Sports and Recreation >>

• Best Dolphins Player
  Joey Porter, linebacker, number 55
  Here is a football star for the YouTube Generation — and not just because Joey Porter's 17.5 sacks made for a slick highlight reel. The Dolphins linebacker, who answers to "Peezy," gives football's most colorful interview. After Giants wide receiver Plaxico Burress accidentally shot... More >>
• Best Sports Bust
  Andrew Miller, pitcher, Florida Marlins
  The Marlins paid a high price for Andrew Miller. In 2007, he was the best prospect the team landed in exchange for two franchise players: Miguel Cabrera and Dontrelle Willis. A former number-six draft pick, the six-foot-six lefty had a 97-mph fastball and a wicked curve — weapons that were... More >>
• Best Park
  Riverbend Park
  It's easy to look out on that sea of green west of the Sawgrass Expressway and call it Everglades. But if you want true Glades swamp, if you want strands of cypress that slap the heat out of the Florida sun, you've got to go north. You'll find one of Florida's most pristine cypress strands at... More >>
• Best Nature Trail
  Fern Forest Nature Center
  Fern Forest is a natural oasis in the middle of Broward County sprawl. It's a preserved cypress swamp, a 243-acre piece of ancient Florida. The swamp was once part of a cypress strand that stretched all the way to Lake Okeechobee. Now it's just a peaceful and beautiful reminder of what we've... More >>
• Best Recreational Club (1 Comment)
  Pompeii's Children Ultimate Frisbee Team
  Ultimate Frisbee (like soccer, with a Frisbee instead of a ball) is exhilarating enough on its own, but try playing with the coed team Pompeii's Children. This squad has struck a perfect balance between being highly athletic and yet awfully silly. Players have been known to make bets among... More >>
• Best Jogging Path
  Hugh Taylor Birch State Park
  Whether you're a long-distance runner, an amateur jogger, or a power walker who's sick of doing laps around Aventura Mall, Hugh Taylor Birch State Park is the best place to get your groove on. This two-mile path is loaded with things to keep your mind off the fact that, for some reason, you're... More >>
• Best Snorkeling Spot
  Commercial Boulevard and A1A
  Snorkeling isn't exactly the most expensive seafaring hobby you can take up, but to find most of the best spots requires some cash. Aside from buying the gear (or taping a few bendy straws together and hoping for the best), most of the prime scuba and snorkeling spots require a boat to get you... More >>
• Best Place to Get Wet
  Ski Rixen at Quiet Waters Park
  Here's the first brutal truth about Florida's coastal inhabitants: We don't all own boats. So logically, we've adapted by befriending people who own boats. But here's the second brutal truth: It's not always easy to stay on the good side of our boat-owning friends. Fortunately, there's a wet... More >>
• Best Beach
  Dania Beach
  It's not flashy; it's just the Florida dream. There aren't any massive, marble-laden, mammon-memorializing monoliths jutting into the sky nearby. It's a working-class beach with a picturesque old pier, a food shack (the Dania Beach Bar & Grill), and a nice strip of sand that stretches far... More >>
• Best Surf Spot (1 Comment)
  Second Street in Pompano Beach
  The Bahamas are the bane of South Florida surfers. The islands cut off incoming swells from the Atlantic, so short of a hurricane or tropical storm, surfers in South Florida are stuck with Typhoon Lagoon. Couple that with territorial pricks at particular surf spots (cough, Lake Worth, cough) and... More >>
• Best Heat Player (1 Comment)
  Dwyane Wade
  Is this even a question? Seriously. More >>
• Best Dog Park
  Barkham at Markham Dog Park
  Dogs are an ease to please. A couple of acres of rolling green space on which to gambol. Freedom to relieve one's self on one's own schedule. That, and the chance to practice the species' appallingly crude greeting ritual: bum sniffing. The Barkham at Markham Dog Park sports more room and... More >>
• Best Kayaking
  Atlantic Coast Kayak Co.'s Isles of Venice trip
  If gondolas are the way to experience Venice, Italy, then the kayak is the way to experience "the American Venice." Evening is the time to launch. Glide soundlessly over water made silver by the moonlight. On those nights when the moon is absent, the lights of Las Olas mark the shore. And even... More >>
• Best Pool
  H. Wayne Huizenga's Pool
  All that we can tell you, definitively, about the Huizenga pool is what government satellites and property records tell us: that it occupies a space 86 feet long and 40 feet wide, that it's nestled on the northernmost tip of an exclusive finger of land called Ponce de Leon Drive off Las Olas,... More >>
• Best Day Trip
  Coral Castle
  It is a strange land that holds a castle of theories. For this castle is said to be carved from 1,100 tons of oolitic limestone and built by one man. This man weighed only 100 pounds. He stood barely over five feet tall. He used no large machinery. But this castle has walls more than eight feet... More >>
• Best Sports Enigma
  Florida Panthers
  If a team wins in Sunrise, does anyone care? When it comes to the Florida Panthers, the answer is a resounding "No." It seems that no matter how good or bad the product on the ice, no matter what superstar players come or go, and no matter how cheap the tickets are, the Panthers just can't pull... More >>
• Best Underdog
  Glen Johnson
  Every other sport is just a metaphor for boxing. If Nadal serves an ace against Federer or D-Wade dunks on Yao Ming, they are imposing their will against an opponent — figuratively. Glen Johnson imposes his will against an opponent literally. With his fists. Five years ago, the light... More >>
• Best Fighter
  Mike Brown
  It was two minutes and twenty-four seconds that changed MMA fighter Mike Brown's career forever. That was the amount of time it took Brown, an undecorated high school wrestler from Maine who had been fighting only since 2001, to dismantle Featherweight Champion Urijah "California Kid" Faber.... More >>
• Best Coach
  Tony Sparano
  Miami Dolphins fans haven't had much to cheer about since Don Shula decided to hang up the clipboard. The list of coaches to patrol the sidelines since then looks like this, in descending date and professional football coaching ability: Jimmy Johnson, Dave Wannstedt, Jim Bates, Nick Saban, and... More >>
• Best Rookie
  Mario Chalmers, Miami Heat
  Mario Chalmers is an old soul. He has an almost preternatural calm on the court, as if he's been there not only his entire lifetime but also a few others. That's a very good thing for a point guard and team general. His rookie mistakes are more like sophomore mistakes. The offenses he leads have... More >>
• Best Panthers Player
  David Booth
  David Booth doesn't have a C or an A on his sweater, so technically he's not a team leader. But ask any player in the locker room and you'll get a different opinion. At 24 years old, Booth is having the best year of his career. He's among the leaders in goals, assists, shots, plus-minus, and... More >>
• Best Marlins Player
  Jorge Cantu
  No, Cantu isn't the most talented player, and he's not going to put up the best numbers. He's not showy, and he's damned sure not pretty. Cantu's just clutch. And guts. Last season, Cantu rapped so many big hits in late innings that a lot of Marlins fans started calling him "Can-do." Most of... More >>
• Best Poker Game
  Mardi Gras Racetrack and Gaming
  The setting isn't elegant. The players aren't particularly warm. The pots aren't huge. But if you want to play uninterrupted poker 24 hours at a time and you don't feel like gambling with the Seminoles, Mardi Gras is your only choice. The poker room has two 12-hour licenses with the state. So... More >>
• Best Leisure Activity
  Get Blissed at Drolma Kadampa Buddhist Center
  Have you ever seen a stressed-out monk? They simply don't exist. To be practiced in the art of meditation is to be able to banish — for as long as you like — the multitasking, short-attention-span culture that has only grown more demanding since the economic downturn. A daylong... More >>