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BEST LOCAL GIRL GONE BAD

Trista Rehn

She came from St. Louis to Miami, innocent and earnest, to get her degree in physical therapy from UM. She got it and began aiding old folks and kids with accident or disease-based problems. An admirable life of helping others. But then she caught a glimpse of the Miami Heat dancers and succumbed to her inner star complex. It's been downhill ever since. Before long Trista was in Los Angeles, a popular finalist on ABC's dreadful The Bachelor, in which a guy goes through 25 hapless ladies to see which one he'll marry. True love on reality TV? Many in here shuddered to think she represented, however tenuously, the best Miami had to offer. When she didn't make the final cut, her audience popularity (imagine that audience...) led boob tube honchos to give her a spinoff all her own: The Bachelorette. This time she got to go through 25 guys and dump 24 of them. Just in time for the final episode, and with commercial sponsors lining up for the kill, she picked a poetry-writing fireman. "We're still together and in love," she recently ventured, adding (to no one's surprise) that she was now looking for a more permanent TV or movie job.

BEST LOCAL GIRL MADE GOOD

Cecilia Altonaga

On May 6, 2003, by a unanimous vote of the U.S. Senate, Altonaga became the nation's first female Cuban-American federal judge. President George W. Bush personally nominated her, sidestepping a list of South Florida candidates forwarded by the state's two senators, Bill Nelson and Bob Graham. The move provoked cries of foul. It's clear Bush wanted a Cuban female in the position, and in Altonaga he found a winner. The Yale-educated Coral Gables resident was a career prosecutor with the Miami-Dade State Attorney's Office until she became a county court judge in 1996 and then circuit court judge three years later. Even Nelson and Graham, two Democrats, conceded the point of her qualifications and ended up backing the president's pick.

Readers Choice: Gloria Estefan

BEST LOCAL GIRL MADE HEAVEN

Doris Wishman

Her passport put her age at 82, but relatives think she was at least 90 when this nation's grande dame of the sleazy art film departed Miami this past August 10 on a nudist cruise to hell. At least that was the destination Doris Wishman always thought she'd booked, owing to the naughty nature of her movies. Indeed her reputed cult classic is Bad Girls Go to Hell. But so extensive was this Coral Gables denizen's following that the boat surely dropped her off at that cinema paradiso in the sky, probably still wearing an imitation leopard-skin suit and retro sunglasses. In the Sixties Wishman's low-budget shoots explored a strange universe of nudism. They include Hideout in the Sun, in which two bank robbers hide from the police in a nudist camp, and Blaze Starr Goes Nudist. Another classic overlooked by the Academy was Nude on the Moon, in which astronauts touch down and find a welcoming committee of naked women with antennas and bouffant hairdos. She even delved into heavy international political themes with Behind the Nudist Curtain. As the decade progressed, the self-taught director gradually refined her grainy black-and-white melodramas in which crude men tended to abuse scantily clad women. Critics raved about her jarring jump-cut closeups to ashtrays, squirrels, heaving breasts. Her filmography is a veritable review of Sixties history: Another Day, Another Man; The Sex Perils of Paulette; Bad Girls Go to Hell; Indecent Desires; A Taste of Her Flesh. Perhaps it was a lust for money that led to her mid-Seventies hardcore phase (Come With Me, My Love). But mostly she eschewed explicit sex in her art, preferring to revel instead in tasteless weirdness. A few years later the prolific filmmaker culminated her dream of making a horror flick with A Day to Dismember, about a female porn actress turned psycho-killer. After a long hiatus and a stint working at the Pink Pussycat sex boutique in Coconut Grove, Wishman returned in the new millennium with the lyrical Dildo Heaven and the violent yet sexy Satan Was a Lady. She was editing Each Time I Kill at the time of her death. In the end, she was a crazy sweetheart. "I made all my films out of love," Wishman purred.

BEST LOCAL PHANTASMAGORIA

Sunny Isles goes up, Fontainebleau mural goes down, DCF kids go missing, Rilya still missing, Stierheim stays, rain stays, Mas Santos seeks a dialogue, Alonso seeks a defense fund, gay rights are challenged, priests are accused, more rain, more DCF kids missing, DeFede goes mainstream, Beach Memorial Day goes on, Stiltsville goes public, Cubans get smuggled, Warshaw gets released, Alex Diaz de la Portilla gets off, cops kill, DCF kills, lightning kills, Elena Burke dies, Leonard Miller dies, George Batchelor dies, more priests are accused, more rain falls, more Haitians arrive, Nicole Guillemet arrives, Carrie Meek retires, Kendrick Meek is anointed, Reno hits the road, Bad Boys II hits town, traffic stops, tempers flare, temperatures rise, summertime sizzles, bus benches sizzle, more priests are accused, more DCF kids are missing, Haitian kids kill, Maysie Beller dies, Ellen Morphonios dies, Humbertico gets released, Al Gutman gets released, Ecstasy smugglers get busted, anti-gay activists get busted, Miami poverty gets famous, Marcos Jiménez takes charge, Joe Arriola takes charge, Alonso is charged again, Muhammad Ali returns, classics return to radio, the Gusman returns to splendor, Shiver meddles at MIA, MIA's Richard Mendez is convicted, Sal Magluta is convicted, Vaclav Havel arrives, Oswaldo Payá arrives, election monitors arrive, Hurricane Andrew turns 10, Calle Ocho turns 25, Bushwacker Lounge dies, Mike Gordon's dies, the Taurus dies, gay rights survive, Natacha Seijas threatens, Rick Sanchez threatens to return, elections turn to chaos, more cops shoot, more Haitian kids shoot, Art Basel arrives, David Leahy quits, Carlos Gimenez quits, Chuck Lanza quits, Ira Clark quits, Florida Philharmonic goes bust, Performing Arts Center busts budget, Miami Beach busts lobbyists, hurricanes stay away, tornadoes arrive, Bill Perry dies, Maurice Gibb dies, Laurie Horn dies, Reno tanks, Dolphins tank, Canes tank, Cubans hijack, Graham runs, cruise ships sicken, Haitians still detained, DCF still kills, but finally some good news for those who think the bad guys always win: North Miami Beach detectives were after Henry Box, Jr., wanted for attempted murder. They got a hot tip and chased it. After securing the area where they hoped to apprehend the suspect, they had a clerk get on the intercom: "Mr. Box, please come to the front office. Mr. Henry Box." He did just that, sauntering from the jury-pool room at the criminal courthouse, where he was doing his duty, into waiting handcuffs and a short stroll across the street to jail.

BEST MANIFESTO

Miami Educational Review

Prof. Brian Peterson

Everything you ever wanted to know about local education (from pre-k to post-doc) and so much more. History professor Peterson, a slight man with glasses, a limp, and a sardonic smile, creates somewhere between seven and ten e-mail newsletters weekly and sends them to a few hundred people. The newsletters are partly a compendium of education-related articles in major newspapers and journals, studies, and statistics. But they also serve as a repository of Peterson's analysis of political trends, bald advocacy of ideological positions, parsing of the smallest potential motives behind every decision made by the school board, and tweaking the administration and politicos by endlessly speculating on their essentially corrupt natures. To subscribe, send an e-mail to [email protected] with "subscribe MER" in the subject line.

BEST MIAMI HERALD WRITER

Jim DeFede

The Miami Herald was a favorite DeFede target for the ten and a half years he was employed by this newspaper. Now that he's toiling away in the belly of the beast, his crusade against corruption, incompetence, malfeasance, official mediocrity, and, well, official idiocy appears to continue unencumbered by the powers-that-be -- at least so far. The first page of the Herald's local section is a far more interesting read thanks to him (and an inspired internal shakeup that affected the other columnists at the paper). Are we sorry to have lost him? Of course. Is he making us proud nonetheless? You bet.

BEST MILE OF MIAMI

Biscayne Boulevard from Sixth Street to Nineteenth Street

This rapidly evolving stretch of Miami's signature thoroughfare embodies the highest of human aspirations and the lowest of human avarice. A few landmarks heading north from Sixth Street: The Freedom Tower and its symbolic representation of mankind's yearning for liberty; a hulking American Airlines Arena as proof that power and money always trump the public's interest; Bicentennial Park, now protected and awaiting rebirth, standing as a very rare victory for that public interest; across the street, a string of parcels bought by a politically connected speculator who expects their value to skyrocket; just beyond the noxious concrete mass of I-395, the grandiose Performing Arts Center rising amid hopes of a cultural renaissance and growing fears of insolvency; and approaching the mile marker, construction cranes erecting a concrete wall of condominiums that will permanently block public access to the bay while enriching developers enabled by politicians whose vision of the future does not extend beyond the next election.

BEST MOVIE SHOT ON LOCATION

Bad Boys II

For closing down the MacArthur Causeway, BBII lived up to its name. But we're willing to bet that once the film opens, all will be forgiven. The original Bad Boys was arguably the first film to portray Miami as a truly urban center, with all its glitz and its grit, and we have similar expectations for the sequel. Besides the reteaming of Will Smith and Martin Lawrence, aren't you just a teeny bit curious about that causeway sequence? Special mention goes to the practically straight-to-video Big Trouble. Based on the book by Dave Barry, the subject of a nuclear device on a passenger plane was too hot to handle post 9/11. Despite its many flaws, the film boasts some memorable moments of Barry's spot-on skewering of the local scene and its population.

BEST NEW BUILDING

Miami Rescue Mission Community Activity Center

You know immediately that something is different about this warehouse. It's the same height as the others but the roof forms some nice angles. The tri-color scheme -- terracotta, olive, and clay -- on its tripartite front wall tells you maybe it's not a warehouse at all. "It's about uplifting you," architect Marilyn Avery says of her creation, located in a downtrodden section of the Wynwood warehouse district. And who needs more of a lift than someone who has spent a little too much time on the streets (like a homeless mom). Rather than plopping down a bizarre-looking "object-building," Avery drew from the zone's indigenous warehouse vernacular. "I took that form and just made it exuberant," she explains, looking up from the sidewalk at the richly colored front wall. The parking lot is hidden in back so as not to clutter the exuberance of the entrance. When they step inside, parents and kids look up to a 40-foot-tall ceiling gently illuminated by outdoor light streaming in through the clerestory windows. There is also something soothing, even primal, about the natural materials. Shiny black granite and glossy medium-brown birch form a large reception desk. Waist-high birch panels run horizontally along the slate walls, and there's more wood inside the four classrooms in the form of cabinets and window panes. Then there's the Zenlike beauty of the smooth concrete floors. Much thought went into the indirectly illuminated basketball gym, with the help of lighting guru William Lam. Thanks to more clerestory windows and the reflective properties of various white surfaces (the walls and the fabric suspended from the ceiling), there are no glaring bulbs to mess up someone's game. All the lighting is indirect. "You never lose the ball up there," Avery affirms.

BEST NEW COMMUNITY INITIATIVE

Greater Miami Prosperity Campaign

Miami is poor, poor, poor. Miami is so poor it's not even funny. Almost one-third of city residents live in poverty, according to the 2000 Census. More than eleven percent are unemployed, and per capita income overall is less than the cost of an economy car. Almost half our residents never graduated from high school. Don't even get us started on the lack of home-ownership. The reasons for all this are many and varied and stretch back in time for decades. But in 2002 a glimmer of hope shined through when Miami Mayor Manny Diaz (pressured by the good folks at the Human Services Coalition of Miami-Dade County, among others) announced his intention to make fighting poverty a priority of his administration. To this end the mayor said he would funnel city funds into existing anti-poverty initiatives, encourage residents to take advantage of tax credits and save money, promote small businesses, and attempt to adopt a living-wage ordinance. Not overly ambitious, but certainly a refreshing change from the city's usual strategy of frittering away federal funds for years while the inner cities rot. The mettle of Mayor Diaz has yet to be tested, and the results of this initiative (coordinated by HSC, the United Way, and others) measured, but at least now our people's pain is out in the open. That's something of a victory.

Best Of Miami®

Best Of Miami®

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