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Best Vintage Clothing Store in Broward

Community Thrift Store

Open even on Sundays (noon to 5 p.m.) and with lots of Discount Days and 50 percent-off sales, the two huge rooms of this place in the Riverland Shopping Center will thrill the most frugal of thrifters. CTS' rack-after-rack variety of items can at first seem daunting (e.g., 40 feet of hanging blue jeans), but after you roll up those sleeves and start digging, you're bound to strike garment gold -- from J. Press tuxedo shirts to cowboy hats to that pair of khaki shorts for the summer you've been needing but didn't want to spend $25 for. The clientele varies from slumming Las Olas Isles matrons to those more obviously less fortunate, and for good reason: There's always fresh meat to dig through -- the store puts out more than 3,000 new items daily. Sometimes less-than-organized (why are those two old saws hanging over the purse rack?) and a little skimpy on the books and kitchen goods, but what's to complain about when you're walking out the door with a $2 Sulka tie? Open 9 a.m. to 7 p.m. Monday through Saturday. Readers' Choice: Vintage Diversity

Best Vintage Clothing Store in Palm Beach

The Vintage Shoppe

Looking for a little extra attention around town? Here's a small secret: the Vintage Shoppe. Although it's run by Gulfstream Goodwill Industries, the shop offers fashions not seen in years -- and nothing you'll find in overpriced and aesthetically bland mall chain stores. For women, there's a sharp selection of dresses, blouses, coats, hats, and shoes in a variety of retro styles. And unlike a lot of vintage clothing stores, the Vintage Shoppe accommodates men as well, with a variety of spiffy shirts, suits, and blazers for all you dapper dandies. Also, in addition to clothing, there's a ton of other unique antique items, from furniture to artwork to luggage and even early Polaroid cameras and old typewriters (remember those?). Heck, this is the type of store where a lot of those eBay hacks get their clothing before doubling the cost. With shirts ranging from $6 to $14, why pay extra to some shady cyber-middleman? Update your wardrobe and furnish your living room by taking them back in time with a little vintage vigor. Vintage Shoppe is open every day from 9 a.m. to 5:30 p.m.

Best Vintage Clothing Store in Palm Beach

The Vintage Shoppe

Looking for a little extra attention around town? Here's a small secret: the Vintage Shoppe. Although it's run by Gulfstream Goodwill Industries, the shop offers fashions not seen in years -- and nothing you'll find in overpriced and aesthetically bland mall chain stores. For women, there's a sharp selection of dresses, blouses, coats, hats, and shoes in a variety of retro styles. And unlike a lot of vintage clothing stores, the Vintage Shoppe accommodates men as well, with a variety of spiffy shirts, suits, and blazers for all you dapper dandies. Also, in addition to clothing, there's a ton of other unique antique items, from furniture to artwork to luggage and even early Polaroid cameras and old typewriters (remember those?). Heck, this is the type of store where a lot of those eBay hacks get their clothing before doubling the cost. With shirts ranging from $6 to $14, why pay extra to some shady cyber-middleman? Update your wardrobe and furnish your living room by taking them back in time with a little vintage vigor. Vintage Shoppe is open every day from 9 a.m. to 5:30 p.m.

Best Secondhand Store

Jane Loves Cheap Furniture

Give it up already. Martha Stewart might be goin' to the pokey, but you're not the new her. Despite the big bucks you've spent at the craft store and the hours you've logged at the Home Depot, you're not gonna become a master of faux finishes, and you'll never get around to reupholstering the couch. Especially when it's so much easier to hit Jane Loves Cheap Furniture. The slogan -- "Because life's too short for boring stuff" -- is painted on the floor of this pleasantly cluttered shop. Surprises linger in every corner and cranny. Antique tables have been handpainted with pictures of palm trees. An old, wooden storm shutter has been whitewashed and fashioned into a room divider. Knickknacks like a $10 buddha statue and nautical notions lurk on shelves and mantles. Tell 'em we sent ya, and say hi to the goldfish in the coffee jar.

Best Toy Store

The Explore Store Museum of Discovery and Science Museum of Discovery and Science Museum of Discovery and Science

This joint ain't large. But it's cheap, convenient, and fun, and the twerps might actually learn something while they spend your hard-earned cash. Opened in 1992, the Explore Store sells rubber sea turtles ($2.50), snakes ($3.50), frogs (75 cents), and iguanas ($2.25, and they squeak). A real hand-painted iguana to scare your sister goes for $27. Plastic whales, octopuses, sharks, dolphins, and lobsters go for $1.25 each. Die-cast metal space shuttles on a stand with astronauts cost $22. Then there are wood kits to build everything from sea life to dinosaurs priced from $5 to $50. Or get a build-your-own-robot kit for $16.95. Hell, even if you don't buy anything, the store is next to the coolest gravity clock on planet Earth, the IMAX theater (DVDs of IMAX shows go for $30), and the Discovery Museum, where your kids can be distracted for hours while you sneak off to the Himmarshee pubs for a toot. Hours are 10:30 a.m. to 6 p.m. Monday through Thursday, 10:30 a.m. to 7 p.m. Friday, and noon to 7 p.m. Sunday. Readers' Choice: Toys "R" Us

Best Place to Get a Contact Lens in a Pinch

Optical at the Swap Shop

Lo, it may befall you, as it has many decent folk, that the morning after a champagne-fueled backyard midnight coed skinny-dipping session, you awake to find only one working eye in your head. Who to contact for a lens? If the morning in question happens to be New Year's Day and all acquaintance be sleeping off hangovers, you'll be resorting to an eyepatch, unless you drop by the Swap Shop's specs shack. Not only is it open but the good folks there have been known to donate an emergency contact for nothing more than a wink.

Best Mall in Broward

Riverland Shopping Center

"We built this city! We built this city on rock 'n' roll!"

OK, not only does that song totally suck but it's dead wrong as well. Anyone in South Florida knows damn well how our cities are built: one collection of shops at a time. Look at any Broward/Palm Beach burg from Margate to Wellington back to Pembroke Pines: It's just one giant interconnected mall! To calculate such a place's cultural worth, subtract 20 points for every chain store. Add 20 points for every unique nook and cranny. That's why Riverland reigns supreme: The closest thing to a chain is the Supersaver Grocery, which could have been teleported straight from Calle Ocho. (The tiny branch of the Broward Public Library doesn't count.) For your shopping pleasure, explore Scot Drugs and Riverland Hardware, two fading showcases that Wal-Mart has all but eradicated. Sissi Fashions offers tight, flattering outfits for the hottie on your list, while clean, white T-shirts at the Community Thrift Store are under a dollar. Yarly's Bakery yummily supplies your bizcocho needs. The Rainbow Restaurant doesn't accept plastic but is one of the most authentic Greek diners in town -- truck drivers like to park their big rigs outside and grab a real meal. Tucked away in a blind alley, Sassano's Pizzeria makes a mean pie. Grab one, pick up some plastic cups at the 99 Cent Store, and some Argentinean merlot at Super Saver and you're good to go. C'mon, throw off those chains. Until Riverland's inevitable date with the wrecking ball, this self-contained universe is unsullied by the corporate-conquest machine. These locally owned businesses used to be the source of strength in every small community, keeping cash close to where it was generated. Riverland is firmly rooted in its community with small, long-term tenants who are anything but fair-weather friends. Unlike Blockbuster or Starbucks, these hardy holdouts are part of our town. Readers' Choice: The Galleria

Best Mall in Palm Beach

Mizner Park

Malls bring out the must-have-everything attitude latent in all Americans. Yet indoor shopping centers just don't have everything. If commercialism's claws are deep into your wallet, get thee to Mizner Park, which has all the standard fare and then some. There's stuff for your home (electronics from Bang & Olufsen, utensils from Mamma Ro), stuff for your body (clothes from Tommy Bahama, shoes from Mephisto), and stuff to stuff yourself (kosher food from Levy's in the Park, cocktails from Max's Grille). Sharing the grounds of this intensely pastel, immaculately clean shopping center are an eight-screen luxury movie theater, a 5,000-seat amphitheater, a state-of-the-art concert hall, and the Boca Raton Museum of Art. It's all so perfectly planned and so mind-numbingly pretty that even the world's most vehement anarchist could be lulled into becoming an American Express-wielding, polo shirt-wearing consumer. If you go, ready yourself for a long walk off the short plank of restraint. You'll fall directly into the wide-open jaws of the circling marketing geniuses who designed this shoppers' wet dream. Readers' Choice: Town Center Mall

Best Boobs

Cinderella Wig and Breast Prosthetic Salon

Janet Jackson has nothing on this place. The airy shop -- located not in the bowels of some stuffy medical complex but in a sassy, celebratory location on Lake Worth's main shopping drag -- is a virtual wonderland of prosthetic breasts, special swimsuits, and wigs. It used to be that breast cancer survivors would have to look for prosthetics in shops that sell durable medical equipment. You know -- walk past the crutches, the handicapped toilets, the canes... until you hit the fake-boob aisle. How depressing. Cinderella changed all that. Founded by Norma Jean Johnson, who had trouble shopping for a mother with cancer, the store sells accessories that help mastectomy, chemotherapy, and radiation patients feel babealicious again. They have wigs made from both fake and human hair. In boobs, their best seller -- #F103 -- comes in sizes 0 through 10, and the upbeat, passionate staff helps with fittings. They also sell special bras and lingerie. Breast cancer definitely sucks, but there is a bright side: Nowadays, it's totally treatable, and you can get insurance to pay for your boob job!

Best Mechanic in Broward

Sample Tire

Sample Tire is run by John Hansen, a paragon of auto care in Broward County for the past two decades. Hansen, a tall, graying fellow who loves to fish, doesn't advertise -- he doesn't have to. Word of mouth keeps his garage full of cars and customers. Why? The guy -- and his team of mechanics -- is honest and fair. I know it's hard to believe. An honest mechanic? In South Florida, no less? But it's true. Hansen is as straight as a razor when it comes to engines. If you break down, you expect to spend $300 bare minimum, right? Well, he or one of his crack employees is liable to charge you $87.15 or something. And you actually feel like you should pay the guy more. Plus, the place is convenient. You can drop off and pick up your car past normal business hours as long as you leave the keys at the nearby Chevron station. So get thee to Sample Tire. Even if you live in downtown Fort Lauderdale, it's worth the trip.

Best Of Broward-Palm Beach®

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