People & Places >>

• Best Scenic Drive
  Fort Lauderdale to Lake Okeechobee by levee
  This is not a road AAA wants you to know about. Nor does it appear on most maps. But there it is in all its potholed glory, a hidden gift from the South Florida Water Management District that has long been a favorite of bird buffs, hunters, canal fishermen, and drug smugglers looking for an... More >>
• Best Architecture
  Stair #1
  It's a suitably ironic commentary on the dismal state of so much South Florida architecture that the most striking piece of work around is this gloriously gratuitous bit of design from the world-renowned firm of Arquitectonica, which has offices in Miami. Built a decade ago, this... More >>
• Best Place To Spot Celebrities
  251 Sunrise
  Say you just had your hair done. Ten minutes ago. If you're a man, you had it frosted. Or cut short and brushed forward à la George Clooney. Your hair matters less if you're a woman. Because you're wearing something tight. And black. If it's Saturday night, you hope to catch a glimpse of... More >>
• Best Charity
  Poverello Center
  Although many bigger charities have much bigger coffers, there's none nobler than Poverello. (The name is an Italian diminutive for "poor little one.") Every dollar raised by this AIDS relief organization, run by volunteers and Fr. William F. Collins, the unassuming but tireless Franciscan... More >>
• Best Daily Newspaper Columnist
  Buddy Nevins
  Buddy Nevins may have a name that belongs on the liner notes of a country and western album, but the politicians he zings are the ones who have tears falling into their beers. Nevins, a 20-year Sun-Sentinel vet, took over the "political writer" mantle five years ago and immediately turned the... More >>
• Best Place To Take Out-of-Towners
  North and South Ocean Boulevard
  It's a glorious afternoon in South Florida, and your guests are already braised to a tender vermilion, strung out on seafood, and exhibiting signs of mai tai malaise. So you slide into the car and head east to see how the other 1 percent lives. Nature and nurture have struck a truce on Ocean... More >>
• Best TV News Anchor
  Tim Malloy
  Thank God for local news anchors. When the world is cold and alien, they brighten us up with an artificial smile and a sterile quip, carefully stripped of any edge or actual humor. WFOR-TV (Channel 4)'s Angela Rae is our best friend. WSVN-TV (Channel 7)'s Rick Sanchez is our idealized version of... More >>
• Best Name For The H. Wayne Huizenga Fountain
  The Throw-the-Billionaire-a-Bone Memorial
  The fountain honoring Huizenga is happening for two reasons: The trash-and-car king has thrown some of his vast wealth (Forbes estimates it at $1.6 billion) into Fort Lauderdale, and Fort Lauderdale's Downtown Development Authority (DDA) doesn't want the green stuff to stop coming. Huizenga has... More >>
• Best Weathercaster
  Chris Dunn
  The main function of weathercasters in South Florida is reassurance. We want them to remind us again and again -- every single night, in fact -- just how lucky we are to be living in this slice of sunbaked paradise. On top of that, we want them to spell out in explicit detail exactly how... More >>
• Best Resort Motel
  Tropi Rock Resort
  The mosaic ribbon of mugs, saucers, ceramic suns, and glints of mirror that wraps around the front wall is the first hint that Tropi Rock is a world away from the neighboring cookie-cutter motels on the blocks extending west from Fort Lauderdale beach. The exterior of each room is painted with a... More >>
• Best Local Scandal
  Stephen Fagan
  Remember William Martin, the guy with the Palm Beach mansion and the Rolls-Royce and the beautiful daughters? The guy who told everybody he was a Harvard-educated psychiatrist who once worked for the CIA? The guy who married a succession of society ladies and told his daughters their mother died... More >>
• Best Bridge To The Past
  Snow-Reed Bridge
  Park your butt on the whitewashed concrete railing on either side of the 11th Avenue bridge, gaze out over the north fork of the New River, and squint. If the sun's low in the sky to the west of Sailboat Bend, and you clamp your lids down just enough to add a blurry sepia tone to the scene, you... More >>
• Best Hotel/Broward
  Lago-Mar Resort
  This is the place to go to escape the daily grind without leaving town. Tucked in a secluded alcove at the far tip of Fort Lauderdale beach, Lago-Mar is as far as you're going to get from the teeming masses of the new, improved, family-friendly Fort Lauderdale. The beach is wide and groomed and,... More >>
• Best Place To Watch Democracy In Action
  Hollywood City Commission
  Just like sausage-making, it may not be pretty to see how government works, but it sure is instructive. The most entertaining show lately is in Hollywood, where the five combative commissioners perform on the first and third Wednesdays of each month. Crowds arrive in eager anticipation of a good... More >>
• Best Hotel/Palm Beach
  Boca Raton Resort & Club
  You know you've found yourself a quality hotel when the Presidential Suite is simply too luxurious for an actual U.S. President. When George Herbert Walker Bush vacations at the Boca Raton Resort & Club, he chooses to stay in the Governor's Suite. And it's not just so he can feel kinship with... More >>
• Best Venue For National Acts
  Broward Center For the Performing Arts
  The Sunrise Musical Theatre is more spacious, the Carefree in West Palm Beach more intimate, and, for that matter, West Palm's Kravis Center has comparable facilities. So what makes the Broward Center so special? Location, location, location. No other South Florida venue has a site as well... More >>
• Best Amateur Butterfly Cultivators
  Ralph Johnson and Bonnie Campbell
  A yellow road-sign hanging from a tree warns "Butterfly Crossing," and the traffic is indeed intense. Dozens of yellow-and-black-striped zebras and classic monarch butterflies swoop, golden sulphurs hover high above, and orange julias flit about the garden that wraps around building contractor... More >>
• Best Proof That Broward/Palm Beach Is The Center Of The Universe
  Rick Sanchez
  You will learn at least one fact from watching any WSVN-TV (Channel 7) newscast: Anchorman Rick Sanchez is the most important person in the world. Why shouldn't he be? Recall the days of Operation Desert Storm, when Rick knelt like Mohammed on the floor of the TV studio, sputtering and pointing... More >>
• Best Weekend Getaway
  Key West
  Hemingway had the right idea. Key West is paradise in the state of Florida. As long as you avoid the tourist madness of lower Duval Street, the place is pure Caribbean-style bliss. A four-hour drive in the middle of the ocean is a small price to pay for the regenerative powers of a weekend with... More >>
• Best Renovation
  Kenann Building
  When acclaimed South Florida architect Dan C. Duckham took on the project in the early '90s, the Kenann Building was in shameful disrepair. The big, round tower -- built in the early '60s and known to locals as "the spaceship building" -- had long been neglected, and except for the inexplicably... More >>
• Best Local Insult
  "She's So Boca!"
  She's in her thirties and shops like a demon. She's either married and living on her wealthy husband's income, or she's hunting like mad for a guy who's loaded. Her hair and nails are always done; she won't even go to the beach unless her makeup is just so. She only wears designer rags. Max's... More >>
• Best Political Battle
  John Rodstrom vs. Scott Cowan
  This political caged grudge-match got heated in 1997 when Rodstrom started raising hell about the county's purchase of Port Everglades land from developer Michael Swerdlow for three times the appraised value. That scuffle was ugly and salacious, but the conflict between the two commissioners... More >>
• Best Local Landmark
  Slip F-18
  He's gone now, but in his lifetime John D. MacDonald penned 73 novels, including 21 thrillers featuring tough-guy sleuth Travis McGee, Fort Lauderdale's greatest fictional citizen. McGee lived on a 52-foot houseboat at slip F-18, Bahia Mar Marina, and to this day scores of literary pilgrims from... More >>
• Best Donation
  The TV in Room 130
  Without a doubt, one of the nastiest places in which to spend a day is Room 130 of the Broward County Courthouse in Fort Lauderdale. This is where not-so-upstanding citizens go to take care of parking fines and other misdemeanors. Apparently we have a lot of traffic scofflaws in this region,... More >>
• Best Pro Athlete
  Sam Madison
  Fourth quarter. The Denver Broncos are putting together a late drive that could tie the game and shatter the Dolphins' playoff hopes. Enter Sam Madison. The second-year cornerback picks off an errant John Elway pass and returns it 35 yards to the Denver six-yard line. Ball game. The Dolphins... More >>
• Best Place To People-Watch
  Nick's Restaurant, Lounge & Raw Bar
  Not even a pane of glass separates those inside Nick's from the action on the Broadwalk just outside. The windows swing in and anchor to the ceiling, leaving large openings in the stone façade. All the better to spy on the parade of exercisers speed walking, teenagers cruising, couples... More >>
• Best Provocative Ad
  Don Bailey Carpets Sign
  Roughly a quarter-century ago, Burt Reynolds posed nude in Cosmopolitan magazine, and driving the streets of South Florida has never been the same. Don Bailey, an obscure carpet-store owner at the time, was impressed by the fact that Burt's bare bod caused the magazine to sell out in record... More >>
• Best Sun-Sentinel Writer
  Stacey Singer
  When reading the dailies, we rarely go to the jump page. That's because we get the basics -- the who, what, when, and where -- in the first 'graph or two. The rest is dueling talking heads. But some daily reporters are talented enough to slip their "voices" into an edited story. When Stacey... More >>
• Best Never-Say-Die News Hawker
  Richard Ferris
  It was half past ten on that dark night in September, and most of Broward County was hunkered behind locked doors, awaiting the expected onslaught of Hurricane Georges. As the winds brought the first sheets of rain ashore, a skinny, raggedy figure stood alone on the median of Broward Boulevard.... More >>
• Best Radio Personality
  Neil Rogers
  Finally a reason to turn on AM radio again. Neil Rogers, the self-proclaimed fat fag, has no peer as far as we're concerned. His timing couldn't have been better for returning to the airwaves after a seven-month hiatus resulting from his nasty spat with WIOD-AM (610). Armed with a new... More >>
• Best Place To Beat The Heat
  Riverside Hotel
  Sweaty and sunburned from jostling with the trendoids and tourists on East Las Olas Boulevard? Then duck into the doorway between Indigo and Golden Lyon marked "Riverside Hotel." Walk down the dark hallway, past the pay phones and gift shop, and through the glass double doors. Select your choice... More >>
• Best Place To Break Up
  Hurricane Food Court
  Your first inclination will be to pick some private, out-of-the-way spot. Forget it! Hell hath no fury like a lover dumped, and what you're gonna want are lots of witnesses around in case things get bloody. Sawgrass Mills has a fine security force and 100,000 shoppers on any given day.... More >>
• Best Way To Meet Members Of The Opposite Sex
  Young Professionals For Covenant House
  Beauty, brains, cash, and a career. That's what we're looking for, right? All rolled into one package, without hang-ups or "issues"? Surely that kind of catch was lurking somewhere on the dance floor at the recent "Howl at the Moon" bash, one of a series of themed fundraising parties sponsored... More >>
• Best Place To Make Up
  Pier Top Lounge
  "Chris, I think we need to talk." That's all you say on the phone. When Chris shows up, you're waiting in the Pier Top with a bottle of Dom Perignon and a view of nighttime Fort Lauderdale that's second to none. Tiny bubbles, twinkly lights. "I was a fool," you say. Later, feeling as suave as... More >>
• Best Local Politician/Palm Beach County
  Nancy Graham
  Say what you will about West Palm Beach's Mayor Nancy Graham. She's a tad cold. She's unresponsive to her constituents. She's out of town a lot, visiting foreign dignitaries and discovering the virtues of Italian architecture. And she's hardly the most photogenic of Palm Beach County politicians... More >>
• Best Political Gaffe
  Sunrise Sign Ordinance
  Forget about guns, drugs, or teenage pregnancy. The Sunrise City Commission tackles the truly ravenous manifestations of urban blight -- like neon. Exposed neon, to be specific. (Whatever that means.) The insufferably self-righteous sign ordinance that put the knife to neon last year also... More >>
• Best Local Politician/Broward
  Kristin Jacobs
  Kristin Jacobs, a suburban housewife, is an unlikely revolutionary. But in Broward County, that's exactly what she is. Jacobs, almost literally on a shoestring, unseated Sylvia Poitier, who had the backing and money of the most powerful and wealthy people in the county. And when Jacobs won, she... More >>
• Best Place To Make Fine-Feathered Friends
  Flamingo Gardens
  Good ol' Edgar. He's always there for us, perched on a railing. He's just one of the 43 species that inhabit the aviary for injured birds at Flamingo Gardens. When it first opened, in 1991, Edgar was the first tenant; now he's the welcoming party. But you have to get the conversation going.... More >>
• Best Place To Witness The Failed War On Drugs
  Port Everglades
  If you hang out at Port Everglades and watch as the three immense cranes offload containers from supercargo freighters, you're witnessing the refueling of South Florida's economy as needed goods and products and raw materials pour into the region. What you may also be watching is the feeding of... More >>
• Best Tourist Trap
  Fort Lauderdale Swap Shop and Drive-In
  In a state stuffed with butterfly jungles, alligator wrestling, acrobatic dolphins, and human mermaids, the Swap Shop stands alone as the Florida theme park par excellence. That's because it doesn't have a theme, aside from the unvarnished worship of commerce. Looking for a preowned set of... More >>
• Best Bar For Gawking At Old Money
  The Leopard Lounge
  Those are Ben Franklins you smell in the lobby of the Chesterfield Hotel. Crisp and tightly packed in a gold money clip, placed neatly inside the interior pocket of a pinstriped suit jacket. The portly gentleman wearing the suit saunters, Dominican in hand, toward the dark-wood-and-brass bar at... More >>