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Best Road Through Perdition

NE Sixth Street in Victoria Park

Developers salivate over this small neighborhood just northeast of downtown Fort Lauderdale. So naturally, home values have skyrocketed, which has led to a feeding frenzy. Cozy bungalows have been torn down to make way for McMansions or, worse yet, crammed parcels of townhomes. Strip malls are pressing in from the west. Still, there´s one forward-thinking development smack in the middle of this transfiguring hell: a new traffic circle at the intersection of Sixth Street and 14th Avenue. Maneuvering east-west through this neighborhood requires dealing with a quagmire of pointless stop signs, but this roundabout is a sane idea to keep traffic rolling. Now if we could just send the speculators packing down this unconstrained road.

Best Scenic Drive

Heritage Boulevard and Park Lane

The key to proper scenic motoring is the absence of other vehicles. Think about it: If you´re concentrating on defensive driving and cursing the typical maniacal South Florida driver, how can you enjoy the scenery? The Heritage-Park excursion is a five-mile pastoral loop off the beaten track -- in fact, most of it´s off the tar. Part of the fun is navigating the water-filled potholes that dent graveled Park Lane. This is, after all, agriculture country and home to Clintmore Heritage Nursery, Heritage Farms, Indian Trails Native Nursery, and Lions Nursery. Old Florida growth abounds here, but the nursery fields provide a floral fullness that Mother Nature didn´t have time for. Heritage Boulevard intersects Highway 441 about a mile south of Lantana Road.

Best Hotel

The Colony

The rooms are, let´s say, intimate, and the plumbing has a clunky, antique, pre-war look, but the Colony has ambiance in spades. The buttery yellow building with burgundy trim almost demands that passersby on Atlantic Avenue step in for a look around. Have a house-specialty Bloody Mary on the shady front porch as a ceiling fan turns lazily and you view the passing crowd. (The redhead in the cool white linen top and slacks over in the corner -- could that be a Rita Hayworth apparition?) Then chill out for a few moments in the rattan-furnished lobby, or wander into one of the vividly painted meeting rooms, where bougainvillea-pink walls and an aquamarine ceiling can put anyone in a party mood. Guest rooms may be small, in the 1920s style, but they´re damn comfortable, looking more like a guest room in somebody´s well-kept old house than a hotel. The dresser is mahogany, floors are the original polished Dade County pine, the beds are covered in soft bedspreads and comforters, and the watercolors on the walls are originals. The walls of the bathrooms are white ceramic tile, and the shower and the pedestal sink, lovingly preserved, work as well as they did when the place was built in 1926. You could say the Colony´s beach club, a couple of miles away, is inconveniently located, but it has the same Jazz Age elegance as the hotel, along with a footstep-shaped saltwater swimming pool. And unlike the beachfront hotels in town, the Colony is right in the midst of Delray Beach´s bubbling dining and nightlife scene. Rates range from $75 off season to $245 for a suite in season.

Best Weekend Getaway

The Rod and Gun Club

You´re tired of living in a place where the oldest architecture is a strip mall built in the 1950s? Well, soak up the past and shed this use-it-up-and-run South Florida culture by hopping on Alligator Alley and heading to Everglades City on the other coast. And we don´t mean the Pacific. There, you must stay in the Rod and Gun Club, which was built back in 1840 by fur traders. In the 1920s, mogul Barron Collier bought the place and turned it into his own private club, where he hosted a few obscure fellows like Franklin Delano Roosevelt, Harry Truman, and Ernest Hemingway. Now, nobodies like us can stay there for a mere $105 a night plus tax. As you sit on the grand veranda or in the restaurant with its rich, polished wood as the Barron River (yeah, the guy had an ego) flows nearby, you can feel the history. That´s right, Dorothy: You´re not in Sunrise anymore.

Best Scandal

International Swimming Hall of Fame

This scandal seems almost too good to be real. You have the last decent public park on the beach slated for massive condominiums by a greedy, unscrupulous developer (Michael Swerdlow). There´s the sleazy, glad-handing mayor (Bill Griffin) who sells out the beach and his town (Pompano Beach) for political and financial gain. You have a do-little state attorney (Michael Satz) pretending he´s investigating the mayor´s corruption, including a new job that the developer helped him get at one of the country´s largest construction firms. And there are hordes of concerned citizens clamoring for all their heads. That´s just the first episode. In the second one, the mayor is voted out of office, then leaves the job. And the project is given the boot by the new city commission. Can´t wait for the next installment.

Best Epicure

Steve Abrams´ kid

What you are about to read is true. And it has never before been published. Last year, a teacher asked third-grade students at the prestigious Lighthouse Point Academy a seemingly innocuous question: Can you name your favorite food? Surprisingly, sushi surfaced as the preferred chow for several savvy members of the Sponge Bob set. Not to be outdone, the young son of Boca Raton Mayor Steve Abrams thought hard. Then the boy, whom New Times is declining to name to protect him from animal rights wackos, piped up. ¨Caviar,¨ came his response. After a pause, the stunned teacher asked, ¨What kind of caviar?¨ ¨Sturgeon,¨ the boy replied confidently. Three words: Only. In. Boca.

Best Local Boy Gone Bad

Peter Sheridan

Peter Sheridan isn´t just a local boy; he´s a mama´s boy. Mom Joan Sheridan is a long-time Fort Lauderdale political activist who has been involved in litter pickups and neighborhood watches. But she should have been watching her son more closely. Pete, when he was assistant city engineer for the City of Fort Lauderdale, got a little too cozy with a company called Recreational Design and Construction. While he oversaw RDC´s contracts with the city -- and steered the company hundreds of thousands of dollars in public business -- its workers built a $13,000 spa in his home. Funny thing: Pete didn´t pay for it. When his underhanded dealings were made public, his mother quickly wrote a check. An ensuing criminal investigation found that both Pete and Joan were unethical, but no charges were filed. Pete resigned with dishonor, but bless us all, he landed on his feet. Local engineering firm Keith and Schnars -- which also has numerous contracts with the city -- hired him tout de suite. It just goes to show that in Broward County, everything´s upside down. As Bob Dylan told us: ¨What´s good is bad, and what´s bad is good/You´ll find out when you reach the top.¨

Best Local Girl Gone Bad

Miriam Oliphant

A year ago, Broward County Supervisor of Elections Miriam Oliphant was one of the brightest stars in the South Florida political firmament. We said so ourselves, naming her Best Politician in our 2002 Best of Broward-Palm Beach issue and concluding, ¨Seems the woman in charge of the political process in Broward knows a thing or two about politics herself.¨ She was young, gifted, and black, not to mention photogenic and a liberal Democrat with a lofty vision for an office that had been held for a gazillion years by the uncharismatic, if reliable, Republican Jane Carroll. Oliphant seemed destined for success -- until she actually had to do her job. Now beleaguered and botched elections are the words that seem destined to cling to her. She may have pulled off the February and March 2003 elections without major problems, but it could be argued that she did so by scaring voters away from the polls. Regardless of how Oliphant fares in the future, her legacy, alas, will almost certainly be allegations of cronyism, nepotism, financial irregularities, and incompetence.

Best Political Gaffe

Unopened Absentee Ballots

So a bunch of naive folks in Broward County thought they voted this past September. So a few months later, investigators turned up a tray of unopened ballots in a file cabinet in county elections supervisor Miriam Oliphant´s office. So those ballots were never time-stamped and apparently forgotten. So the clerk responsible for picking up the ballots from the post office, Glen Davis, was allowed to continue in his job despite reprimands for being drunk and arriving late. So Davis had a relationship with Robin Darville, Oliphant´s sister. So what?

Best Politician

Jim Naugle, Fort Lauderdale mayor

He wants to enforce sodomy laws against gays. He believes the world would be a better place if more of the right people carried handguns. He wants God in the classroom and counts the Christian extremists at Coral Ridge Presbyterian Church as some of his most important supporters. He´s a Republican who calls himself a Democrat for the most cynical of political purposes. Yes, there are lots of things not to like about Jim Naugle. As a mayor, though, he can´t do much damage on those counts. And as far as mayors go in Broward and Palm Beach counties, he is simply the top of the heap. Naugle is the most accountable elected official in Broward County, a fiercely independent man who doesn´t schmooze and isn´t in developers´ pockets. He´s not afraid to speak his mind, and he´s been a first-rate steward for the city. So we had to cheer when he routed the untested Tim Smith in the February election. But don´t get any big ideas, Jim. If you run for Congress, we will have no choice but to out you (politically speaking, of course).

Best Of Broward-Palm Beach®

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