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Best Massage

American Institute of Massage Therapy

Places abound in Broward and Palm Beach counties to get a rubdown in a frou-frou joint with scented air filled with whale noises and the trickling sounds of water on rocks. But if you want a basic massage done cheap and with extra care, the place to go is the American Institute of Massage Therapy, a school for massage therapists. The massage clinic offers therapists-in-training an opportunity to gain experience on real-world people. Student massage therapists offer Swedish relaxing massages under the unobtrusive guidance of licensed professionals and teachers. The clinic's décor is basic, but the facility is clean, professional, and relaxing. Because it's students performing the massages, the American Institute of Massage Therapy offers some of the best deals around: $35 for 55 minutes, $55 for 80 minutes. Tipping is not accepted for students. Hours are Monday to Thursday 9 a.m. to 10 p.m., Friday 9 a.m. to 8 p.m., Saturday 9 a.m. to 4 p.m., and Sunday 10:30 a.m. to 6 p.m.

Best Reason to Shop CityPlace

Freebies

If the complaint against CityPlace is that it's too Disneyfied, there's one way that this shopping mecca differs from the land of the mouse: free stuff. On weekend nights and some Sunday afternoons, CityPlace hosts free concerts in the main square. There's everything from R&B to jazz to salsa. CityPlace also hosts performances by school kids who sing near the escalators across from the fountain. And speaking of the fountain, there's a fountain show every hour set to music. Yeah, OK, that all does sound a bit like Disney, but how about the free parking (for the first hour)? Then, of course, there's the best thing that's free at CityPlace: the people-watching. What has become the downtown in downtown West Palm Beach attracts everyone from Loxahatchee cowboys to goth kids from suburbia. Take a spot along the balcony across from the tony second-floor restaurants (which are not free) and watch as the snowbirds mingle with the disgruntled locals in a free show that never gets old.

Best Reason to Avoid CityPlace

Ain't No Room

Sometimes you're in a hurry at the supermarket and don't have time to wheel around a shopping cart. So you pile everything inside one of those little green baskets. But before you even make it to the third aisle, the basket's ready to spill and your arms feel like they're going to fall off. Now, imagine if the basket were a full-scale shopping, dining, and entertainment district crammed into a space barely big enough to hold the buildings, let alone all the people. Welcome to CityPlace. Looking for a convenient parking spot? You'd better settle for what you can get the first time around; it takes less time to walk an extra block than to keep driving through the horrendous traffic. Of course, once you exit your car, the pedestrian traffic is just as bad, what with all the shoppers, diners, moviegoers, and loitering teenagers milling around. And after 30 minutes, all you can think of is how nice and peaceful Clematis Street seems by comparison. Isn't that what the trolley is for?

Best Reason to Shop Riverfront

Riverwalk

Toss back a couple of drinks at Ugly Tuna or Martini Bar, hook your arm around your date's waist, and saunter north. Past the scooped-out palm stump where sparrows sip and bathe, across the train tracks, and beside the Old Fort Lauderdale Museum of History. The only thoroughfare here, in the heart of a car-mad sprawl, is the New River, nuzzling against its concrete banks where the yachts nod and the algae faints, recovers, and faints again beneath the surface. The sabal palm and acacia absorb noise and light. From a few blocks away comes the rasp of tires raking over the steel drawbridge on SW Fourth Avenue. A little farther on, near the Fort Lauderdale Museum of Discovery and Science, find the curious educational displays on the mechanics of human sight and the use of the astrolabe. Underfoot are the personalized bricks dedicated to loved ones both living and lost, with little notes ("Dearest Samuel, You intoxicate my soul! Love, Angela") that describe lives lived not in stone but in temporary flesh. To that end, the walk includes memorials to fallen police officers and a local Audie Murphy type named Sandy Nininger, whose heroics in the Pacific Theater made him (posthumously) the first Congressional Medal of Honor winner in World War II. So what if the $7.7 million Riverwalk project is mired in construction delays, contract disputes, political finger-pointing, and general Fort Lauderdale civic botchitude? You get ornithology, marine biology, botany, anatomy, astronomy, history -- all while you're just trying to walk off a $20 buzz in relative peace.

Best Reason to Avoid Riverfront

Cheese

Wait a second. This looks familiar. Yes, it's on the water, and yes, the boats are cool -- but something's amiss. Do you see the kiosks selling $12 sunglasses, little panda figurines, and beaded bracelets and displaying the "We can write a name on any buckle" sign? Do you hear the sounds of a cover/garage band playing "Brown Eyed Girl" for the umpty-jillionth time? Have you tried the $3.99, you-get-what-you-pay-for lunch special at Max's Grille? Are you seriously telling me that you're buying "home décor" from a store that also sells T-shirts remarking "mr. winkie wants to buy you a drinkie"? Do you hear the visitor from the Midwest comment about the whole setting, "It just seethes with tacky energy"? You say this is prime downtown commercial real estate and a centerpiece for the whole county -- but this is common, this is fungible, this is derivative, this is a Hooters above a Johnny Rockets. This looks a lot like -- a damned mall. People come from all over the world to visit Fort Lauderdale. And when they leave, this is what they tell their friends about. Or not.

Best Cheap Thrill in Palm Beach

Slumming at the Breakers

If you can do without a room -- which would set you back $285 to $3,650 a night -- the Breakers is actually a cheap thrill. You need not be a guest of the hotel to take advantage of a lot of its amenities. Bellmen crowd the lobby doors like penguins, while locals and tourists swarm in and out to get treatments at the spa, shop in the boutiques, or dine in one of the hotel's eight restaurants. Munch on the free peanuts and spring for a drink (the $7.50 Pinot Grigio is a better deal than the $9 bottle of Evian) at the Seafood Bar, where the countertop is actually an aquarium full of live fish and the windows look out on the Atlantic Ocean. No one will stop you from playing a game on the six-foot-high vertical chessboard in the Tapestry Bar or from walking through the hedge maze or from killing time in the video arcade. You can even skip the valet by parking for free just past the guard gate.

Best Not-So-Cheap Thrill

Speed Indoor Racing

For $2 per minute, you could see a top-of-the-line sex therapist, hire Michelle Kwan's ice-skating coach, or get a private reading from psychic Zayna Ravenheart. For the same price, you can get a serious adrenaline high at Speed Indoor Racing, the high-speed go-kart track that opened last year. Racing costs $11 for a five-minute session, $19.95 for a ten-minute session, $28 for a 15-minute session. A clean headsock -- a ski mask-looking thing that you slip on under your helmet to protect you from other people's sweat and cooties -- will run you another $3. After the high school kids who run the place have schooled you on how to drive the low-riding karts and shown you how not to burn yourself on the motor while sliding in and out, slam the pedal on the right and go whipping around rubber corners at speeds of 45 mph -- seat-belt-free! After your short stint as a human centrifuge, you'll receive a stats page that gives you all your lap times. The track is open to anyone over 8 years old, 53 or more inches tall, and under 300 pounds. Here, grown men giggle like little boys, little boys drive like demons, and girls who discover that the karts vibrate while idling get their not-so-cheap thrills before even pressing the gas pedal.

Best Pet Store

Wild Cargo Pets & Supplies

Ron Dupont doesn't want to be known as the roach guy, but these days, he just can't help it. Dupont says his is the only pet store he knows of selling roaches -- live roaches -- something desperately needed for owners of most reptiles. And what's worse, Dupont's roaches are notoriously tasty. "We call them 'tropical cream-filled roaches' because they're so juicy," he says. Dupont sells thousands of the little buggers every week at 8 to 39 cents apiece, and soon, he fears, he'll likely be known for them. Really, he'd rather be known for his reptiles. Dupont's been in the reptile business since he started catching snakes at 15 years old in his back yard and selling them to pet stores. Now at 63, he imports reptiles from around the world at his shop, Wild Cargo Pets & Supplies. He sells about 2,700 lizards a year. Usually, boa constrictors start from $119 to $149, and monitor lizards can be found for at least $40. Dupont will also special-order, like yellow phase tree pythons that run about $700. Dupont also sells tarantulas ($20 to $150 for rare ones) and an odd assortment of reptile food, including bloodworms, mealworms, and crickets. But more than anything, Dupont can't keep the roaches in the store. "People will come back and say, 'Man those roaches are juicy.' They can't get enough of them."

Best Veterinarian

Arch Gordon at Coral Ridge

A great vet becomes truly noteworthy after you've had a few bad ones. Arch Gordon's tableside manner is so effortlessly kind, benevolent, and caring, it's worth giving him his due. We know a certain cat terrified of thunderstorms, vacuum cleaners, doorbells, and even its own shadow that regularly melts into Gordon's capable hands during checkups, purring contentedly. Feline and canine office visits run around $40; rabies shots are $15 extra. He seems to have a way with dogs too -- from the little yappy lap dogs to the poodles-as-fashion-accessories and the pampered pooches belonging to the high-class ladies living near the beach. Be you one of the bejeweled set or just a normal sort with a normal pet, Gordon's comforting, compassionate aura of concern makes a visit to the vet as painless as possible.

Best Holistic Veterinarian

Friendship Animal Wellness Center

OK, you've got Fido on that special vegan diet, and his mock turtleneck sweater is made of hemp. So what's next to make your dog a true reflection of your hippie roots? Holistic medicine, of course. It's sure to restore your mutt's inner peace -- which does not require a pooper scooper. At Friendship Animal Wellness Center, veterinarian Carol Falck will give your pet a holistic checkup for $125, followed by a recommendation for treatment from Chinese medicine to traditional veterinary care (which runs about $42 per visit). For some animals, the prescription is for acupuncture ($50 a visit), which can especially aid with arthritis. Follow it up with an aromatherapy bath with slippery elm and rose geranium. Top it off with a spritz of doggy cologne made from nutmeg and lime. The center also offers Reiki, an ancient form of medicine that, according to its website, involves moving energy, restoring your pet's "natural state of wholeness on all levels -- mental, physical, emotional and spiritual." That's right, spiritual. Don't you know what dog spelled backward is?

Best Of Broward-Palm Beach®

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