Best Lesbian Bar

Androgyny rules at J's Bar, a fun-filled nightspot in an off-the-beaten-path southwest Fort Lauderdale neighborhood. Luscious young chicas clad in baggy, saggy jeans down bottles of Bud with big butch bull-dykes, and the crowd is as genuinely multiculti as any you've ever walked into, even by South Florida standards. And everyone's welcome, even conservative old farts just stopping in to knock a few back after a day of golf. The jukebox mixes current hip-hop hits with plenty of Ani DiFranco, Melissa Etheridge, Sarah McLachlan, and KT Oslin. J's is one-half typical South Florida strip-mall sports bar with black spray-painted dropped-ceiling tiles and a pair of pool tables and one-half gay disco with parquet flooring, twirling mirror ball, and raised stage. The latter comes in handy once a month when it's overrun by the full-contact karaoke crew of drag kings and queens called SisterSpeak. That's when J's (if it were a tea kettle) really gets to whistling. Maybe you'll spy someone wearing a bathrobe lip-synching a Garth Brooks tune while holding a pink double-headed jelly dong like a microphone. And, really, isn't that what fun's all about?