BEST FLAME-BROILING 2002 | Burger King fire walkers | Best Restaurants, Bars, Clubs, Music and Stores in Miami | Miami New Times
Navigation
Support Us
Search

BEST FLAME-BROILING

Burger King fire walkers

The irony is just too delicious. This past October marketing executives from Burger King, reeling from the botched introduction of their revamped French fries and gearing up to push the new Chicken Whopper sandwich, participated in an "achievement" team-building seminar on Key Largo. According to published reports, some 100 Burger King employees "used their bare hands to bend spoons, break boards, and smash bricks. Some bent steel bars with their throats and walked over a board of 6000 sharp nails." At the end of the seminar the executives were introduced to the highlight of the evening: an eight-foot-long pit of glowing-hot rocks they were told to walk across in their bare feet. Most of the participants made it over fine, and supposedly enjoyed a surge of confidence that comes from knowing they can overcome any obstacle. Unfortunately not everyone could overcome this particular obstacle. A dozen people suffered first- and second-degree burns on their feet. One woman had to be hustled to the emergency room. A day later several executives had yet to recover ambulatory status and were moving around in wheelchairs. As Burger King spokesman Rob Doughty told the Herald: "We certainly didn't intend for that to happen."

BEST TRADE (SPORTS TEAM)

Florida Marlins owner John Henry to the Boston Red Sox

Major League Baseball engineered this deal, allowing Henry to sell the Marlins, then turn around and buy the Red Sox. To Henry, who constantly cried poverty, tried to cajole South Florida taxpayers into building him a new stadium, and then when they wouldn't, orchestrated the $600 million purchase of the Sox by putting up $150 million of his own money, we say good riddance. And we offer one last bit of baseball trivia: Since 1919 the team you sold has one more world championship than the team you bought, chump.

BEST FARMERS MARKET

Robert Is Here

We know what you're going to say: Robert's is not a true farmers market. A splendidly eclectic fruit stand/reptile show/folk revue perhaps. What, you'll ask, about the Coconut Grove farmers market? Or the one outside Gardner's Market in Pinecrest? Fine. But this is our list and this year we're picking Robert Is Here. Yes, it's partly about the exotic fruit milkshakes, which are divine. But Robert Moehling and his crew have so much more to offer. In the fruit-and-vegetable department, for instance, just about everything grown in South Miami-Dade. In season there's U-pick strawberries. Plus live bees in a glass-enclosed honeycomb, every type of honey and preserve known to man, countless pepper and barbecue sauces, key-lime-infused chocolate-covered coconut squares, and many touristy trinkets. Out back is a large pen filled with giant tortoises and iguanas. There's also a one-man band playing in the corner on Saturdays. This is a place where you can truly eat, drink, and be merry.

BEST MISSED OPPORTUNITY

Miami Fusion

When Major League Soccer finally catches on in the United States, the decision to fold the Miami Fusion will make America's most apathetic sports town look even more stupid, as if that were possible. (Hello? The Dolphins couldn't sell out a playoff game?) Soccer is followed with feverish fanaticism throughout Latin America and the Caribbean. South Florida has a huge and ever-growing population of immigrants from Latin America and the Caribbean. You do the math. Bad management and inept marketing -- not a starless team with a lousy playoff record -- led to this humiliating loss. But nature hates a vacuum. Professional soccer will return to Miami. It is inevitable.

BEST ERRATUM

From the Miami Herald, Thursday, December 20, 2001: "On Sept. 23, 2000, The Herald published a story about a house donated to the Fort Lauderdale Branch NAACP. It included information provided by Hansel Williams, who was interviewed at the house, that is not correct. Williams subsequently said he is not married, has no children, did not live in the house rent-free and that his grandmother did not live there with him."

BEST NEW OLDIES JAZZ STATION

104.1 FM

The seasoned cats who preside over Jazz in the Afternoon play all the cool hits. You know: Kind of Blue, Giant Steps, A Love Supreme (the whole blessed album). This is noncommercial (and unlicensed, meaning "pirate") community radio as it was meant to be. These guardians of the bebop, hard-bop, and post-bop jazz flames liberate the airwaves on Saturday and Sunday afternoons. One way to make a good thing even better would be to extend the holy sounds of Miles, Trane, and Dolphy into weekday evenings, currently the domain of an emcee who preaches to us about things we already know regarding the current state of slavery in America.

BEST METEOROLOGICAL TREAT

Clouds

Miami has no mountains. There are no hills, buttes, or mesas. But there are clouds, and they appear almost daily on the big palette that is South Florida's sky. Our cosmic placement at the tip of a peninsula located to the east of the Gulf of Mexico, north of the Caribbean Sea, and downwind of the jet stream puts us at the crossroads of breezes and moisture that can produce spectacular celestial works. High up are the thin, wispy cirrus clouds, delicate free-form brush strokes of white that flow and curl against the blue of eternity. In the foreground on a fair day the cumulus play, those billowy shape-shifters, puffing effortlessly by on the breeze. Here are our mountains, inspiring and variable, and our view is unobstructed.

SECOND BEST ERRATUM

From the Miami Herald, Wednesday, October 24, 2001: "A story in Friday's editions referred to the Batman costume Elian Gonzalez wore at Halloween. Elian arrived in the United States in November and left in June, so he did not wear the costume at Halloween."

BEST BEATLES CORRESPONDENCE

Hard Rock Café

Bayside Marketplace

Before finding happiness in a warm gun, the Beatles found a buddy in a Miami Beach cop. Sgt. Buddy Dresner was assigned to provide security to the Beatles during the group's South Florida invasion in February 1964. The Hard Rock Café has no photos of the screaming female mob that besieged the boys when they descended from their rooms for a dip at the Deauville Hotel pool. But there are shots of them at Dresner's house, where Mrs. Dresner served a nice dinner and Paul read to the couple's children. Back in London several months after the two-week February tour, Paul scrawled a letter to Dresner apologizing for not writing sooner. "I lost your address. I've only just got it again -- from George," he wrote. "We'll be out [again] in America soon. That's if they don't start a war or something. For instance, all this business in Vietnam." (The Beatles indeed invaded the States again in late August, as the U.S. military presence grew and grew in Southeast Asia.) Other historic scrawlings appear on a work of abstract art the Fab Four signed and shipped to Dresner after the February visit. The drawing (by one D. Spence) consists of four splotches of black ink dripping to the bottom of a piece of brown paper. On it one can observe hints of the psychedelic wordplay John later embraced: "To good old Buddy, what is our Buddy, good Bubby (get a job Buddy), all the best and thanks from me." In a separate letter Brian Sommerville, the group's agent, penned a sentiment about our subtropical burgh that many still find apt. "I'll never forget that wonderful place and its people," he wrote.

BEST GARISH PARTY OF THE YEAR

Ocean Drive anniversary party

On South Beach attending and critiquing over-the-top parties isn't just a leisure activity, it's a way of life. And for local fashionistas, one of the most anticipated fetes is Ocean Drive's annual birthday bash, where the magazine's glossy pages, chock full of beautiful people, come to life. Even the Herald bought into the hype this past year, giving the Loews Hotel-hosted party front-page coverage, and in light of the hordes of would-be crashers lauding it as the season's most coveted invite. Once inside, however, a different truth emerged. Yes, there were the requisite flocks of aspiring models trucked in by their agencies, and a smattering of celebs were coaxed to the shindig by Ocean Drive's wunderkind publisher. But the overall vibe was less fabulous than bar mitzvah: serving stations of food, well-mannered members of the tribe schmoozing away, and a DJ spinning an early-Eighties playlist that stopped just short of Kool and the Gang's "Celebration" -- the usual cue for a hora circle. Only the writhing, half-naked "living sculptures" added a welcome touch of Beach tackiness, reminding everyone this wasn't a post-synagogue affair.

Best Of Miami®

Best Of Miami®

Use of this website constitutes acceptance of our terms of use, our cookies policy, and our privacy policy The Miami New Times may earn a portion of sales from products & services purchased through links on our site from our affiliate partners. ©2024 Miami New Times, LLC. All rights reserved.
Do Not Sell or Share My Information
Powered By Foundation