Keeping up with Broward County's alternative nightlife scene is a huge undertaking; the posters, the flyers, the drag divas, the circuit boys — it's enough to make you pass out while cartoon thongs spin overhead. The fact that Mark's List (www.jumponmarkslist.com) thoroughly tabulates and organizes every major gay and lesbian event from Miami to Palm Beach — and now also those in the Central Florida/Bay Area — is befuddling. The fact that it also accounts for all of the smaller ones (drink specials, karaoke nights, bear bowling, etc.) is what makes it a necessity. The only problem you might discover while navigating through this collage of to-dos and nearly naked men is that every click leads to another. It's a party planning hydra. Soon you'll realize that you've spent a whole afternoon learning about the ins and outs of gay beaches when you should have been doing "real work" (you scamp, you). Don't feel bad, the website is just that good. Without it, our local nightlife would lack cohesion, our city would be less fabulous, and, worst of all, we would never know what our favorite porn stars were up to these days.

In October, an out-of-shape, 30-something accountant named Gary decided it would be a smashing idea to organize a weekly volleyball match for folks of all skill levels. It would be casual, friendly, and non-competitive. Nobody would have to fret about getting spiked in the head by a hard-bodied beach bully. Heck, they wouldn't even bother to keep score! It took Gary a while to assemble a core group of regulars for the Saturday beach matches. Busy schedules, hangovers, and the harsh Florida sun made for spotty attendance in the fledgling, loose-knit group. But several months in, he has attracted enough faithfuls to warrant a weeknight match as well. The locations vary, as Gary seeks to lighten the commuting burden on members whenever possible. After playing, the group usually grabs a drink and maybe some grub together. Members have awarded the Meetup group with an average approval rating of four-and-a-half stars (out of five).

Its name lined in globe lights, the Entrada stands as a final vestige of old Florida motels. From Federal Highway you might mistake it for another piece of crumbling Floridiana, but inside the cocktail lounge around 2 a.m. you'll find it's ever so much more. Grab a seat in one of the stackable metal chairs that fences in the sunken bar and order a dirt-cheap drink from a plastic cup. Don't worry; this bar is grandfathered in with a 6 a.m. liquor license — all you have to do is be patient and wait for the magic to happen. Phase One: Sex workers fresh off their shifts pile in to commiserate about their nightly ordeals over $3 gins; their pimps loiter menacingly in the room's smoky corners. Phase Two: friendly neighborhood businessmen (i.e., dealers) swing by to drop off and collect from the underbelly's graveyard shift. Phase Three: If you've waited this long, you've now officially entered "Crazy Hour." This is when the order of operations stops making sense. Here's what you recall the next morning: the police came, repeatedly; prostitutes were passed out on the bar, the floor, your friend's lap; pimps got angry; there were fights; more cops; distant gunfire was heard; your friends vanished; you left a twenty on the bar — it was enough to buy a round for everyone in the room; you had new friends; the cops came and took your new friends away; you went home amazed.

Their skin is wrinkly, colorless, and dry, and sometimes covered with white powder of non-illicit origins. They have the money but sometimes can't read the sign or hear the price as the tattoo artist shouts it into their hearing aids. But oh boy do older folks love getting tats these days. In the past, new trends have included young people going to clubs with bed-head (thinking it looked cool) and women walking around in thick fur boots, despite the year-round tropical climate. But this year it's seniors cruising around with freshly crafted, technicolor art covering all parts of their bodies. Whether it's a Harley insignia on an arm, an elegant rose on an ankle, or a full-color recreation of Michelangelo's Sistine Chapel fresco spread between melanoma-covered shoulder blades, local retirees are splashing into the body art scene like a bratty grandchild at the community pool. One thing, though: if the ink isn't done by early-bird special time, it's a definite deal breaker.

When it comes to playing Caribbean music, South Florida radio stations have a lot of competition. It's not like rock or urban formats where anywhere from 2-6 solid competitors exist in the market place at any one time. There are a slew of Caribbean radio stations here (some legal/some illegal) and staying on top of the game is always that much harder. But Riddims 94.5 FM is a station that you can consistently count on to have the top selectors and the best jams. Their DJs like Louie Rockaz of Jah Cuban Sound System know how to smoothly shift between Jah Cure, Tony Rebel, and Beres Hammond without being afraid to throw newer acts like Gyptian and Turbulence into the mix as well. If you can't catch their feed in your car, you can also listen to them online. For lovers of real reggae, soca, bashment, and dancehall, 94.5 FM is definitely the best pirate station in South Florida by far.

Fort Lauderdale has long been called the Venice of America, but even folks who live there hardly ever see it by water ('cept for the ones with boats). This is dumb, because water is romantic, and so is Fort Ladida. Especially in December. The Carrie B. Evening Holiday Light Cruise brings visitors up and down the New River and parts of the Intracoastal while the wintertime pageantry of the town's many rich people is on full display. The boat's got a bar, some snacking options, and a low-key narrator to tune in on when the conversation hits a lull — but the goings-on are so mellow that you can ignore the patter and chat among yourselves. It's breezy out there on the waterways, so sitting close together is a swell idea. The Evening Holiday Light Cruise is a December-only thing, but the Carrie B. runs daytime sightseeing cruises all year — through historic Tarpon River, past the mansions on the Isles, past Pier 66 and into Port Everglades, and then past hundreds of yachts docked near 17th Street. These waterways were the reason Fort Lauderdale was built, and the city's soul still thrums in them. Checking it out is a way more inventive first date option than dinner and a movie. First dates on the Carrie B. tend to lead to second dates elsewhere.

As a franchise, the zombie flick is brainless and relentless, much like the zombie itself. So we may as well make money off them, and that means alerting Hollywood, California, to the marvelous zombie film locations available in Hollywood, Florida. Specifically, the whole downtown. There's an ample supply of zombie-esque transients to work as extras. Half the storefronts are vacant and the other half will close on the cheap rather than suffer another slow night. The condo towers around Young Circle are pitch-black at night, as if their owners had already been gobbled up. Come to think of it, are we sure that real zombies haven't already struck this luckless berg?

If you're going to crash your yacht on a sandbar somewhere, do try to avoid Bermuda (gotta travel through the Triangle) and St. Barth's (the euro is so expensive right now!). Aim instead for Peanut Island, located in the Intracoastal Waterway off Riviera Beach. The 86-acre playground was built in 1918 when the Lake Worth Inlet was dredged and workers needed a place to dump all the dirt. Nowadays, the south side of the island is a family-friendly outpost, known for snorkeling and manatee sightings. The 20 campsites here come with grills, showers, and picnic tables and can be rented for $16.50 a night. The north side, meanwhile, is often jammed with so many boats and beer kegs that it's affectionately referred to as the "Redneck Yacht Club." After receiving 78 calls in a two-month period last year, the Palm Beach County Sheriff's Office led a crackdown on the normal weekend gatherings, hoping to reduce the number of topless chicks and cases of alcohol poisoning. But the party carries on! If it's all too much fun in the sun, you can duck into the on-site bomb shelter, built for President Kennedy just in case World War III broke out while he was vacationing in Palm Beach, and now open for public viewing. Then again, you could always find refuge on your lido deck... or just head home via water taxi, which dutifully runs seven days a week from the Riviera Beach Marina.

It's a shame Hunter S. Thompson didn't postpone his suicide long enough to write a sequel to Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas set in Hollywood's Seminole Hard Rock Hotel & Casino, which as money-glutted monuments to human depravity go is second only to Vegas itself. If it's people-watching you prize, best to arrive around happy hour on a Friday for the spectacle of those droves of elderly gamblers who make a shuffling migration to the parking lot, squinting up at the sun or glancing sideways to monitor the aggressions of the boisterous teens and 20-somethings who come roaring in on tricked-out Toyotas, flashing ersatz bling and reeking of Axe Body Spray, head on a swivel for the coked-out skanks from their Bang Brothers-inspired fantasies. After midnight, revelry careens toward riot, and in the midst of this mess of unholy humanity, a celebrity may materialize. One may even perish. Surely Anna Nicole won't be the last...

It's hard to be a tourist. From the Internet or the information booth on the turnpike, one Everglades tour looks just like the next; one alligator rassler looks no different from another (they each have nine fingers). Holiday Park's fleet of airboats is unique because all the boats have covered passenger compartments. That means you get all of the high that comes with hovering at warp speeds through the river of grass, and none of the wetness that makes you look like you peed your pants doing it. Furthermore, Holiday's guides are mostly local roughnecks who love this land like John Ashcroft loves eagles — and they seem to have a symbiotic relationship with the gators here. Besides being hip to all of the gator nests and hideouts, the guides do a bang-up job during the shows, where they sit on their friends' scaly backs and spread their jaws to basically do an up-close dental checkup. (The gators like it! See? They're smiling!) Beyond these feats, the folks out here on the western edge of BroCo will be happy to rent you a little fishing boat of your own and hook you up with camping trips. The site even has a nifty little general store where you can pick up some trinkets and snacks before you swashbuckle your way through the sawgrass. Mmm, alligator jerky...