Wet Heat offers an insightful take on a critical moment for our city and the cultural engine driving it. During the past 18 months, Bill Bilowit and Grela Orihuela, originators of the popular site, have been producing documentary content chronicling Miami's new identity as a global arts destination and the players fueling its rise. They began screening the project during last December 2008's Art Basel confab. The arts confluence unfolding on their doorstep and the opportunity to chronicle living history is the Ariadne's thread that binds these films. "Each edition is an in-depth, cinéma vérité, behind-the-scenes profile of a Miami-based artist at a milestone moment in their career," Bilowit states. He and Orihuela recently wrapped filming locals Bert Rodriguez and Hernan Bas for hourlong documentaries respectively, excerpts of which can be viewed online. The documentaries shadow the artists in their studios and at art openings and fairs, and feature interviews with dealers, collectors, critics, and high-art honchos, conveying their development as artists as well as telling the story of Miami's dramatic upswing.

Miami has a graffiti style all its own — wild, imaginative, and full of tropical color. MSG Cartel claims it's only an "online exhibition" of graffiti, implying its contributors are simply admirers of that particular street art. But browse the site — named for graffiti crew Miami Style Gods — for a while and it becomes clear it's operated by, and is a meeting ground for, Miami's most prolific illegal artists, from Crome and Crook to Atomik. The photos posted constitute a de facto hall of fame for some of the most skilled local wall work. After Kendall graffiti artist Merk fell to his death while spray-painting a highway overpass, the blog became a memorial ground. It's a daily updated finger on the pulse of a naturally reclusive subculture.

For the first time in decades, since before John F. Kennedy allegedly betrayed them, Cuban-Americans in Miami were supposedly ready to accept the Democratic Party into their lives again. Focus groups and studies indicated that Cuban-Americans in Miami wanted the freedom to travel to Cuba and visit relatives, not to mention send them money. Polls showed that, like the rest of America, Cuban-Americans wanted leaders who would focus on fixing the local economy instead of being fixated on toppling Fidel Castro. These were the signs that propelled the Democratic Party to recruit Hialeah's Mayor-for-Life Raul Martinez out of retirement and go after Rep. Lincoln Diaz-Balart's seat. From the get-go, the campaign was billed as the clash of the titans. It was the type of political race made for national television. On one side was Diaz-Balart, a former state prosecutor whose congressional career has been defined by a singular subject — the Cuban embargo. On the other side was Martinez, the charismatic Cuban Democrat who built his legacy running Miami-Dade's second-largest city. The plan seemed perfect. Martinez would siphon votes away from Diaz-Balart's base in Hialeah while clobbering the U.S. representative in Democrat-loving Broward County. Pundits figured Diaz-Balart was in the fight of his political life. They claimed he was in a dead heat with Martinez and the race was too close to call. But everyone underestimated Diaz-Balart, who proved he can still get nasty and dirty to get a victory. Throughout the campaign, Diaz-Balart hammered home Martinez's troubled past, including his indictment on public corruption charges and video footage of the burly Martinez pummeling a smaller man during a street protest. Martinez was unable to thwart the barrage against his character and ended up losing to Diaz-Balart by double digits. So much for those focus groups.

You know that old saying, "He could sell popsicles to an Eskimo"?

It's officially been revised, as of March 24, 2009, to read: "He could sell taxpayers a $600 million stadium during the worst economic meltdown in modern history."

Jeffrey Loria, owner of the Florida Marlins, put on a clinic in chutzpah this spring when he steamrolled through the city and county commissions with a $634 million deal for a retractable-roof stadium in Little Havana.

All this while the American economy death-spiraled and South Florida sank under a real estate market tanking harder than Dontrelle Willis's career. And best of all, Loria persuaded the council to pay for most of the deal — all but $120 million worth — with taxes.

Loria, who earned his billions selling art, is officially the Rembrandt of chutzpah.

At the Frost's gorgeous new building, local kids finally have a place to channel their inner van Gogh or Warhol in a setting that invites creativity. This state-of-the-art gallery allows visitors to enjoy interactive activities designed to educate, entertain, and enhance the museum experience. The gallery boasts 13 stations, including the computer-based display "Picture Yourself," where a camera snaps an image of the user's face and reproduces it on a touch screen. Participants can then trace the contours of the face with their fingers and print the finished artwork to take home. And, best of all, entrance to the gallery and museum is free year-round.

The sparkling debut of Miami's first new museum in a decade was greeted with critical acclaim and thunderclaps of applause from the public when the Frost reopened its doors this past November. Designed by Yann Weymouth, the 46,000-square-foot building is a work of art that rivaled the impressive exhibits organized for the unveiling. The museum boasts a dazzling Chinese granite façade, a soaring atrium, and a floating stairwell, and features more than 10,000 square feet of exhibition space.

Inside the concave-shaped gem, galleries are bathed with natural light filtered through skylights. Its ceilings are covered with fiberglass petals that protect the art from the sun's ultraviolet rays. The Frost christened its new home with six exhibitions, including "Modern Masters from the Smithsonian," which featured 43 key paintings and sculptures by 31 of the most celebrated artists who came to maturity in the 1950s. The sprawling show examined the complex and varied nature of American abstract art in the mid-20th Century.

Add to the fresh new museum smell a bold exhibition schedule and the Steven and Dorothea Green Critics' Lecture Series, and the trek to the hinterlands becomes more of a joyous cultural pilgrimage than a headache. The museum's new Target Wednesday After-Hours programming also gives visitors the chance to engage in gallery talks, visiting artist lectures, films, live music, and performance art the first Wednesday of every month. And, unlike other local museums, admission to the Frost and its programs are free to the public.

As we enter the final, gasping, dying breaths of the newspaper era, it is nice to see there are still a few Miami Herald veterans who continue to put out insightful, probing, hard-hitting journalism. At a time when thousands of unemployed shoe leather scribes are contemplating how they're gonna turn their buyout into the next big new media adventure, guys and gals like Larry Lebowitz keep churning out news articles that leave your fingers black with ink. And his words are worth every stain, because Lebowitz knows Miami-Dade County better than the guy who has to take a Metrobus from his house in Homestead to his job in Aventura. For more than a decade, Lebowitz has produced an impressive cache of clips. When he was the Herald's court reporter, Lebowitz wrote about everything from Deerfield Beach gun smugglers doing business with the Irish Republican Army to the story of a federal judge who went after a couple of DEA agents who defied a court order barring them from using a convicted smuggler in a sting. Lebowitz has gone on to shine as the Herald's transportation guru. Through his weekly column, "Streetwise," Lebowitz takes local government officials to task by exposing the never-ending bungling of the half-penny sales tax to fund mass transit in Miami-Dade while also offering his own perspective on how to make commuting bearable in sun-soaked traffic jams. In 2007, Lebowitz was honored by the South Florida Society of Professional Journalists when he and Debbie Cenziper won the James Batten Award for Public Service Journalism and the Gene Miller Award for Investigative Reporting for the "House of Lies" series. We only hope the Herald doesn't implode so that Lebowitz can keep his job.

Did you know Florida's Jews have been kicking it old-school in the Sunshine State since 1763? With the Torah and the menorah and the dancing of the hora under swaying palm trees? No? Well, there's this nice Jewish lady over on the Beach... she or one of her helpful staff members will set you straight on the long, colorful Jewish experience in the land of alligators and orange trees. Reams of mementos, photos, oral histories, and other items are housed in the two former synagogues that compose the Jewish Museum of Florida. As well as containing an extensive permanent collection of Florida-related Judaica, the museum offers many temporary exhibits, other public functions, and help with research. You know your bubbe would want you to go, so do it already.

Thanks to the sizzling scenery that needs no translation (i.e., the sexy dancers on seemingly every show), América TeVé has plenty of viewers who don't know a lick of Spanish, but for those who can understand the language, Oscar Haza is an even greater draw. As host of A Mano Limpia, he not only dazzles the audience with his knowledge of Latin American history and politics, but also carries on conversations with the likes of Lech Walesa, John McCain, Huber Matos, and anybody who can upset the Castro brothers. Despite the obvious focus on Cuba, he's not just another "Miami Mafia" windbag. The Dominican-born journalist covers hot topics of local, national (that means U.S.), and international interest that have nothing to do with the Pearl of the Antilles. And he does it in a classy, informative way that is as entertaining as TeVé's flashier fare.

With the advent of the now ubiquitous camera phone and cheap broadband, almost anyone can become a famous photographer overnight. Well, not quite anyone. There's still this little thing called talent that isn't quite universally available yet. But Carlos Ramos definitely has it. Ramos is the shutterbug known to his many fans as Miami Fever. Day after day for the last several years, he's uploaded thousands of images that seemingly capture the city's very soul — freezing the most intimate moments in a maelstrom called Miami. Not only does Ramos give the snootiest art snobs rich images to revel in, many of his photographs also cater to the more pedestrian loves of beautiful women and expensive cars, meaning there is something for everyone to like. If Ramos continues to follow his current trajectory, he has the potential to become a photographic superstar on the level of Henri Cartier-Bresson or Garry Winogrand. Yes, he's that good.