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Best Of Miami® 2012 Winners

Arts & Entertainment

Best Museum Exhibit

"A Day Like Any Other"

From evoking the slow-drip symphony of a summer shower with an array of suspended buckets to creating paintings using a torrential downpour in her native Brazil, Rivane Neuenschwander's first museum survey enchanted Miami Art Museum visitors through its beguiling and interactive nature. "A Day Like Any Other" featured 11 major works created over the past decade. In them, Neuenschwander, a storyteller with an eye for the cinematic, explored themes of time's fleeting nature and concepts of mapping, measuring, trading, and categorization. At once poetic and haunting, her works included dreamy constellations conjured by using a hole puncher on literary classics as well as an Orwellian installation based on a '70s Francis Ford Coppola thriller that riffed on notions that Big Brother is alive and well. Adding a palpable noirish feel to the engaging exhibit, Neuenschwander even recruited a forensic artist from the Palm Beach Sheriff's Office, who collaborated with MAM visitors to re-create memories of their first flames. The result was a gallery filled with portraits of perps guilty of breaking hearts.

Best of Miami: Arts & Entertainment

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READERS' POLL WINNERS

Best Art Gallery: Dorsch Gallery

Best Art-House Cinema: O Cinema

Best Bar, Central: Ricochet Bar & Lounge

Best Bar, Miami Beach: Chalk

Best Bar, South: Bougainvillea's

Best Bar, West: Blue Martini

Best Blog: Antisteez.com

Best Band: PALO!

Best Dance Club: LIV

Best DJ: Pinchadiscos 305

Best Gay Bar: Twist South Beach

Best Festival: Ultra

Best Movie Theater: Regal Cinemas South Beach

Best Museum: Miami Art Museum

Best Radio Station: Power 96 (96.5 FM)

Best Theater for Drama: GableStage at the Biltmore

Best TV News Anchor: Belkys Nerey

Best Twitter Feed: Pepe Billete (@PepeBillete)

Best Place to Meet Intelligent Women

SWAN Spoken Soul Festival

Women. You know you can't live without them. But it sure helps if the one you're living with can carry on a conversation without using words like irregardless, high-larious, and — our personal favorite — anyways. Where can you find such a woman without having to scour comic-book conventions and Scrabble meetups? You want brains, but you could do without dressing up like Pikachu and engaging in cutthroat board-game play. Enter the SWAN Spoken Soul Festival, a celebration of women artists that climaxes with the Spoken Soul Showcase, an event featuring artists, singer/songwriters, photographers, and spoken-word artists — all of whom are female. In honor of International SWAN (Supporting Women Artists Now) Day, organizer, actress, and spoken-word artist Deborah Magdalena created an event that — wait for it — brings together the most talented, bright, creative, and (dare we say it?) beautiful women in Miami. Besides knowing who Mondrian is, female artists got swag. They're easy on the eyes — and that helps soothe the pain when they're laying the smackdown on you in a game of Words With Friends. If you're a dude looking for a brainy chick, your best bet is the Spoken Soul Showcase. If you're a chick looking for a brainy female, attend the Sunday brunch, which is ladies only. It's like shooting female Mensa fish in a barrel.

Best Place to Meet Intelligent Men

Effusion Gallery

Face it: Spending your weekends at South Beach clubs hasn't helped your search for the perfect man. You want someone funny, handsome, and smart, but the majority of men bobbing their heads to the DJ's uhntz-uhntz are about as interesting as that recycled Madonna beat. Don't despair — the answer to your prayers is located right around the corner on Ocean Drive. In the middle of the art deco district, you'll find Effusion Gallery. Not only will you get a taste of Miami's culture through local artists' works, but also you just might find the man of your dreams. Sure, you'll occasionally encounter a hipster who overanalyzes every piece while wearing pants that are tighter than yours. But no doubt there will be at least one attractive smarty-pants checking out the scene. Replace that EDM with pop art; your ears and your love life will thank you.

Best Place to Meet Single Women

The Corner

It's 4 a.m. and you still haven't found a special lady with whom you can have a semi-inebriated conversation. You are thinking of calling it a night — but slow down there, buddy. There is a watering hole in downtown Miami perfect for meeting women who aren't ready to call it a night. Appropriately named the Corner — because it sits on the corner of NE 11th Street and North Miami Avenue — the bar takes its cues from places such as the Room in Miami Beach's South of Fifth neighborhood and Living Room at the W South Beach in that it offers the carefully crafted cocktails of the latter with the craft beers and cheap pints of PBR of the former. The women who frequent the Corner are of the hipster variety, so their ears will perk up if you complain how gentrified Wynwood has become. If you really want to impress her, skip the cheap beer and order her a Falerno ($14). Served in a small goblet, the cocktail combines Diplomático rum, Luxardo maraschino liqueur, candied ginger, and citrus. Notes of clove and allspice dance on the palate, giving it a sexy mouth-feel without being called something silly like Sex on the Beach. And we haven't even told you the best part. If you arrive at 4 in the morning, take your time in wooing your future girlfriend. Last call at the Corner is nonexistent, as long as there are willing patrons. The establishment is the only bar in the 305 with a 24-hour liquor license — not counting nearby megaclubs like Space and Mekka — thanks to its location in the Miami Entertainment District.

Best Place to Meet Single Men

Hooters on Coral Way

Granted, the guys who regularly hang at Hooters to suck down pitchers might not be moneyed, but they obviously dig chicks — and not only the ones with wings. Heck, they congregate at a place known for exposing so much of its staff's cleavage that the servers don't even expect patrons to look them in the eye. According to general manager Peter Gonzalez, peak man hours are Fridays at lunchtime (understandably, because the restaurant offers a slew of menu items for under $7) and Thursdays, Fridays, and Saturdays at dinnertime. Unfortunately the city put the kibosh on the eatery's motorcycle meetups — perhaps the sight of all those choppers and their leather-clad bosses put the Coral Gables ne'er-do-wells on red alert — but loads of dudes can still be found there on a regular basis. Like the Latin look, ladies? Stop by during pay-per-view boxing matches. Want variety? Head over when the Heat plays. And here's more advice: Don't try to compete with the Hooters girls. The guys already know that most of those gals are out of their league. Instead, be yourself, dress as you normally would, and don't seem so interested in what's on TV that you can't be engaged in conversation. Oh, and if you go for the first time and don't find anyone who gets your loins warm, at least you can order a plate of 3-Mile Island wings and fire up your face. See? It's a win-win.

Best First Date Spot

Gary Nader Fine Art

Miamians are a funny breed. We'll pay hundreds of dollars to stand shoulder-to-sweaty-shoulder in a dark nightclub, listening to electronic music that sounds the same coming out of our speakers at home, where we actually have room to dance. And though we have the daily opportunity to stand mere feet from million-dollar paintings by Picasso, Botero, Matisse, and other masters, at absolutely no cost, most of us don't take it. Then again, most of us don't know about Gary Nader Fine Art in Wynwood. That's why your love interest will be shocked, awed, and impressed when you take her (or him) to this warehouse of world-class art on your first date. At 55,000 square feet, it is the largest private gallery space in the world, and thanks to Nader's three decades of scouting and collecting great works from around the world, it is home to perhaps the greatest private collection of the Latin master painters. Woo your date by learning a few tidbits about Wifredo Lam before you traipse through the front door. Have an abstract conversation with the fluid photographs taken by ballet great Mikhail Baryshnikov or another special exhibition on the second floor. And on your way out, linger a bit in the parking lot while you admire the bodacious Botero sculptures; it might be an artful opportunity to steal that first kiss.

Best Historic Museum

Black Police Precinct & Courthouse Museum

In 1944, the City of Miami hired its first black police officers. They worked on foot and bicycle, patrolling the Central Negro District of Overtown, then known colloquially as "Colored Town," from the Florida East Coast Railway tracks to NW Seventh Ave, and from NW Fifth to 21st streets. By 1946, they also patrolled Liberty City and Coconut Grove. They were trained in the Liberty Square public housing project, and for six years they struggled without a permanent headquarters. In 1950, through the efforts of respected black professionals and clergymen, they secured a separate courthouse, jail, and precinct house at 480 NW 11th St., the first of its kind in the nation and still the only known black police station, jail, and courthouse built from the ground up. The historic building still stands, and Tuesday through Friday from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m., expert tour guides such as Capt. Otis Davis and Det. Archie McKay, who were on the police force way back when, will lead you through and relate stories about the jail cells and courtroom where they worked until 1963, when the station was closed in favor of integration.

Best Festival

Big Night in Little Haiti

Music is the soul that makes the planet dance, and every third Friday of the month, Little Haiti shakes its hips, waves its hands, stomps its feet, and thanks the stars. Since March 2011, this festival of music, art, food, and culture has brought some of the biggest names in the history of Haitian music to a free party in the heart of the city. Tabou Combo, Shleu Shleu, BélO, Jowee Omicil, Beethova Obas, Magnum Band, and Zenglen have all touched down. Local legends such as Papaloko, Rara Kuyu, and JahNesta have also been given a chance to shine. Rara Lakay has led a vuvuzela parade through the streets, a vodou drum circle has filled the night air with percussive force, kids have painted murals together, world-famous visual artists have shown internationally renowned work in the pristine art gallery, World Cup of Beer gold medalist Prestige is always available, politicians have made proclamations honoring the event, and the sounds of compas, reggae, funk, and racine have vibrated in tune with the universe. Of all the money the Knight Foundation has donated to cultural events, this has been the best-spent.

Best After-Hours Club

Norman's American Bar & Grill

Every day, including Christmas and Easter (and probably during hurricanes), Norman's celebrates its late-night happy hour from midnight to 5 a.m. When other bars close and people are sick of dancing on South Beach, tired of paying $15 for a cocktail, or looking for a good time when the freaks come out, they hit this Miami Beach gem for $5 martinis, margaritas, and mojitos, and $4 mixed drinks (vodka, rum, and tequila). The kitchen stays open till 3 a.m. (Fridays and Saturdays; till 1 a.m. weeknights), a Red Stripe costs $4.50, a pitcher costs $12, and a glass of the house Merlot is just $5. But like we said, the stars of the show are the $5 cocktails and $4 mixed drinks. There's free parking next door (with a pass from the hostess), and the Wi-Fi is gratis, so you can tweet all of your comrades about the afterparty. Oh yeah, the place also rents hotel studio apartments for $250 a week or $800 a month, so you can stretch your late-night happy hour into a permanent vacation.

For decades, the Fontainebleau had been regarded as the granddaddy of all luxury resorts in Miami Beach; by the '90s, it had lost a bit of its luster. But it's funny what a multibillion-dollar renovation can do. After a complete overhaul in 2009, the hotel reopened with a more youthful vibe, including a megaclub far away from South Beach. The legendary Tropigala, which had turned into a horrible, campy version of its former self toward its end, was replaced by LIV — which is the roman numeral for 54, the year the hotel opened. Locals and visitors seemed to fall instantly in love with the venue, proving you don't have to be located on Washington Avenue to be successful. The pantheonic dome remained, but it received a lighting face-lift that gives the illusion the room is moving. For VIPs, there are boxes overlooking the main floor, which is packed with couches and tables, as well as bottles outfitted with sparklers. And this being Miami Beach, and the Fontainebleau in particular, expect high admission prices, a hassle at the door, and a big drink bill at the end of the night — if you aren't of the fairer sex. That being said, you can't say you've experienced Miami nightlife if you haven't visited LIV. From Paul Oakenfold to Calvin Harris to Tiësto and other big live acts, thanks to LIV, your granddaddy's hotel is looking pretty hip these days.

To do the VIP experience right, you must follow the lead of the hip-hop heavyweights who visit South Beach to blow off some stress and put a serious dent in their financial portfolios. Sure, their accountants won't be happy come Monday, but Lil Wayne, Rick Ross, Flo Rida, Diddy, and even the insufferable Chris Brown know that the top place to be treated like a VIP is the area behind the DJ booth at Cameo. The unassuming plot of nightclub real estate is a flurry of bottle service, posturing, and groupies, with the occasional greenback shower. This scene has given the Opium Group a VIP area that seems to send gossip magazines and blogs into a tizzy. Only Cameo is ballsy enough to offer a $100,000 VIP package to ring in the new year with the Bawse. And it was Cameo where Brown infamously snatched a fan's iPhone as he left the club. Our source at Opium Group says if you want to live it up in the VIP area while a celebrity is sitting nearby, it will probably cost you around $10,000. Nobody said partying like a VIP was cheap.

Upstairs at Grand Central — the immense downtown live music venue — is the Garret, which functions as an independent space. It is the perfect size for smaller shows and weekly parties. Though one-off shows and events have had varied levels of success, the Garret's Friday-night party, Peachfuzz, is a clear winner. As the name implies, the party takes you back to middle school days (if you were born in the '80s), when you swore the light patch of hair on your upper lip was a mustache to rival Tom Selleck's. Spearheaded by Raul Sanchez and Pres Rodriguez (both formerly of Bar), the hip-hop dance party recalls a time when Trick Daddy tried to take it to the house and Biggie's death was still fresh on our minds. Resident DJ DZA provides the soundtrack you first danced to in your school's cafetorium with the hottest girl/boy on campus. Or at least he helps you remember it that way.

Best Ladies' Night

Blush Wednesdays

Ladies in this town have it tough. We feel the pressure to look good all the time or risk our Miami resident card being revoked. We should totally be rewarded for this, no? Thank goodness for Blush Wednesdays at Villa Mayfair. It's the best spot to take a group of gal pals for a fun, worry-free evening. Villa's sexy violet lighting and classically chic décor up the cool factor. And then you have the hot DJ, who spins tracks that make you feel like you stepped into a European discotheque. Double-X chromies enjoy unlimited silky-smooth Rosé champagne and leggy Rosé wine until the night's end — free of charge, of course. Villa Mayfair offers a $35 prix fixe menu that night as well. It's the best way to try executive chef Frederic Joulin's masterworks if the Villa's regular prices are out of your budget. There's music, food, and lots of bubbly. Add in the bonus of your best girlfriends' company and you have yourself a female extravaganza.

Best Drag Night

Getting Fresh Wednesdays

Spending a Wednesday at Twist is like stepping into the fantasy realm of Gay and Gayer. We love Miami for giving us that option. Things are likely to get rowdy, especially because the superstar Ms. TP Lords hosts the night with more sass than a kitten. Enjoy $5 Long Island iced teas and join the gaggle that congregates at the weekly evening. On past Wednesdays, Twist-goers have seen unpredictable costume contests, hip-swaying karaoke, and saucy performances guaranteed to knock you off your six-inch stilettos. The guest DJs, such as Maximus 3000 and J Felix, are there to keep the music hot and heavy, and a free attitude is strongly encouraged on the dance floor. If it's your first time, come prepared with as little clothing as possible and your credit card (for the bar tab, dummy). There's never a cover at Twist, but a dragging good time is always guaranteed.

Best Strip Club

King of Diamonds

There are $100 bills on the floor, empty bottles of Cristal in the trash, and nudity everywhere. Or as noted hustler, Maybach Music boss, and Carol City poet laureate Ricky Rozay would say, "Somebody call the Brinks truck... [King of Diamonds] got the baddest bitches waiting on a nigga." In a city with a strip club on every corner, the big-money ballers and rap-game shot callers like Ross, Lil Wayne, Drake, DJ Khaled, and Gucci Mane choose this North Miami Beach nudie mecca (and even write strip-club love songs about the place) because its 300 big-booty strippers can and will do almost anything. You know, slip and slide down a 30-foot brass pole like Spyda. Talk politics with MSNBC's Joe Scarborough over corned beef hash and coffee like Tip Drill and Skrawberry. Wash your whip for charity like Queeny. Hijack your Drizzy-drizzling heart like Blac Chyna. Or fistfight for money on a Monday like Ms. Tocka. Come straight from the clink like Gucci and Weezy. Chopper down for your b-day like Rozay. Or roll up in a broke-ass 1999 Toyota Celica and pay $100 for a parking spot. Just don't forget your garbage bag of plastic-wrapped money bricks at home. 'Cause ballin' like a boss at KOD ain't cheap, son.

For all y'all midlevel ballers looking to get outta that part-time gig at Macy's and into the VIP, here's some advice: Empty your savings account, rent a Rolls, and spend the weekend at SoBe Live. Any given Thursday, you could be running wild with Atlanta spitter and Brick Squad boss Waka Flocka Flame, spraying coeds with champagne, smoking a sticky Swisher, and "standing on the chair like ya really don't care." Less than 48 hours later, you'll be back in the club, rubbing up on XXX diva Cherokee D'Ass while she whispers tips about breaking into the adult biz, making the perfect baby-makin' mixtape, and filing taxes as an LLC. And then come Sunday, Uncle Luke and 100 fat-assed party girls are gonna be hosting a master-level seminar on freakiness that you just can't miss. Straight up, this South Beach hip-hop spot is Miami's headquarters of hustle. It's where the deals go down and the coochies get popped.

Best Gay Bar

Swinging Richards

Yes, the prudish goofs who run North Miami Beach are totally grossed out by a gay bar with a "sexually explicit" name such as Swinging Richards — not to mention the icky idea of full, frontal male nudity. But that's no excuse for uptight residents and overzealous city officials to go trampling on a homosexual man's right to pay another dude to rip off his G-string, shake that manly junk, and perform nonstop ball drops all night. In November 2011, this local outpost of an identically named Atlanta gay male strip club took over a neon-lit box building at 17450 Biscayne Blvd. that had been occupied by hetero nudie bar Queen of Diamonds. The club quickly hired a supersexy stable of bartenders, waiters, shooter boys, and 75 strippers; adopted a strict "no-clothes policy," and opened for business. Unfortunately, this combination of gayness, nudity, and drunkenness irked certain members of the North Miami Beach community. And latching onto a generally unenforced law banning nudity and booze in the same establishment, these people insisted that Swinging Richards be shuttered. So far, the club hasn't quit shaking its junk. But the struggle to save Miami's best gay bar still isn't over. So help stop NMB officials from shutting down this "all-male, all-nude, all-night" nudie spot, sign the club's petition, and swing your Richard for equality.

Best Dive Bar

Mac's Club Deuce

In the land of million-dollar megaclubs, endless bottle service, boob-job giveaways, bleached beaches, and cosmetically enhanced asses, everybody needs a drunk-and-dirty dive-bar reality check. And Mac's Club Deuce is so real that it's unreal. So hide your bloodshot eyes behind smashed shades. Escape the merciless subtropical sun. And enter the cool, lurid darkness of this 90-year-old South Beach boozing spot. The neon flickers. The beer gets spilled. The barflies fight. The jukebox doesn't stop. And happy hour almost never ends. Every day from 8 a.m. till 7 p.m., suck a bottleneck (Rolling Rock, High Life, Corona) and slug shots (Bushmills, Jim Beam, Tres Sombreros) at two-for-one prices. In exchange for six crumpled singles, the bartender will slide a cold drink into your hands and slap a casino chip down as credit for the next round. And here, there's no shame in drinking till dusk or beyond. Watch tales of murder, drug busts, and home invasions on the 6 p.m. Action News, and ogle the pink naked lady on the wall kicking her high heels and waiting on a mate while lying face-down, ass up. Bark at the old fat dog as he licks the floor, weaves between the barstools, pokes his nose in the trash, and sniffs the toes of a sexy 50-something amputee with perfect platinum-blond hair and a dirty martini in her remaining hand. Steal a casino chip from the ancient eye-patched and tatted gangster who just staggered across the street for a taco break. And count down the seconds as a crooked hand crawls across the dirty face of Mac's glowing toxic-green clock.

Best Underground Club

Stoop House

Welcome to Stoop House, where the only rule is "Stoop hard, get stoopid." It's a newish party spot that belongs to Miami's long, great, and generally undocumented tradition of totally off-the-radar music venues, such as the short-lived all-ages spot Goo. Or remember last year's ill-fated Chum Bucket collective? Or how about the now-dead La Cueva, a Little Haiti music venue above a liquor store? We're talking tiny, no-budget, DIY spaces where punks, skaters, street kids, scene freaks, folkies, metalheads, swag rappers, radical activists, and their friends can get together for house shows, events, food, booze, and good times. Of course, party plans are pretty sporadic. So any wannabe Stooper will need to keep it locked to the Interwebs for updates. But when it's finally time for "some crazy super group togetherness," expect loud music, pesticide-free potlucks, homemade T-shirts, stapled zines, demos on cassette, lectures about sexism in the media, and hours upon hours of crowd surfing with your 16 new BFFs.

Best Latin Club

Bongos Cuban Cafe

When out-of-towners want to shake to the rhythm of Latin music, we throw on a guayabera, linen pants, and loafers and escort the visitors to the American Airlines Arena in downtown Miami. Located behind the Miami Heat's home court, Bongos Cuban Cafe boasts a sweeping vista of Biscayne Bay, which is the perfect backdrop for the thumping beat of salsa, merengue, and reggaeton that fills the 16,000-square-foot supper club Friday and Saturday till 5 a.m. Owned by Miami icons Emilio and Gloria Estefan, Bongos has established itself as the spot for the city's Latin music industry. With its Havana nightspot décor, the place has hosted afterparties for the Latin Grammys, the Billboard Latin Music Awards, and Premio Lo Nuestro, to name a few. Bongos features a large ballroom where hundreds of people show off their salsa and merengue dancing skills every weekend. Just remember to yell, "Azúcar!" every time a Celia Cruz tune plays.

If you're gonna murder a popular song, might as well do it on the fringes of the Everglades. Since 2009, Fat Monkey has been hosting karaoke parties six days a week. Trust us — the trek to deep South Miami-Dade is worth it. Lube up your vocal cords with $5 frozen daiquiris or four bottles of domestic beer for $10. Ladies drink free Friday nights. And once you've built up enough liquid courage, you can have your way with a playlist featuring more than a thousand songs. Located in the heart of historic downtown Homestead, Fat Monkey is tucked inside an unadorned storefront with pane-glass windows. Hours are 4 p.m. to 3 a.m. daily.

Best Rock Club

Churchill's Pub

On the first day, that great guitar god in the sky made a skull-shattering noise and called it rock 'n' roll. On the second, he smashed his axe, lit the splintered instrument on fire, and watched it burn. On the third day, he destroyed a four-star hotel room. On the fourth, he signed a major-label record deal, transformed himself into a swan, and lay down with a famous groupie. On the fifth, he OD'ed. On the sixth day, he rose again. And on the seventh, he said, "Screw rest. I need someplace to party." And thus, Churchill's Pub was created.

Best Venue for Local Acts

PAX Miami

Set back about a hundred steps from SW Eighth Street, a black, boxy building hides in the shadow of I-95. This is the Performing Arts Exchange, also known as PAX Miami. Just more than a year ago, owner and art buyer Roxanne Scalia completed renovations on the former Miami Herald distribution center. She quickly booked a bunch of bands, including Miami jam stars Suénalo, local Latin fusion legends Locos por Juana, and Magic City alt-rockers Minimal. In the intervening 13 months, Scalia's place has become a clubhouse for Brickell and the rest of Miami's best- and least-known Afro-Cuban, compas, indie rock, reggae, and jazz musicians — not to mention touring acts from foreign lands like Haiti, Chile, Argentina, France, and Puerto Rico. A laid-back cultural hub that describes itself as "a progressive independent performing and cinema arts center in a sustainable format, with a local focus and a global reach," PAX is all about promoting Miami's artists and musicians. And that's exactly why the locals hang out here, scenesters sip java and beer at the bar, and the small, low-slung stage is almost never empty.

From the outside, there's no sign of life. Long curtains hinder any attempt to spy through the windows of midtown's ever-expanding strip mall on North Miami Avenue. In fact, there's really nothing — aside from the packed parking lot — to indicate you have arrived at your destination in an otherwise desolate area. Late at night, there is only this bar and Gigi's, both owned by Amir Ben-Zion, who is building a local empire. Bardot reminds us of a cross between the coolest music venue in NYC's East Village and your best friend's basement. There's good booze, plenty of beer, and programming that ranges from local performers to more established names. The lineup is impossibly diverse, from sonic jazz to Latin fusion, classic hip-hop, vintage funk, electronic trance, reggae, alternative rock, and more. Bardot curates an amazing rotating selection that definitely has something for every taste. Plus there's a fantastic sound system in this rectangular, railroad-style space. Music fills the bar without speaker backlash, delivering the lyrical voice of whoever is at the microphone. There are plenty of couches in dark corners and new friends making out like crazy. Bardot manages to be a bar where both community and privacy are respected. But in the end, it's all about the music.

Best Small Music Venue

Treehouse

How do you build a killer tree house? Step 1: Pick the perfect crotch, a space between boughs that's ideally suited for supporting a couple of rooms, a few friends, and a full premium bar. Step 2: Lay the dance floor, install the VIP tables, and unfurl the rope ladder. Step 3: Hire a bouncer-slash-model to work the door. Step 4: Charge a modest $10 cover. Step 5: Book the raddest house, techno, and indie-dance acts of any club in Miami Beach. Sure, your favorite elevated party place used to be that secret leafy spot where you kept a stash of stolen porn, smuggled cigarettes, and watered-down vodka. But ever since construction wrapped in January 2011, you've switched to the Treehouse on 23rd Street at Park Avenue, a smallish nightlife hideout and music venue that's been ceaselessly presenting Beach clubbers with EDM legends such as M.A.N.D.Y., Mr. C, and Steve Bug — plus live crossover crews including Miami's own Krisp. So whether it's Winter Music Conference or just another Sunday, climb up, shoot some vodka, and come play.

Best Open-Mike Night

Tuesday Nights at Luna Star Cafe

If you're a musician, performance artist, poet, or spoken-wordsmith, follow the map in the sky to Luna Star Cafe in North Miami, now in its 16th year of awesomeness. There you can display your talent in an open-minded open format, with a supporting cast of more than 100 cosmopolitan beers (including a Florida brew called Holy Mackerel and a Belgian one called Kwak; Coors, Heineken, and Amstel Light did not make the cut). There is also a menu that includes duck wings, crabcakes served with a key lime tartar sauce, pizzas, pastas, and Mediterranean plates. For those looking to activate sleepy corners of their creative minds before taking the stage, an espresso or gourmet coffee is a peppy choice. The open jam on Tuesdays is a laid-back event that often features local musicians playing original acoustic folk or rock, but comedians, storytellers, and others with a creative seed to sew are welcome to do so too. Not ready to strum in public? No worries. There's enough graphic art on the walls, live entertainment, fresh food, and stimulating conversation to make even wallflowers emerge from their shells. Call to make sure the schedule hasn't changed — things at Luna Star Cafe rotate like the planets.

On May 10, 2012, Laura Sutnick closed a chapter of her life. Besides matriculating at the University of Miami, she's been the iconic on-air DJ Laura (of Miami) on WVUM for the past four years. Her show, Vamos a la Playa, quickly became a Miami staple — a two-hour feature of the best in college radio. Sutnick also took her keen ear to the nightclubs, spinning regularly at places such as the Electric Pickle and Bardot. But she wasn't content to be only a DJ. With Patrick Walsh, she developed the nightlife collective and blog Nightdrive, which has attracted some of the best indie-rock and electronic acts to area venues. And it's that love of introducing the city to new music, either from behind the decks or behind the scenes, that has made Sutnick Miami's top DJ. At a time when most of our DJs are content to spoon-feed crowds the stuff they expect to hear, Laura (of Miami) has us reaching for Shazam, hoping we can figure out the name of that awesome track she's spinning. And for Vamos a la Playa fans, the show lives on at wynwoodradio.com Mondays from 2 to 4 p.m.

Julio Mejia is young, talented, local, and seemingly unstoppable. Just old enough to drink, the 21-year-old has already merked the decks onstage with great names such as Diplo, Dave Nada, Klever, and last year's best Miami DJ, Craze. Whether he's working on solo projects or with his partner Matthew Toth as half of electro duo GTA, Mejia has penned tunes that have attracted the attention of bloggers, EDM enthusiasts, and superstar DJs alike. His big break came when Dave Nada, founder of the genre, began playing his moombahton track "Move." Around the same time, GTA started working with Laidback Luke, and ever since, the requests and scene support have come in droves. He has officially remixed artists including Flosstradamus and Buraka Som Sistema. He's working on a few EPs, both as JWLS and GTA, as well as a series of rap instrumentals to be titled JWLS Is Bored. Keep an eye out for JWLS and GTA. Miami's moombah kid is doing big things.

A quick look at the Billboard charts reveals that the rest of America has finally learned something Miami figured out long ago: House music is awesome. Of course, the Magic City wasn't always so hip. Murk — the team of Ralph Falcón and Oscar G. — defined our club music culture starting with their debut in the early '90s. Separately, the Miami natives are superstar DJs with residencies and gigs across the globe. But together, under an ever-growing list of aliases, they've become house production royalty. The duo has scored seven consecutive number one hits on Billboard's club play charts. They have also remixed singles for pop stars as disparate as Madonna and RuPaul. And this past February, Defected Records released a best-of compilation for its elite House Masters series. They haven't quite reached the commercial heights of some of those new kids who are tearing up the pop charts with crossover hits, but that's only because Murk's Miami fans know the definition of real house music.

Whether they're ass-smashing Nachos Supreme with strippers, "Planking on Yo Bitch" all over South Beach, or overdosing on "Kush Smoke & Pussy" in a Miami Shores parking lot, O'Grime's L.Rey and Nikolais Javan are this city's most ridiculously rad rap team. Their YouTube vids routinely get 100,000 views. Their email inboxes are constantly flooded with nudie pics from fans of both sexes. They're even huge in Lithuania, thanks to last year's b-ball anthem, "Valanciunas (Big V Lithuanian Hero)," in honor of seven-foot phenom and fifth-overall NBA draft pick Jonas Valanciunas. But really, it all started in summer 2011 when these barely post-teen hip-hop pranksters debuted with a nine-song eponymous EP chockablock with funny, filthy tracks like "Domework," a drugged-out, dubsteppy cut about getting blowjobs while playing video games. And then it hit peak perversity just a few months ago when L.Rey and Niko finally followed up with a full-length slab — the equally horny, totally superhigh, and oh-so-swaggishly titled Pearl Necklace — whose NSFW cover art features a corseted set of boobies spattered with gobs of semen spelling out O'Grime. So yeah, they're young, wild, crazy, uncensored, and occasionally offensive. But that's how Miami has always liked its bangers — from Uncle Luke and 2 Live Crew to Disco Rick, Trick, and the Baddest Bitch. We just wanna get grimy in the 305.

Bachamambo plays bachata criollo, a form of Dominican roots music that was born in country barrooms of the D.R. The style is a dance based on Dominican blues, with songs about getting drunk, losing your woman, and getting kicked out of the house. It's all set to an infectious beat that Latins call "pegajoso," as in sticky or extremely catchy. It's a guitar-driven style whose heroes are Luis Vargas, Raulín Rodríguez, and Luis Segura. The most popular song might be Luis Santos's "Corazón Culpable" ("Guilty Heart"). Bachamambo pays tribute to these greats with covers performed by the seven-piece band of guitars, bass, keyboard, tambora, timbales, and saxophone. They are six Dominicans and a Nicaraguan. Founder Raffy Quezada started the band in January 2009. You can see them live every Sunday night at Club Típico Dominicano in Allapattah, every Friday at Puerto Marino in Hialeah, and monthly at La Guira in Miami. They are available for booking and have found huge support from Hondurans and Nicaraguans, in addition to Cubans, Colombians, Puerto Ricans, and gringos. There was a time when Dominican radio would not play bachata, but in the past decade it has risen to the heights of popular Latin dance alongside salsa and merengue. Every time Bachamambo hits the stage, it keeps the audience drinking and dancing to the classics till the early morning.

Best Funk Band

Psychic Mirrors

This 12-member mini-orchestra is perhaps the most ambitious indie music project in recent South Florida memory. Psychic Mirrors comes complete with choreographed back-up singers, horns, keys, and a unique blend of funk rhythms, electro beats, and Latin flavor that includes decidedly futuristic nods toward the past. This is a band that doesn't follow any predefined archetypes. The brainchild of Cuban-American composer Mickey de Grand IV, it delivers on all of that ambition. Tracks such as "Mystic Hustle" and "We Can Groove" sound like something from a tropical space party. Luckily you don't have to travel into orbit to catch the band live.

Best Music Video

DJ Khaled's "I'm on One"

Most rap videos are luxurious fantasies layered on top of other wildly luxurious fantasies. We've all seen the video in which a rhyme-spitting protagonist is partying in the VIP section of the hottest club, wearing the finest clothes, drinking top-shelf liquor, and standing amid gyrating ladies — one of whom he'll probably take home later in a fine sports car. It's exciting, but nothing we can relate to. This is what makes DJ Khaled's clip for "I'm on One" stand out. It's a luxurious fantasy layered on top of, well, a pretty mundane downtown Miami lifestyle most of us know well. The song features three of the biggest rappers — Drake, Rick Ross, and Lil Wayne — but they're doing some pretty ordinary things. Drinking Four Loko on a balcony after a long night out? Yeah, we've done that. Flirting on the Metromover? Been there. After-partied in a friend's barely furnished downtown loft probably bought out of foreclosure? Check. Swerved across lanes of traffic between high-rises and pulled over by the bay to smoke a blunt? Maybe not in a Rolls like Rick Ross, but yep. Getting caught in the rain? Duh. One day when people ask us what is was like to live in Miami during this era, we'll show them this video. We just won't mention that Khaled and company made it look ten times more glamorous.

Thanks to meat-fashion enthusiast Lady Gaga, pop music is currently parked at the corner of Weird Boulevard and Glamour Drive. Travel down an alley, though, and you'll find Marlon Alarm. In his video for single "Double Diamond," ethereally beautiful, ambiguous, and asexual Alarm emerges from a trash can before pronouncing with a sneer: "Radio, listen up, play my song. I'm talented as motherfuck." In the song's video, he does his best Britney on a budget — but gives off a classic Bowie vibe. It's not quite polished enough to reach double-diamond sales status, as the name suggests, but Alarm is an exciting raw talent with a clear artistic point of view. Sadly, radio may not be playing his song anytime soon, but there's no denying he is as talented as he claims to be.

Best Concert

Cut Copy's Double-Header

Miami's hipster concertgoers are pretty lax when it comes to buying tickets. Indie shows rarely sell out here. So a lot of people were left shocked in their skinny jeans when tickets for Cut Copy's September show at the relatively cavernous Grand Central were gone early. That's because it wasn't just hipsters buying tickets. Cut Copy seems to be one of those groups whose popularity cuts across the city's very separate scenes. Apparently the Australian band's dance-friendly electro-rock moves the feet of South Beach house heads, Kendall kiddy ravers, Brickell yuppies, people who wear sunglasses in clubs even when they're sober, your mom, your hairstylist, your mom's hairstylist, that chick you kind of dated but dumped because she had a laugh like Fran Drescher — you know, just about everyone who doesn't get all of their music direction from Y100. So the band added a second show the day before, which is a rarity in Miami. And it was worth it. Opening acts Midnight Magic (disco revivalists with a horn section and last summer's hottest indie club jam) and Washed Out (chillwave OGs) set the tone, but Cut Copy whipped both nights' crowds into an ecstatic frenzy with hits like "Lights & Music" and "Need You Now." The experience left audiences wanting more, and probably ensured that tickets will sell out even faster the next time the band comes through town.

Is she a hippie, a gypsy, a nomad, or a crazy, soulful, lovely, lusty Cuban musical genius? All of the above, and a work of art to boot. And if you heard her earlier this year playing live on Michael Stock's folk and acoustic music show on WLRN (91.3 FM), you know the skill and imagination it takes to make a song about sex and pizza so lyrical you can smell it through the radio. Sol has toured Cuba, Jamaica, Costa Rica, and Europe, picking up new life experiences to write about at every opportunity. Her lyrics reflect an infectious passion for life that makes you want to hop a train, swim naked in the rain, and take a plane to Paris. That's the kind of music we like, and she writes it better than anyone else we have ever heard. She just funded her next album through Kickstarter, so we look forward to hearing more soon.

Oi! Die Trying plays street punk — the driving, anthemic, and melodic style of underground rock that encourages gang-vocal sing-alongs from the crowd and revels in the power of a simple and heartfelt delivery. The band features members from Hellhounds, Five Across the Eyes, Unit Six, Vice City Rockers, and Guerrilleros de Nadie — five groups that have helped define the past ten years of Churchill's Pub. You probably missed their first show there earlier this year, but you shouldn't miss their next one. With lyrics about fighting Nazi skinheads, standing up for justice, and sticking by your friends, Die Trying delivers inspirational hardcore that will give you something to think about while you rock out.

Best Solo Musician

SpaceGhostPurrp

On April 1, 1991, the future capo of the intergalactic Raider Klan Mafia was born in Miami. His name was SpaceGhostPurrp. Well, legally, the infant's birth certificate read, "Muney Jordan." But that was just the earthly label forced upon an extraterrestrial creature who crash-landed in Carol City with a mission to get high, hypnotize humanity, make money, and elevate his Klan to another level. Now aged 21 in earth years, he proffers syrupy raps and staticky beats (i.e., "Mystikal Maze" and "Tha Black God") that sound like secret, swaggy messages from some undiscovered planet with a massive surplus of essential resources like cars, cash, hos, gangsta grills, and Purrp-brand promethazine drank. Last year, the Ghost grabbed mad Internet buzz for mixtapes like NASA: The Mixtape; collab'ed with swag superstars Smoke DZA and A$AP Rocky; scored a spot on Miami New Times' Best Albums of 2011 list with Blvcklvnd Rvdix 66.6; and even earned a name-drop in Spin's recent rap issue. But now he's about to blast out his debut studio slab, titled Chronicles of SpaceGhostPurrp. And then, he says, "The prophecy shall be fulfilled."

Best Comedian

Dave Williamson

The genius of Dave Williamson's comedy: It's your life, but funnier. Williamson is an exactly average human being, a man of median age who lives in the burbs with his wife and kids. His height is average, he's neither grossly over- nor underweight, and he doesn't have a big nose or a Gilbert Gottfried voice or, really, any distinguishing physical characteristics. Like you, he enjoys telling stories about his kids, his own childhood growing up in Miami, and hanging out with his college buddies back in the day. But unlike you, his stories are unpretentious, genuinely interesting, and, most important, atomically funny. The normal world in which he lives — in which we all live — is ridiculous enough on its own; he's just especially talented at pointing that out. When your grandfather complains about annoying technology, you groan; when Williamson outlines the differences between the Trapper Keepers of his youth and his kids' iPads, you cry laughing. The details of family life, the trouble with raising children when you yourself are still just a man-boy, learning to amuse yourself at a 3-year-old's birthday party — it's all fodder. Williamson's sets are like the stand-up version of a great sitcom, except he's allowed to cuss and talk about penises. All you have to do is sit back and provide the laugh track.

Best Supporting Actress

Clara Lyzniak

Main Street Players president Clara Lyzniak has been involved with the small troupe since 1998 and has served in almost every capacity there is at a theater company. But it was her uproarious scene-stealing turn as Zoila in the group's production of Living Out that proves she needs to be on stage more often. Lyzniak's take on the modern Hispanic nanny — heavy accent, big attitude, and oozing with chutzpah — brought hysterical laughter to an otherwise somber and serious play. It was a bit role that served as the story's comic relief, but Lyzniak, who in real life speaks perfect English without a hint of an accent, absolutely crushed it as Zoila. She hilariously massacred the English language and delivered pure, unbridled sass when taking direction from her Anglo employers. The role could have easily been mailed in with a stereotypical portrayal, but Lyzniak knew when to dial it down and when to bring it full bore. The result was a show-stopping performance every time she appeared onstage. Zoila was Lyzniak's first major role for the troupe, taking her away from behind-the-scenes and administrative duties, and we hope to see more of her in front of the audience.

Best Theater for Drama

Main Street Players

Putting on engaging stage dramas can be daunting for any theater troupe. Yet the diminutive and diverse Main Street Players is always up to the task. Sure, there are bigger troupes that draw larger crowds and cast more accomplished actors for their respective productions. But Main Street Players is special because its commitment is to stories and to telling those stories with hungry young actors and a stage crew ready to expertly build a small apartment or a makeshift park at a moment's notice. The group performs in an amiable black-box theater nestled across from a multiplex and a Johnny Rockets. And it knows how to pack a punch. Even with its limited budget and small working space, MSP understands the play is the thing, and the troupe's commitment resonates in each production. Main Street Players has had many incarnations over the years since opening in 1974 as the Miami Lakes Players Guild, often moving from venue to venue and putting on two or three productions a year wherever it could until the City of Miami Lakes offered the current space. It's a small, talented, and versatile group that doesn't mind taking on challenging plays such as the controversial Extremities, the deeply layered Living Out, and the provocative Closer. Plays with such driving and stimulating narratives would normally be shortchanged and curtailed by the quirks and limitations of a small local theater troupe working on a tiny stage, but Main Street Players is the little theater group that could, and it knows exactly how to give audiences a rich and rewarding theater experience.

Best Theater Company

The M Ensemble

Formed in 1971 at the University of Miami by the late T.G. Cooper, the M Ensemble has always had the goal of promoting African-American culture and experiences through the performing arts. Beginning at the Edison Community Center and going through many incarnations, with plays performed in schools, churches, and libraries, the troupe has made a deep and lasting mark in the community. With an unmatched, ambitious fervor to expand the boundaries of theater and expose Miami to talented and prolific African-American playwrights such as August Wilson and Djanet Sears, the M Ensemble has never been afraid of taking on profound and subversive plays and turning them into lively and engaging productions on a shoestring budget. With recent productions such as the complex and moving Radio Golf, a play that delved into the complicated parameters of embracing the promise of the present while sacrificing the past, and Harlem Duet, a stirring modern slant on Shakespeare's Othello, the M Ensemble continues to stretch itself and, in doing so, remains not only Miami's premier African-American theater company but also one that's unmatched by others.

TP Lords can serve up just about anything. One night she's offering traditional glam girl and the next she's on some avant-garde Leigh Bowery-type trip. Hell, she can even do Beyoncé realness with the best of them and then go backstage and emerge as some sort of neon creature who looks like a cross between a club kid and a space empress from Planet T. TP has drag versatility down. Otherwise known as Alex Velez, TP is the mother of the House of Lords when she's not performing multiple times a week at places such as Twist, Discotekka, Sugar, and the Palace.

Best Reality Contestant

Latrice Royale, RuPaul's Drag Race

Have you ever been moved to tears while watching a 300-pound ex-felon in a wig lip-sync Aretha Franklin's "Natural Woman" to her fake baby bump? If not, you clearly haven't been watching the fourth season of RuPaul's Drag Race, featuring breakout star Latrice Royale. She fell just short of winning the crown, but she certainly won our hearts. Before being cast on the Logo network's reality show, Royale — AKA Timothy Wilcots — pounded the pavement outside the Palace in South Beach after turning her life around following an 18-month prison sentence on drug charges. In addition to the harrowing backstory, Royale had all the makings of a reality TV phenomenon with her own catch phrases (ask her about the five G's), a signature laugh, a warm and caring personality, and a remarkable stage presence. In her own words, "She is chunky yet funky. The bold and the beautiful. She is Latrice Royale."

Best Public Art

Brandon Opalka's Semitruck

As a street artist, Brandon Opalka has been using Miami's façades as his canvas since moving to town in 1996. Without the urban sprawl, Opalka would have no medium, but paradoxically, it's the natural world that inspires him. His latest massive mural, Changing the Way We Breathe, completed in late 2011, reminds us to take care of our silent organic friends and highlights the sacrifices that come with modern living. Brilliantly colored and intricately detailed, this 115-foot masterpiece has a prophetic and ghostly quality, as if telling us to care for our planet as a means of caring for ourselves. Engulfing the length of a wall, the painting features a swirly, almost trippy semitruck belching fire and smoke while toting a chopped-down redwood on its way to the mill. The background is just as colorful and chaotic, meant to give the impression of an "apocalyptic world without trees," according to Opalka. It's inspiring for its attention to detail and breathtaking to behold, a gorgeous addition to Wynwood's colorful neighborhood. For Opalka, whose work is featured at Wynwood Walls and the Dorsch Gallery, it's also a triumph of nature as street art.

Distilling a Miami aesthetic down to a distinct essence is an Olympian undertaking. Our city beats with a rhythm that's electric and shape shifting. Languages and cultures collide in a Babylonian tapestry. Artists from Iceland to Chile call the Magic City their home. But then again, for Monica and Tasha Lopez De Victoria, who for the past decade have been collaborating as the TM Sisters, making the protean seem simple has been a calling card since they burst onto the scene. They gained international attention in 2005 with their video "Superpowers," featuring a cast of dozens of Miami's artists harnessing a bolt of homegrown energy and pitching it off to each other against a dazzling geometric blue and pink background reminiscent of a vibrant videogame. It went on to be featured in an exhibit that traveled across Europe. Not only did the video capture the metamorphosis underway on our art scene at the time, but also many of the colleagues with whom the TM Sisters collaborated on the project have gone on to represent the 305 on the international scene. The insatiably curious siblings are no strangers to experimenting with media. Their works oscillate from video to collage and from sprawling, interactive installations to ambitious performance pieces that reflect their love of South Florida with a unique techno-tropical vibe. Their "Whirl Crash Go!" production at Locust Projects in 2009 combined synchronized swimming and spandex-clad roller skaters with animated video projections, along with a musical score composed by Otto Von Schirach and costumes designed by Karelle Levy of Krelwear. The pulsating event transported viewers to a polychromatic universe of epic scope, nonstop action, and intense light and sound. Likewise, their multimedia opus "Shimmer," at the Adrienne Arsht Center, presented as part of Miami Made Festival 2012, scintillated the senses with their trademark multimedia experimentation while delivering a vision of Miami's clash of cultures, saturated neon lights, and a prismatic lightning bolt of life uniquely their own.

Best Art Gallery

Primary Projects

Art with an attitude and an uncompromising eye for gritty street swagger distinguishes Primary Projects from the rest of Miami's ever-growing pack of galleries and artist-run spaces. Powered by the triumvirate of BooksIIII Bischof, Typoe, and Chris Oh, this multidisciplinary stage for bleeding-edge work — oddly located in a swank Design District enclave of restaurants and designer shops — has hosted a sizzling string of solo and group shows in the past year that have been among the most controversial and talked about of the 2011 season. Some of the most memorable works included Edouard Nardon's fearsome yet oddly beautiful collection of jailhouse shivs; Scott Shannon's gorgeous Crayola drawing of a swastika floral bouquet; Autumn Casey's petrified, rotten-apple bongs; and George Sanchez-Calderon's bronze crack-pipe sculpture. Those tired of Wynwood's increasingly commercial scene flocked to Primary for a taste of art that fluctuated between the sublime and sinister, from Kenton Parker's fully functioning Taco Shop to Andrew Nigon's surreal Bullwinkle moose head with antlers festooned by what appeared to be rainbow-hued used-car-lot flags. And who can forget Jessy Nite's Hell Here, a brazen one-night stand in which she recruited a stripper to deliver private lap dances to viewers willing to part with their greenbacks. When it came to Art Basel headline grabs, no local space commanded as much attention last December as Primary, which staged Miru Kim's 104-hour performance I Like Pigs and Pigs Like Me, in which the Korean-American artist wallowed nude with two live hogs in the gallery's storefront window, earning tons of international media attention while stirring controversy with animal advocates.

Best Museum

The Wolfsonian-FIU

Let's face it: Miami is not always seen as the classiest town. Many outsiders still think our idea of art is a stripper's Betty Boop tramp stamp. But if Art Basel and the explosion of Wynwood aren't enough to silence the critics, try taking them to one of the most unique and well curated museums in any city. The Wolfsonian, which was born from a collection belonging to millionaire Mitchell "Micky" Wolfson Jr., is packed with artifacts of modern design, organized in a way that is somewhat random yet cohesive and themed. Creepy German World War I prop­aganda posters are displayed beside a 1920s zeppelin model, which hangs not too far from an art deco hair dryer. It's like a trip to your uncle's attic, if your uncle collected seminal design work and not foam beer koozies. Spend a couple of hours in this beacon of culture — admission is $7 for adults, with Friday nights free — and then feel free to return to a more stereotypical life of G-strings and beer bongs. Open daily noon to 6 p.m. and Friday noon to 9 p.m.; closed Wednesdays. Seniors, students with valid ID, and children ages 6 to 12 pay $5; Wolfsonian members, children under 6, and students, faculty, and staff of the State University System of Florida are admitted free.

Best Art Museum

Museum of Contemporary Art

Celebrating its 15th anniversary, the Museum of Contemporary Art has always had a mission to inspire cultural consciousness among local audiences — the younger the better. Museum director Bonnie Clearwater is a firm believer in arts education and has expanded MOCA's outreach programs to include a museum-studies partnership with Miami-Dade County Public Schools, directly affecting more than 7,000 students in kindergarten through 12th grade. The museum also operates an after-school junior docent program in which students guide peers on tours of exhibits and take journalism workshops to learn to write creatively about art. But Clearwater has also made a name for herself with an eye for discovering fresh talent and giving many rising Miami artists their first museum shows. To date, she has screened the works of more than 200 locals in MOCA's celebrated festival, Optic Nerve. Also, the museum typically draws young families to enjoy free jazz concerts on its lawn every month and consistently mounts some of the most provocative and fresh exhibits during each season. Last year's blockbusters included Mark Handforth's "Rolling Stop," featuring monumental works too large for the museum walls to contain and were exhibited throughout the community, from Griffing Park to Wynwood. Ryan Trecartin's epic series of videos filmed locally, "Any Ever," was a crowd magnet, and MOCA's three-day symposium New Methods, focusing on cutting-edge artistic practices and educational exchange, drew cultural leaders from six countries. It comes as no surprise that Clearwater receives regular letters from former student interns saying that working at MOCA inspired them to pursue art degrees.

Best Acting Ensemble

Cast of So My Grandmother Died, Blah Blah Blah

Overflowing with pop cultural and Wikipedia references, textually dense psychodrama, and existential meanderings, Mad Cat's So My Grandmother Died, Blah Blah Blah was a theater experience that can be described only as tripping balls while journeying through the mind of a girl suffering from severe writer's block. This original production was an amalgam of fascinating characters, a daring story line, and well-timed Oprah jokes, and it took a remarkably talented cast to bring home the crazy. Melissa Almaguer was hilarious as the whirling, harried, emotional hot mess Polly, the Alice of this Wonderland working out her writer's block while dealing with her personal romantic pitfalls and the death of her grandmother. Polly's mind was a minefield of subconscious voices and personalities that came in the form of three "deconstructionists" who were her own personal Greek chorus, played with disturbing brilliance by Troy Davidson, Anne Chamberlain, and Ricky Waugh. The trio hysterically morphed from one personality to another, frantically feeding the audience a healthy dose of information about an eclectic array of subjects via monologues and soliloquies, all while Polly navigated the uproariously convoluted story with her dry wit. In a kinetically paced mind-zonk of a play where comedic timing was everything, no other cast brought it harder — and crazier — than Mad Cat.

Best Art Walk

Art + Design Night

Forget the circus atmosphere of Wynwood's Second Saturdays. A few blocks north, on the same second Saturday of every month, the Design District hosts a much more subdued art walk that's every bit as interesting. What makes this one special is that instead of the wafting smell of fried dishes from food trucks, you have your choice of lauded eateries such as Michael's Genuine Food & Drink (130 NE 40th St.), Sra. Martinez (4000 NE Second Ave.), and Egg & Dart (4029 N. Miami Ave.). Oh, and let's not forget the art. Galleries such as 101/Exhibit (101 NE 40th St.), Bas Fisher Invitational (180 NE 39th St.), Locust Projects (3852 N. Miami Ave.), Primary Projects (4141 NE Second Ave.), FriendsWithYou (3930 NE Second Ave.), and the De la Cruz Collection (23 NE 41st St.) call the area home and exhibit some of Miami and the world's best artists. Parking is plentiful if you arrive early, but beware: Leaving your vehicle in the historic Buena Vista area, which has residential parking only, can spoil your night of art and food by having to pay a visit to the tow yard. If you get there after 8 p.m., hit up one of the four valet stations throughout the district for a measly $3.

Best Basel Headline Grab

Yishay Garbasz

From a drug-filled coffin at a satellite fair to a naked artist lying in the mud with a pair of hogs in a local gallery window, the tenth-anniversary edition of Art Basel featured plenty of weird art to compete with the high-priced masterpieces at the Miami Beach Convention Center. But if there was one artist this past December whose opus raised the bar on headline grabbing, it was Yishay Garbasz's cringe-inducing installation at the Seven Art Fair. The Israeli-born, Berlin-based artist typically explores issues of gender in her work. At Seven, the Bard College-educated photographer presented an arresting suite of self-portraits snapped over the course of a year documenting her gradual transformation through surgery and hormone treatment from man into woman. The powerful pictures, exploring a typically taboo subject, were visceral and compelling in their honesty. But what left tongues wagging was the artist's display of her post-op testicles floating in a jar.

Best Alternative Art Space

6th Street Container

Nestled behind a building housing a barbershop, bakery, dollar store, and tattoo parlor, the unusually configured 6th Street Container has become a hotbed of provocative exhibits far from Wynwood's increasingly commercial spaces. Since opening the space about two years ago, chief curator Adalberto Delgado and director Maria Amores have organized a steady stream of monthly shows featuring seamlessly curated solo and group exhibits notable for their unexpected, experimental nature. This past season, some of the indie art house's offerings included Cat Del Buono's "Vanity Unfair," which skewered the Magic City's obsession with unattainable notions of beauty, and Alma Leiva's En la Celda (Inside the Cell), a site-specific installation evoking political terror in Honduras. For their project "Dome Drift," a cerebral work by the collaborative team of Cristina Molina and Wes Kline, the duo used both the interior of the 6th Street Container and parts of its sprawling courtyard for their exploration of Buckminster Fuller's geodesic dome and its enduring impact on culture and architecture. Last year, the modest Little Havana space was a Knight Arts Challenge finalist for its efforts to promote established local, national, and international artists outside the mainstream, as well as crackerjack emerging talent. Look for the 6th Street Container's initiatives to host international exchange programs, artists' residencies, and local community workshops.

This past February, Miami's art scene lost one of its elite leaders when Ruba Katrib was tapped as the new curator at Long Island City's Sculpture­Center. Before leaving the Magic City, Katrib, the former associate curator at the Museum of Contemporary Art in North Miami (MOCA), left an enduring legacy at the museum by organizing a string of exhibits easily rivaling any top-flight cultural institutions in the nation. With an astute eye for talent and of-the-moment art trends and critical contemporary issues, Katrib gained international attention in 2010 when she organized the first U.S. museum survey of the work of Cory Arcangel and introduced South Florida audiences to the Paris-based collective Claire Fontaine. Prior to landing in South Florida, Katrib, a West Virginia native, had earned her bachelor's degree in visual and critical studies from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and later graduated with a master's degree from Bard College's formidable Center for Curatorial Studies. She went on to found ThreeWalls, a Windy City nonprofit, before moving on to the Centre Pompidou in Paris, where she cultivated an international arts network. Last year, she brought Ryan Trecartin's "Any Ever" to MOCA — hands down one of the top events of the year's arts calendar. She also organized the ambitious group offering "Modify, as Needed" before accepting her new post at the SculptureCenter. Luckily, Katrib, who served as an adjunct professor at the New World School of the Arts, has inspired a fresh crop of talent likely to carry her dynamic vision well into the future.

Best Gallery Exhibit

"The Fabulous Bunny Yeager"

Idolized by several generations for her savory pinups, including the infamous nude photos of Bettie Page that graced the pages of Playboy in its infancy, Bunny Yeager can mark 2011 as the year of her rediscovery. The iconic South Florida shutterbug was the subject of her first museum survey at Pittsburgh's Andy Warhol Museum, where highbrow art swells showered her with some long-overdue love. In Miami, her modest solo, "The Fabulous Bunny Yeager" at Harold Golen, was the first gallery exhibit featuring Yeager as the subject. The tantalizing show featured a luscious collection of rare, never-before-seen self-portraits taken by Yeager during the '50s and '60s. Not only did they quickly become the toast of the town, but the former beauty queen's enduring allure also earned her a spot on New Times' May 5, 2011 cover. Not surprisingly, Yeager's work caught the eye of Berlin-based curator Helmut Schuster, who organized a blockbuster exhibit boasting more than 200 of her eye-scalding pictures this past Art Basel.

Best Art Fair Meltdown

ArteAmericas

For lovers of traditional and contemporary art from Latin America, ArteAmericas has become a darling by mixing big names such as Wifredo Lam and Carlos Cruz-Diez with emerging talent from around the hemisphere. The self-described "boutique fair" typically draws about 50 international and local galleries to the Miami Beach Convention Center, where visitors can discover more traditional museum-quality paintings and sculptures alongside the latest trends in multimedia and video installations. But in 2011, the fair tried spicing up its image with racier works such as dancing dildos and videos of swollen, glowing testicles courtesy of the Wynwood art space LMNT. Although crowds flocked to LMNT's stall to peek into a gold-painted mannequin's backside and observe themselves emerging through its digestive tract in one interactive opus, ArteAmericas' ninth installment soon turned excremental. During the weekend, a vandal scrawled the word shit on local artist Marco Vallela's series of abstract paintings, valued at $8,000. The paintings were removed from the exhibit after Miami Beach police investigated. Then ArteAmericas was in the news again for all the wrong reasons after Cuban painter Agustín Bejarano, who was in town exhibiting at the fair, was busted by Hialeah cops for allegedly sexually assaulting a 5-year-old boy. Let's hope 2012 puts the fair back on its path of celebrating the highlights of Latin American arts.

Best Art Trend

Non-December Fairs

We have to admit to feeling some skepticism when Art Miami director Nick Korniloff announced a new stand-alone fair this past February so quickly on the tails of Art Basel. After all, the economy is stale, and who else besides the one-percenters can afford to buy art? But to everyone's surprise, when Art Wynwood opened on Presidents' Day weekend in midtown Miami during one of the busiest weeks of the season, the gambit paid off. Korniloff, who has steered the once-fading Art Miami back to relevancy during December art week, saw an opportunity in Wynwood. He believed he could create an international fair with homegrown appeal and persuaded local cultural leaders and institutions to back him. The inaugural edition of Art Wynwood featured 50 galleries from 13 countries, with nearly a quarter of the roster culled from Wynwood spaces. Decidedly edgier than its more sedate progenitor Art Miami, Art Wynwood boasted photography, painting, sculpture, video, installation, urban street art, and every conceivable contemporary genre by more than 500 international artists. It was held at Art Miami's sprawling 100,000-square-foot tent pavilion, where a crowd of about 5,000 collectors and culture vultures attended the event's VIP preview. More impressive, Coral Gables' Cernuda Arte reported $400,000 in sales during the five-day confab, while New York-based Westwood Gallery and London's Waterhouse & Dodd each saw their coffers enriched by transactions exceeding six figures. Not only did most of the participant local galleries boast windfall sales for undisclosed amounts, but also nearly every gallery and artist's studio in the neighborhood was overrun by close to 24,000 attendees. While some might scoff at Korniloff's assertion that Wynwood is challenging New York, local dealers' spiking sales at non-Basel fairs can only leave observers feeling optimistic about Miami's art future.

Best Art Fair

Wynwood Art Fair

Three years ago, when Constance Collins Margulies hosted her first annual one-night fundraiser for the Lotus House Women's Shelter at her husband Marty Margulies's capacious art warehouse, little did she dream the event would spill out onto Wynwood's gritty streets to transform the surrounding landscape into a virtual playground for art lovers. The down-home art-happening-cum-charity-shindig transformed a stretch of NW Sixth Avenue between 23rd and 29th streets with multiple stages boasting live music, performances, vaudeville acts, buskers, and impromptu, percussion-led parades by local talent such as the Magic City's FriendsWithYou during the spirited three-day extravaganza. Supported by major museums and more than 30 local galleries and artist spaces from across the 305, the fundraising fair collected upward of $500,000 over the weekend. Everywhere during a postcard-perfect South Florida weekend in October, young families and their children observed and made art in interactive exhibits to support the women of Lotus House, trying to break the bonds of dependency through the uplifting spirit of art.

Best Emerging Artist

Domingo Castillo

If you found yourself in the Design District this past Art Basel, you might have stumbled across one of Domingo Castillo's street posters supposedly advertising a missing cat but actually leading to an alternative space, Dimensions Variable. Castillo created the poster as part of the exhibition "G-Spot: Get the Green Light," which highlighted Miami's rising talent during December's citywide arts confab. Castillo's cat was just one of the red herrings that fill the inscrutable artist's works. At Dimensions Variable, the 23-year-old set up a makeshift karaoke bar for an exhibit titled "Duets." But unless you personally knew Castillo or were the guest of one of his friends, your dreams of joining him on the microphone for a rendition of "Cat's in the Cradle" were dashed. In fact, spectators outside the gallery were the ones who truly got to experience the spirit of the art, which was in fact a commentary on the exclusivity of Basel. Castillo is also one of the founders behind the End/Spring Break, a nomadic art project responsible for some of the quirkiest and most thought-provoking cultural programming in the Big Mango the past year.

Best Actress

Christina Alexander

In Djanet Sears's racially and sexually charged Harlem Duet, Christina Alexander of the M Ensemble portrayed Billie, a woman scorned by her man and betrayed by her mind. While dealing with her husband Othello leaving her for his white co-worker, Billie's mind is in constant flux, unstable and deteriorating, while an uneasiness in her perspective on race throughout the years simmers beneath the surface. A character this complex and layered demands an actress to walk the fine line of sanity and lunacy, of love and hate, and of grace and rage. With her malleable expressions and darting, vulnerable eyes, Alexander was able to capture perfectly the delicate balance of Billie's perception of Othello's betrayal — not just that he left her, but that he left her for an intellectually equal white woman — while confronting him with her own viewpoints on interracial relationships. She deftly allowed Billie's psychosis to seep in gradually, staying even-keeled when confronting Othello, even as she wrestled with her personal demons in solitude, while plotting her revenge. A richly drawn character such as Billie demands versatility, and Alexander's portrayal was a delicate balance of sincerity and maddening rejection.

Best International Arts Project by Locals

Kulturpark

At an abandoned amusement park in the former German Democratic Republic, weeds cover roller coasters, and an orchard of colossal toppled, graffitied dinosaur statues is reminiscent of the fall of the Berlin Wall. The surreal landscape is a model playground for artists to explore, and to Miami's Anthony Spinello and Agustina Woodgate, the "Kulturpark" represented the ideal public art project. It was also a perfect vehicle to launch South Florida talent onto the international stage. The local duo joined forces with Elsewhere Collaborative's George Scheer and Stephanie Sherman to transform the dilapidated East Berlin landmark into a sustainable, cultural gathering place overflowing with art. The organizers were joined by a collaborative team of more than 30 Berlin and U.S.-based creative types — including several hailing from the 305 — in the ambitious undertaking. They raised funds for the project and are planning a program for New World School of the Arts students to visit the site and have recruited the folks behind the Magic City's own End/Spring Break to weigh in with an experimental radio program as part of Radio Espacio Estacion, Woodgate's online radio platform for the multiculti swap. Don't be surprised if these art-scene ambassadors soon return with plans to invite their Berlin cohorts to leave their marks on our side of the Atlantic.

Best Arts Collective

RAW: Natural Born Artists

Here's the funny thing about arts in Miami: As the scene expands, it becomes harder and harder to break in as a new talent. After all, the more artists there are in this city, the more people are competing for attention. Much like Survivor, if you don't have an alliance, you're likely to get voted off the island. So RAW: Natural Born Artists did the arts community a solid when it launched in May. "My responsibility is to find great artists to represent Miami," spokesperson Rosana Emanuelli says. "It is going to be a little bit of everything." Everything, in this case, includes visual art, as well as music, fashion, film, hair, makeup, and performance art. And that's not because RAW organizers were too flighty to narrow things down. (Well, maybe it was in part — they are creative types, after all.) The group's inaugural event, which took over Design District nightclub the Stage in May, boasted musical performances by the Dude and the Deadly Blank, live painting by Floyd the Rock Artist, body art by Stay Sea Love and Pamela Trent, and art exhibits on just about every wall in the place. And nearly all of it was for sale or hire on site, providing the artists with the one thing all artists need: a marketplace. As perks of joining an arts alliance go, it doesn't get any better than that.

Best Street Artist

Ruben Ubiera

What makes Ruben Ubiera so special? He eschews traditional canvases for urban-associated items such as the sides of buildings, skateboards, and scrapped wooden fencing. But then, so do a lot of painters. The difference is that his work gives a touch of humanity to city corners that would look otherwise desolate. His signature tag isn't just a name scrawled in spray paint; it's the combination of his inimitable style and unexpected subject matter (think giant gorillas). This artist's work is one part graffiti art and one part classical illustration fused with plenty of Miami soul. Born in the Dominican Republic, Ubiera came to South Florida by way of New York City to attend the Art Institute of Fort Lauderdale on a full scholarship. His career as an artist began traditionally, rather than in the DIY manner of most street artists. But his vision of Miami through overlapping abstractions and collages is more at home on the sides of Wynwood's buildings and in the neighborhood's lesser-known art fairs than in traditional art spaces. In the sterility of a gallery, his work reads like the work of a graphic novelist surveying Miami one portrait at a time. And that's cool and all. But it's best viewed within the world that inspired it, where the imperfections of the raw wood and 3-D effect of the skateboards he paints complement their surroundings, and vice versa. It's street-inspired art that, in a way, inspires the street itself.

Best Arts Outreach

Florida Grand Opera

Social media innovations. Flash mobs. Wynwood Second Saturday Art Walk performances. They sound like the attention-getting tactics of a young start-up arts collective. But the cultural organization that's making the biggest push for new audiences this year isn't a new one. In fact, it's been around for 71 seasons. It's Florida Grand Opera. FGO wants your ass in its audience, and it's going to great lengths to achieve it. In February, the opera's performers infiltrated Miami International Airport as part of the Knight Foundation's Random Acts of Culture. Dressed in plain clothes, they emerged from café lines and waiting areas to perform six times at gates throughout the terminals, to the delight of travelers who otherwise had nothing but stale coffee and flight delays to look forward to. FGO followed that spectacle with an announcement that was truly uncharacteristic, especially for an artistic medium as traditional as opera: The company was offering special seating at its shows for patrons who wanted to be able to use their cell phones, tablets, and other electronic devices during the performance. Tech-obsessed culture seekers could geek out to their hearts' content, sharing photos, tweeting, and even live-blogging from the shows themselves. Next came FGO's performances at the Dorsch Gallery during Second Saturday Art Walk in April, a showcase designed to appeal to an unlikely audience — hipsters. The Dorsch was packed for every performance that night. In an arts community as rapidly evolving as Miami's, innovative ideas are the only thing that'll hold anyone's interest for long.

Best Film Festival

Miami International Film Festival

At the last edition of the Miami International Film Festival, a Chilean film called Bonsái took home the big prize. But let's be honest: We were all winners. Over the course of a week and a half, we had the opportunity to watch more than 100 movies. And not just any movies — films vetted by MIFF's selection committee that were specifically designed to appeal to a local Miami audience. We got to feel pretty damn special about it too, because plenty of those movies made their South Florida premiere, their U.S. premiere, their North American premiere, and, yes, even their very first screening anyplace in the world right here in the Magic City. (The Showtime TV drama Magic City also hosted a red-carpet screening of its pilot episode at this year's fest.) The Miami International Film Festival is the biggest movie party in town in terms of numbers of films, special events, and celebrities who trek to the tropics for red-carpet appearances and post-screening Q&A sessions. Though we love the other, more niche-focused festivals that come through town each year, MIFF is the one that offers the broadest vision of the world from a South Florida point of view. That's a vision that's hard to beat.

Best Art-House Cinema

O Cinema

Miami's art-house scene has grown exponentially over the past year, and O Cinema is leading the way. The Wynwood theater, which opened only two years ago, is already keeping up with its peers in the 305, bringing national and international indie films to town. In the past 12 months, it has shown off buzz-worthy festival favorites such as Lars von Trier's Melancholia and niche films like Tomboy, which made waves on the GLBT scene. But it's O Cinema's focus on Miami — both its filmmakers and its audience — that sets this art house apart. From the best of the Borscht Film Festival's shorts, to a documentary featuring the badass local NSFW rapper Blowfly, to March's ten-year Rakontur retrospective, O is clearly devoted to showing off our city. And not just its film side — the theater's OMG Dinner and a Movie series lets viewers pig out on food by local chef gone big Michael Schwartz, making it the only theater in Miami where you can enjoy a bona fide dinner (read: not just popcorn and hot dogs) with your show. The folks at O Cinema clearly love the Magic City as much as we do, and that only makes us love them more.

Best Movie Theater

CineBistro at Dolphin Mall

Dinner and a movie. It's been a classic date combo since the early days of the silver screen. You fill up on tasty food, take in a rom-com while you digest, and if all goes well, return home to get it on. But this is Miami, where all rarely goes well. Traffic sucks, you can get caught in a rainstorm at any second, and public transportation is essentially nonexistent — all of which means getting you and your date from the restaurant to the movie theater can be a frustrating, and potentially sex-sabotaging, process. Unless, that is, you've taken your date to CineBistro, where the restaurant is the movie theater and vice versa. CineBistro shows all the big-name movies you'll find at every other theater in the 305. But show up at the Dolphin Mall location at least 30 minutes before showtime and you can select from a full menu of appetizers, main courses, and desserts to eat while you watch. There's also booze galore: wine, beer, and specialty cocktails. So you get to watch a movie with a real drink in your hand, as opposed to a Sprite bottle filled with vodka that you smuggled in. And you won't have to worry about kids crying or shuffling off to the bathroom every five minutes, because this theater doubles as a bar, so CineBistro movies are 21-plus only. It all adds up to the most convenient, hassle-free movie experience in Miami — getting there, getting fed, and getting through a whole feature film without annoyances. Getting laid afterward is, of course, up to you.

Best Pop-Up Event

Live Young, Skate On!

What elevates a random gathering of people to "pop-up event" status? In the case of Live Young, Skate On!, it was a couple of things: Live entertainment, celebrity appearances, and a world record to break. Evian invited all Miamians to converge on Collins Park this past April 7 for a pop-up roller-skating party, complete with free skates, backpacks, and freaky T-shirts designed to make participants look like their heads were attached to the bodies of infants. Folks from all walks of life signed up, from wobbly-legged skating beginners to the Roll Crew team, whose members showed off with handstands and other crazy tricks on wheels. A DJ spun '80s hits, and the CoolHaus ice-cream truck served frozen treats. Actress Gabrielle Union even made an appearance, joining a roller skate conga line. Union's participation alone certainly made Live Young, Skate On! the pop-up event of the year for at least one attendee (the guy who got to skate behind her with his hands on her hips, naturally). But the rest of the participants had an awesome time too. Amid the retro fun of roller skating, watching Roll Crew's stunts, and taking goofy pictures in the free photo booth, they set a record for world's longest roller-skating conga line — verified by on-site RecordSetter officials to be 197 people — making Live Young, Skate On! a pop-up event that will go down in history.

At the end of every lunar month (approximately 29.53 days), a beautiful downtown Miami mansion was overrun by hard-core Earth fanatics, semi-ironic hippies, and amateur astrology enthusiasts who came to worship that bright, white rock in the sky by flipping tarot cards, syncing menstrual cycles, peddling homemade holistic anklets, instigating furious drum circles, and dancing barefoot till Mother Moon revealed the secrets of the universe. Yes, it was a full-moon party. And until recently, it went down at Villa 221, a palatial 8,500-square-foot nightlife compound within drunken-stumbling distance of the Burger King and Checkers on Biscayne Boulevard at NE 17th Street. Of course, a Villa party isn't always about barefoot worshipers passed out on comfy circular sofas and making out in the moonlight. The recently restored 1920s Spanish-style estate also caters to scuzzy SoFla scenesters, international EDM jet-setters, and entertainment industry pros by hosting local record releases, marathon 16-hour raves during Winter Music Conference and Miami Music Week, and even New Times' own Artopia bash this year. The Villa is the exceedingly rare place where lunar-deity devotees, long-haired hipsters, ecstatic fist-pumpers, alt-weekly writers-for-hire, and even Mother Moon herself can party together in perfect harmony.

Ana Menéndez's fourth book, Adios, Happy Homeland!, is structured as a collection of stories by Cuban writers spanning several decades. Though the stories are presented as unrelated, each one slyly shifts into the next and the different voices build to a chorus trying to make sense of what it is to leave home. The book isn't about where people come from but where they go when their homeland ceases to be their own. One boy thinks Miami is "someplace in the sky" after his father "turned him to face the smell of the ocean and pointed up through the leaves, [saying,] 'Miami is that way.'" Elián González haunts several sections, but otherwise the book points outward from Cuba in as many directions as there are stories. Grifters import luxury chocolates instead of food for children, Miami office drones swap Castro speeches for cubicle-tacked slogans ("Become a possibilitarian!"), and men back in Cuba grow wings. Borges and Bolaño are obvious influences, and though Cuba is present on every page, this is a book of and about Miami. Menéndez spent years as a Miami Herald reporter and columnist, but she wrote most of this book in the Netherlands and continues to split her time between Maastricht and Miami. Her work offers a stunning glimpse of a city often too occluded by its own magic to be seen from within. It's an essential read for anyone who has forgotten the many ways Miami shifts to fit the dreams of its every new arrival.

Gregg Weiner is the only South Florida-based actor who has the stage presence and physical instincts to sink himself into the skin of such a force of nature as Mark Rothko, the brilliant Russian-born American expressionist who's the subject of John Logan's one-act, semibiographical play Red. With a shaved head and middle-aged paunch, Weiner was grounded yet forceful as Rothko — a man so fraught with conviction he can't help but bludgeon his young assistant with overbearing speeches about art and its role as myth in society. Rothko could be an imperious, domineering personality, but Weiner, with his artful baritone inflection, nuanced humor, and genuine humanity, made the ornery artist a likable and oftentimes sympathetic figure. It's not easy bringing a troubled genius to life before a live audience night after night. It takes a robust, bombastic, yet adaptable actor to become someone like Rothko, yet Weiner pulled it off masterfully, and the result was another triumph for GableStage.

Best Memoir

American Desperado, by Jon Roberts and Evan Wright

Carl Hiaasen — South Florida's reigning king of fiction that's almost as unbelievable as local headlines — once said of his novels' bad guys: "I always try to burden even the villains with some weird predilection they have to cope with. It helps make them memorable and gives them a human side." Former drug smuggler Jon Roberts, who achieved an outlaw's fame when he costarred in the documentary Cocaine Cowboys, was as gleefully villainous as any literary character. He was a mob thug turned Vietnam War murderer — readily admitting to skinning Vietcong alive and killing village women and children — turned filthy rich and incredibly violent coke importer. He once eluded cops by kicking through the windows of two squad cars, while handcuffed, leaving a trail of hundred-dollar bills behind him. Hell, in 2009, he threatened the life of a reporter from this publication. But in his memoir, American Desperado, his co-author, accomplished war journalist Evan Wright, somehow dragged enough weird predilections out of Roberts to make the old, evil bastard sympathetic. At one point, Roberts, an unlikely animal lover, recalled his deep fondness for a glass room he constructed in his Delray Beach house. During wild South Florida electrical storms, he liked to lie there with his model wife, his 150-pound pet cougar named Cucha, and his killer dogs, and watch rain lash the glass. He had spent his teenage years as a bloodthirsty orphan after his mafioso dad was deported and his mother passed away. Roberts died in horrible, karmic fashion from the rapid spread of cancer a month after the memoir was published. But the sparely described image of him ensconced behind glass with his strange, makeshift family, marveling at the natural power of a storm, said something about the swaggering bad guy's perpetual loneliness. And, even more remarkably, about his vulnerability.

Best Miami Herald Reporters

Michael Sallah and Carol Marbin Miller

This year, the Miami Herald was a Pulitzer finalist for its series "Neglected to Death," about horrifying abuse and deadly neglect in Florida's assisted living facilities. The series was reported by Michael Sallah and Carol Marbin Miller — along with Rob Barry, who has since left the paper — and as a result of their yearlong investigation, 13 offending facilities were shut down and the state penalized nearly three dozen others. Lives were saved — lives of otherwise marginalized, voiceless, defenseless people like so many of the others whose stories were told in "Neglected to Death." Is there a better use of newsprint than that? As important as this series has been, it's worth noting that it isn't unlike the other work Sallah and Marbin Miller have produced during their careers. Sallah has won two Pulitzers for reporting on war crimes and public housing corruption, and Marbin Miller has done incalculable good in chronicling child welfare problems in the state. If you see either of their bylines above an article, it's a safe bet that what follows is essential reading that will reverberate in Florida well past the final punctuation mark.

Best Radio Show

Under the Sun

Earlier this year, journalist Terence Cantarella re-created a two-decade-old experiment by legendary Miami New Times writer Sean Rowe. Like Rowe, Cantarella bought a canoe, launched it into Biscayne Bay, and navigated all of Miami-Dade County via its neglected canals. Instead of writing about the trip, though, Cantarella told his story primarily through audio. In Dade, there's only one place for that kind of radio storytelling: WLRN's narrative innovator, Under the Sun. After Cantarella paddled his way through the Biltmore Golf Course, battled hordes of mosquitoes, and discovered that locals are way friendlier than advertised (someone even left a cooler of cold beer out for him!), he told his tale on Under the Sun. It's exactly the kind of project the show has pioneered — from narratives about religion in Haiti after a devastating earthquake to a series of personal stories of real Miamians — and won numerous awards for, including an Edward R. Murrow prize and regional awards from the Society of Professional Journalists. Whatever story Under the Sun tells, we'll be listening.

Best FM Radio Personality

Bo the Lover

Brindley "Bo the Lover" Marshall might not be the best-known radio personality in Miami, and he's certainly not the slickest, but he's definitely the hardest working and most consistent. The founder of Hot 97.7 FM ("The hottest, hypest radio station in South Florida"), which is by most accounts the longest-running underground station in Miami, can be heard at all hours of the day and night. In fact, if we hadn't heard him stumble over the same word on a few occasions, we might have figured he was broadcasting live 24/7. Highly regarded in the local hip-hop community for his early support of artists such as Trick Daddy, Trina, and Brianna, Bo the Lover has also been an indispensable asset to the local pirate radioscape. He emerged as a spokesman of sorts for airwave pirates after a 1999 FCC raid, which briefly shut down his station, and he's been a vocal supporter of Hot 97.7's home base of Liberty City, where he has led drives to raise money for families of murder victims. Perhaps most important, in an era of highly formatted radio programming, Bo the Lover is one of the few remaining DJs who emphasize spirited conversation and music in equal measure.

Best AM Radio Personality

Dan Le Batard

Sports talk radio is largely a vast, arid wasteland of vapid, mind-numbing obtuseness. Angry, failed, and washed-up athletes-turned-mike-jocks saturate the airwaves with meathead nonsense that feeds the bloated beast of sports cliché and celebrates antiquated and lazy-minded notions of sports myth and misinformation. But then there's Dan Le Batard and his afternoon drive show on 790 the Ticket offering a refreshing alternative. Yes, this is the same Dan Le Batard who wanted to get into the human element of Ricky Williams's abrupt retirement from the Miami Dolphins in 2004 when everyone else simply wanted to burn the running back in effigy. This is the same Dan Le Batard who can come across as a condescending, player-apologist, let's-make-every-topic-somehow-about-race know-it-all. But the Cuban-American University of Miami grad is also mostly right. And he's a fan of fun. Le Batard is as intelligent as he is silly — equal parts college professor and clown. And that's exactly why his is the highest-rated sports talk program on the radio from 3 to 7 every weekday. Along with cohost John "Stugotz" Weiner — who plays the perfect foil to Dan's academic, abstract, and nontraditional take on sports — Le Batard covers everything from Miami's pro and college teams to pop culture and animals. And it's his love of stats, intellectual discourse, and self-deprecating humor that make him a must-listen for all Miami sports fans. That, and his hilarious viral YouTube rants about the Miami Heat.

Best Spanish-Language Radio Personalities

Ricardo Brown and Lourdes Ubieta

Every weekday, Ricardo Brown and Lourdes Ubieta provide Miami with a double dose of politics. Their show on Actualidad (WURN-AM, 1020) is like a cortadito to the cerebral cortex, skipping from local news to national and international politics so easily that before you know it, you've forgone your usual afternoon siesta and actually learned something. Unlike many Hispanic radio personalities, however, they don't ignore Anglo or African-American Miami. Case in point: They interviewed Miami New Times columnist Luther Campbell last year when he ran for mayor. On a recent show, Brown, a Cuban who has won four Emmy Awards and traveled more widely than Anderson Cooper, discussed the Trayvon Martin killing with a leading Miami attorney. In his warm, deep voice, Brown expressed disbelief that Sanford police had threatened journalists reporting the case. "How are they going to arrest you for sending an email to a public figure whose information might be important in a death investigation?" he asked. "As far as I know, asking questions is still legal in the United States." Alongside Brown, Ubieta's rapid-fire, Venezuelan-accented commentary and incisive wit come in handy for fielding the dozens of calls the duo takes on the air every day. Together, they're a doble espreso de noticias instead of that weak, watered-down stuff on other stations.

Best Director

Lowell Williams

Djanet Sears's meticulously complex Harlem Duet is a provocative play that deals with race, sex, and mental illness in the black community. When the M Ensemble performed the play in March, the troupe turned to University of Miami drama professor Lowell Williams to take on the challenge of bringing out all of the show's multifaceted and nuanced layers. Williams, who holds a master's degree in psychology from Kent State, took an eclectic and talented cast and coached it into performing one of the finer dramas on a Miami stage in some time. The ever-modest Williams swore that his cast, made up of veterans such as John Archie and up-and-comers such as Ethan Henry, made the play excel. But tackling subjects such as interracial marriage and sexual politics in the African-American community takes a strong hand steering the production. Williams's direction was particularly crucial for the role of Billie, a woman dealing with a deteriorating psyche, played by Christina Alexander (not coincidentally our winner this year for Best Actress). "I told Christina that she can't play both sane and insane at one time," Williams said. "I told her not to get caught up in trying to bleed them together. A lot of actors make the mistake of playing competing emotions at the same time." The result was an outstanding performance from Alexander and a powerful, resonant production from the M Ensemble.

Best Hurricanes Football Player

Lamar Miller

With all the handwringing that University of Miami fans were doing last year, they might have missed a historic, lineman-shredding effort by their sophomore running back. While former booster Nevin Shapiro was promising to destroy UM football and a decidedly mediocre 6-6 season unraveled on the field, Lamar Miller accomplished something no Cane had done in nearly a decade: topping 1,000 yards on the ground. (The last guy to do it? You may have heard of Willis McGahee.) In Miller's first season as a starter, the five-foot-11, 212-pound Miami Killian Senior High grad stiff-armed his way to seven different hundred-yard games, bashed in nine touchdowns, and finished with 1,272 yards on the year. Sadly for the orange-and-green, soon after his final game, the 20-year-old wrecking ball tweeted a farewell to the U — "It was a blessing to be a Miami Hurricane," he wrote — and declared for the NFL draft. Let's hope someone at Dolphins HQ took note of the righteous ass-kicking Miller left on the field in his last year in Coral Gables.

Best Tennis Courts

Tropical Park Tennis Center

Unless you live in Southwest Dade, the Tropical Park Tennis Center isn't exactly convenient — but therein lies its unique appeal. You can actually nab a court without lurking for hours or booking days or weeks in advance. Sure, reservations are recommended during the peak hours of 6 to 9 p.m. (courts are open till 10 Monday through Thursday and 8:15 on weekends), but stop by on a weekday afternoon and you and your partner might just find yourselves playing in solitude. The dozen courts are well manicured, with few if any of the disorienting cracks that mar most public tennis courts. And if you find yourself in a queue for a court, there's almost always room to practice your stroke on one of eight nearby racquetball courts. Plus the price isn't bad: $3 per person per hour before 6 p.m. and $4 thereafter.

Best Movie Shot on Location

Life and Freaky Times of Uncle Luke

Plenty of films were shot in Miami this year. But only one of them featured the life story of 2 Live Crew's Luther "Uncle Luke" Campbell, as told by two of our city's quirkiest and most entertaining artists: filmmakers Jillian Mayer and Lucas Leyva. Are we biased, considering that both Leyva and Mayer have won New Times MasterMind Awards and that Uncle Luke writes a column for our publication? Perhaps. But we're sure as hell not alone in fawning over this film. Life and Freaky Times of Uncle Luke received a rousing welcome at festivals from Sundance to South by Southwest. (It might have been in part due to the filmmakers' creative additions to the festivals' swag bags: whoopee cushions printed with a cartoon version of Uncle Luke.) Life and Freaky Times injected homegrown Miami talent into the international film scene. But it's also simply a damn fine movie, immersing the ever-entertaining Uncle Luke inside a fantasy world of Mayer's creation, featuring cartoonish, colorful handmade sets and adorably lo-fi special effects. There are booties and boobs and science and more booties and a whole lot of screaming. At one point, a character confirms to Luke what we've known all along: "According to our extensive research, you are the realest nigga in Miami." And it all proves that 20 years and a genre change later, Miami's artists are still as nasty as they wanna be.

Best Musical

Million Dollar Quartet

The true-life events of the Million Dollar Quartet jam session of December 4, 1956 — when Elvis Presley and Johnny Cash popped in to Sam Phillips's legendary studio Sun Records to catch a Carl Perkins recording session while up-and-coming piano rocker Jerry Lee Lewis sat in — are found scattered through biographies, a scratchy recording, and word-of-mouth accounts. The account is more apocryphal than actual history, but this dazzling musical transported audiences to that fateful afternoon of the winter of '56. The actors portraying the iconic foursome oozed gobs of talent. With voice and movement, they blew away the crowd. They didn't just mimic the foursome; they slipped into their skins. Even more impressive was that the performers played their own instruments. Lee Ferris shone as the often-frustrated Carl Perkins, and his phenomenal guitar solos were the highlight of each song. Derek Keeling as Johnny Cash was superb, bringing down the house when his booming baritone belted out "Folsom Prison Blues" and "I Walk the Line." Cody Slaughter nailed it as the young, sexually charged Elvis, with his swiveling hips, crooked smile, and country-boy humility. And the production's standout was Martin Kaye as the kinetic and cocky Jerry Lee Lewis. Million Dollar Quartet was at once a time capsule, a concert, and a celebration of the birth of rock through myth, magic, and music.

Best TV Show Set in Miami

Magic City

It's the middle of the day on Ocean Drive a half-century ago. Cuban men sit in folding chairs on the grassy strip now known as Lummus Park, strumming tiny guitars and singing in Spanish. A businessman in a breezy white suit approaches and lingers for a moment to enjoy the music. Behind them, shiny pastel cars glide past pedestrians in circle skirts and cat's-eye sunglasses. Everything, from the familiar façades of the hotels in the background to the sepia tinge that the late-afternoon sun casts in the summertime, is picture-perfect Miami. Scenes such as those are what elevate Magic City from a standard premium-cable corruption drama to a loving homage to Miami's past. Sure, this town had its problems back in the day: political unrest brewing in Cuba, union scuffles and workers' disputes here at home, and just as many shady dealings then as today. But those times are the foundation upon which the city we call home was built, and this Starz drama does them justice. For that reason alone, you gotta love it. Of course, that's not the only reason to watch. Like any good cable show, Magic City treats viewers to healthy doses of T&A, with copious sex scenes steaming up the already-humid air. Plus, the performances that Jeffrey Dean Morgan and company turn in are as convincing as the scenery itself — and yes, the action was filmed in Miami, not some L.A. set designer's version of it. Magic City's elements combine into a sexy, stylish, sleazy, dramatic, and addictive package — much like Miami itself.

Best TV News Anchor

Laurie Jennings

Three haiku about Laurie Jennings:

Soft! Lighter than air,

She glides behind her news desk

In a chair sans wheels.

United Way... eh.

Her community service

Is her smile, homey.

Her calm, sexy voice,

Her face on every screen

When robots take over.

As host of NBC 6's 6 in the Mix, Roxanne Vargas doesn't get to cover the same breaking news stories she reports for the station's morning show. But she goes into each cooking segment and "Melt-Proof Make-Up" item with unflagging enthusiasm and genuine interest. As a result, she elicits unexpected responses and humanity from guests who thought they were going on television simply to spend a couple of minutes talking about what swimsuit is best for your butt. Take, for example, her interview with Nicolas Cage, whom she took as seriously as she would have taken the pope. Vargas asked of Cage's oft-ridiculed role as the flaming-skulled Ghost Rider: "What was it like essentially to embrace this dual role?" Cage, unexpectedly, gave a reasoned and interesting answer: "Anyone who has lived for eight years with the curse of his head exploding in flames and turning into a skull would go a little nuts. And this movie allowed me to go there and open that door." That's the most sense Nick Cage has made in a decade.

One day, we'd like to see Gary Nelson dressed in a tweed suit and a fedora as he narrates pulp noir novels on the stage of a local theater. He possesses the perfect baritone to match his skills as a storyteller. Even when reporting on the mundane, everyday events of the evening news, Nelson keeps viewers on the edge of their seats. Born and raised in Gainesville, Nelson has never left the Sunshine State during his 42-year broadcasting career, although he has gone on many overseas assignments that landed him several Emmy and Associated Press honors. Among his award-winning pieces was a 2008 exposé on former Miami police chief John Timoney receiving a free Lexus, and his revelations last year that more charter schools failed the FCAT than public schools in Miami-Dade and Broward. The wily journalist is a master at landing scoops. He was the first to interview Frank Acosta, a student at Barbara Goleman High who was arrested for stabbing a classmate who allegedly attacked him. More recently, Nelson was the first reporter to bum-rush Peyton Manning when he came to Miami shortly after the hall-of-fame quarterback was released by the Indianapolis Colts.

Best Spanish-Language TV Personality

Jorge Ramos

Jorge Ramos is hard to miss. Long before Anderson Cooper was strutting around conflict zones in a tight black T-shirt, the original silver fox was stalking presidents for exclusive interviews. During his 27 years at Univision, Ramos has helped grow the Spanish-language station into one of the most powerful in the Americas. Since starting his Sunday morning talk show Al Punto in 2007, he has almost single-handedly shown that Hispanics are a political force to be reckoned with. He has interviewed Barack Obama, Mitt Romney, Newt Gingrich, and even Arizona's vigilante sheriff, Joe Arpaio. Yet despite his international reach, Ramos is far from the first name you think of when it comes to Miami's prensa power brokers. One reason is that Ramos — Mexican-born but now an American citizen — and his station cater to a mostly Mexican audience. Univision's studio may be in Doral, but its audience has traditionally been in Texas, California, or New York, not Florida. But a recent spat between Ramos and Florida Sen. Marco Rubio proves that Univision's relevance — along with its audience — is growing in Miami. After months of trying to track down Rubio for an interview, Univision execs told the senator that Al Punto would run a story about how his brother-in-law had past convictions for drug trafficking. If the senator granted Ramos an interview, however, the stand-alone story might not air, they allegedly said. Rubio's team leaked news of the negotiations to the Miami Herald and the story exploded. But the flap didn't dent Ramos's popularity. If anything, it just showed his expanding influence. El zorro plateado is here to stay.

Best Meteorologist

Max Mayfield

During hurricane season, Miamians need gravitas and real experience to firmly pull their eyes to that terrifying map swirling behind their meteorologist's frantically waving arms. Max Mayfield, more than anyone else in town, knows when to cover up and get out of a hurricane's way. Some meteorologists do their reporting by putting the top down on their drive to work, but Mayfield's street cred is real. After predicting weather for the Air Force, he spent 35 years at the National Hurricane Center, including seven as its director. The guy lives extreme weather; his favorite Bible verse is Matthew 7:24-27, which is about rain and flooding. Is his favorite Billy Joel album Storm Front? If his son misbehaved, would Mayfield call him "El Niño"? We may never know, but you can count on this: When hurricane season rolls around, Mayfield is there with his easy smile and Oklahoma drawl.

Best Twitter Feed

@LoMoMarlins

Last year, the Florida Marlins were laughably bad. Led by octogenarian manager Jack McKeon, the Fish finished dead last in the National League East with an abysmal record of 72-90. Fans could only sit back and sarcastically applaud as the season fell apart. This year, however, the Marlins are no laughing matter. A new stadium and several high-profile free-agent signings mean the team is a serious playoff contender. So thank God for Logan Morrison. The outfielder's tweets have gotten him in trouble in the past, but we read them just to keep our spirits up. Sometimes LoMo's feed is an all-too-intimate narration of his day — for example, this recent gem: "That awkward moment when you're able to muffle a giant fart, then realize it smells like Bigfoot's dick..." He excels when poking fun at fellow celebrities: "In #26hours @justinbieber's new single #Boyfriend drops. Im gonna have 2 call my physician bc this erection is goin 2 last longer than 4 hrs..." Many of his tweets mock his own romantic life. For instance, before a spring-training game against the Angels, he tweeted opposing pitcher C.J. Wilson: "Hey @Str8edgeracer if you tweet my cell # out & encourage chicks to MMS me pics, ill only fly out to deep RF off of you. Deal?" But what makes Morrison a must-follow is his interaction with his 100,000-plus followers. When one fan tweeted him: "LoMo hows it feel that u got drafted for $4 in our fantasy league," Morrison didn't skip a beat. "Still not the worst thing ive done for $4."

For a so-called amateur blogger, Bill Cooke sure breaks a hell of a lot of interesting stories. In fact, with his run of recent scoops, the professional photographer could be a star in any local newsroom. Instead, he's one of the most feared nemeses in at least one local newsroom in particular: the Miami Herald. The Doral-bound daily is Cooke's most frequent target on his blog, Random Pixels. Sometimes he's just parsing the Herald's stories, critiquing the editors, or creating hilarious fake front pages. Other times he's leaking internal emails, as he did when a sportswriter belittled a colleague's coverage of rumors about an old hookup between Sarah Palin and former Miami Heat star Glen Rice. And sometimes he's just embarrassing the daily by beating it to big stories — from his recent revelation that two Miami Beach cops were suspended for drinking on the job and speeding on camera, to breaking the news about the Beach's choice for its next police chief, to introducing the world to a naked Miami woman immortalized in a Google Maps photo.

Carried by Gregg Weiner's forceful performance and Joseph Adler's tight direction, GableStage's Red was a strongly acted and dense portrait of a complex, flawed, and opinionated man. The venerable one-act drama about the brilliant Russian-born American painter Mark Rothko (played by Weiner) hurled symbolism, existentialism, and Friedrich Nietzsche all up in the audience's face like an abstract expressionist dousing a canvas with paint. At its core, the play is a series of snapshots of the artist's mind through visceral moments where he admonishes his young assistant Ken (played by Ryan Didato) while also feigning indifference and bitching about everything that's wrong with world culture. Weiner's blistering performance revealed the artist as a complicated, narcissistic soul who was deeply influenced by Nietzscheism and who viewed himself as a fading giant in a postmodern world. Adler's masterful direction made an otherwise incomprehensible genius accessible and human. Held together by an absorbing classical soundtrack, set designer Lyle Baskin's stripped-down lighting, and the two actors who delivered playwright John Logan's heavily intellectualized prose with adept skill, Red was everything a profound and engaging drama should be.

Best New Play

So My Grandmother Died, Blah Blah Blah

Mad Cat Theatre's Paul Tei wanted to explore the impact the Internet has on our lives. His aim was to reveal how communication has been stifled. And with his play So My Grandmother Died, Blah Blah Blah, he channeled our very real struggles with pain, loss, family, love, and resolve through his protagonist Polly's whirling mind's eye. Tei's brilliantly twisted play was an amalgam of witty comedy, textually dense psychodrama, trippy-ass quests of intellectual expression, philosophical meanderings, and comedic kitsch, with some existentialism thrown in for good measure. Melissa Almaguer played Polly, a struggling comedy writer who flew to Hollywood, Florida, from Hollywood, California, to attend her grandmother's funeral and write the eulogy. As she opened her laptop to begin writing, the audience became Alice in Polly's Wonderland of imagination. Her subconscious, made up of four zany "deconstructionists," was the audience's guide on a quest involving lost love, Wikipedia entries, and emotional baggage. It was a furious, frenzied production where we were plunged into the mind of a writer while she trudged through personal issues, relationships with family members, and a challenging career, all while trying to kick a stubborn case of writer's block as she penned a eulogy for her dead grandmother. Writer/director Tei understands that theater doesn't resonate like it should without a nuanced script, fascinating characters, a daring and original story, and just the right amount of crazy. So My Grandmother Died, Blah Blah Blah delivered on all counts.

Best Supporting Actor

Teo Castellanos

GableStage's The Brothers Size, a play about three men dealing with their past and struggling to grasp their future, featured extraordinary performances by its three stars. But it was the textured, nuanced performance from Teo Castellanos as the enigmatic Elegba that imbued the production with understated power. Castellanos's portrayal was a surreptitious and seductive one. Moving languidly across the stripped-down, darkened stage with cat-like stealth, the actor brought a tortured yet furtive anguish to a complex and haunted character. With a perfect blend of charisma, vulnerability, and honesty, Castellanos made Elegba a sympathetic and tragic figure, taking the play's shady protagonist and making him wholly likable. In an all-around masterful showing from an actor who knows how to play in the shadows, Castellanos proved once again he is South Florida's premier actor's actor.

Best View

Miami skyline from the Julia Tuttle Causeway

Miami may be a tropical paradise, but life in the 305 is still life. You still waste days in line at the dreary DMV, argue with your significant other, get the flu, trap yourself in a cubicle, and eat frozen meals at your desk. But sometimes — on a Tuesday morning when you're stuffing processed muffins down your throat while speeding to work, for instance — you look out the window and think, Holy shit. Where do I live? Westbound on the Julia Tuttle Causeway, connecting I-195 to Miami Beach, the skyline opens up in all its coke-snorting, '80s-era glory. Biscayne Bay shimmers and ripples with speedboats and Jet Skis. To the left of the high-rises, cruise ships churn away from the Port of Miami. Palm trees lining the causeway are adorned with neon halos. The sky is pristine and cloudless or, conversely, before a downpour, a dramatic bruised gray. You can almost hear the synth of the Miami Vice theme song. You still have to make that presentation to your boss today. You still have to slice through the plastic on your mac 'n' cheese before placing it in your workplace's splattered microwave. But knowing you have this drive to look forward to — that this is your commute — makes you feel like the benefactor of incredible cosmic luck. And the fact that the City of Miami once forced sex offenders to live under this very bridge? That somehow just makes your good fortune seem even more miraculous.

Best Radio Station

Radiate FM (WRGP)

In 2004, before he was an Emmy-winning TV producer, DJ Drastic X was one of the first nonpirate radio FM DJs to play Rick Ross tracks. He did it on his It's All Gravy Show on Radiate FM, and the Boss has never forgotten it. The history of this student-run station, affiliated with Florida International University, is marked by a commitment to free-form broadcasting, playing local and independent artists, and representing the diverse musical communities that make up this great area. But whereas Radiate long had a weak signal that restricted its reach to South Dade, the station's recent investment in radio translator technology has amplified its broadcast range so that it reaches most of the county. The station broadcasts on three frequencies: 88.1 in Homestead, 95.3 in Miami, and 96.9 in North Miami. It also streams worldwide on the Web. So whether you're looking for dubstep (Batcave Sessions with Ryan Bats), brutal riffs (Metal Show with Cyrus the Virus), house/electronic (Ravin' and Misbehavin' After Dark with Risto, simulcast live from Korea), riot grrl and queercore (Toxic Shock with Kat Merkin), shoegaze/noise rock (Wall of Sound with Torgo and DJ Count Goldblum), disco (Supernature with Mamey Disco), Latin, African jazz and funk, synthpop, or sports talk, Radiate FM has it. And now, you do too.

Best Local Champion

Lauren Perlstein

Any time a debate about Miami's local music scene occurs, it ends up one big blame game. Promoters don't want to pay. Venues only care about DJs. Bands expect too much. Stop it already! If the Magic City is going to be an indie music mecca, everyone has to work together. That's why Lauren Perlstein is the perfect champion for the cause. Instead of getting mixed up in arguments that go nowhere, she supports the scene the best way she knows how: by writing about it. She and her army of contributors make up the local music blog South Florida Music Obsessed, where she writes plenty about visiting national acts but also shows local outfits lots of love. Talking with her, you can clearly see she is not only passionate about music around South Florida but also knowledgeable. Perlstein is expanding her reach beyond writing. With her Music Obsessed brand in tow, she has begun staging events around town with local music on the bill.

Most music blogs are fine with just throwing up a SoundCloud link, writing a couple of sentences, and calling it a day — but then again, they aren't Miami's Nightdrive. At this corner of the Internet, their job as music masters is taken a bit more seriously. "Down here we find ourselves partaking in a collective redesign of Miami's cultural landscape," they state on their "About Us" link. "Regardless how we got here, we [have become] part of a city that is now struggling to figure out where it's going, how it's going to get there, and what it's going to become." Nightdrive is headed by Laura (of Miami) and Patrick Walsh. There are others too: Terence Tabeau, Steve "Stevezy" Saiz, and their roster of DJs. They also like to feature guest posts from community tastemakers. Nightdrive works hard to bring readers the hottest in up-and-coming artists from many genres, as well as exclusive interviews with rising stars and details about local events. Hell, they even bring music to town, such as the May 24 show with Nightdrive favorite Todd Terje at the Electric Pickle. As Laura put it, the show was "a perfect example of how all the Nightdrive elements work together."

Best Record Label

Maybach Music Group

This is not a record label in the traditional sense. It doesn't produce and distribute records. But Maybach Music Group is the umbrella group overseeing all Rick Ross-involved projects, from the rapper's own albums and mixtapes to those of local supergroup Triple Cs (Gunplay, Torch, Young Breed, and Ross himself). It also reps the rapidly expanding roster of rappers — Philly's Meek Mill, D.C.'s Wale, NYC's York's French Montana — that Ross has pulled into his orbit in the past three years. Most recently, the imprint announced the signing of R&B singer Omarion at a high-profile news conference at Manhattan's Eventi Hotel. It also revealed a blockbuster slate of album-release dates, including this summer's two most anticipated rap albums, Ross's God Forgives, I Don't and Mill's debut LP, Dreams and Nightmares. MMG releases music through not one but two major record labels: Island Def Jam and Warner Bros. This all but ensures that whatever the fate of the declining music industry, Miami will most likely remain a hip-hop power center for years to come.

Best Practice Space

Destroyio House

If your girlfriend, parents, or neighbors think your music sucks and they don't ever want to hear one more note of it, it's time to find your band a practice space. You know, a place where you can turn your amp to 11 and rock out at 3 in the morning without some whiny, soulless bastard crying about the noise. But unless your dad owns a warehouse in an industrial part of Hialeah, you probably don't have that opportunity. Well, now you do. Destroyio House is a roughly 1,000-square-foot air-conditioned warehouse space with tube amps, vocal mikes, a PA, drum gear, industrial fans, and an ice-cold minifridge where punk-rock impresario Fabio Destroyio rents out space for bands to practice music. For just $25 for two hours and $10 each hour after that, you can play any type of music you want, as loud as you want, whenever you want, for as long as you want. That means four people can jam for four hours and pay just about $11 each. When your band is ready, he'll book you a show at Churchill's, and you can use the door money to book more time to practice. You'll find a like-minded community of musicians there already, so you can make new friends, and when your bandmates become whiny, soulless bastards, you can join another group.

Best Jukebox

Fox's Sherron Inn

Since 1946, Fox's Sherron Inn has been serving South Miami with shots, suds, steaks, good times, and jukebox music. But like cigarette vending machines and pay-as-you-go porno peep shows, the classic juke — a partially automated, coin-operated, 400-pound music-playing device with a library of only about 200 songs — is an anachronistic and impractical piece of technology that's slowly but surely disappearing from the American cultural landscape. Our nation's bars, diners, pizza joints, laundromats, and soda-pop shops are getting rid of their jukeboxes at an epidemic rate. And the replacements are satellite radio, iPods on shuffle, and touch-screen MP3 selectors that look like knockoff ATMs from some defunct factory in Taiwan. But thankfully, the Sherron Inn hasn't given up on its enormous, old, occasionally broken music machine. So fill your pockets with loose change, feed Fox's box a few quarters, and pick 119, 142, and 206.

Best Pool Hall

Chalk Ping Pong & Billiards Lounge

You think pool halls and you envision dark, smoky rooms filled with tables covered by worn-out green felt. And until early January 2012, that was probably true. Since then, Chalk Ping Pong & Billiards Lounge has proven the pool hall can also be a sexy place where beautiful people lacking leather vests and tramp stamps can play together. Chalk also has seven Ping-Pong tables in addition to five pool tables, two expansive bars, and VIP rooms. Don't want to miss the game? Don't worry — each bar has a pair of flat-screen TV sets hanging overhead. Prices for a game vary based on the time. Early birds (7 to 9 p.m.) can enjoy a 30-minute game of table tennis or pool for $8. The rate goes up to $10 after that but drops to $5 from 3 to 5 a.m. For pool sharks, Chalk also offers memberships for $50 a month or $500 annually. And a fair warning: Though Chalk is a sexier, South Beach version of the pool hall, it hasn't inherited the Beach's mantra of table reservations, which means waits on the weekends for pool or Ping-Pong at peak hours can be long. That being said, cozy up to the bar and talk to the friendly bartenders while you wait for your name to be called.

Best Hotel Lounge

FDR at Delano

There is no denying South Beach was abuzz with the news that Chris Paciello would be returning to the scene with a new project. After years as a guest in federal prison, he found a very different South Beach than the one he encountered in the 1990s. Sure, South Beach is just as vain as it was back then. But the free-spirit, bohemian attitude has been replaced by Vegas-like aspirations of hospitality and entertainment. But Paciello has brought back the old days at FDR at Delano, the Florida Room's former digs. This is a low-light, cavernous space filled with richly textured, expensive-looking décor and pricey drinks. Try one of the signature cocktails for $20 — seriously worth the price — such as the New Deal, made with Bulleit bourbon, peach purée, and ginger beer. Or check out the Eleanor (notice a pattern?), made with Plymouth gin, muddled strawberries, and lemon juice. Cocktails aside, it's what FDR represents that really has us calling it Miami's number one: a return to the ultra-VIP glamour that first put South Beach on the map. Which means just trying to get across the velvet ropes is half the fun.