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Best Tourist Trap

Tantra

Sex sells, and Tantra is well aware of it. You could even call this restaurant self-aware, the play toward sensuality is so over-the-top. That's why the cuisine has been labeled "aphrodisiac," and dishes have been given fanciful names: A tomato salad is called the "Love Apple" and a Roquefort-Bartlett pear salad is called "The French Kiss." In addition to the menu, you've got owner Tim Hogle, self-confessed "dentist to the stars." Then there's the Tantric décor, designed to stimulate all five senses (not to mention a little below-the-waist action): living grass carpet, marble-backed waterfall, Indian sculptures, and incense that burns like the eternal light. Stir together a mix of celebrities like Madonna, Leonardo DiCaprio, Whitney Houston, and Courtney Love, all of whom have lent their own notorious reps to the place. Then charge as much as you can get away with -- say, $20 for a seared foie gras appetizer, or $46 for a veal steak, or $14 for a wedge of flourless chocolate cake. Voilà! The ideal tourist trap. The saving grace? Chef Willis Loughhead's cuisine is almost worth the hype.

Best Local Erotic Website

www.chersangels.com

This slickly produced site offers much more than just a peek at a nubile young blonde lounging around her Miami Beach apartment in Victoria's Secret lingerie, with friends who are likewise scantily clad. This is South Beach pixilated. It's about time America's Sodom and Gomorrah had its own Web presence. Happily this is no sleazy porn site, nor is it a classless voyeur site with cameras placed in a sorority-house bathroom. Cher shares herself in a teasingly erotic yet tasteful manner. It's a virtual jaunt about town with beautiful girls as they relax on sunny beaches or party in dim nightclubs (links are provided to many of the Beach's club and restaurant Websites). All for only ten dollars per month. Some lonely soul in Minnesota is very thankful. Cher obviously enjoys being the star of her own show. Cameras record her movements in her living room; she's contemplating a bedroom cam as well. A gracious hostess, she makes a point of e-mailing her admirers in real time. Believe it or not, Cher was a mortgage-banker trainee before she realized she could make more money broadcasting her life and tapping into the South Beach obsession with skin and sun.

Best Monologuist

Ed Kaplan

"I'll be with you until two this morning. If you have something you want to weigh in on, maybe the over/under for the Marlins, give me a call. Maybe the upcoming NFL draft. I was just going -- " Anyone with even a splash of radio experience knows how hard it is to fill dead time between callers. As the host of the late-shift sports talk show on WQAM-AM (560), Ed Kaplan is more adept at this than just about anybody. Almost every weeknight he can be heard delivering long soliloquies on Pat Riley, horseracing, or maybe something he read in the paper. If the board isn't lit up with callers, he'll just keep talking -- and talking and talking. "Don't get me wrong about Bobby Knight," he might muse. "The man can coach, no doubt about it. I'm just saying he's a jerk." At age 39 Kaplan walked away from a successful law practice to pursue a career in sports broadcasting. Sixteen years later he's still on the air, working weeknights from 10:00 until the last game is played on the West Coast. He specializes in gambling, his discourses often veering into point spreads and handicapping. This pari-mutuel focus comes in handy on a slow sports night, when he may spend ten minutes reading from a list of upcoming races scheduled for the Flagler Dog Track. Kaplan is so skilled at talking nowadays that listeners might not even notice the padding. "QAM sports time is 1:35," he'll say. The Spalding Gray of local sports talk radio finally takes a break.

Think of it as Kiwanis with attitude, or the 'hood's chamber of commerce. One thing's for sure, businesses in NANA, as it's known, don't go down easily. NANA members (about 150 merchants are in the organization) believe there are far too few black-owned businesses to begin with, so they'll fight tooth and nail to save the ones that are up and running. For instance in April a landlord tried to evict Betty's Market from a building on NW 60th Street and Twelfth Avenue for nonpayment of rent, among other things. NANA members, led by founder Leroy Jones, sprang into action with street protests outside and subtler negotiations with the landlord inside. By the end of the affair, Betty's Market was back in business. Members even helped raise funds to restock the shelves.

Best Graffiti Mural

The Boardroom

With the number of legal works of graffiti in the area increasing, the results have been larger projects done in plain view. The Boardroom is one of these pieces. Easily visible to traffic traveling north on NW 27th Avenue, the mural is a purist's dream. Measuring about 12 feet by 55 feet, The Boardroom demonstrates skills in three-dimensional drawing and old-school balloon lettering of artists' tags yet maintains a unified vision as a collaborative work. The Dam Graffiti Crew, which created the mural, includes Ultra, Reuz, Gwiz, Kedz, Elex, Freek, Threat, Task, and Furious. (They prefer to be known only by their tag.) The mural is a self-portrait of the group, featuring cartoonlike renderings of the members seated at a boardroom table. Dressed in military uniforms and blue suits in the painting, they strike various poses of concern and urgency. One slams a fist on the table, another jams down an index finger. Closer inspection of the table reveals that it is made up of the twisted and elongated three letters of the crew's name, "Dam." Above the nine seated individuals hover the artists' names in that baroque calligraphy, the literal and figurative signature of this urban art form.

Best Herald Writer

Meg Laughlin

From the day she began writing for the Miami Herald in 1982, first as a freelancer then as a staffer, Meg Laughlin has wrapped her prose around the lives of some of South Florida's strangest characters and most disturbing stories. We love her for that. At Tropic magazine she chronicled the bizarre machinations of Hank Blair, a U.S. Customs agent who couldn't stop himself from sadistically harassing Susan Billig, the mother of a young girl who mysteriously disappeared decades ago. She looked into the cops' killing of bus hijacker "Nick" Sang and found that the Joe's Stone Crab waiter wasn't what he seemed to be. Laughlin showed us the depth of suffering Magda Montiel Davis experienced after kissing Fidel Castro. And then there's Elian. Laughlin enlivened the Herald's occasionally lackluster coverage of the case with sparkling writing and ample enterprise. She was the one who toted up the eleven times Marisleysis Gonzalez was hospitalized. And it was she who figured out how Demetrio Perez and company were programming the six-year-old at Perez's Lincoln-Martí school. She had no problem cadging Sister Jeanne O'Laughlin into admitting the weird reason she took a side in the custody battle for Elian. All part of a day's work. Says Laughlin: "I'm gonna miss the kid."

Best Cheap Thrill

Party crashing

Invitations are for the spineless masses and the spiritually lazy. Who are these elite snobs to banish you from their South Beach soirees? What do Cameron Diaz and Leonardo DiCaprio have that you don't? Money? Looks? Fame? Bah! Level the playing field with the one thing you do have over them: smarts. This takes just a little preparation. First scour the papers for news of a fab event. Then call those responsible and make your pitch. If it's a PR firm, remember the name of it as well as the name of the person with whom you spoke. Say you are "media." Make up the name of some fashion magazine -- Cut or Plastic or some such. If they say they've never heard of you, say it's a Condé Nast prototype due out in the fall. Make sure you dress appropriately. You also can show up at the door with attitude. Approach the person holding the list and give your name. When they can't find it, roll your eyes, look pissed and say, "Maurice with that PR firm, whateveritscalled, phoned me personally, and I told him I'd only do this if he made sure I didn't have to wait at the door." Once inside drink copiously, drop names, and try hard to have fun.

Best Place To Watch The Fight

Miami Jai Alai Fronton

Say it's a fight. A really big fight. The kind of fight everybody wants to see. You can watch it at home, courtesy of pay-per-view, for no less than $50. Or you can go to a bar, where the cover charge can set you back $15, $20, or more. Or you can go to Miami Jai Alai. The struggling fronton will let you in for one measly dollar. Not only does that include a whole evening of jai alai betting action, it also covers the fight, shown on dozens of screens, with cheap beer flowing everywhere. Part with $5 and they'll let you ride the elevator upstairs to the Courtview Club. Eat a surprisingly decent prime-rib dinner if you want (the meal, with salad and dessert, costs only $11) while you watch your own private television. If Felix Trinidad is fighting, though, you'll probably want to catch the bout downstairs in the large banquet room, surrounded by hundreds of passionate Puerto Rican fans. When Tito wins, jump and scream and dance and shout with glee. If not for the fighter, then at least for the bargain.

Best Actor

William Metzo

There's not a huge demand in the theater for naked middle-age men, but don't blame actor William Metzo. As the Marquis de Sade in the magnificent Florida Stage production of Doug Wright's play Quills, Metzo gave a performance that required him to 1) stop speaking after the first act (since the Marquis is relieved of his tongue by church authorities hoping to stop him from writing erotica) and 2) strip down to his bare essentials. What Metzo displayed was a professional confidence and talent that proves he needs no costume. It's a tribute to the strength of his acting that Metzo's Sade seemed more vulnerable without his wig than without his pants. In this play about the importance of defending art against censorship, Metzo makes an indelible case for great acting.

Best Protest Du Jour

Hunger strikes

Let's see now, in just the past twelve months, there has been a series of hunger strikes to free immigrants held at the Krome Detention Center. "Nobody listened to me," Marta Berros, leader of the group Mothers for Freedom, told the Herald. "My son was being tortured, and nobody wanted to listen until I did the hunger strike." Members of exile organization Vigilia Mambisa protested the Los Van Van concert at the Miami Arena with a "daylight hunger strike," not eating for two days from 8:00 a.m. to 6:00 p.m. A group known as Municipalities in Exile made their strike (in solidarity with fasting dissidents in Cuba) even more palatable by fasting from only 10:00 a.m. until 5:00 p.m. Hunger-striking Haitian detainee Arnel Belizaire dropped nearly 100 pounds after he stopped eating solid food to protest his INS incarceration. This past January his lawyers admitted that Belizaire might not realize his hunger strike could be "a futile action." Only a few months earlier, Democracy Movement leader Ramon Saul Sanchez launched a twenty-day, liquids-only hunger strike to win release of his boat Human Rights, which the feds had impounded. His strike was not a futile action. After the boat was returned, Sanchez transported it to Jose Martí Park, where he and 100 others celebrated its return. Food and drink, appropriately, were not served.

Best Locally Produced Musical

Finian's Rainbow

Last fall the average playgoer had to wonder: Did we really need a revival of Finian's Rainbow? Despite a glut of Broadway revivals in New York, the Coconut Grove Playhouse certainly made a good case for the 1947 classic by Fred Saidy and E.Y. Harburg, whose familiar songs ("How Are Things in Glocca Morra?" and "Old Devil Moon") are just two good reasons to revisit this story of a man, a woman, a leprechaun, and a battle against racism. Starring Austin Pendleton, the great Brian Murray, and a ferociously talented chorus, and featuring a book updated by Peter Stone, the Grove's Rainbow rose over one of the most exquisite examples of stage design you'd ever want to see. (Kudos to Loren Sherman's rainbow of pastel bed sheets, Phil Monat's effervescent lighting, and Marguerite Derricks's choreography.) It also served to remind us that there's always a place for an old-fashioned musical with a great score and a timeless anti-bigotry statement. Things are great in Glocca Morra, indeed.

Best Of Miami®

Best Of Miami®

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