vapid reality shows set in Miami. How can you watch the air-humpingly happy Royce Reed square off in verbal tiffs against Evelyn Lozada (who exudes a certain effortless I’m-the-head-bitch-and-I-know-it vibe that’s so necessary for good reality television) and not be entertained? Sure, other shows set in the 305 might have more cultural value, but few really represent a certain segment of our culture quite so well. Ask yourself when was the last time you walked around town and saw a spy shootout or serial killing spree. Now, when was the last time you saw a chick with too many rhinestones and an entitlement problem? You’re probably within 30 feet of one right now.

Long before the University of Miami was known as “the U” and when Hurricanes football players were more chumps than champs, it was the Lady Canes who brought athletic glory to the school. The women’s golf and swim teams won multiple national championships in the ’70s. Now with the football team in a (let’s hope temporary) rut, it’s the ladies once again who are the pride and joy of Hurricanes athletics. Unquestionably, the women’s basketball team was the best on campus this year, and it’s in no small part thanks to Shenise Johnson. The Canes won the ACC regular-season championship and skyrocketed to the national top ten, while Johnson netted honors as ACC Player of the Year. She was the only player in the conference to land in the top ten for average points, rebounds, and assists. Shenise and her talented teammates ended the regular season with a 26-3 record. Hell, forget best team on the Coral Gables campus. Considering the Heat’s sometimes struggles, Johnson might just be leading the best team in all of Miami.

Anyone who can make Perez Hilton leap out of his host chair and yell, “I’m from Miami too, bitch!” deserves some attention. That was the scene at the Bad Girls Club Miami reunion after Lea Beaulieu, arguably the most exciting reality-TV vixen ever, unleashed her Latina temper yet again. Beaulieu was just another sharp-tongued employee at Salvation Tattoo on Washington Avenue when a phone call changed her life. Oxygen’s Bad Girls Club Miami was looking for a few photogenic ladies with a penchant for misbehaving. Beaulieu not only qualified but also proved to be the über-bad girl. With her multiple tattoos, piercings, red lips, and perfectly coifed hair, she’s like a hipper, more badass version of Grease‘s Pink Ladies. And though Beaulieu was born in San Francisco and raised by a Brazilian mother, her blood runs pure, hot-tempered Cuban. Her good looks and mean streak proved to be a deadly combo. Over 13 episodes, roommate Brandi became so obsessed with her that she was driven to near breakdown in an unforgettable panini-maker-throwing freakout. And although Beaulieu and roommate Kristen spent more than half the season as bosom buddies, their friendship came to a violent end when Beaulieu punched her five times in the face. Looking back, Beaulieu’s downfall — or perhaps greatest skill — was her ability to go from zero to chonga in record time. Among all the bitches on reality television, Beaulieu holds a special place in our heart because her flip-outs were tinged with Miami flair. But maybe it’s not fair to judge anyone through the distortion of a reality-TV lens. As she told us, she remembers her Bad Girls Club experience as a “prison with beautiful furniture and lots of booze. It’s a lot like a sweet house arrest.”

Most TV news anchors are saccharine. They work too hard for our attention, overplaying emotions like freshmen drama school students. Then they end every story on a note of hope, even when the facts are bleak. Not Calvin Hughes. When the Emmy Award-winning WPLG Channel 10 newscaster headed down to Port-au-Prince for a three-part series called “Haiti: One Year Later,” he didn’t choke up, even when covering earthquake victims with amputated limbs. And he didn’t inject false hope into the country’s struggle to overcome crime, disease, and poverty. Instead, he reported the story gracefully and professionally, ending one piece by lamenting that most Haitians still lived in “inhumane conditions with an inept government, no leadership, no work, and, dare I say, no hope for some that tomorrow will bring a better day.” Growing up in Cleveland and East St. Louis, Hughes learned that reporters’ platitudes and smiling sign-offs often hide the intransigence of poverty and blight. His reporting reveals those problems without dismissing them.

We admit we had never heard of Claudia DoCampo either, at least until last winter. That’s when the plucky brunette elbowed her way up to soon-to-be-ex-county Commissioner Natacha Seijas and did what no other reporter around had yet achieved: forced her to answer a question. Well, kind of. On January 31, DoCampo showed up to interview Julio Robaina at the opening of a clinic in Hialeah. Instead, she spotted Seijas, who for weeks had been dodging her and other reporters’ interview requests. So the scrappy DoCampo cornered the commissioner and asker her about the recall campaign against her. First, Seijas simply repeated, “No, señora,” and tried to slip away. But when DoCampo held her ground, the politician shoved the reporter out of the way, banging her arm against a doorway. Even then, the Argentine-American newscaster didn’t give up. “Don’t push me!” she yelled and kept following Seijas around the clinic. At one point, the commissioner had to stare at a wall to ignore her. Finally, Seijas turned around, grabbed DoCampo’s microphone, and said in Spanish: “Ma’am, we are not here for that. We are here for something very special, OK? There is an ongoing lawsuit. I am not going to answer you. Do you understand what a lawsuit is? OK? Thank you.” As Seijas marched off, DoCampo shot back, “You don’t have to push me or touch my microphone,” before adding a sarcastic gracias of her own. In the end, DoCampo didn’t get the straightforward answer she and the rest of Miami-Dade deserved. But by exposing Seijas’s fear of the truth, the resilient reporter revealed a more accurate portrait of Seijas than if the commissioner had simply answered the freaking question in the first place.

Hot!

It’s 3 a.m. on a Tuesday, and you can’t stop thinking about the aliens that kidnapped your dog, the ghost that talks through your cell phone, or the satanic lady at the supermarket. Don’t worry — you’re not the only one. In fact, millions of listeners already tune in to the Coast to Coast AM radio show seven nights a week, just like you should. Talk to George and his guests about paranormal activity, conspiracy theories, the occult, aliens, and tales of whoa and fury. His temper is as cool as Iceland, his tone as warm as vintage radio tubes. And the show is open to both good and evil. The callers are an amazing, strange, and wonderful assortment of crackpots, believers, seekers, and lunatics. George knows how to get them talking, cuts them off when they’re boring, and asks the questions that elicit the best answers. In South Florida, we tap the 5 kilowatts of output from 610 WIOD every Monday through Friday from midnight to 5 a.m., and weirder hours on the weekends, for the kind of talk that gets you thinking.

If voices were alcohol, Andy Wagner’s would be an expensive yet approachable, universally beloved champagne. An announcer for WLRN, Wagner is a witty Bristolian Brit with a sparkling charm that sedates frazzled nerves and melts the day’s resentments away. Swallow a few sips of his gentle English brogue on your commute home, and you’ll suddenly find yourself much less desirous of punching things or screaming, all without the risks of driving under the influence. The announcer doesn’t usually impart information much more urgent than the weather or upcoming programs (although he has produced All Things Considered, among other meatier tasks), and that is part of his appeal. It’s all about his gorgeous accent and his witty little puns, the kind that make you chuckle softly, shake your head slowly, and say, “Oh, Andy.” The ten-year BBC World Service Radio veteran has graced our airwaves since 2002, after coming to Miami in 1999 for a three-month assignment and developing a taste for our salty sea air. A worldly chap, he’s been a telephone engineer for the British Army, a Greenpeace activist, and a teacher of English as a foreign language. Wagner enjoys swimming, cooking, and cinema when he’s not reaching through our car radio to tickle our ears.

A journalist who came to Miami via Venezuela and New York with more than 30 years of experience, Julio Cesar Camacho never gets lost in the maze of this city’s Spanish-language radioverse, prone to sensationalist noise and cheap jabs. Every day from 5 to 7 p.m. on Actualidad (WURN-AM, 1020), Camacho is just as likely to level hard-hitting questions at politicians across the ideological spectrum as to interview doctors working on important research, musicians performing across the globe, or local professors conducting sociological studies. He welcomes anyone and everyone to his show, maintains a cool and collected stance, and delves deep into far-ranging issues. And perhaps most important, he seems comfortable enough to understand the story isn’t about him.

Don Francisco has been in the business so long that his life is slowly transmogrifying into a daytime variety show. At the age of 70 — when most South Floridians have retired and taken to wandering around the mall food court — the Chilean talk-show host was recently hit with a paternity suit by 43-year-old Patricio Flores Mundaca, who claimed his mother once had an affair with The Don while she was working as a hotel maid. To make matters juicier, Francisco was allegedly caught bribing a biochemist to alter the paternity test. But after 49 years at the helm of Sábado Gigante — Univision’s irrepressible and unapologetic pastiche of buxom models, weepy interviews, and dancing dwarfs — the king of kitsch can be forgiven for a few transgressions. Besides, he looks great. If Charlie Sheen has tiger blood, Don Francisco’s bodily fluid comprises dragon DNA and Johnny Walker Black. Since bringing his show to Miami in 1986, he continues to strut around the stage like an ultratan AARP avenger in impeccably tailored suits. Born Mario Luis Kreutzberger Blumenfeld in Talca, Chile, while World War II was just getting underway, Don Francisco is the epitome of an entertainer. His latest foibles only make the man behind the tan mask all that more human.

Marc Hackman is like every other sportscaster in the country — prone to pukey clichés, blatant pandering, and an almost encyclopedic store of useless information. Except Hackman isn’t really a sportscaster or radio personality. He’s not even a real person. He’s a hack, a construct created by 790 the Ticket station program director Marc “Hoch” Hochman to serve as an ad hoc (excuse the pun) guest from Miami when sports shows across the nation come calling. Instead of getting a sports insider talking about the Heat or Hurricanes, unsuspecting hosts are treated to the most hackneyed, cornball, goofball sportscaster imaginable. It’s the best kind of satire — just credible enough to keep unwitting hosts from hanging up, but over-the-top absurd enough so his appearances provide pure comedy gold for Miami listeners who are in on the gag. Here’s Hackman talking to a Cleveland station about the Heat’s early-season troubles: “There’s an old saying that every dog has its day, and we’ve been saying in Miami radio for a while that even when there’s darkness, one size fits all.” On air in Chicago, he likened the Dolphins’ problems to a pizza: “It’s like a Chicago deep-dish pizza — lots of layers and lots of sausage.” He’s apt to ramble nonsensically, make up silly facts (“UM President Donna Shalala invented the pantsuit”), and mispronounce names such as Heat coach Erik Spolestra (instead of Spoelstra). Catch Marc Hackman bits periodically weekdays from 3 to 7 p.m. or in rebroadcasts on the 790 website.

Assume Conan is on vacation and The Daily Show is on hiatus. What do you watch at 11 p.m.? Spanish-language paid programming on Mega TV, of course. Sure, you might learn a thing or two about immigration laws or DUI charge loopholes, but the best-bet byproduct of En Corte con el Dr. Ricardo Corona is belly laughter. Sandwiched between Bayly and prerecorded commercial programming, En Corte con el Dr. Ricardo Corona is a live phone-in show that offers generic legal advice from a team of Corona Law Firm abogados. At the helm of this hourlong consulta gratis is an attractive blonde named Leyla (at least when Dr. Corona isn’t in), along with Nina Tarafa, lead counsel, so to speak, who butchers the Spanish language Mondays through Fridays. Each weekday offers something a little different: Mondays, the panel discusses foreclosures. Tuesdays are dedicated to immigration law. Divorce, domestic abuse, and other family matters take center stage Wednesdays. Thursdays and Fridays round out a week of paid programming with a potluck of cocaine possession-related charges and DUI Breathalyzer test queries. And the beauty of it all: It’s commercial-free — because it’s already an hourlong commercial.

In any other season, on any other Canes team, on any other night, University of Miami star Leonard Hankerson would have left the locker-room doused in champagne last November 28. On the field at Sun Life Stadium that Saturday, the mammoth six-foot-three receiver with 200 pounds of sprinter-quick muscle scorched the University of South Florida for nine catches and 127 yards. No one on the Bulls could cover him. Hardly anyone in the country could all year, actually. With his season-ending haul against USF, Hankerson set a new UM record this year for touchdowns (passing some guy named Michael Irvin, who once had 13) and tied a 26-year-old mark for receptions. He might just have turned in the best single season ever by a Miami wideout. Too bad for Hankerson that the heroics came amid an epic Hurricanes implosion. In fact, the very night Hankerson rewrote the record book against USF, the boys in green and orange blew a last-minute shot at a field goal and eventually lost 23-20 to the Bulls. Instead of celebrating his feats after the game, Hankerson was left arguing why his coach, Randy Shannon, should keep his job. (Shannon was fired hours later.) Well, consider this your much-belated champagne bath, Leonard. Pop!

We’ve all asked ourselves about people who just seem to drop out of our lives. Where did the cute girl from the dog park go? Where do carnies hang out the other 11 months when the county fair isn’t in session? Where is the guy who faked Obama’s birth certificate? Why did my dad abandon me? Many of these questions and others can probably be answered thanks to WhosArrested.com. You can read a list of the most recently incarcerated members of the community or search via a crime cloud if you want to focus on a specific violation. At the very least, the mug shots provide hours of free entertainment and peace of mind — so the cute girl at the dog park is a down-low carnie who runs a side business making fake birth certificates and is married to your estranged dad. No wonder you never hooked up!

It’s a relative newbie, with a little less than a year under its belt, but Beached Miami has quickly proven itself one of the best reads in the South Florida blogosphere. With great writing, quality photography, and creative features, Miami natives Jordan Melnick (a journalist) and Robby Campbell (a photographer and songwriter) are out to unveil the true essence of the Magic City. Coverage focuses heavily on music, art, and culture, but readers will also find insightful posts about politics and history, as well as news commentary and interviews. The blog excels at interacting with its audience through participatory activites such as caption contests for Campbell’s cartoon sketches and a Valentine’s Day playlist where Melnick featured songs suggested via Twitter throughout the day. For those not inclined to read, podcasts summarize each week’s events. Beached Miami has set out to highlight the side of Miami that isn’t all glitter and fake, and so far it has done a superb job.

“RT if you love brown skin.” This is not a Manny Mangos original, but it pretty sums up the vibe of this quirky local character’s Twitter feed. Who is Manny Mangos? You’ve seen him around. He’s tall and lanky, all Miami. Manny plays garage music, not very often, but he does it. The thing that makes him stand out on the Internet are his tweets. The people of Come On Bro, a weekly party housed at Villa 221, were so inspired by the Mangos’ insane little tweets that they created a photocopied zine of the megalomaniac’s words and called it Spring Break Starts Now. The gems inside include “wish BK delivered” and “follow me, in real life.” His tweets are enlightening. “mEmBeR when girls would pretend to be bi in middle school for attention?” Middle school? Which middle school was that? Back in the day, girls waited till high school to do it with other girls for attention. He makes commentary on sexuality (“Since the end is near spread that seed”) and reflects on religion (his Good Friday tweet read, “rip Jesus”). A regular thinker, this guy is. His grammar is not always the best, but he definitely has the right attitude to get the world at his feet. Follow him on Twitter, not in real life.

Ah, if there is one thing we always look forward to when we travel through the Twitterverse, it’s catching up with the pseudo-avatar of Miami Heat power forward Chris Bosh. Playing on the baller’s perceived lack of toughness, @notchrissybosh amps up the former Raptor’s feminine side with some revealing tweets, such as asking Twitter followers to guess what “color panties [he’s] wearing during the game,” or mentioning he “can’t keep [his] tongue in [his] mouth” when an opposing player bends over, or talking about showing up for a “K-Y party.”

New Yorkers and Midwesterners who spend a summer day at Jones Beach or some lake adjacent to a nuclear power plant don’t mind getting pricked by a used syringe, stung by a jellyfish hiding in a floating Wendy’s cup, and pissed on by a naked toddler. They’ll still be sunburned and happy on the long trip home. But in South Florida, where many of us live within walking or short-driving distance from a beach that looks like it was ripped from a postcard, we can get pretty spoiled. To us, South Beach’s famous shores — clogged with gobs of humanity sweating, bleating, posturing, preening, and moaning — have begun to resemble a DMV waiting room (but with more sand and topless Brazilian knockouts). So thank the Lord for Surfside’s pristine, beautiful, and — most important — never-crowded sands. Douche-tastic Jersey Shore wannabes don’t travel this far north, and loud children have mostly been replaced by elderly couples. Unlike neighboring Bal Harbour, this beach isn’t crawling with snobby rich people glaring as if you stole their Grey Poupon. Surfside Police officers patrol on ATVs but typically don’t bother you if you’re discreetly drinking wine or beer, and sometimes you can even get away with bringing a small dog. And yes, you perv: There are topless Brazilian babes in Surfside too.

There is something stirring, even transcendent, about good public parks. They are the flip side to our collective neuroses, the yin to the voyeuristic yang of Charlie Sheen and Real Housewives obsessions that we secretly share throughout the week. Rather than wallowing in one another’s misery on reality TV, however, a well-designed civic space brings us together for a few fleeting hours to celebrate the fact that we humans are still capable of creating beautiful things from time to time. Case in point: Miami Beach’s new SoundScape Park, best known as the strange mix of palm fronds and alien structures to the east of the New World Center. Of course, the park almost didn’t happen. When architect Frank Gehry complained there were insufficient funds for the park, city hall refused to cough up more cash. Luckily, Dutch firm West 8 stepped in to create a park that is half high-tech auditorium, half leafy oasis. And although SoundScape feels a bit barren at the moment, it will fill out over time as the palm trees grow and blood-red bougainvilleas creep over the park’s metallic pergolas. But the real beauty of the 2.5-acre installation is its Wallcasts: concerts (beamed live from inside the concert hall) and movies projected onto the 7,000-square-foot ExoStage outside the New World Center. During Wallcasts, you can find bums seated next to beach bunnies, and real estate moguls sharing food with teenage skateboarders. For a couple of hours, peace reigns. Then everyone goes back to being a dick. SoundScape Park is open sunrise to midnight.

At the southernmost tip of South Beach, where the ocean meets the bay, lies South Pointe Park. City of Miami Beach officials took their sweet time renovating this area, but they did a smashing job. Lots of detail was put into this little urban oasis — benches, green space, even man-made rolling hills. That’s all nice, but what makes this park spectacular is the view of the ships floating into and out of the Port of Miami. Seafaring vessels have always carried the romance of long voyages. Now you can follow the centuries-old tradition of greeting these boats. Choose a spot by the water, spread out a blanket, and uncork a bottle of wine. Gigantic container ships pass by so closely you think you can touch them. They arrive from China, Argentina, and Europe in the afternoon, toting cars and goods. Cruise ships depart for the Caribbean in the evening, carrying families and honeymooners. Pick a porthole and make up a story about the people inside the cabin; then wish them bon voyage as you sip your vino under the clear Miami Beach sky.

This is a great place to spend an idle morning or an active afternoon with your best friend. There are really two separate, fenced-in dog parks: one for small dogs (less than 35 pounds) and one for big dogs (more than 35 pounds), so Chowder can easily make friends his own size. You don’t have to worry about potential play dates being a bad influence on your beloved pooch either; dogs must have valid tags to enter the playground. There are lots of potential play dates for those at the other end of the leash too. Parkgoers run the gamut from little abuelitas to irreverent hipsters. Aside from this being the perfect place for your hound to burn off some energy — each side of the park has a king-of-the-hill ramp, a tire jump, a window jump, doggie comfort stations, and water spray areas — you’ll be surrounded by tall trees, a lake, and miles and miles of nature’s splendor. Tropical Park’s Bark Park is the ideal spot to let your little snookie-wookums loose while you read a book and enjoy lunch on one of the many picnic tables or benches. However, you’ll probably just want to sit back and watch the adorable high jinks unfold as a French bulldog and a teacup Yorkie try to pick up the same miniature poodle.

Fifty nautical miles east of South Beach’s art deco decadence, a seven-mile strip of land moonlights as Miami’s Bahamian playground. Want to spend a Sunday scarfing down fresh conch fritters and drinking fruity cocktails topped with paper umbrellas? Then split the cost of gas on your rich friend’s boat and leave the country for a few hours. Bimini is closer than Key West and cheaper than a couple of piña coladas at Mangos. In the ’30s, Ernest Hemingway lived on North Bimini while writing To Have and Have Not. If he were alive today, he’d probably buy his bait and tackle at Fisherman’s Village, a marketplace adjacent to the 5-year-old Bimini Bay Resort, and hit the deep blue in search of 500-pound marlins. He’d get drunk at a swim-up bar, hop on a golf cart, and cruise the island for Bahamian hotties. Then he’d jump on his boat, Pilar, and motor back to Miami just in time for a Heat game. Isn’t South Florida great?

We live at the edge of the miraculous, or so wrote Henry Miller. The fantastical can be tough to spot, however, when you have a homogenized skyline of Bed, Bath & Beyonds and Staples. But the miraculous is out there; you just need the right guide. Bas Fisher Invitational, an artist-run gallery in the Design District, can lead us out of our doldrums with its trio of Weird Miami bus tours. Local artists Christy Gast, Adler Guerrier, Clifton Childree, and Kevin Arrow have navigated yellow school buses through side streets and around back yards, jolting us awake to how wonderfully strange Miami still is. The magic bus has pulled into Little Haiti farms — tiny fertile crescents that brim with emus, goats, and plywood tree houses. It has visited a Native American ceremonial sand mound, plantation slave quarters, and an aquaculture lab where complex, glowing sea creatures are cloned. It has stopped at a Tibetan Buddhist Dharma center tucked inside a seemingly typical suburban house with a back yard full of stupas. The Weird Miami tours remind us it’s possible to escape our mundane reality through a simple staycation. It’s like Mr. Miller always said: One’s destination is never a place, but rather a new way of looking at things.

Early last season, Panthers left winger David Booth was coming off the best year of his career (2009) and hoping to earn a spot on the U.S. team ahead of the 2010 Olympics. Then Mike Richards of the Philadelphia Flyers blindsided him with a vicious hit. Instantly, Booth’s dream of Olympic gold ended. He missed 45 NHL games before returning to the ice. Less than two months later, another concussion forced him to sit out the rest of the season, putting his hockey-playing future in doubt. This season’s prospects for the Panthers are just as dire as the past ten. The team became the first to miss the playoffs for a decade straight. No playoffs. No prospects. Same Panthers. Except for this: Booth is back. He’s among the top goal scorers on the team and is using his speed and stick-handling to whiz by defenders and re-establish himself as one of the best wingers in the NHL. Any doubts about his future and confidence vanished with one sweet move in a February shootout against J.S. Giguere of the Toronto Maple Leafs. After missing his first two shootout attempts of the year, Booth pulled out the spin-o-rama move and left Giguere clutching for air as he roofed his backhand shot. Even though a flying puck smacked Booth in the throat, which required yet another visit to the emergency room, he was back taking slap shots the next game. It seems any remaining misgivings about whether Booth is back have vanished. Now it’s about whether he’ll be back next year — with the Panthers.

Have you ever waited in line for an hour at the MIA security checkpoint and fantasized about what it would be like to have your own private plane? Channeling your inner mogul for the day is easier (and less expensive) than you think with Platinum Aviation, a flight instruction operation that teaches on Cirrus Aircraft, basically the Ferrari of airplanes. These babies cost about a cool half-million, and you, poor schmuck, can get behind the stick without any previous training and take to the skies. This bad boy is yours to fly just about anywhere in Miami — along the beach, over the Everglades, or for a fly-by of your ex-girlfriend’s condo — it’s up to you. You can even bring a passenger. The cost for an hourlong “fantasy flight” is about $280, which includes plane rental, fuel, and private flight instructor.

Ever since the movie Tron came out in 1982, we’ve been dreaming of some neon-colored alternate world where we were totally awesome in sports. Now, with the help of some liquid courage, we’ve finally found it: glow-in-the-dark soccer. With the flip of a switch, Revo Soccer transforms its small indoor soccer field into a spectral, glowing galaxy. With a shot or three in your system before the game, you’re sure to feel like you’re playing on the surface of the moon instead of in a warehouse just off Biscayne Boulevard. Under UV lights and blaring speakers, the soft, synthetic turf fades into a black abyss beneath your feet, while the phosphorescent ball zings back and forth between the boards. Revo Soccer hosts regular matches seven days a week, so the best way to set up a game of “glow soccer” is to call ahead. Rates generally run $120 an hour, or slightly cheaper the longer you play. If you tipple before taking the field, be careful not to crash into the wood and Plexiglas walls surrounding the pitch. And, of course, make sure you have a sober driver to take you home.

Whether you smoke rapper weed from mediCali, downtown brown bags, saguesera hydros, or superphonik krypto is not important. The point is, you’re stoned, you’re bored, and you’re looking for something to do — preferably free, and with munchies and cold drinks available. You might have been to a casino before, but Magic City is different. For one, it’s located smack in the center of the city of Miami, which anybody here on vacation will tell you actually increases your high by as much as 37 percent. Catch the chauffeured golf cart (whoa, I feel like I’m flying) from the parking lot to the front door, show the off-duty cop your ID, and head up the escalator. The rugs are trippy as hell, there are blinking colored lights everywhere, and more bells and whistles than you can throw your life savings at. Now, a crucial aspect to this adventure is not going there with the intent to gamble. Losing your rent check, kid’s dental payment, or food money will totally blow your high. Trust us. There’s still plenty of entertainment for the discerning burnout. When the dogs aren’t running, the place throws big-name classic concerts (America, War, Rey Ruiz) in the amphitheater. The casino bar overlooks the action on the floor, and Secada’s serves up a mean $12 lemon drop martini. Grab a $2 Bud (the beer kind, dummy) for happy hour Monday through Thursday from 6 to 8 p.m. and wander around the place. Gamblers are funny to watch, so the laughs are easy here. And the employees are friendly and courteous. When they catch you staring off into space for ten minutes without moving, just tell them you’re looking for pizza. They’ll point you in the right direction, and a slice is just $2.50. If you’re really hungry, there’s a seafood buffet for $16 every Friday from 6 to 11 p.m. And if you hit a lick, it’s like they’re paying you to be there. But anybody who thinks he’s going to beat the house must have his head in the clouds.

Because we’re perched on the edge of the great blue Atlantic, tropical wildlife flock, swim, and grow just steps from Miami’s busiest intersections. Coconut Grove is not only the appropriate place to score your next date and suck down a Call a Cab, but also ideal for viewing historical sights and nature in its habitat, all from the water. In addition to teaching kids with disabilities to sail, Shake-A-Leg affordably rents kayaks. The nonprofit organization has adopted two spoil eco-islands lush with native mangroves, sea grapes, sea grass, and coconut palms that offer homes to birds and critters. One of the islands has a dock, a beach, and picnic tables, where a packed lunch, a healthy amount of curiosity, and a bathing suit equal a day of relaxation and exploration. After you spy on small fish living in the mangroves, a paddle north presents a taste of the Italian Renaissance on the bay with a view of Vizcaya. You can’t gain entry from the water, but the mangrove hammock is home to pelicans, ibis, egrets, anhinga, cormorants, and the underwater creatures they might eat, as well as snapper, stingrays, angel rays, and leopard rays. Heading south, you’ll spot the Barnacle, built in 1891 by Grove pioneers. It isn’t merely a beautiful old house; it’s one of the last remnants of Miami’s natural hammock. Hourly rentals cost $15 for single or $20 for double.

If not for Mario Cristobal and his scrappy, young FIU Golden Panthers, this city would be devoid of good football teams, what with the Dolphins and Canes sucking things up in monumental ways. During Cristobal’s four seasons as the Golden Panthers head coach, we’ve seen the team go from so-so to SoFla darlings, firmly planting their flag in the nation’s college-football-watching psyche. As Cristobal’s recruiting classes took shape in the first three seasons under the Columbus High grad, the team finished with a combined 16-33 record. This past season, after stumbling out of the gate with four straight losses, FIU quickly righted the ship and finished the season 7-6. The team went on to win the Sun Belt Conference Championship with a 6-2 conference record and ultimately snagged its first bowl game after taking down Toledo 34-32 in a nail-biting Little Caesars Pizza Bowl victory. There used to be a time when the FIU football program was an afterthought in Miami. No more!

In a sport that has given us Rocky, Million Dollar Baby, The Cinderella Man, and The Fighter, a boxer’s rough-and-tumble life story is as vital as his left hook when it comes to carving out a place in pugilism history. Lucky for Erislandy Lara, he has a killer swing and a hell of a backstory. The five-foot-nine southpaw, a native of Guantánamo, Cuba, caught the world’s attention in 2005 when he bested a heavily favored Magomed Nurutdinov to take the world amateur crown in Moscow. The next year, he won gold at the Central American and Caribbean Games. But disaster struck in ’07 when he tried to defect before a bout in Brazil. Local cops caught the young fighter and shipped him back to Havana, where his punishment was a ban from sparring. Faced with a life without boxing, Lara in 2008 took the ultimate risk: He hopped a speedboat for a treacherous cross-gulf journey to Mexico. He survived, made it to the States, and has been knocking suckas out ever since. As a pro, Lara has gone 15-0 and shot up the middleweight ranks. He has fought on ESPN2 and Telefutura, and played to Vegas audiences seven times. This past January, he destroyed Delray Raines, a highly ranked kid from Arkansas, in less than five minutes with a devastating left hook to the jaw. Hollywood, you payin’ attention?