Arts & Entertainment

When the Center for Subtropical Affairs shuttered last year, it left a saxophone-shaped hole in the community where it’s open-air jazz night used to be. When the owners of the intimate downtown restaurant Jaguar Sun (and some friends) opened Understory, they didn’t just bring a rotating roster of exciting new chefs and community events (yoga, poetry, figure-drawing classes) but added a weekly jazz night, too. On Thursdays the folks at Miami Jazz Bookings curate Jazz in the Jungle, which brings local and touring musicians to a small outdoor stage. Some nights the sounds are funky, other nights are more bass-heavy, but there’s nothing more romantic than listening to the improvisational beats in the subtropical air with crunchy gravel beneath your feet and string lights overheard. The cover is a more-than-reasonable $15.

After Thanksgiving, multiple fairs pitch their tents on the sands of Miami Beach for Miami Art Week. But none is as exciting as Untitled Art. Founded in 2012 by Jeff Lawso, it is among the most highly respected independent art fairs with a reputatio for paying it forward by subsidizing booths for emerging artists, fledgling galleries, and nonprofit organizations. The long list of participating galleries always features local representation. At the 2022 fair, in fact, the Bonnier Gallery provided one of the most impressive works on view: All is well, All is well, All is well, a cylindrical stainless steel piece by artist Amanda Keeley that was inspired by Buddhist prayer wheels and encouraged viewers to spin it around and around.

Founded in 2005 by art dealer and curator Anthony Spinello, Spinello Projects connects local, national, and international art lovers to relevant, cutting-edge artworks, from international art stars to emerging Miami-based painters and conceptualists. The Wynwood-adjacent gallery’s programs are ambitious and constantly evolving: It got its start with highly conceptual work but has transitioned to paintings that are more approachable yet still visceral (take the recent exhibition In So Deep by Miami-based artist Ema Ri). Spinello’s commitment to artists who were born and reared in Miami extends to helping to expand their careers with art fairs and special presentations around the world. A study-abroad system of sorts, the gallery also forges new paths locally for out-of-town and international artists. The gallery is open to the public Wednesday through Saturday from noon till 5 p.m., by appointment only. Email gallery@spinelloprojects.com to connect.

Anastasia Samoylova is captivated by Florida: The state stars in not one but two photography books by the Russia-born, Miami-based artist. In FloodZone, which was published in 2020, Samoylova’s brooding images of coastal flooding, toppled plam trees, and construction sites to explore Miami’s continued development as the threat of sea-level rise and hurricanes looms. In Floridas, published in 2022, Samoylova explores Florida’s idiosyncrasies as a tourist destination, a playground for the wealthy, and a swampland paradise — by juxtaposing contemporary photos of her own against archival photos and paintings by the famed photographer Walker Evans. Samoylova can capture an ordinary construction site, streetcorner, or beachscape, and evoke multiple layers and themes through the portrayal.

It’s hard to make sense of Jason Seife’s mesemerizing paintings of Middle Eastern carpet patterns when you realize he grew up in Little Havana. But Seife was raised by Cuban and Syrian immigrant parents, and his work is the kaleidoscopic byproduct of Miami’s diaspora. His search to fulfill both sides of his ethnic identity led to painstaking research into textile arts during trips to Syria and Iran. The remarkable artistry that followed is on full display at the Pérez Art Museum Miami in Coming to Fruition, Seife’s first museum show in the U.S. and, perhaps more important, the culmination of a boyhood dream to have his art exhibited in his hometown.

Whether she’s launching a new product or designing a magazine cover, Reyna Noriega imbues each project with the colorful and whimsical Caribbean-Latin flair from her heritage and upbringing in Miami. After a stint as a high-school art teacher, the Florida International University alum went to work as a freelance graphic designer. Her unique illustrations soon graced the covers of the likes of the New Yorker and Science magazine. More recently, Noriega partnered with the hair-accessory brand Goody to design Caribbean-inspired hair tools for the Goody Tru collection. She’s now collaborating on a swimwear line with Nomads and the Clif Family Winery’s limited-edition 2021 Napa Valley red wine blend. Noriega hopes her art can inspire other BIPOC women to live unapologetically. “We are deserving of peace, joy, happiness, and confidence where we’re at right now,” she says. “It’s not something we have to break our backs to achieve. I want women to feel empowered to embrace that aspect of their lives and cultivate it all around them.”

Marrying millennial angst with a retro ’70s vibe, Dee Wahlung’s illustrations are a trippy fever dream of anthropomorphized telephones and empanadas, wavy fonts, and rainbow colors. After getting her start as a ghost designer for a local wall décor brand, the 28-year-old has transformed her illustrations into prints, stationery, and household items for a client list that includes Restoration Hardware, West Elm, and Nordstrom. She now oversees the art direction for international lifestyle brand Ban.do and works as a freelance designer for local shops like Gilded Moon jewelry and Great Oak Tattoo.

Sugar, spice, leather, and spikes. New Jersey-born Octavio Aguilar (AKA Dope Tavio) designs clothes that differ from your summer suits and honey mango-colored sundresses. His designs are a shock-and-awe campaign of ruffles, layers, stripes, and polka dots laid bare in black and white. Each Dope Tavio piece is a statement better suited to a rave or punk show than, say, your nephew’s bar mitzvah. Aguilar has gained support from the likes of Patricia Fields and made it through some tough rounds on Project Runway two years ago. If the material can be altered, Aguilar will find a way to manipulate its contours.

After the travesty that was Ultra Music Festival’s brief sojourn in Virginia Key in 2019, followed by COVID-19 cancellation in 2020 and 2021, one would have been forgiven for thinking the star-studded, internationally renowned festival might have lost its way. But big-name DJs, top-quality stage production, and mind-bending pyrotechnics have returned to Bayfront Park. In 2022, Ultra reclaimed its reign as one of the supreme leaders of the festival world. And this year, the throngs saw the return of dance-music legends such as techno club DJ Carl Cox, trance idol Armin Van Buuren, and superstar trio Swedish House Mafia. Next year’s tickets are already on sale.

Do you like piña coladas? What about getting caught in the rain? If you’re looking to find other folks who enjoy singing their hearts out to yacht rock classics and the like, then head to Over Under some Wednesday around 9:30 p.m. Toward the back of the room, you’ll find a chill crowd of karaoke enthusiasts, fortified by their own self-confidence and/or liquid courage. Pick your poison, choose your favorite tune, and shoot your shot. Likely as not, you’ll be back for more. It’s addictive.

Miami’s contemporary art scene is world-renowned, but no local exhibition has baffled scientists and engineers quite like the Coral Castle Museum in Homestead. The limestone sculpture garden is often referred to as Florida’s Stonehenge because no one’s quite sure how its eccentric creator, Edward Leedskalnin, singlehandedly carved more than 1,000 tons of coral rock, including a tower, furniture, and a nine-ton gate that moves with the touch of a finger, without modern construction equipment. Cryptically, Leedskalnin, who is said to have stood just over five feet tall and tipped the scales at 100 pounds, would boast that he “knew the secrets of the pyramids,” but whatever those were, he took them with him to the grave in 1951. There has been speculation about supernatural powers and reverse magnetism, providing fodder for segments of Ancient Aliens and Leonard Nimoy’s series In Search of….

It was uncclear how Factory Town would fare after Miami Springs abuelos and nine-to-fivers complained that sound from the Hialeah club carried to their nearby Mayberry and deprived them of sleep. But beats prevailed over litigation, and Factory Town’s team — owned by Club Space and others — now works with municipal governments to keep the noise dialed down at every event. Though the venue might seem out of place among the warehouses and body shops, Factory Town flexed its muscles with an engrossing visual display and star talent during Miami Music Week, Art Basel, and on New Year’s Eve. The club can accommodate three different stages simultaneously and boasts the obvious essentials: VIP amenities, artwork, food booths, a party bus, and room to spare.

Lately, Miami has seen the closing of a lot of live venues that booked local acts — Churchill’s Pub, Las Rosas, the Center for Subtropical Affairs (its replacement, Understory, hasn’t been booking local bands with any regularity). In their absence, a no-frills South Florida sports bar — yes, a sports bar — has stepped up to become our town’s new local music hub. For the most part, the Sand Bar + Kitchen in North Beach feels like your run-of-the-mill South Florida sports bar. But if you go through the back door and courtyard, you’ll stumble across the SandBox, the bar’s live-music space, which boasts black-box theater vibes and an impressive sound system. Emerging bands regularly play here on the weekends, and there have even been a few raves and burlesque shows. Local acts that have graced its stage include Johnny Dread, Glass Orange, the Creature Cage, Foxgloves, and Iliad. Bar owner Tim Wilcox deserves a parade for giving the community a live music venue when it needed it most.

Amid the tourist-luring murals and selfie-takers of Wynwood, there is at least one haven for locals: Savage Labs, a small music venue where patrons sometimes sit cross-legged on the floor just a few feet from live acts when the velvet sofas reach their capacity. Come for the tunes from up-and-coming Miami artists but stay for the community vibes. Claustrophobes, fear not: It’s intimate but there’s always enough wiggle room to dance and a lush outdoor patio if you need a breath of fresh air. There are usually products by local small businesses available for purchase, too.

Perreo Galáctico is an amorphous, shape-shifting party. It pops up in a new venue and with a different theme biweekly, but the one crucial constant is the thunderous blast of Daddy Yankee, Wisin y Yandel, Rauw Alejandro, and other reggaeton legends. This traveling Latin bash was started by TikTok sensation Karen Ponce; previous perreo themes have included Y2K, emo night, cowboys, and aliens. For the scoop on where they’re popping up next, check the Instagram account. You can reserve tickets ahead of time or buy them at the door.

Sister System (Alexis Sosa-Toro), True Vine (Santiago Vidal), and Jonny From Space (Jonathan Trujillo) have been painting the town with ad hoc parties throughout Miami and even the Everglades. But the trio’s monthly residency at Floyd, dubbed ODD (as in Objects Don’t Dance), features the underground’s best sound cache of downtempo, left-field, psychedelic, and techno, including Danny Daze, Ben UFO, and Aurora Halal, with prime spots from locals. LED tube lights are installed for each party in a different pattern that flickers and bounces across the ceiling in sync with the music, imbuing the flowery, pink space with a dark and eerie vibe. The objects might not dance, but the people sure do.

There’s a new club in town. Don’t worry — you don’t have to dish out $3,000 for a table. At Domicile, a threadbare venue nestled deep in Little Haiti, $20 for a ticket is usually all you need to drip sweat from every pore until 5 a.m. surrounded by punks, goths, depraved ravers, and photophobic creatures of the night. The median BPM runs close to 140 inside, but there’s an area out back to chill out and water is reasonably priced. The club has hosted techno’s dark royalty, including Rebekah and Aadja, making it a long-awaited home for DJs who spin too fast for anywhere else. Fair warning: Domicile is usually 18-plus, but mixing with kids is a small price to pay (did we mention the price of admission?) for an authentic warehouse-club aesthetic in this skyscraper-plagued city.

Every Saturday night, Red Rooster’s pool hall, the Shrine, pulsates with a fusion of Afrobeat, Amapiano, and Caribbean rhythms so hypnotic that by midnight the dance floor’s completely packed with gyrating bodies. It’s all thanks to Cameroon-born Aya (Leslie “Aya” Ayafor) who’s often perched inside the DJ booth manning the 1s and 2s. Ayafor credits Kwaito, a subgenre of South African house music from the ’90s, for influencing his signature sound, which has become a crucial note in Miami’s diasporic nightlife scene. You can also catch him at his monthly party, Stamped. “It feels great to offer a space where it’s unapologetically African,” Aya says. “Stamped is not just a party. It’s a community. It’s a celebration of not only African music, but everything African.”

Create Dangerously and its nonlinear storyline may not precisely fit the standard format of what a play should be. At one point, one of the characters even tells the audience in all honesty, “This isn’t really a play.” But it does make for good theater. It’s an adaptation of the book Create Dangerously by Miami national treasure and multi-award-winning Haitian-American novelist Edwidge Danticat. Miamian Lileana Blain-Cruz (the current resident director at Lincoln Center Theater in New York) was recruited by Miami New Drama to write and direct the adaptation. During the 90-minute production, six actors portray multiple roles as Danticat’s prose rolls off their tongues. It’s reminiscent of generations of storytelling, and it offers the audience perspective, reflection, and the opportunity to live inside someone else’s stories.

In January, when a Chili’s banner was seen draped over the likeness of a certain British prime minister at the shuttered Little Haiti location that had once housed Churchill’s bar, it didn’t take a profound cognitive leap to imagine an American restaurant chain known for its 3 for Me value meals “opening soon” on the hallowed grounds of what was once the city’s grungiest live-music venue. Though some seemed tempted by the promise of pairing vinyl-shopping trips at nearby Sweat Records with margarita specials and baby back ribs, the news infuriated keyboard metalheads and punk rockers across social media. But soon we learned that it was a prank pulled by local actor and comedian Andrio “Rio” Chavarro, who goes by the moniker @riodiosmio on Instagram. Joke’s on us all, though: Months later, Churchill’s remains still closed and Miamians continue commuting to Bayside and Kendall for their Chili’s fix.

You might not always win money at the Seminole Hard Rock Hotel & Casino. But, with more than 2,700 of the latest slot machines to hit planet Earth, table games upon table games (roughly 200 of ’em), a 45-table poker room, and world-class entertainment venues on the property, you’re sure to leave a winner. There’s no other place in South Florida where you can double down on a blackjack table, catch an act like the Rolling Stones at the 7,000-capacity Hard Rock Live, rage all night with the likes of Tiesto at the DAER nightclub, and taking a nap in your hip suite within the curiously shaped (though aptly named) Guitar Hotel. There’s more to the Seminole Hard Rock than gambling, and that makes all the difference.

The art of cabaret gets a progressive twist with Uncut Gems, a lesbian burlesque troupe founded by Rae Jenae of the lesbian event organization Lezchic. Catering to LGBTQ audiences, this sultry salute to the art of burlesque pops up once a month at Hamburger Mary’s in Wilton Manors. Equal parts enticing and empowering, each month the roster of performers (known as the Gems) highlights a new theme that, coupled with drink specials, DJs, and go-go dancers leads to a dizzying and intoxicating night.

Thursday is spelled F-R-E-E D-R-I-N-K-S at ladies’ nights across Miami, and the competition is stiff. Mayami in Wynwood emerges victorious thanks to its generous three-hour timeframe for free liquor (7-10 p.m.), combined with a trippy ambiance and solid menu. Decked out with chandeliers, Mayan-themed fixtures, and lounge-inspired décor, the place is a chic, albeit slightly disorienting, spot to get stuck in. The place turns into a nightclub after hours complete with fog machines, fire-spinning performers, flickering lasers, and a bass-purveying DJ. So the night need not end early. One caveat: Leave your flip-flops and cargo shorts at home, because the dress code (outlined on the lounge’s website) is strictly enforced.

On Friday nights starting at 8:30, the Outcasts Show brings a flirtatious cast of drag performers to Georgie’s Alibi Monkey Bar in Wilton Manors. Hosted by Nicky “The Cock Destroyer” Monet, the party features regulars like androgynous showgirl Sin Silva and glamorous Fantasia Royale Gaga, but it’s a welcoming space for emerging queens, too. Oh, and there’s no cover and cocktails are two-for-one all night long.

Juicy Love Dion’s not just the ol’ cartwheel diva. The former FIU cheerleader calls herself “Miami’s Afro-Cuban dancing doll” and has a a mug that leaves no crumbs. Her high-energy lip-sync routines regularly fill venues wall-to-wall. Not only can she flip midair and land into a split with the ease of an Olympic gymnast, but she does it all while serving impeccable looks with nary an eyelash out of place. At 22 years old, Juicy’s roots in the Haus of Love have taken her performances from South Florida hubs, like R House and Queer Parties, across the world to the luxurious JackieO’ Town Bar in Mykonos, Greece.

Miami comedian and commentator George Harris grinds out material that slays week in and week out. Harboring a seemingly endless reserve of energy for the stage, the Venezuelan transplant has struck a chord with observational bits about immigrants’ experience assimilating into American culture. Since getting his start playing comedy shows in Miami to a handful of attendees, Harris has climbed up the comedy rungs to the point where he’s a household name in Spanish-language comedy, with millions of followers on social media. He headlines a long-running weekly show aptly titled “El Show de George Harris” on Thursdays at La Scala de Miami on Brickell Bay Drive. His Hijo Unico tour dates stretch around the globe from Mexico City to Madrid.

Jeni Hacker’s mantra must be: “Bring it on.” One of her most memorable roles was in Zoetic Stage’s 2019 production of Sweeney Todd, in which she put her own zany spin on the serial killer’s accomplice and Cockney cook, Mrs. Lovett. There’ve been other comedy roles, and serious ones, too. This season, as the lead in Zoetic Stage’s Next to Normal, Hacker showed the entire spectrum of her skills, from her knack for comic timing to a vocal range that wrapped around the rock musical’s score (during her post-college days in Miami, she led an R&B band). Hacker mesmerized the audience with her layered portrayal of Diana, a woman with bipolar disorder, trying to keep her family intact and her own head above water. Ronnie Larsen, who cast her in his play Grindr Mom in 2019, commented that since working with the actress he has become “the president of the Jeni Hacker fan club” — of which, in South Florida theater circles, there’s no shortage of members.

Gabriell Salgado wins this category three times over. In the past year, he has been seen in almost every local professional theater production that calls for a good-looking Latino. But casting directors don’t just want him for his body. The 2019 New World School of the Arts grad made his professional debut at Zoetic Stage in 2021’s Frankenstein, proving himself a talent to be reckoned with as a hideous creature, skinny, contorted, and covered in makeup that rendered his body and face in scars and stitches. This season, he turned in a gold medal-worthy performance as professional swimmer Ray in Ronnie Larsen’s production of Red Speedo the Foundry in Wilton Manors and made his GableStage debut playing comical dual roles in El Huracán. But wait — there’s more! As Juan Julian in Miami New Drama’s production of Nilo Cruz’s Anna in the Tropics, he commanded the stage alongside veteran actors in a play that won the 2003 Pulitzer Prize for Drama. Let’s just hope Salgado doesn’t flee the subtropical nest too soon — South Florida theater needs him.

Hit ’em deep in the heart and keep ’em moving: That’s the name of Nii Tei’s game. The Ghana-born DJ moved to Miami a decade ago, but his inspiration from home never faded. Merging electronic music with Afro influences, Nii Tei produces a sound that adds oomph to any set. Tei’s hypnotic sets sucker-punch the crowds at Club Space, Floyd, Eagle Room, and the local party series Coconut Groove. His modus operandi is one part homage to dance culture and one part devotion to the sounds of his youth. The new father took a short break but he’s back and he’s not hard to miss: round eyeglasses, a big smile, and a head that bops up and down to the music he spins oh, so well.

As associate artistic director of Area Stage Company, Giancarlo Rodaz is a risk taker, unafraid to challenge his audiences, actors, and even plays. Take for instance the tale as old as time where Rodaz used his magical touch to transform Disney’s Beauty and the Beast into a work that might’ve impressed Walt himself. Realizing that if he was going to go big, he couldn’t go home, Rodaz moved his vision from Area Stage’s small South Miami home base to the Adrienne Arsht Center’s Carnival Studio Theater Center. Rather than sit in theater seats, Rodaz cast the audience as guests at wooden benches and long tables, from which actors not only sang and traded dialogue, but danced, ran, jumped and leaped all around them. B&B was the third in a series of reinventions wherein Rodaz reinterpreted big-scale musicals with abandon: In 2018, he stripped down Shrek The Musical, ditching the green ogre and donkey personas, among others, and presenting human characters (Shrek was distinguishable by a green clown nose) struggling with modern problems. In 2021, his immersive Annie featured eight adult actors in all roles — no kids. Rodaz’s minimalist approach launched these fairy tales to new heights. Next, he’ll take on The Little Mermaid — we can only imagine how he’ll render “under the sea.”

In 2021, after the passing of Joseph Adler, GableStage tapped Bari Newport to lead the company into the future. Newport, who’d served as artistic director of the Penobscot Theatre Company in Bangor, Maine, for nine years, took over with the specter of the pandemic still looming over everything. Even then, she pulled off a well-received debut season with productions of Authur Miller’s The Price, Claudia Rankine’s The White Card, and Tanya Saracho’s Fade. Newport flexed her theatrical muscles for the 2022-23 season, introducing South Florida audiences to We Will Not Be Silent by David Meyers, Lucas Hnath’s A Doll’s House Part 2, and El Huracán by Charise Castro Smith. The company recently announced its 2023-24 season — also its 25th anniversary — which will feature August Wilson’s How I Learned What I Learned, the Miami premiere of Jon Marans’ Old Wicked Songs, and the premiere of Alexis Scheer’s Laughs in Spanish. With a lineup like that, a $180 to $360 season pass is more than worth it.

Founded by dancer and choreographer Pioneer Winter, the Pioneer Winter Collective is a wholly inclusive dance company. Its mission: to celebrate queerness, humanity, and vulnerability. Winter welcomes everyone, and believes that every body is a dance body. The company’s latest work, Birds of Paradise, marked the collective’s return to performing after the COVID-19 shutdown. Since its 2021 debut, the 75-minute performance has constantly evolved, undergoing at least iterations, all of which explore the theme of rebirth.

After finding viral success on YouTube, Issa Rae made the leap to television with her hit HBO series Insecure. Over five seasons, the series explored Black womanhood and friendships and the existential dread that has come to define the millennial experience. After the series wrapped in 2021, the question quickly became: What would Rae do next? The answer arrived the following year with the premiere of Rap Sh!t on HBO Max (now Max), a series that follows two women as they attempt to scale the ladder of success in Miami’s rap industry. Rae is a native of Los Angeles, and there’s reason to be skeptical of any outsider’s ability to portray this town accurately. But Rae and her writing team were more than up to the task. Aida Osman and KaMillion bring their characters of Shawna and Mia to life as their story unfolds over eight episodes as they hustle and scheme their way to the top. Crucially, the series was shot on location, including scenes in Liberty City, Little Haiti, and Miami Beach. We were sad to learn that the second season will see Rap Sh!t‘s storyline move to California — thanks to a generous tax credit, the likes of which our state is unwilling to offer. But Miami should still thank Rae for the most accurate fictional portrayal of Miami thus far. Seduce and scheme forever!

In September, filmmaker Carla Forte released Miki Maniaco, a dark, twisted vision of exile, celebrity, and South Florida. The feature film by the Venezuelan-born director is a made-in-Miami nightmare that’s hard to watch yet impossible to turn away from. Forte’s dark comedy expertly combines dance, theater, and cinema to depict a suffocating, wet, manic world. By the film’s end, you’ll be relieved it’s over but already itching to lose yourself once again in the filmmaker’s eagle-eyed vision.

Miami’s homegrown Rakontour crew (Billy Corben, Alfred Spellman, and David Cypkin) is at it again with another wild story that once again confirms that there’s always a Florida connection. This time the documentarians behind the Cocaine Cowboys craziness teamed up with Adam McKay and Todd Schulman to create the most-watched documentary on Hulu to date. In the nearly two-hour film, Miami’s own Giancarlo Granda, a former pool boy at the Fontainebleau, shares intimate details about his seven-year love affair with Becki Falwell, the wife of prominent Republican evangelist and then-president of Liberty University Jerry Fallwell Jr. If you weren’t already shaking your head, you will be by the time Granda reveals that Falwell encouraged his wife’s affair. The documentary incorporates interviews, archival footage, text messages, and audio and video recordings to explore the influence of evangelism on U.S. politics and the implications the Falwell affair had on the 2016 presidential election of Donald Trump.

The CocoWalk multiplex is in its glow-up era. A decade ago, the old CocoWalk movie theater reeked of sweat and was in desperate need of a face-lift. Cinépolis took over the property in 2015 and has since performed so much nipping and tucking that the space is nearly unrecognizable: comfy reclining leather seats, updated screening technology, a sleek new bar and lounge, and a menu of gourmet food and drink that can be delivered to your seat during screenings. As the shopping complex completes its upgrades with some of the best restaurants and cocktail bars in Coconut Grove, the addition of Cinépolis Luxury Cinemas again marks the Grove as the go-to spot for dinner and a movie.

We’re not given to bestowing “Best” honors to shuttered establishments, but consider this the exception that proves the rule. Tower Theater opened its doors in 1926. In 2023 those doors were closed after the City of Miami abruptly terminated the theater’s contract with Miami Dade College, which had been managing the historic property since 1992. Navigating from the silent era to the streaming age is no easy feat, and it’s worth celebrating the variety of films that screened at the now-imperiled Tower during its 97-year history. From its two screens, Spanish subtitling, and topnotch programming in collaboration with the Miami Film Festival, the Tower is special. Its absence leaves a hole in the region’s contemporary art-house scene. With Tower Theater dark, the Coral Gables Art Cinema, the Bill Cosford Cinema at the University of Miami, O Cinema South Beach, and Savor Cinema in Fort Lauderdale are the last screens standing.

The Miami Film Festival may have lost its years-long home at Tower Theater (see “Best Art-House Cinema”), but that hasn’t interfered with festival’s mission of providing a world-class platform for local, international, and Ibero-American independent cinema. After the City of Miami abruptly terminated its contract with Miami Dade College last fall, the festival had to quickly pivot and secure screenings for its 40th edition in March at Silverspot Cinema’s downtown Miami location and at Coral Gables Art Cinema. Gems, the fall mini-film festival, is scheduled to return in November with a selection of films from around the globe, many of which will be contenders come awards season. The lights may be out at Tower Theater, but the Miami Film Festival must go on.

From a once-in-a-thousand-years storm that parks itself over Fort Lauderdale to tracking oncoming hurricanes to practical tips on navigating the brutal South Florida heat, we look to Betty Davis. As chief meteorologist for Local 10, she’s our trusted weather source on weekdays during the station’s 4, 6, and 11 p.m. shows. She has been in the biz for 15 years, with stints at the Weather Channel and in markets farther up the East Coast. We’re glad she’s here — her impact extends well beyond her forecasts, including regular visits to local classrooms and universities to inspire the next generation of atmospheric scientists. We can count on Davis’ forecasts to be bright even when the weather isn’t.

When it comes to landing scoops about the grimy side of Miami life, count on Sheldon Fox to be the first TV reporter on the scene. A Magic City native, Fox is known for his exclusives documenting violent episodes that are commonplace in our tropical dystopia. He was first to report on a roving band of male bicyclists attacking and robbing unsuspecting pedestrians in Miami Beach. The story included cellphone footage of the young men ganging up on and beating a victim. Fox was also the first on the scene in Miami’s Silver Bluff neighborhood shortly after an unidentified man was spotted indiscriminately shooting a high-powered rifle in the street. And he uncovered the exclusive police bodycam footage showing police officers blowing up a door and windows of a hotel room where a homicide suspect was holed up. Fox is also keen on public-service journalism, like the time he reported how a woman videotaped a tow truck driver rifling through her car after he hitched the vehicle for being illegally parked. The driver was later arrested for allegedly stealing cash and iPhone accessories from the woman’s SUV.

As his Twitter handle @TheMozKnowz suggests, WSVN sports anchor Josh Moser understands South Florida’s diverse sports scene. From sideline reports after Miami Heat games to one-on-one sitdown interviews with Miami Dolphins coach Mike McDaniel, Moser has his Knowz deep in the Miami sports trenches. Arriving in late 2020, Moser is a relatively newcomer on the Miami sports-coverage scene. But his outside-the-box interview questions keep Moser’s subjects and viewers at the edge of their seats and on their toes, providing a jolt of new insight to what often feels like a redundant space.

Whether she’s singing with Jimmy Fallon or enjoying a back-arching dance with Magic Mike, Emmy Award-winning TV reporter Johanna Gomez is bubbly and captivating on-screen as the cohost of the daily lifestyle and entertainment show 6 in the Mix on NBC 6 South Florida. She and cohost Jen Herrera have a natural chemistry and easily riff on each other in what often becomes unscripted knee-slapping comedy. But off-screen (and via social media) Gomez reveals a softer side, as the mother of three often shares her personal struggles as a breast-cancer survivor and urges other women to check each month for cysts.

As a little girl, Amanda Booz would hold an imitation microphone to her lips in front of her dolls at her childhood home in Miramar home to host “The Amanda Show.” All these years later, she’s garnered 57,000 sentient followers on Instagram, who tune in for her curated feed of fashion, makeup, and travel inspiration. As a lifestyle influencer and multimedia journalist and producer, Booz has worked with a slew of networks and brands, including BET, Viacom, Complex, Spotify, NBC, and CBS Radio. Her advice? “Be a light and be confident and true to who you are no matter what,” Booz says. “Live out loud and enjoy life.”

He’s in his 20s now, but that hasn’t stopped young-at-heart Miami The Kid from amassing more than a million followers on his YouTube channel, where he posts absurd prank videos, man-on-the-street interviews with bikini-clad young women, and other dramatic misfortunes. Like the time he was stopped by police officers outside Aventura Mall while wearing a ski mask, and the time his girlfriend caught him cheating and cut his hair while he slept. These days each video he posts generates 100,000 to 300,000 or more views and thousands of comments from fans and haters alike.

To a certain generation of Miamians, Alix Earle is their local Princess Diana, a prominent blonde whose daily movements and fashionable getups are closely followed. A New Jersey native, the recent University of Miami graduate skyrocketed to popularity last year on TikTok, where she has amassed more than five million followers thanks to videos of her getting ready for college outings (#GRWM) and spilling the messy details of her personal life (breakup with pro baseball boyfriend Tyler Wade, drunken mishaps, getting stranded in Italy). She might be rubbing shoulders with Miley Cyrus and Victoria’s Secret models now, but followers appreciate her no-filter realness about her struggle with cystic acne and the decision to have cosmetic work done. She just, like, gets us.

Got a case of the Mondays? Well, there’s an Instagram account that’s making the best of it by telling you everything that is happening this week. Lunes Oña-Pérez curates the account and highlights everything happening in Miami’s underground music and arts scene. Yes, the target demo for the events highlighted is squarely Gen Z, but Oña-Pérez has a great knack for finding events that might’ve slipped out of mainstream round-ups. Every week, @alwaylunes packages its guide into a nifty slideshow, as well as an expanded calendar on its website, alwayslunes.com.

Andrew Otazo certainly seems like a Miami creation myth: He works full-time in communications, picks up litter from South Florida’s mangroves, and somehow has the time to make hilarious Miami-centered memes. A scroll through Miami Creation Myth’s Instagram and Twitter reveals absurd memes about local politics, overdevelopment, and the overall ridiculousness of life in the Magic City. Otazo’s funniest takes tend to involve the feud between Miami-Dade and Broward counties or the horrors of driving in South Florida. This year, he ventured into the book format, publishing The Miami Creation Myth: A Culturo-Cosmic Adventure, a ludicrous fiction about how Miami came to be and two sisters, Marta and Cuquita, who traversed the city to make cafecito and save humanity.

Morning commutes can be a doozy around these parts. One silver lining is DJ-rockstar extraordinaire Ashley O on South Florida’s alternative station, 104.3 The Shark. She’s on mornings from 6 to 10 a.m. with her hot takes and funny commentary. Over the years, she has interviewed bands like Twenty One Pilots and the Killers, started a program that pays off outstanding student lunch debt in Broward County, and is the beloved local face of The Shark’s biggest annual concert spectacle, the Audacy Beach Festival (formerly Riptide Music Festival). She’s a blast to follow on social media, too, dishing on everything from favorite hot dog toppings to what it’s like to work in the DJ booth.

When naming rights for the Miami Heat’s arena were sold to the cryptocurrency exchange FTX in 2021 for $135 million, Miami Mayor Francis Suarez tweeted that he was “overjoyed” at a 19-year deal that “advances our efforts to be the most crypto friendly city on the planet.” The mayor’s brand of blind optimism didn’t last long: A year later, FTX shed billions of dollars in value in a matter of days and was forced to file for bankruptcy in November 2022 amid allegations that customer assets had been mishandled. Founder and CEO Sam Bankman-Fried resigned in disgrace and was later arrested on federal charges in what prosecutors called “one of the biggest frauds in American history.” Those in charge of the arena, of course, looked to sever ties — a change of course that required a rebrand of everything from the building’s roof to employees’ embroidered shirts. In all likelihood, those corporate polos are in-demand memorabilia now. We’ll all look back fondly on FTX Arena for what it truly was: a monument to Miami’s favorite pastime: grift.

Miami City Attorney Victoria Méndez, known in some circles as “Tricky Vicky,” hasn’t been a good egg in a while. But this year we’ve been informed about what might be her biggest scandal to date. This past spring, WLRN investigative reporters Daniel Rivero and Joshua Ceballos (a New Times alum) published a series of stories revealing that Méndez’s family members have purchased homes at a marginal cost from the county’s guardianship program — which uses the proceeds to pay for the care of the incapacitated property owners — and then flipped them for a profit just months, or sometimes days, later. Méndez herself now lives in a home on a property that was purchased from the guardianship program, according to WLRN’s reporting. Méndez denies any impropriety. But the guardianship program has frozen property sales at the direction of Miami-Dade County Mayor Daniella Levine Cava while county investigators look into the program’s real estate dealings.

Coco Gauff was born in Atlanta, but from age 7 onward, she trained a short I-95 hop north of our chaotic metropolis in charming Delray Beach. Now that she’s ranked as the world’s sixth-best tennis player in women’s singles, we’re officially claiming her as one of our own. It was right here in South Florida, after all, that Gauff became the youngest Orange Bowl International girls’ 18-and-under singles champion —at the tender age of 14, no less. She seems proud to rep South Florida, too: At the ’23 Miami Open at Hard Rock Stadium in April, Gauff and her partner Jessica Pegula held up their doubles trophy in front of a hometown crowd and dedicated their win to the Florida Atlantic University and University of Miami basketball teams that had been eliminated from the Final Four the previous night: “This was for you, Miami and FAU.” And in May, after a first-round women’s singles victory at the French Open, she declared, “Heat in 7 — and maybe Coco in 7!” A local gal after our own heart.

Fabián Basabe peaked sometime in the early aughts, back when he was grinding with then-president’s daughter Laura Bush, appearing on reality TV (remember Filthy Rich: Cattle Drive? Of course you don’t), and fashioning himself as “the male Paris Hilton.” Rather than fade into adulthood, he attempted to run for a seat on the Miami Beach City Commission but was disqualified for flunking the residency requirement. Undeterred, he ran for a Florida House seat as a moderate Republican, pledging to support gay rights and a woman’s right to choose — two stances that ran counter to Gov. Ron DeSantis’ legislative slate. When bills on those matters came up for a vote, Basabe…didn’t show up. Perhaps not surprisingly, his flip-flopping has led to calls for his resignation and public heckling. Oh, and Basabe is under investigation for allegedly slapping an aide across the face at a reception in Tallahassee and he’s being sued by a cousin over a deal to import and resell vintage Land Rovers.

Whether in the halls of Belen Jesuit Preparatory School or the studios of Saturday Night Live, standup comedian Marcello Hernandez has been making Miami laugh for years. He cut his teeth opening for giants like Gilbert Gottfried and Dave Chappelle, but locally he’s known as a creative force behind the ludicrous social-media company Only In Dade, where he interviewed celebs like Floyd Mayweather and Nicky Jam. More recently, he expanded his audience outside the 305 to late-night TV as a featured player for SNL‘s 48th season.

Inside a modest three-story schoolhouse that’s listed on the National Register of Historic Places, students at iTech @ Miami’s Mega Technology Magnet High School are being primed to become the next Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos. In 2015, the former Thomas Edison Middle School shuttered to make way for iTech and its new curriculum, steeped in coding, programming, software use, financial services, geospatial information systems, STEM research, and more. Students adhere to a strict dress code to prepare them for corporate America: crisp white Oxford shirts, Dickies-style khaki or black pants, solid black or white shoes, and optional red tie and black blazer.

Wife-and-wife team Avra Jain and Dalia Lagoa don’t mind playing in the Miami developer sandbox, even if it’s overrun by cis white males. The successful married duo lead the Vagabond Group, a real estate company that’s leading the repurposing and reviving of historic and industrial properties in Miami’s MiMo District, Little Haiti, and Little River. They oversee an all-female staff, providing opportunities to young women eager to break the glass ceiling in the world of commercial development. One of their first endeavors, the renovation of the Vagabond, transformed a gone-to-seed motel into one of the hippest hotels in Miami’s Upper Eastside neighborhood. Having applied that blueprint to other ’50s-era properties on Biscayne Boulevard — including the South Pacific and the Selina Miami Gold Dust. Now the two are keen on making Hialeah their next vibrant frontier, where they recently developed Factory Town, a dance-music venue that harks back to the halcyon days of all-night raves.

“Best Politician” is a tricky category. It’s the one most likely to figuratively bite a humble writer in the keister ten years down the line, when a best-politician laureate is arrested for actually biting someone’s keister during a coke binge at a moldy motel. That said, this year’s selection, Florida District 34 Sen. Shevrin D. “Shev” Jones, seems a safe bet. Humor aside, Jones has become the de facto foil for Gov. Ron DeSantis’ “culture war” agenda. Jones, whom pundits often distill to “the first openly gay state senator in Florida,” refused to shy away or back down when DeSantis and his allies in the legislature pushed through a deluge of legislation targeting LGBTQ issues. When DeSantis signed bills in 2023 restricting the use of state funds for transgender healthcare and expanding the state’s so-called Don’t Say Gay bill, Jones spoke out wihthout mincing words, at one point deeming the governor “wildly out of step with where Floridians actually are on these issues.” Born in and still based in Miami Gardens, Jones ensured that LGBTQ people in Florida knew that someone was sticking up for them in the statehouse at a time when many felt marginalized, stigmatized, and dehumanized for political gain.

If you’re familiar with R&B and hip-hop artists Pouya, DRAM, Cedric Brazle, and Zya, you should also know Justin Wiggins, who has manned the boards to produce some of their signature sounds. Most recently, Wiggins teamed with Twelve’len and Denzel Curry to produce their single, “Lady Draco” with a moody, shape-shifting beat. Wiggins — who is inspired by Brandy, Justin Timberlake, Destiny’s Child, and Donell Jones — is orchestrating a contemporary spin on early 2000s R&B and hip hop. His growing roster of hits signals that his vision for R&B is taking root. “I want to make an impact on R&B, especially being from Florida and Miami,” Wiggins says.

Cedric Brazle is bringing begging back to R&B. We’re not referring to the panhandling kind; we mean the “on bended knee” strain of R&B pleading that used to spark romance between potential lovers or revive a relationship. A Jacksonville native, Brazle grew up in a musical family – his uncle was a Calypso singer – and decided to pursue music full-time while attending Florida Atlantic University. After years of cutting his teeth in the local R&B scene, the budding artist recently released a six-song EP, …What I Know Now, as an extension of his 2020 EP If I Knew Then…. With feathery harmonies, vulnerable lyricism, and seductive crooning, Brazle’s new tracks feature all the trademarks of traditional R&B, as he confesses his romantic pitfalls on “Product of Love,” assumes responsibility on “My Fault,” and sings with a flirtatious falsetto on “Sexy Lady.” “Everything I’ve done has been off the backs of artists who are in Miami,” Brazle says. “Whether it was a concert piece or performance, I’ve always collaborated with people who live here. I wouldn’t be able to build anything if it wasn’t for the talent that’s here.”

Whether with his four-man-band Juke or solo as Uncle Scotchy, Eric Garcia is a seasoned performer and no stranger to the stage. But The Blues Opera presented a new challenge. With the help of the Juggernaut Theatre Company, Garcia invited audience members into a facsimile of a Little Havana home, where he performed songs that recounted the emotional turbulence he endured when he served as the caregiver to his aging parents until they died. It was a tightrope-walk of a show that aimed to touch hearts and entertain ears. File this one under “Mission Accomplished” — the show’s closing date kept getting pushed back in response to popular demand.

Ever since Vanesa Perez was little, she enjoyed playing piano and writing. Nearly two decades later, the Cuban-American artist has become a one-woman show performing in local venues. The singer-songwriter wears many genre caps, and her sound exists somewhere in the middle of the indie pop, alternative rock, house, and soul Venn Diagram. Her lyrics lean on vulnerability, and often touch upon themes of changing identity, rejection, and staying true to one’s true self. She’s already released several singles — “Wake Up and Find Peace” and “VIP VIA” — but has announced that she’s putting together her first EP.

Formed in 2015, Jah Steve & the Counteract Crew crisscross the Sunshine State for their bread-and-butter shows, including regular gigs at the Original Fat Cats in Fort Lauderdale and Ginger Bay Cafe in Hollywood. But touring with legend Lee “Scratch” Perry solidified this South Florida band’s bona fides as a top-tier roots reggae ensemble. The band’s vibes are reminiscent of Bob Marley, Augustus Pablo, Peter Tosh, Tenor Saw, and other reggae icons. Frontman and bassist Steve McGowan leads the five-member group that also includes brothers Doron and Jadon Clarence, guitarist Bennie Jackson, and drummer Basil “Benbow” Creary, who has appeared on more than 50 studio albums for artists such as Yabby You, Dennis Brown, and The Skatalites.

Local venues where rock bands can play might come and go (sadly, it has been mostly the latter), but the highly adaptable Palomino Blond have continued to find places to play their dreamy feedback-laden rock since 2018. Comprising singers and guitarists Carli Acosta and Kyle Fink, drummer Emma Arevalo, and bassist Peter Allen, this Kendall shoegaze outfit has meshed the quiet with the loud reminiscent of a next-gen Smashing Pumpkins or My Bloody Valentine. In 2021, Palomino Blond’s debut album, ontheinside, captured the band’s grungy blissful aesthetic in seven songs that left you longing for an eighth. Don’t worry — the band never goes more than a couple of months without announcing a new local show.

Trapland Pat was raised in Deerfield Beach but he embodies his Haitian descent, neighborhood, and upbringing with sprouting bonks, flashing diamond grills, and an animated persona. He entered the scene full-time in 2018 after a drug charge led the loss of his football scholarship at a small Indiana college where he’d played wide receiver. Since then, he has released a handful of mixtapes and singles, including his 2020 breakout banger, “Big Business,” which was remixed by Rick Ross. On his latest mixtape, Trapnificent, Trapland Pat joined forces with fellow Broward County producer Pepperjack Zoe and Baton Rouge rapper Fredo Bang. The results are versatile tracks that bridge regional sounds with piano-heavy trap beats and introspective verses on money, street life, and women. The catchy, melodic tracks are vaguely reminiscent of Kodak Black but his breezy cadence and straightforward delivery are all his own.

It’s been a couple of years since Ginga Soul dropped her EP On My Mind. For anyone concerned that the Miami-based artist might’ve lost her way, the release of her new single “Karmic” this past spring put all doubts to rest. In a collaboration with rapper A’Sean, the song pairs Ginga Soul’s sultry vocals with laidback beats reminiscent of the neo-soul of Erykah Badu with a tinge of Janet Jackson’s coffee shop R&B. Just like the six-song EP that preceded it, “Karmic” showcases a new and emerging voice that continues to hit all the right notes.

Inspired by alternative Latin scenes they discovered in metropolises in Central and South America, Miami natives Golden Flora and Darwin Figueroa are on a mission to show that Latin music expands beyond reggaeton. Performing as Oro Fresco, the duo mixes electronic music, hip-hop, and comedy to create a sound that’s unique yet not too discordant to dissuade anyone from the dance floor. This year saw the release of Oro Fresco (Remixes), a collection of four tracks reinterpreted by other artists messing around with the band’s Spanish-language tracks in praise of marijuana and in dread of the climate crisis.

Earlier this year, when the City of Hialeah floated the idea of annexing an unincorporated chunk of Brownsville, the latter community’s leaders banded together to preserve the legacy of their historically Black neighborhood, which was a key destination for civil-rights leaders and entertainers during the segregation era. One of the most prominent speakers during the annexation debates was Enid Pinkney, a longtime Dade County educator and preservationist who told residents, “We have a rich history. We need to learn it so we can defend it.” The heartfelt, pointed opposition paid off when Hialeah backed off. An author, activist, and a retired public-school administrator, Pinkney has been a stalwart advocate for safeguarding landmarks in Brownsville and the Miami area, leading efforts to preserve the Historic Hampton House and the Miami Circle.

How do you condense Miami’s electronic music scene into one album? If you’re Omnidisc, you don’t. The Danny Daze-led label released Homecore! Miami All-Stars last December, with a whopping 44 tracks from the city’s top producers. No one is left behind on this release, from the long-established like Otto Von Schirach, Jesse Perez, Murk, and Dino Felipe to emerging acts like Nick León, INVT, La Goony Chonga, and Sister System. So deft is Daze’s curatorial touch that he even managed to lure producer and scene icon Push Button Objects out of retirement to contribute to the project. Taken together, the compilation gives you an auditory peek into where Miami’s electronic music scene has been, where it is, and where it’s going — and the future sounds exciting.

Vinyl takes a long time to press. It’s also clunky. Whether it sounds better than an MP3 is up for dance-floor debate. None of that deterred a ragtag group of University of Miami grads from creating the vinyl-only record label Sports Records. In six years, the label, spearheaded by Michael Bird, Jacob Friedland, Kyle Parker, Will Cormier, and Daniel Edenburg (AKA Brother Dan), has generated nine releases, 42 parties, and an unmistakable house sound that is sleek and sexy. Turntable fodder aside, the label is known for its funk-filled parties at Floyd and at warehouses across the Magic City, so the uninitiated will have plenty of opportunities to savor their production cred.

There are few places on this peninsula where discophiles can uncover a rare reissued vinyl in mint condition and a well-worn copy of the 2 Live Crew’s As Nasty as They Wanna Be under the same roof. Praise Technique Records, which has been providing Miami vinyl aficionados with a trove of more than 20,000 new and used records since 2017. While you can peruse all of Technique’s inventory on its website, it’s worth browsing the aisles of the 79th Street headquarters to take in the giant posters for cult-classic movies, the vast selection of DVDs and VHS and cassette tapes, and a staff eager to help you navigate the row upon row of sonic treasures.

You’d be forgiven for thinking Jonathan Escoffery’s 2022 debut, If I Survive You, is a memoir. Throughout much of the book, the author, who was raised in Miami by Jamaican parents, uses second-person narration to tell the story of Trelawny, a Jamaican-American boy growing up in Miami in the ’90s and coming of age in the post-recession aughts. (“On the day you are scheduled to begin the sixth grade, a hurricane named Andrew pops your house’s roof open…. Nor do you share your concern that in Miami, great city of cons, you’re as likely to wind up getting your organs harvested as you are to make a profit here.”) The book, a compilation of eight related short stories, reads like a novel, telling a continuous story while jumping back and forth in time and closing with Trelawny scrapping to buy his father’s sinking home in Cutler Ridge. It’s a fairy-tale ending fit for Miami and what Trelawny describes as the Magic City’s “aroma of promise”: that at any time, “you are a single lucky break from becoming one of the haves.”

As a reporter, it’s important to ask the hard questions and awaiting those answers can often be long and fraught — but never when they’re directed at Miami Police Department spokesman Orlando Rodriguez. Rodriguez respects tight deadlines, assists with public-records requests, and responds to inquiries seemingly 24/7 (sometimes within minutes!). Rodriguez has never dodged a request for comment or ghosted us completely unlike other media liaisons with other public agencies (we’re glaring at you, City of Miami).

Miami Herald photographer Carl Juste has been at it for decades. Since 1991, the award-winning photojournalist has been holding his camera up to the injustices, scandals, and beauty that surround South Florida, while bringing empathy and a strong moral compass to his work. That work was deservingly spotlighted in last year’s HBO documentary Endangered, which featured Juste and three other journalists discussing how freedom of the press is under attack abroad and in the U.S. It’s been said in industry circles that if you want to know what’s going on in Miami, figure out where Juste is. You’ll find him in hurricane-ravaged suburbs, at protests against police brutality, inside the homes of vulnerable migrants, and anywhere else history is being made in the moment.

A lot of climate reporting focuses on big-picture data and futuristic projections. But stories bearing the byline of the Miami Herald‘s Alex Harris — the paper’s first climate reporter — often focus on what a changing climate feels like. Harris reports on climate change as a personal, local issue affecting all of us, from coastal condo owners to the working poor. Take her stories on the catastrophic flooding in Fort Lauderdale earlier this year, including one presciently titled: “A freak storm, but also the future?” In between accessible explanations and frightening data points, Harris weaves in stories about an elderly resident floating in her home on a mattress and panicked parents hoisting their young children on a sofa to avoid rising floodwaters. One thing Harris’s work makes glaringly clear: Climate change is here, and it’s happening now.

A lot of stations claim to play “the hits.” Hits 97.3 actually does. Perhaps it’s in the name, but the station has mastered the right balance of Latin thump, contemporary pop, and nostalgic throwbacks to keep South Florida jammin’ through the day. Its DJ lineup is great, too, with quintessential Miami girl Jade Alexander hyping up our mornings and comedian/actress/DJ Brittany “Duchess of Kendall” Brave making us laugh. Thank you, Hits 97.3 We think you’re a hit, too.