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Best Cheap Beer Selection

Super Saver Supermarket

While South Florida isn't exactly awash in interesting microbrews or exotic quaffables from around the world (thank our state's boneheaded beverage lobby for that), we're strategically positioned to enjoy a plethora of light beers from the Caribbean and the Americas. In our summertime, subtropical torpor, a pale lager hits the spot much better than a malty, yeasty ale. At Super Saver, which is located in a 1950s-era shoppette just west of I-95, you'll find Polar from Venezuela; Kalik from the Bahamas; Presidente from the Dominican Republic; Cristal Lager, Cusqueña Malta, and Pilsen Callao from Peru; Quilmes from Argentina; plus beers from El Salvador, Panama, Guatemala, Mexico, Trinidad and Tobago, and Brazil. If you simply must leave the Americas, plenty of European beers are sold cheaply throughout the West Indies and thus at Super Saver, too. Among them: Hollandia, the Dutch-brewed, poor man's Heineken, and Bavaria. Both go for less than $10 a 12-pack. The selections change, and it's very likely you'll encounter foreign six-packs you've never seen before. Additionally the supermarket carries a nice variety of Chilean wines -- all very inexpensive -- for your drinking pleasure.

Best Chiropractor

Jesse Rogers, D.C.

Jesse Rogers's office used to be a swimsuit shop. Now it's a one-room clubhouse of sorts for a one-man show punctuated by -- what else? -- one-liners. Often as not his storefront practice in the Gateway Shopping Center is full of people waiting their turns and chatting merrily. A former standup comedian and long-time yoga devotee, Rogers is a different kind of chiropractor. Clients simply drop in whenever they feel like it, and for payment drop whatever amount they choose in an honor box at the door. He doesn't have a set fee, and he doesn't take insurance. Rogers does, however, have a jar of fortune cookie-style papers printed with wise words from the world's great thinkers -- a different kind of doctor's orders.

Best Cigar Shop

Cigarros Del Mundo

Like Scotch whisky, good cigars need about seven years aging to get really fine. The strong and rich Padron Anniversary Series, a product of Nicaragua, gives you that quality. The 1994 Padron commemorates the company's 30th anniversary for $14.99. Who pays $15 for a damn cigar? Not the guys who pick up the Fuente Opus-X, a long and very strong smoke wrapped in cedar and laden with hints of cocoa and spice. It runs for $35 a pop. Then there's the John Holmes of cigars, the huge Davidoff (eat your heart out, Monica), which comes in a wood case for $35. You can get them all at Cigarros Del Mundo in Dania Beach. If you're just a regular putz, they have something for you, too: their Honduras-grown house blend. You can sample this in a mild, hand-rolled robusto for $2.49. (The torpedo'll run you $3.50.) If you visit the store, you'll also get to see one of the finest collections of politically incorrect wooden Indians in South Florida. On top of that, it has great lighters (including those torch gizmos that ignite in a hurricane), cigar cutters, and flasks. Yes, flasks. And that brings us back to Scotch...

Best Counterculture Enterprise

Sound Splash

Matt Reynolds's all-ages, punk-rock, green-anarchist exchange of all things musical is going on its tenth year, having migrated slowly south from its original North Palm Beach location to Okeechobee Boulevard, and thence to its present locale in the industrial neighborhood along Georgia Avenue. A bare-bones operation of roughly cut shelves and record bins, Sound Splash is home to the area's largest collection of alternative-music rarities, as well as radical and oddball literature. Fliers on the walls tell you how to hook up with a ride to the next antiglobalization showdown or militant feminist poetry workshop. Evenings feature the occasional thrash-ska hoedown. The new space (store implies too much organization) includes an interlinking set of courtyards out back, where you can feed the cockatoo.

Best Flea Market

Fort Lauderdale Swap Shop

Sure, we've named this place Best Tourist Trap and Best Cheap Thrill in past years but, hey, it's a phenomenon. In this age of Disneyfied, mega-indoor shopping outlets à la Sawgrass Mills, it's good to know there's still a freak in the family. The Swap has been attracting tourists and an ever-diversifying mix of locals since 1966. Just driving through the eastern parking lots, which circle large drive-in movie screens (new releases screen every night for $3.50 per person), is enough fun to make the trip worthwhile, with vendors hawking everything from wooden back scratchers to fishing rods. Canvas tents cover a good deal of the outdoor shopping, where myriad pairs of granny underwear in varying tones of fuchsia and teal await. The notoriously labyrinthine, two-story indoor hall houses more stairs than an M.C. Escher drawing. A free circus performs daily -- three times a day on weekends. Upstairs, Elvis slot machines, two-inch gold crucifix pendants, and Oriental swords greet you from booths and kiosks. The Swap Shop is open Monday through Friday from 6 a.m. to 5 p.m., Saturdays and Sundays 5 a.m. to 6 p.m., and parking is free.

Best Florist

Field of Flowers

You'll have no excuse to live without fragrance and beauty once you've discovered Field of Flowers, the floral supermarket with locations in Davie and Coral Springs. Owner Donn F. Flipse is a third-generation florist: Granddad Jimmy migrated to Miami from Scotland at the outset of the last century and opened a landscaping and flower business, dad Fred joined after World War II, and Donn took up the trowel in 1971, opening Field of Flowers in 1990. The two locations offer 150 varieties of fresh-cut flowers by the stem, bunch, or arrangement. And they're cheap! Of the five-dozen available arrangements, half cost less than $50; they start at $17.50 for a little charmer called "Minuet" and average about $35. All are on display in the store's glass refrigerators, but if you can't make it to one of the sites, you can order over the Internet. Prefer to do it yourself but don't know how? Attend floral design school, in which you'll create arrangements using fresh-cut flowers, live plants, and accessories. And should you find yourself at the Davie store on a Saturday afternoon, take advantage of the free cake-tasting, compliments of Susie's Scrumptious Sweets. Susie started this custom some years ago to develop a cake-baking business, which is now booming. Hey, why quit while you're ahead?

Best Garage

Davie Garage

Is there such a thing as an honest mechanic? Yes, yes, yes! For the last 35 years, Davie Garage has been driving home the point that honesty is the best way to keep customers. If you go more than twice the employees will likely remember your name when you walk in the door. Stop in for an oil change and pay a mere $30.74, cash on the barrel, tax included. That's right. Credit cards and checks are not accepted, thank you very much. Bob, Mark, Steve, or Vinnie will take your car for a test run afterward, just to make sure everything's all right. If it ain't broke, they won't fix it. The employees also make a point of being accessible; they are the "service specialists" and the mechanics on your car, unlike so many dealerships where no one knows your name or cares about you. If you wait while your car is serviced, you'll wait in the office, where the business dealings are transparent. Davie Garage doesn't need gimmicks like a chair massage, cappuccino machine, or complimentary car wash. They simply do an honest day's work for an honest day's pay. In the world of automobile service, that's rare indeed.

Best Head Shop

Grateful J's Dead Head Shop

There was a time when head shops were pretty much about one thing: drug paraphernalia. Then came the war on drugs. Some head shops folded; others diversified. When Jay Work, owner of Grateful J's Dead Head Shop, opened his store, he took the latter approach. His five-year-old business offers body piercing at its Margate location and glass-blowing lessons at the Boca Raton branch. A selection of colorful glass pipes is available at both joints -- "sold as art and not intended for smoking," of course -- along with other accessories meant for use "with tobacco only." J's also offers the requisite incense and T-shirts, as well as a smattering of "adult toys" and a full line of licensed Grateful Dead products. But what really sets his operation apart from others of its ilk in SoFla, says Work, is the tape exchange. "We're the only store that gives away music," he explains. Take in a blank tape, choose from the huge inventory of live Dead shows (dating back to 1965, and all authorized for reproduction by Grateful Dead Productions), and J's will copy it for you.

Best Health Food Store

Whole Foods Market

Yeah, it's a chain. But at least it's a chain of health food stores, as oxymoronic as that notion might seem. Indeed the quirky nature of South Florida capitalism has dictated that the store with the best selection of health food, prepared meals, and offbeat products (soy Bisquick, for example) is a virtual monopoly. Whole Foods stores -- despite their membership in a 75-store national corporation -- do a wonderful job offering an array of designer protein powders, organic produce, premade tofu sandwiches, frozen fake meat, and other vegetarian staples. Some of Whole Foods' bigger locations even boast smoothie bars, eateries, and aisle upon aisle of soy creations. Leftist principles aside Whole Foods will expertly satisfy even the most granola-loving South Floridians.

Best Kids' Clothing

Think Thrift

You could take your hard-earned cash to Sawgrass Mills or any other mall for that matter and spend it outfitting the tykes. You could also wad it up and throw it in the crapper. As far as we're concerned, it's about the same thing. The fact is that kids outgrow clothes so fast that buying brand-new, name-brand stuff for them is a sure way to spend yourself into the poor house. And the clothes they don't outgrow, they'll refuse to wear because the styles have changed. We recommend you bypass the whole retail mess and shop Think Thrift, Broward County's premier secondhand store. It has racks of kids' clothes organized by article and sex, and most of it looks barely used. You'll find shorts, shirts, pants, and even shoes for less than five bucks. You can pick up a good winter jacket for $10 or so, about right given the few times you'll need it around here; and you can buy baby sleeping gear for less than a buck.

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