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Best New Gridlock

American Airlines Arena

Nearly 20,000 basketball fans pouring on to Biscayne Boulevard after the final buzzer gives new meaning to the word jammed. Think that's fun? Just wait till the hoopsters are joined by another 12,000 leaving their concert at Bayfront Park Amphitheater and 8000 more from events at the Performing Arts Center up the road.

Best Defense

Last fall criminal defense attorney Curt Obront argued before a federal jury that his client, who had been arrested for smuggling cocaine into the Port of Miami, was innocent because federal agents didn't actually catch him with the offending kilo of cocaine. Rather the agents found it on the ground near where his client was walking. Obront argued that finding kilos of cocaine on the ground at the Port of Miami wasn't so unusual -- after all, this was Miami. And this being Miami, the jury agreed and found Obront's client not guilty.

Best Place To Meet Single Men

The Home Depot

The best place is over near the lumber. All that fragrant wood is a kind of aphrodisiac in itself. The tool section, of course, is not bad either. Nor the paint area, especially because it can be a long wait in line to get that color mixed. Stay away from home lighting. Follow these simple rules and the chance of chatting up a man somewhat of your choice is good. For best results check in as often as possible during hurricane season. The thing is, some Home Depot locations are open 24 hours, and lots of people of the single persuasion like that freedom to shop at odd times before they drop, and this being Miami, the drop can occur well after midnight. Hanging out at the Depot night or day certainly beats dining out alone, and it's tons better than the gym. Can't tell the size of the board? Good reason to ask for a little help. The fluorescent lights in this store are deceiving: What is this color? Installing a ceiling fan can be tricky -- got any hints? Yes, these are icebreakers, but they often have the potential to lead up to the ideally interactive kicker that can lead you out of the store: With only two hands, how can you put that thing together? And of course: You're right, this deck chair is great. It's too bad my car is so small.

Best Cuban-League Baseball Player Living In Miami

Camilo Pascual

Pascual threw one of the sweetest curve balls in baseball history while playing for the Minnesota Twins from 1961 to 1966. The Reds, L.A. Dodgers, and Cleveland also made good use of his right arm, though only briefly. But before his stint in the American big leagues, Pascual played the game in Cuba, his native country, from 1953 to 1961. When he wasn't throwing for Los Elefantes de Cienfuegos or Los Tigres de Marianao, he pitched for the late lamented Washington Senators. (Check out the 1958 film version of Damn Yankees to see him throwing for Washington against the Yanks.) These days in Miami, where he's resided since 1960, he scouts Latin-American hopefuls for the Dodgers. At age 66 he's still living the béisbol dream.

Best Charity

Food for Life Network

It's pretty tough to argue with an outfit that feeds the HIV-positive among us. But throw in a few twists -- say, delivering groceries to those who are not ambulatory, providing foodstuffs to victims' families, and even catering home-cooked meals for those who are too sick to cook -- and you've got one dedicated charity. Indeed Food for Life Network not only nourishes, it nurtures. Through referral programs and its own nutritional services and counseling departments, the organization follows its clients to ensure they're not only fed but are proactive enough to tackle HIV before it balloons into AIDS. The group also sponsors fundraisers, events, and food drives to raise both community awareness and resources. So in the end, the thirteen-year-old Food for Life Network deserves kudos for more than cooking. It gets praise for persistence, perseverance, and very dedicated personnel.

Best Sanctuary From The Fast Track

Simpson Park Hammock

Enter deep into this eight-acre native hardwood hammock and become a witness to the past in all its former glory, a time when banyan, pigeon plums, velvet seed, gumbo limbo, and Gulf licaria trees covered the Brickell area. The park has been undergoing restoration for several months (pesky foreign plants had threatened to wipe out the fragile native flora) and will reopen to the public this month. Here you can escape the concretized, high-stress world we've created and take respite in the world as it should be.

Best Nonprofit

Grubstake Resources for Recovery

Since opening in October, the grassroots Grubstake has helped an estimated 150 women, many of them drug-addicted prostitutes who prowled Biscayne Boulevard for tricks, right their upturned lives. Grubstake and its companion thrift store, Good & Funky, are the brainchild of Heather Klinker, who gave up a lucrative job in promotions to launch this venture. Klinker knows whereof she speaks; she's a recovered alcoholic. But among the nonprofits that help the poor, Klinker and her colleagues are anything but impersonal paper-pushers. They help their charges navigate the maze of social service agencies, rehabs, and job placement. They'll give someone a ride to a clinic, or help a woman who is kicking her habit furnish a new apartment with donated furniture. It's the attention to detail that makes her operation stand out. Recently Klinker helped a young addict get a truck out of hock at the impound lot, and brought money to a jailed transvestite so he could buy razors to keep up appearances.

Best Candidate For Urban Renewal

NW 79th Street between NW Tenth and NW 27th avenues

What's up with this boulevard through nowhere? It's sort of like taking a trip down a rural Southern road, where all you see are tarpaper shacks, junk, and mud. This stretch of pavement remains countrified, but with a touch of strip mall here and there. Maybe someone tried to develop the area and just gave up. Vacant, weed-choked lots run for blocks, broken up by fragments of fences and trailer parks, or the battered and rotted remnants of what might have been nice little settlements 30 years ago. It's pretty obvious this tract has been officially ghettoized when just about the only buildings not boarded up are a Church's Fried Chicken, a Kentucky Fried Chicken, a Popeye's Fried Chicken, and a roadside barbecue joint -- also a few mom-and-pop markets and a few churches. Add the used-car lots, check-cashing windows, and junkyards, and you've got yourself a genuine wasteland.

Best Whiners

Miami-Dade County Commission

For almost a year -- and at nearly every commission meeting -- at least one member of the Miami-Dade County Commission grouses about how the whole world thinks they are a pack of corrupt nincompoops, all of whom are on the verge of being indicted. The king of whiners is Dennis Moss, who trots out his Rodney Dangerfield "I Don't Get No Respect" speech at the slightest provocation. He demands to know why the media don't give commissioners credit when they do something right. Our advice to the good commissioner: Worry less about your public image and more about the public's business, and everything will come out fine in the end.

Best Political Consultant In The Hereafter

Phil Hamersmith

Best Of Miami®

Best Of Miami®

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