People & Places >>

• Best Recount
  Broward County Canvassing Board
  On Thanksgiving eve, Miami-Dade County wussed out in fear of the Republicans at the gate. Palm Beach decided to take the festive Thursday off and ended up looking like a bunch of turkeys. (After the county missed the Monday deadline, a British reporter summed up the stupidity of this decision by... More >>
• Best Gas Station to Hang Out In
  Amoco
  Late one night police cars crowded the parking lot, but no one was at the pumps. Was it closed? Had it been robbed? As it happens, it was neither. Still, a Fort Lauderdale officer sternly warned that this is among the most dangerous places in town. Oooh, we're shaking! It's the entertaining kind... More >>
• Best Reason to Live in South Florida
  Getting buzzed by 747s arriving at Fort Lauderdale/Hollywood International Airport
  OK, yeah, we admit it. Sometimes we time it. We synchronize our exit from I-595 eastbound to I-95 southbound, or switch from I-95 northbound to I-595 westbound to coincide with the landing of -- whoooooooooooooooooooosh -- a jumbo jet. What makes this experience, well, such fun is the same thing... More >>
• Best Place to Lose Your House
  Pembroke Falls
  It sounds like a nightmare: You're driving your black Eddie Bauer-edition Ford Explorer through a maze of roads lined with cookie-cutter, single-family homes. Slowly the houses melt together into a blur of fawn-colored stucco, garage doors, and sentrylike mailboxes. Perhaps you've passed your... More >>
• Best Local Girl Gone Bad
  Theresa LePore
  LePore was once almost universally admired by politicians in Palm Beach County. She has a genuine charm, works hard, and seems truly to care about the integrity and fairness of the election process. Time was, nobody would say a bad thing about her. Then came her ill-conceived butterfly ballot,... More >>
• Best Place to Carpool
  Tri-Rail Park-and-Ride Lots
  South Florida breeds car burglars like cockroaches; they're everywhere, they like to rifle through your stuff, and they're pretty damn fast. (The only differences are that the thieves aren't quite as big as the roaches and can't fly.) So you never want to park your car out there in the public... More >>
• Best Local Scandal
  Scott Cowan Gets Busted
  We all know that politicians are scoundrels at heart, and we all long to see them punished for their evil deeds, though too often we cannot quite catch them in the actual doing of said deeds. They're slippery little devils, which is how they came to be politicians in the first place. So it is... More >>
• Best Postelection Slogan
  Don't Blame Me, I Thought I Voted for Gore
  Don't Blame Me, I Thought I Voted for Gore More >>
• Best Political Activist
  Vivian Burch
  She's pro-choice, she votes, and she wants you to vote as well -- especially if you're pro-choice, too. To that end Burch's red head can be seen at countless street festivals, Lollapalooza-like concerts, Planned Parenthood clinics, and women's events, asking anyone within hollering distance,... More >>
• Best TV News Anchor
  Laurie Jennings
  The bad, bloody news flows from her lips with unhurried urgency. Her incandescent blue eyes burn with earnest sincerity, without betraying the fact that she's reading from a TelePrompTer. Her hair is serious yet stylish, her wardrobe sharp and understated. She punches the end of her line, then... More >>
• Best Political Gaffe
  Palm Beach County elections
  One more time: Butterfly ballot. Angry Democrats. Happy Republicans. OK, we're done. More >>
• Best Place to Pick Up a Police Report
  Davie Police Department
  By the time you get to the police station to pick up an arrest record, you're probably in a rotten mood. Maybe the cops arrested your kid. Maybe your backyard marijuana farm caught a police officer's eagle eye. Maybe, in a last-ditch effort to ruin your fascist boss, you've launched an extensive... More >>
• Best Neighborhood Activist
  Carl Flick
  When he learned last year that Walgreens planned a traffic-magnet, suburban-style store in his funky-chic Northwood neighborhood -- a residential district north of West Palm Beach's downtown -- Carl Flick sounded the alarm. He and his neighbors had spent the last decade pulling Northwood out of... More >>
• Best Weekend Getaway
  De Land, Florida
  De Land offers a three-in-one package deal of Florida attractions: In one weekend (without excessive hours whiled away on Interstate 95) you can enjoy Spanish moss-strewn Old South, Disney-tinged commercialism, and lush natural beauty. Located about 225 miles north of West Palm Beach, De Land... More >>
• Best Friends
  Broward County Commissioner Lori Parrish and her lobbyists
  We like Lori Parrish. We really do. She's a Southern lady with an attitude almost as big as her hair, and we respect her for that. Sure, we've slammed her a couple of times, but we're paid to do that. It's nothing personal. Because we like her. We really do. Of course we might have raised her... More >>
• Best Place to Spot Celebrities
  Amici Ristorante & Bar
  When original Bice maitre d' Maurizio Ciminella packed up his seating charts and set up a pasta palace of his own a few blocks north of Worth Avenue, a good deal of the glitz went with him. Revlon gazillionaire Ron Perelman may or may not have been his silent partner, but the balding mogul makes... More >>
• Best Activist Neighborhood
  Mango Promenade
  When the Norton Museum of Art asked the West Palm Beach city commission to overrule the city's historic preservation board and OK the destruction of a 1920s garage to make way for the museum's latest round of expansion, the trustees expected to get their way. Not in Mango Promenade. The... More >>
• Best TV News Anchor on the Radio
  Guillermo Benitez
  Since the mid-1970s Benitez has been the sober, soothing Spanish voice of South Florida news on WLTV-TV (Channel 23), but we like him better as a standup comic whose shtick is broadcast on the radio. The local affiliate of Colombian media giant Caracol already boasts the most rollicking... More >>
• Best Deposed Politician
  Lee Hillier
  True story: Lee Hillier, then a Plantation city commissioner, is sitting at the bar at Grin's Pub, a pleasant dive, having a few beers. The gnarliest half-drunk patron in the place, a man with few teeth and a dirty gray beard, comes up to him and starts complaining about a house in Plantation... More >>
• Best Place to Beat the Heat
  Gilbrace Ristel's ice cream truck
  Gilbrace Ristel may be mobile, but come summertime he isn't hard to find. Ristel hails from Haiti, but for seven years he's been a nomad, roaming the often road-blocked residential streets between Federal Highway and Andrews Avenue near downtown Fort Lauderdale. Listen for the tiny tinkling of... More >>
• Best Government Idea
  Bicycles on buses
  When Broward County bicycle coordinator Mark Horowitz suggested putting bike racks on buses more than a decade ago, people thought he was crazy. The bikes would fall off, they'd get stolen, no one would use the racks -- Horowitz heard all the complaints. Still he persevered. Two years ago... More >>
• Best Private School
  The comfort of your own home
  OK, you're a parent. Junior's marks this year are underwhelming. And the teacher and the school, well... let's just say they're not meeting their obligations to you or your child. What to do? How 'bout doing it yourself? There's precious little stopping you: The state requires only that you file... More >>
• Best Political Fight
  The Battle in Davie over Rocky Johnson
  Sure, it's been a year of skirmishing in South Florida. The baseball stadium, the convention center, Elián, and of course Chad all sparked disputes that were better than anything that happens in the ring these days. But tear gas notwithstanding, all those issues still qualified as good,... More >>
• Best Place to Watch Police Officers Eat at 1 a.m.
  The Floridian Restaurant
  Forget the stereotype of the cop huddled in his patrol car as he munches on Dunkin' Donuts. In the wee hours of the night, Fort Lauderdale's men and women in blue leave their cruisers parked and running at an abandoned Las Olas Boulevard gas station. As their cars purr away our tax dollars, the... More >>
• Best Public Records Custodian
  Jeff Samuels
  Florida citizens enjoy unparalleled access to government documents -- our Sunshine Law is the most comprehensive in the nation. But the people whose job it is to hand over the documents are a mixed lot. Some are helpful, some are incompetent, some delight in their ability to obfuscate and... More >>
• Best Weathercaster
  Bob Soper
  Hey, Bob, no one knows what you're doing right, but keep it up. Cherub-faced and perennially chirpy, Soper could probably announce the arrival of six simultaneous hurricanes with a smile and a cheery sendoff. In the face of gale-force winds, Soper keeps his chin up, warning us about the dangers... More >>
• Best Tacky Florida Kitsch
  Christmas reindeer all year long
  No one likes those lazy jerks who hang their Christmas lights up when they first move into a new place, then leave them up until they move out. When it's just a few strings of icicles, this practice is at least tolerable. But when the supposedly posher-than-thou Las Olas Boulevard boasts a herd... More >>
• Best Place to Live Next to a Lawyer
  North of Davie Boulevard, east of Andrews Avenue
  The number one fringe benefit of living in this section of older ranches and ramblers? Not the proliferation of bail bondsmen in case you get into trouble. Not the proximity to the New River, though that is nice. Not the fact that you're within walking distance of the jail so you can go see Mom... More >>
• Best New Local Celebrity
  Jimmy Page
  First the former Led Zeppelin guitarist moves to your Las Olas neighborhood. Then the rock god starts showing up at parties, and his wife tries to buy art from your friends. Before long you go to your favorite local bar, and he's there, too, praising your favorite local band. Sheesh. This guy... More >>
• Best Architecture
  Morikami Museum and Japanese Gardens
  Who would have expected Japanese colonists in South Florida? Well, they were here, nearly a century ago, and although their Yamato farming community in Boca Raton didn't last, their legacy lives on in the form of the Morikami Museum and Japanese Gardens. Think of this 200-acre complex as an... More >>
• Best Local Website
  www.TheHoneyComb.com
  With the exception of one or two stations, South Florida radio sucks. Downloading music from Napster is generally a better bet. But now, thanks to Lars, Dr. Dre, and a few other industry crybabies, Napster is soon to be no more. Good thing you can still stream in Real Audio tunes via... More >>
• Best Neighborhood Bar
  Grady's Bar & Grill
  Budweiser baseball caps. Harley-Davidson muscle tees. Drafts for a buck and the juke playing songs about exes in Texas. Welcome to working-class Fort Lauderdale. Culturally far from though geographically near to the silicone-studded and Tommy Hilfiger-clad bodies of Himmarshee Village, Grady's... More >>
• Best Local Poet
  Denise Duhamel
  A creative writing professor at Florida International University, Duhamel writes the sort of edgy-but-life-affirming poems of which we could all use a little more in our lives. She specializes in fusing her often racy introspection with politics and pop culture; her acute sense of the absurd and... More >>
• Best Radio Personality
  Randi Rhodes
  For four hours a day, she berates, taunts, and baits America's right wing in a relentless, I'm-as-mad-as-hell rant. She's the liberal anti-Rush of South Florida whose searing afternoon drive-time rhetoric is sure to burn the Bushies and warm the hearts of those who insist Gore Got More. Her... More >>
• Best Charity
  Young Professionals for Covenant House
  YP president John Haley sums up his fundraising philosophy thus: "Give them what they want, and like, so that it becomes irresistible." And what do yuppies want? Parties! At least 3000 people in their twenties and thirties have joined, making this the largest young-professionals group to support... More >>
• Best Gay Bar in Which to See and Be Seen
  Georgie's Alibi
  Your Beamer's buffed to a radical shine, your pecs are engorged from a brisk workout at the gym, you have a fresh and fab haircut, and you're horny. Better make the scene at the Alibi, where the eye candy is sweet and the drink deals get the juices flowing. This hip hangout in the heart of... More >>
• Best Centenarian
  Winifred Lancy
  Flash back to 1909: There's little ten-year-old Winnie Lancy at her great-grandparents' 60th wedding anniversary in Vermont. As the festivities die down, her great-grandfather, a Civil War veteran who is about 81 years old, starts talking about something he rarely mentioned: Gettysburg. And... More >>
• Best Local Landmark
  Henry Morrison Flagler Museum
  Put simply, South Florida as we know it today probably wouldn't even exist if it weren't for a retired millionaire named Henry Flagler and his vision of linking the state's entire east coast, from Jacksonville to Key West, by rail. And his Palm Beach estate, Whitehall, now known as the Flagler... More >>
• Best Topography
  Broward County Interim Contingency Landfill
  Standing upon this hill, one can see for a good long distance in almost any direction. Of course the vista serves mostly to reinforce the general flatness of the surrounding terrain: pleasant, mostly green, utterly monotonous. Is this view worth enduring the smell? Probably not. While the vast... More >>
• Best Bar in a Warehouse
  Charlie's Rustic Bay Inn
  If David Lynch were scouting for locations around Fort Lauderdale to film his next bizarre odyssey, chances are that Charlie's Rustic Bay Inn would be near the top of his list. But even if Lynch doesn't introduce dancing midgets, locals can say with some certainty that this is one of the... More >>
• Best Place to People-Watch
  Broward County Courthouse
  The nation ogled the comings and goings at the courthouse during last fall's postelection battle, but the show goes on, folks. You want big names? How about Johnnie Cochran and Al Sharpton, who recently used the courthouse as a backdrop for basking in the outrage over the Lionel Tate life... More >>
• Best Bed and Breakfast
  Caribbean Quarters
  If you've done any B&B-hopping in your life, you know the stellar inns are historied, meandering mansions. Stay in those B&Bs -- often Victorian style -- and you can almost hear the echoes of butlers announcing guests and piano lessons in the music room. Trouble is, Queen Victoria held little... More >>
• Best Anti-Boca Bar in Boca
  Boca Pub and Nite Gallery
  Boca Raton is notorious for symbolizing South Florida's anticulture: stuffy, platinum-pated, insufferably posh, and full of itself. We wouldn't want to grow up there. But if worse came to worst, at least there's one small pinpoint of hipness in this vast bad-jewelry-and-plastic-surgery capital.... More >>
• Best Place to Meet People of the Opposite Sex
  Broward County Courthouse
  Spend enough time watching these people, and you will come to an inevitable conclusion: In addition to providing great theater, the criminal justice system is also a babe magnet. Go to civil and you see hot-to-trot divorcées and racy, newly liberated dudes. Go to the criminal courtrooms... More >>
• Best Scenic Drive
  A1A between Flagler Memorial Bridge and Southern Boulevard
  Each year our readers choose A1A as the best scenic drive in Broward and Palm Beach counties and of course they're right -- in part. There are some scuzzy stretches of this oceanside road, to say nothing of the many miles of looming condos blocking that same ocean from view. But the stretch of... More >>
• Best Place to Confront Your Arachnophobia (1 Comment)
  Secret Woods Nature Center
  Along the south side of the New River, just west of I-95 and north of I-595, lies Secret Woods Nature Center, a 56-acre oak-hammock preserve that's a favorite destination for busloads of kids on school field trips and hikers wanting to explore short trails to observe flora and fauna. In addition... More >>
• Best Local Boy Gone Bad
  William Scherer
  To most people in Broward County, Scherer was just another lawyer/lobbyist type who scurried around getting government contracts. (His plum is a North Broward Hospital District deal.) He wasn't really in the public eye much -- which turns out to be a good thing for all concerned. When the manual... More >>
• Best Mile of Broward/Palm Beach
  State Road A1A
  Ahh, South Florida. Sun, sand, surf, and shade. Shade? OK, so South Florida, with its wide-open beaches and signature palm trees, isn't exactly renowned for offering lovers of the outdoors much natural relief from the heat -- which is just one of the things that makes a milelong stretch of State... More >>
• Best Local Politician
  State Rep. Lois Frankel
  When the presidential race was on the line last fall, the world's attention focused on Florida. And as everyone remembers, we became a nationwide laughingstock, a bunch of nincompoops who couldn't punch a chad to save our subtropical lives. When the Republican-controlled state legislature... More >>
• Best Place for Boys to Meet Boys
  The Firm Fitness Center
  Really, what kind of man are you going to find at a bar? Sure, you'll get lucky -- if you consider a fling with a sallow, flabby, weak barfly lucky. We don't. We want taut buns, bulging biceps, healthy lungs, the whole package. That is why we recommend you skip the bar and try the Firm. We're... More >>
• Best Palm Beach Post Writer
  Emily J. Minor
  She writes one of those lifestyle columns you instinctively know you're going to hate. It's called "Real Life," but as any discerning newspaper reader knows, anytime a newspaper writer is set loose to write about "family issues," the column is going to be sappy, self-involved, and... More >>
• Best Place to Spot a Mullet
  Home Depot
  Fashion-conscious South Florida has a way of keeping the passé at bay. Hairstyles that have come and gone are usually relegated to backwoods parts of the Panhandle, appearing every so often in Davie or at the odd demolition derby or NASCAR event. But the haircut police evidently haven't... More >>
• Best Place for Girls to Meet Girls
  SunTrust Jazz Brunch
  It's 11 a.m. on the first Sunday morning of the month, and it's a bright sunshiny day. Call the girlfriends and grab the beach blanket or chairs -- you're going out. It's important to be a little more subtle than you are on Saturday night at the Sea Monster, although almost anyone and anything... More >>
• Best Storefront Church
  Royal Palm Church of God of Prophecy
  This place is worth a visit if only to savor its flag: a scepter, star, and crown in purple, red, and white that resembles nothing so much as the banner of a Belgravian fascist league out of 1930s Europe. In truth this denomination is nothing more than an early-20th-century Pentecostal outgrowth... More >>
• Best Place to Spot a Mullet
  Tarpon River Bridge
  The mullet, of course, is a fish generally caught in our waters for sport, rarely to be eaten. (What did you think we were talking about?) But it's one of the most interesting aquatic creatures swimming in our midst, especially in late fall, when the fish begin to spawn. The extremely active... More >>
• Best Place to Break Up
  Pompano Beach Service Center
  The advantages of breaking off a relationship at a highway rest/food stop are almost too numerous to list. For one thing, thanks to passing traffic no one can hear you if you choose to make a scene. Then there's the transient nature of the other customers, who are more interested in a bathroom... More >>
• Best Sun-Sentinel Writer
  Tom Jicha
  The Sun-Sentinel television critic is not a man to suffer fools gladly. Therefore, when you write him a letter to ask him a dumb question -- like "When can I catch reruns of Touched by an Angel?" -- be sure to brace yourself. In his column in Sunday's On TV, he will publish your inane query,... More >>
• Best Place to Walk Your Dog
  Bark Park at Snyder Park
  A socialized dog is a happy dog, and a dog allowed to run off-leash is in heaven. Problem is there aren't many places left for dogs to run around unfettered in this concrete jungle of ours. Bark Park, "the park dogs ask for by name," is just the place to let Bowser play with other dogs and get... More >>
• Best Place to Make Up
  Big Cypress National Preserve
  When it comes to relationships, everyone screws the pooch once in a while. Yet no one screws it more frequently or spectacularly than those darn heterosexual males. This particularly oafish lot is most often in dire need of extraordinary measures when it comes to begging forgiveness of their... More >>
• Best Parking
  CityPlace
  Sorry, but not all of us are down with this whole New Urbanism kick. Building ritzy, cookie-cutter cities with hyperexpensive shops and homes doesn't sound like a good way to build a sense of community to us. It sounds more like a refuge for the Thurston and Lovey Howells among us -- and that's... More >>
• Best Parade
  Mardi Gras Fiesta Tropicale
  Every city has a Mardi Gras parade these days. So what separates a good one from a bad one? Access to alcohol, plain and simple. If your city has a Mardi Gras parade yet cracks down on public drinking, your city has a substandard celebration. Hollywood, though, kicks out the jams, combining the... More >>
• Best-Kept Secret of CityPlace
  Mike Monet's Church of Desire
  A specter is haunting CityPlace, and its name is Michael Monet. The actor, model, club kid, and all-around scene fixture died in 1995 of a heroin overdose in the old First Methodist Church that is now the centerpiece of the gaudy West Palm Beach shopping complex. In the early '90s, in the... More >>
• Best Herald Writer
  Johnny Diaz
  Plenty of crackerjack reporters slave away at The Herald's Broward County headquarters. We think, for example, that Lisa Arthur, Dan de Vise, and Bill Yardley do some solid work -- given the constraints of daily journalism. But this award should go to someone unsung; thus our pick is Diaz. A... More >>
• Best Park
  Holiday Park
  In the fall peewee football reigns and the smell of popcorn wafts from the concession stand. In winter Latin-American and Haitian teams in brightly colored soccer jerseys take to the field while, on the basketball court, shirts and skins dribble, then dunk. Paths offer biking and skating, an old... More >>
• Best Place to Gather Peacock Feathers
  Rose Drive
  Yes, strolling along Rose Drive just south of Davie Boulevard can bring you more than a view of quaint houses and bougainvillea galore. You can also spot male peacocks preening and strutting as they try to entice their dull-feathered female counterparts into a little bump and grind. If you visit... More >>
• Best Correction of a Nonmistake
  The Palm Beach Post
  One day after the paper reported that Glades Central's girls' basketball team "beat the crap out of" William T. Dwyer's squad, 62-33, it printed the following Editor's Note: "A brief article in the high school girls' basketball roundup in The Post Tuesday used inappropriate language to describe... More >>
• Best Hotel
  Riverside Hotel
  Back in the 1930s, well-to-do Chicago brothers Preston and Tom Wells fell in love with Fort Lauderdale -- and with Champ Carr, the likable fishing guide and raconteur who took them out on their annual winter excursions into the briny deep. In 1936 the pair decided to build a small but exclusive... More >>
• Best Place to Take Out-of-Towners
  Everglades Holiday Park
  This down-home campground is easily overlooked as a tourist destination. Sure, there may be more politically correct, environmentally friendly ways to entertain your visiting friends -- but that's not really the Florida way, now is it? No, the Florida way is to fuel up an airboat, drop some... More >>
• Best Right-Wing Loony
  Dan Gregory, talk-show host
  Because his voice is perfectly pitched (rich and sonorous) and his mind is perfectly bent (far to the right), this former Canadian and ex-baseball player is a talk-radio natural. He doesn't go in for "that Black Helicopter garbage," but neither does he place any credence in evolution, the moon... More >>
• Best Place to Enjoy the Everglades
  Royal Palm Visitor Center
  To hear some folks tell it, one can truly enjoy the Everglades only by dropping a canoe into the sawgrass and paddling into the sunset, armed with merely a compass, a bottle of insect repellent, and a healthy respect for the region's scaly dominant predator. Fortunately for the less intrepid... More >>
• Best Place to Write a Haiku
  Atlantic Yard
  Water is trickling Lilies glistening as they Listen to the wind More >>
• Best Gourmet Gas Station
  Boca Teeca Mobil
  Judging by the fuel prices, you'd think the Mobil station across from the Boca Teeca Country Club offers petrol Cordon Bleu instead of plain old gasoline. And while what you get at the pump is the same old, same old, the convenience store shames most gourmet boutiques. Clear-plastic bins of... More >>
• Best Tip for Newcomers
  Make a driver's license appointment
  You're fresh off the truck from Kansas. You read somewhere that you have ten days after moving to the Sunshine State to get a Florida driver's license. So you dutifully march your newbie ass down to the nearest office of the Department of Highway Safety & Motor Vehicles. And you wait in line.... More >>
• Best Place to Hide from Your Boss
  Colee Hammock Park
  So maybe it didn't prove a very good hiding place for William Colee's family, whom Seminole Indians slaughtered in this very place in 1836, but that doesn't mean the park isn't good for something. For downtown Fort Lauderdale pencil pushers, this park is a prime spot for ducking deadlines. Only... More >>