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Best Bar Food

Big City Tavern

Las Olas' popular bar and eatery Big City Tavern is a moody establishment where it's engaging to sip a cocktail and mingle. But as the night wears on, even though you've made new friends, your stomach starts to scream for nourishment. Not to worry, Big City Tavern offers up the likes of spinach salad with grilled chicken, warm bacon vinaigrette, Gruyère, red potatoes, and red onion for $11.50. If that doesn't hit the spot, try grilled chicken, bamboo skewered, with salsa and tortilla chips for $8.95. Pizza Salsice with sausage, tomato, and mozzarella for $10.95 will stave off the ill effects of your boozing. Or you could go for just the plain old Big City Burger with fries and cole slaw for $9.95. Once you've recollected your senses, you have the option of heightening them with the Tavern Chocolate Cake served with whipped cream, créme anglaise, and fresh fruit for $7.

Best Low-rent Bar

Sonny's Stardust Lounge

Some guy named Sonny -- who's rockin' a silver pompadour -- owns and runs this honky-tonk joint. It has old country songs on the jukebox, including tunes from Sonny's old band (which used to open for Patsy Cline and Rod Stewart). They have a guard rail along the dance floor in case the line dancers get too outta hand, and they're starting to book rock shows once a month. They don't carry draft beer, but a bottle of Bud is a fair $2.75. If you're real nice to Sonny, you can keep that bottle cold by borrowing one of the koozies he keeps under the bar.

Best Place to Get a Head

Sofa Kings Sports Bar

No, not that kind of head, wishful reader. We're talking suds, hops, brew, ale, lager, the nectar of life. But as for that other kind, Sofa Kings isn't the worst place to dream of it. It's a place where testosterone is free to roam and a man can, for one shining moment, still be a man. This place is a fantasy come true for every dirty, boorish, superior, lecherous, sports-watching man. The Everyman, as it were. Picture it: You sit on a big leather sofa, watch your favorite team on about 50 televisions, drink three-dollar drafts to your heart's content, play pool, and, oh yeah, watch young women in short, plaid, Catholic-school-girl skirts shake their moneymakers in your face. And when they aren't dancing for you, they might just start grinding it with each other. This isn't a bar; it's freakin' nirvana, working-class style. But if you're looking for a real good time, fuhgeddaboudit. As the owners of the place describe it, Sofa Kings is R-rated, not Triple X. After a lot of beer, a good game, and a few dollars placed in willing G-strings, the Everyman may be ready for a little more. It don't happen, folks, but a guy can dream.

Best Place for a First Date

Dave and Buster's

A quick three-step guide to first dating: First and foremost, you're going to have to face the fact that you're not getting laid, so just scratch those devious thoughts from your raunchy little mind. Next, if there is any hope, nothing is going to lubricate the gears of love faster then a few adult beverages, so start drinking heavily. And most important, despite what you've been led to believe, you're really not all that interesting -- in fact, you're most likely downright boring. So you're going to need to find an activity that doesn't require you to actually talk. That's what makes Dave and Buster's the perfect place to spend time with someone who's most likely never going to talk to you again. First, you can try their signature drink, the Million Dollar Margarita, which actually costs only $8. After that, dine from a diverse menu that includes dishes like a hearty mesquite peppered rib-eye steak for $18.99 and Huli Huli salmon for $13.48. Then you can head down to the Million Dollar Midway to entertain your date with cutting-edge and classic video games, virtual reality simulators, or one of more than 60 games of skill. Each game costs as much as $2.25, so it can get a little pricey. But that's OK. Who knows what the future holds. The place is open until 2 a.m. Thursday through Saturday, so you'll have plenty of time to work the mojo.

Best Place to Get Drunk

Boonies Restaurant and Lounge

It's a late Tuesday evening, and there's a vague apocalyptic feeling to this place, which hunkers on the edge of the cane fields. It's on the edge of nowhere. It invites disconnection. An over-the-hill cowboy, dressed in white hat, spangled belt and jeans, is massacring a George Jones song at the karaoke machine. He's in full beer-weave, and his voice sounds like he flossed his throat with barbed wire. A winsome blond watches with her man at a nearby table. She slips her hand up the back of his shirt. He does likewise to her. They sip whiskey Cokes with their free hands. It's men's night, as it always is on Tuesdays, which means two-for-one mixed drinks, $1 drafts, and $5 pitchers all night long (maybe you should think about sleeping in the car tonight and avoiding that long, bleary drive home). But then, it's almost always happy hour at Boonies, with the same deal seven days a week from 11 a.m. to 7 p.m. And just for good measure, it's ladies' night on Mondays. "We're from the country, and we like it that way," sings a chubby, short guy now at the mic. The drunk cowboy has staggered back to the bar, tweaking the barmaid's bottom along the way. "He stopped lovin' her... today," he croaks. He burps loudly, then fetches a healthy pinch of snuff from his tin. Time stands still.

Best Activity While Intoxicated

Ghosts, Mysteries, and Legends Tour of Old Fort Lauderdale

Two questions: Did you ever wonder about all those freaky old buildings along the New River? Have you ever had the dilemma of trying to figure out what to do when it's Friday night, happy hour is over, and you don't want to go home? Well, there's one answer to both questions, and that's the Ghosts, Mysteries, and Legends Tour, which is right around the corner from Fort Lauderdale's most popular drinking establishments. The well-researched 60- to 90-minute tour leaves from Sixth Avenue and Las Olas near Riverfront and gives you the skinny on the former inhabitants of the Stranahan House and the Cooley Hammock Massacre, among other topics. It's like a field trip for adults, and you're the sloshed class clown who's gonna jump out from behind the bushes to give everyone an extra scare. The tour leaves at 8 p.m. and costs $15 for adults and $10 for children, who should not drink beforehand.

Best One-Nighter

MoonFest

Imagine, if you can, Respectable Street's goth crowd wearing smiles in contrast to black vinyl pants and hair dye. Meanwhile, out on Clematis Street, drunken Rotary Club types join the usual crowd of club kids, frat boys, and rockers while live music blasts from nearly every venue around. What is this -- Halloween? Well, almost. It's MoonFest, the enormous street party held every October in downtown West Palm Beach. Like the evil twin of SunFest, MoonFest transforms the city streets, bars, and clubs into an orgy of alcohol consumption, live bands, carnival rides, and loads of strange behavior. And, of course, Halloween costumes that would make Wes Craven blush: priests getting blowjobs from altar boys, Hawaiian transvestites, prosthetic genitalia, and girls with even skimpier outfits than is probably legal. 2004's celebration even featured a guest "get out the vote" speech by actor Mandy Patinkin of The Princess Bride fame (you remember -- Inigo Montoya, the guy who got stabbed 90 million times). With all that, it's no wonder the city's atmosphere is so upbeat. Well, for one night, at least.

Best New Club in Palm Beach

Release Night Club

Release makes no bones about the fact that most people are jonesin' for hip-hop and house. So this Clematis monster club split its 8,000-square-foot interior right down the line. And a fun-loving 20- and-30-ish crowd takes the bait. The blue room's DJs are on the ball throwing popular hip-hop and R&B hits that keep the crowd moving. The red room, where house rules, has hosted such illustrious DJs as Gabriel Fain, Ivano Bellini, and Edgar V. There is also a lounge where you can escape the pounding beats to drink and chat. Plenty of seating throughout makes this the kind of venue where you can dance your ass off, chill to recover, and then hit the floor again and again. Drink prices run from an affordable $5 to $8, and bottle service is in the $200 range.

Best Place for a Second Date

Sunrise Health Center

You wouldn't be going on a second date if the first one hadn't gone well. And if you're going on a second, you're probably gunning for a third. And everybody knows that on the third date, you're supposed to have sex. (Oops, you thought that was on the first date?) Before you bump uglies with your new friend, you might want to know that diseases like herpes and genital warts just loooove hitchhiking back and forth along the nookie highway, and they can hop from person to person even when you're using condoms. Broward County has the second-highest number of HIV/AIDS cases in the state, and lately, the local health department has taken to announcing, "Syphilis is back!" Spare yourself future problems by getting checked out for sexually transmitted diseases at one of the Broward Health Department's three STD testing centers. (The Sunrise Health Center has the best hours.) It's a cheap date too: For $15, we got tested for syphilis, HIV, gonorrhea, and chlamydia; saw a superfriendly doctor and three cheery nurses; got a pregnancy test; and walked away with free drugs to treat a urinary tract infection. Why, we scored better schwag than we ever did trick-or-treating! If you think waiting in a windowless room for three hours for treatment is boring, you haven't seen the Condom Lady entertain the crowd by playing a trivia game and showing you how to pinch and unroll a rubber! When she's done, help yourself to as many condoms as you can stuff in your pockets and go back to people-watching (seems there are a lot of regulars in the waiting room). It's good fun, really! And if the so-called person you are dating is too cool, squeamish, humorless, or disrespectful of your health to go through this with you, then he or she is not worth seeing anyway -- fuck 'em! Um, we mean, don't!

Best Place to Meet Single Men

Fort Lauderdale Beach During Fleet Week

According to the dream dictionary on www.hyperdictionary.com, "Dreaming that you meet a person wearing epaulets means unwise attachments that may result in scandal." Hmm... sounds fun! There's something about stripes on a uniform that'll make you ask an otherwise regular guy to dock his boat in your slip! Willing accomplices can be found at any alcohol-dispensing establishment (Blondie's, the Elbo Room, the Treasure Trove, the Quarterdeck) along Fort Lauderdale Beach during Fleet Week (usually in April, so make a note), when a buttload of Navy and Coast Guard ships dock at Port Everglades. Navy flaks will tell you that Fleet Week "showcases the U.S. Navy's might and gives the public a glimpse of their hard-earned tax dollars at work as Navy sailors and their modern hardware and technology meld into one efficient fighting team." It shouldn't be too hard to get your hands on that modern hardware, considering that most of these sailors have been out at sea for months. You need only read a typical posting at www.militarysingles.com to see what's going through most of the enlisted men's minds: "I blew things up, shot things to pieces, called down 500-pound bombs, and managed mass destruction. Please help this fully equipped, clean-cut, above average, all-American boy turn from fighter to lover! I need just the right playmate to take me prisoner, so to speak." Go for it, girls! Support our troops!

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