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BEST ART CHAT

Pillow Talk

Beach House Bal Harbour

Film and theater directors and actors, poets and writers have been allowing audience members to have at them for years in frank exchanges about content and merit, seriousness and triviality. Now the Rubell family, boutique hoteliers and major art collectors, are applying the principle to visual artists. Several times a year accomplished artists like Jeff Koons, Andres Serrano, Ross Bleckner, Cindy Sherman, and Damien Hirst will display their work and appear in the cozy Bamboo Room of the Rubell's Beach House hotel to talk about art with fans and perhaps less-than-fans. So far this year's artists have included Rineke Dijkstra, the famed Dutch chronicler of youth at bay (April 25), and Maurizio Cattelan, the impish sculptor who portrayed Pope John Paul II struck down by a meteorite and got the art world all upset (May 2).

BEST LOCAL ALBUM OF THE LAST TWELVE MONTHS

Strokes Is For Dopes

Curious Hair

Okay, so it's not an album, it's a three-song EP, but then, as they say, it's not the length that matters, it's what you do with it. And this little disc is more an act of protest than a digital artifact. Dismayed by the faux-phenomenon surrounding Brit crit darlings the Strokes, the Hair did what any angry underemployed all-too-inventive band would do: stroked back. Jeff Rollason and friends burned up a batch of stroke-anti-stroke sarcasm to distribute to unsuspecting fans at the Strokes Billboardlive show -- and the songs don't sound half-bad! If, as the original rock critic Lester Bangs claims, David Bowie's stardust-sparkling whine was a response to the carefully posed amateur cool of the Velvet Underground (who the Strokes flagrantly rip off), there's just as much whiny sparkle here. And as legend has it, Strokes pretty-boy frontman Julian Casablancas even signed a copy!

BEST RAP ALBUM YOU NEVER HEARD

Dirty Life

X-Con

Most of Miami's rap hopefuls dream of the day their big break arrives in the form of a major-label record contract. Once they've signed on the dotted line, so their thinking goes, everything else is automatic: fame and fortune, groupies and gold teeth. Right? Not always. Take local emcee X-Con, whose independently issued single "Whoa! Lil' Mama" generated enough of a buzz to snag a deal with major Elektra. And if you opened up glossy hip-hop mags such as The Source, XXL, and Vibe last winter, you were greeted with full-page ads announcing the imminent arrival of X-Con's debut album. But good luck actually finding a copy of Dirty Life in the stores: The execs over at Elektra unceremoniously dumped X-Con from their roster immediately upon his album's release, cutting all promotional support, even refusing to answer questions about the matter. A somewhat chagrined X-Con isn't talking either about this mysterious career setback; rumors have been flying, citing everything from an aggrieved CEO with a personal beef to an abrupt change of heart over the rapper's commercial prospects. As to the latter charge, the curious can decide for themselves by rooting around Morpheus or other sites. Your downloads won't get X-Con any closer to MTV, but they won't put any change in Elektra's pockets either -- a dirty life, indeed.

BEST TV STATION

City of Miami Television (Channel 9)

This is no joke. Jim Clark, a former WAMI-TV (Channel 61) sports producer with otherwise good credentials, began whipping Channel 9 into shape in the fall of 2001. Under his guidance we can still witness extraordinary performances by one of South Florida's best acting troupes, the Miami Commission, but now we can enjoy the show without the garbled audio. The station also transmits meetings of other bodies that occasionally make important decisions, including the Code Enforcement Board, the Historic and Environmental Preservation Board, the Parks Advisory Board, the Planning Advisory Board, the Urban Development Review Board, the Waterfront Advisory Board, and the Zoning Board. But there's more. Viewers, and perhaps some of our elected officials, can bone up on the basics of our system of government in the United States by watching On Common Ground. This program is funded by various state governments and the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service. Channel 9 also offers the PBS-produced show Crossroads Café, which is designed for people learning English as a second language. For those of us whose first language is English but still need a little more practice, the station presents TV 411, a production of the Adult Literacy Media Alliance. Call for current program times. The station is carried only on cable within Miami city limits, but Clark hopes to have it streaming on the Internet in the near future.

BEST FILM FESTIVAL

Gay and Lesbian Film Festival

Really, this is more an award for founder/director Robert Rosenberg than it is for a collection of films. As we saw this year with the Miami Film Festival, there's more to creating a successful event than meets the camera's eye. Rosenberg started his fest four years ago with a combination of love, enthusiasm, a good curatorial eye, and a healthy respect for organization. That great mix shows. Each year the festival has grown, but at a controllable pace. The offerings are not so disparate as to lose cohesion, but fresh enough to give us something out of the ordinary. Films were selected well in advance, as were the dates and times they would screen. Thematically this year the issue of identity broke new ground -- gone are those teenage coming-out stories; in are ones about gay men falling for straight women. Not all the films worked, but the festival itself has a firm grasp of its own identity, the best template indeed.

BEST LOCAL ELECTRONICA RELEASE

Live at Fuácata

Spam Allstars

You'll have to provide your own sweat, smoke, and spilled mojitos, but this live document of the Allstars residency at Hoy Como Ayer's Fuácata party (edited and spliced together in dizzying Miles Davis Bitches Brew fashion) is still one of the slinkiest set of grooves around. DJ Le Spam (that's still Andrew Yeomanson to his mother) drops salsa turntable samples and Fidel's speeches over double-time beats; funky guitar riffs butt up against rapid-fire timbales. And somehow the whole concoction coheres, becoming much, much greater than the sum of its parts.

BEST PIT STOP

Wayside Fruit and Vegetable

Pit stop not really required, though for joggers and bikers it's ideal. This roadside fresh fruit, vegetable, chocolate brownie, and fruity milkshake stand, located on an otherwise residential stretch of Red Road, is worth a trip all by itself. Located far (and not so far) from the madding crowds of U.S. 1 and the Shops at Sunset Place, and just down the street from Parrot Jungle, Wayside is a true oasis, a quiet little spot with outdoor tables and chairs beneath a lush South African sausage tree and tall, lanky bamboo, where you can bring a friend, a pooch (dogs are welcome), or a good book. The perfect refueling station for the long, strange, never-ending trip we call daily life in South Florida.

BEST REGGAE RADIO PROGRAM

Jamusa

WAVS-AM (1170)

Wednesday, Thursday, Friday evening drive time

A newcomer arrived in Miami. He drove from the airport through the jungle breeze and sharp metallic colors. He switched the radio on and heard: "Lift up your leg! You must!" in a froggy, urgent roar from an artist he'd never heard. The station, he discovered, was WAVS-AM ("The Heartbeat of the Caribbean") and the DJ was Jamusa, who went on to become the newcomer's favorite after-work unwinding guy, rolling out spools of sound by Beres Hammond, Maxie Priest, Inner Circle, Luciano, Shabba Ranks, and Morgan Heritage -- all citizens you're not going to hear real soon on Power Radio or Mambí or the BBC loop from NPR. The newcomer learned that Jamusa has been at this stuff for 40 years and that he recently received a well-deserved testimonial at Stinger's. But when the newcomer tried to speak with him, he couldn't get past one of Jamusa's deputies, who warily observed, "Me tink you tryin' to headrest wit Jamusa, but Jamusa only headrest wit jah!"

BEST CONCERT OF THE PAST TWELVE MONTHS

The Strokes at Billboardlive

Critics have been proclaiming the death of rock and roll for so long now, the genre's aesthetic demise is almost taken as a given. Buzzsaw guitars? Crashing drums? A lovesick singer whipping his microphone through the air? Uh, what else ya got, grandpa? So why the Strokes were able to take those three familiar fuzzed-out chords and whip up so much unalloyed excitement during their January Billboardlive concert is anybody's guess. The reference points were certainly clear enough -- a taste of Lou Reed's jaded snarl here, a dash of Television's dueling Telecasters there, even an old-fashioned sing-along. But somehow it all seemed fresh again, full of crackling energy, and the packed audience ate it up with a sweaty, body-tossing frenzy.

BEST PIT STOP ON THE WAY TO KEY WEST

The Lor-e-lei

Mile Marker 82

This bar, restaurant, and marina is more than merely a pit stop for hungry tourists on their way to Key West. It's a piece of Islamorada history, a place to bask in the warm sun and the spirit of the Keys, and it's a popular watering hole for locals. Start your visit with a fresh fish sandwich and a cold beer inside the unpretentious restaurant or on its shaded patio. If you can manage to pull yourself away from the table, stagger a few steps through the hot sun over to the Lor-e-lei's waterfront bar, where you can have another cold beer, gaze out at the calm waters, and eavesdrop on the relaxed conversations. If you're looking to cool off, just walk a few steps to the water and take a dip. Closer to sunset the mood changes as the fishing boats glide in after a day out on the flats, breathing new life into the lazy afternoon. The quiet bar begins to bustle as fisherfolk make their way to the barstools to share perfectly accurate, self-deprecating accounts of the day's adventures. There's no better place to watch the sunset. You didn't really want to drive all the way to Key West, did you?

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