Best Gadfly 2001 | Tuesday Morning Breakfast Club | Best Restaurants, Bars, Clubs, Music and Stores in Miami | Miami New Times
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Best Gadfly

Tuesday Morning Breakfast Club

They get miffed about overdevelopment and lobbyists lurking at city hall. They've successfully battled high-rises, and don't even try to tell them what to do with their neighborhood's sidewalks. Go to just about any public meeting at Miami Beach City Hall, and you'll see a couple of them in the audience -- watching. They are members of the Tuesday Morning Breakfast Club, and they like nothing better than to chew on a squirming public official along with their coffee and toast. Each Tuesday morning this motley gaggle of Miami Beach property owners, entrepreneurs, and condo-board types converges on South Beach's oldest Cuban diner about 8:30 to get a clean shot at invited guests. When the chatter from their rear corner table rises above the general restaurant din, you know the guest speaker is being sliced and diced. Although the group began meeting in 1995, it became a force to be reckoned with in 1997, when its members took on high-rise developer Thomas Kramer and his $1.5 million campaign to defeat the "Save Miami Beach" referendum. The ballot measure passed overwhelmingly, and now a citywide vote is required whenever officials seek to increase density on waterfront property. Political foes sniff that the group is more attitude than substance, but we like the club's tenacity and political savvy.

Best TV News Reporter

Jilda Unruh and "The Investigators"

For more than a year now, Unruh and crew have been relentless in hammering away at incompetence and corruption in the biggest and arguably most important bureaucracy in Miami-Dade County: the public school district. They've chronicled misspent construction dollars, highly paid do-nothing employees, sex scandals, and nonexistent classes. Prying the lid off a secretive self-protective government entity ain't easy, but the red-faced, sputtering reactions of school officials confronted by Unruh indicate she's making progress. We all should take comfort in their discomfort. Thanks, Jilda.

Best Place To Drink Like A Fish

Underwater bar

How low can you go? At this underwater watering hole, you can go about twenty feet down, to the sandy floor of the ocean. Think of it this way: Even if you hit rock bottom, you'll never again have to moan, "How dry I am!" Here you're as likely to see a mermaid as a barmaid. In a marketing stunt that sounds more like a drunken prank, tequila magnate José Cuervo celebrated the Mexican holiday Cinco de Mayo in 2000 by actually sinking a full-size bar, complete with six stools, about 200 yards off of the First Street beach on South Beach. But this $45,000 structure attracts more than potential consumers. Behind the bar a curved wall of interlocking tetrahedrons, made from recycled concrete by long-time artificial-reef builder Ben Mostkoff, promotes algae growth, promising sea creatures and divers a lush environment. So stick around for last call. Sometimes, round about 3:00 a.m., if you're really quiet, you can hear the shrimp sing: "José Cuervo, you are a friend of mine/I like to drink you with a little salt and lime."

Best Promoter Of Cultural Diversity

Dade Heritage Trust

The county's architectural, cultural, and environmental heritage is precious and should be preserved. At least what's left of it should be preserved. For the past 25 years, the Dade Heritage Trust has worked to save historic sites (the Cape Florida lighthouse, the Miami Circle), restore historic properties, improve historic neighborhoods, and instill a sense of place and community in Miami's diverse environment. One of the trust's best functions is its annual Dade Heritage Days, a two-month spring celebration of Miami's cultural heritage that gives residents a chance to experience a bit of where their neighbors are coming from. The celebration includes hikes through the county's wild places, evenings of contemplating Haitian art or Miami Beach architecture, Miami River boat rides, and tours of the Miami Circle, Stiltsville, and the Biltmore Hotel. The list goes on.

Best Hurricanes Football Player

Ken Dorsey

The numbers alone are enough. This sophomore quarterback from Orinda, California, set a team record for pass attempts without an interception. He led the Big East in passing yardage and total offense, earning first-team all-conference honors ahead of Virginia Tech magician Michael Vick. The future alone is enough. In only his first full season as a starter, Dorsey played an instrumental role in the Canes' 11-1 record and near-miss of a national championship. But what about the drive? Ah, yes, The Drive. Fifty-one seconds. Seven plays. Six completions. Sixty-eight yards. When it was all over, when Dorsey raised his arms skyward in victory, Miami held a three-point lead over then top-ranked Florida State with less than a minute to play. And Dorsey had emerged as the most valuable player on a team full of talent.

Best Kids' Thrill

Lion Country Safari

All right, so the winner isn't actually in Miami. What's more important -- your children's happiness or simple logistics? Exactly. Drive eighteen miles west of West Palm Beach on State Road 441, and you'll be at Lion Country Safari, where the kids can observe beasts in their nearly natural environment, as opposed to watching out for them in school hallways. When it opened in 1967, the animal park was the United States' first drive-through cageless zoo, a place where you could drive right through into a herd of zebras and cruise by a few rhinoceros as they graze by the side of the road. These are wild animals, though, and you'll have to make sure the little ones don't roll down the windows to get a better look at the lions. In fact if you drive a convertible, the park will insist that you rent a car at the gate. After the kids get restless, you can park and step into Safari World, the walk-through portion of the park. Here's a tip: To catch the animals at their liveliest, get to the park in the morning, before the heat of the day takes its drowsy toll. The park is open 365 days per year, from 9:30 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. Last car enters at 4:30. Admission is $15.50 per adult and$10.50 per child, but be sure to check local papers and visitor centers for discount coupons. Lion Country's Website also offers coupons. One more thing: Beware of the ostriches and emus. They have a thing for windshield wipers.

Best Film Festival

FIU-Miami International Film Festival

This year was a glorious one for the city's largest film festival. Getting off to a head start last December with the Miami premiere of Julian Schnabel's tour de force, Before Night Falls, the late-February event presented one of the best selections in the eighteen years since its inception. From the riveting French period drama The Widow of St. Pierre to the ambient Chinese study In the Mood for Love, the festival surveyed the best of contemporary trends in cinema. An especially strong Latin-American lineup included Barbet Schroeder's controversial existential meditation Our Lady of the Assassins; Andrucha Waddington's Brazilian feminist romp You, Me, Them; and Alejandro Gonzalez Iñárritu's brash music-video-style Mexico City epic Amores Perros. In these films, as in the documentaries set in Cuba -- Jane Burnett and Larry Cramer's Spirits of Havana and Uli Gaulke's Havana, Mi Amor -- the music made as strong an impact as the celluloid. The felicitous synching of sight and sound climaxed in the festival anchor and audience-award winner, Fernando Trueba's documentary of Latin jazz, Calle 54. As if Trueba's loving portraits were not magical enough, the festival's after-hours Baileys Club brought the film to life with standout performances by Puntilla, Cachao, and the venerable Bebo Valdés.

Best Retirement

Janet Reno

While serving as the nation's first female attorney general, Reno appointed special prosecutors six times to investigate top officials in the Clinton administration, more than any other attorney general before her. Yes, she botched the raid on the Branch Davidian compound in Waco, Texas, where more than 80 people died. And snatching Elian from his relatives in Little Havana didn't win her friends back home among Miami's Cuban community. But it's the way Reno left office that said something about where her heart lies. The former U.S. Attorney General bought a used pickup truck to tour the country, returned to the house her mama built by hand in 1947, and made plans to kayak the 100-mile Wilderness Waterway from Everglades City to Flamingo in Everglades National Park. Welcome home. Relax. Enjoy.

Best Injury

Ricky Bones

The Florida Marlins pitcher had to be scratched from his scheduled May 11, 2000, home start against the Braves because he strained his back while rising from a reclining chair in front of his clubhouse's television set.

Best Local Landmark

El Centinela del Rio

New Yorkers have Miss Liberty towering above their harbor. Washingtonians have the noble Pocahontas perched atop the U.S. Capitol. And Miamians have a 21-foot-tall, virtually naked Tequesta Indian blowing into a conch shell on the grounds of the Three Tequesta Point condominium tower at the mouth of the Miami River. He stands on a nineteen-foot coral-rock pedestal surrounded by palm trees. Historians believe the last Tequesta died in the 1700s from diseases borne by the dreaded Spaniards, but this big bronze one will be impervious to such calamities. Commissioned by the Swire Group, which has developed most of Brickell Key (also known as Claughton Island), the statue, whose Spanish name translates to Sentinel of the River, was created by Cuban-born sculptor Manuel Carbonell and unveiled in July 1999. (Another Tequesta statue by Carbonell adorns the nearby Brickell Avenue bridge.) Our sentinel doubles as an ersatz lighthouse. The conch, which he holds pointed skyward, glows at night. The work is best seen from Biscayne Bay by boat, though it is visible from the northern seawall of the river near the Hotel Inter-Continental.

Best Of Miami®

Best Of Miami®

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