Subtropical Life >>

• Personal Best
  Oscar
  Nobody expected Oscar the Featherless Bird to become a pheenom. When she arrived at the Broward County Humane Society 12 years ago, she was in bad shape (that's right, Oscar's a girl). She was sorely afflicted with what's known as "beak and feather disease," a grinding, degenerative condition... More >>
• Best Flack (1 Comment)
  Jim Leljedal
  Jim Leljedal has weathered a lot in his 25 years with the Broward Sheriff's Office. Working for Nick Navarro, the egomaniacal former sheriff who battled 2 Live Crew and teamed up with the Cops TV show, could never have been dull. Then came the tragedy of Ron Cochran's death, followed by the... More >>
• Best FM Radio Personality
  K. Foxx — 99 JAMZ
  You'd think it would be hard sitting in Khaled's shadow. The loveable and highly lauded DJ Khaled is the biggest name in South Florida radio. He's been at it for numerous years, and with his albums, connections, and new record label taking off, it's hard to think of anyone that's doing it bigger... More >>
• Best Ho
  Destiny
  If the photos on her backpage.com ad are any measure, Broward-based Destiny belongs in that elite milieu of strumpet with the chick who shtupped Spitzer. She makes a credible claim to "incomparable beauty," favors lacy black lingerie, and describes herself as "Columbian," a misspelling that... More >>
• Best Gadfly
  Ed Wooley
  Call Wooley the thinking man's activist. The native Miamian has a B.A. in economics from the University of Chicago, an MBA from Harvard, and a doctorate from the University of Chicago. He spent a career as an executive in the freight industry before retiring in 1997. "I didn't like what I saw,"... More >>
• Best Hotel
  The Atlantic
  The new Fort Lauderdale has no shortage of luxury resorts. Determining the best hotel is akin to choosing the hottest Playboy centerfold. The Atlantic is like the busty blond twins who'd be willing to show you a thing or two after everyone else leaves Hefner's grotto. Located on the beach and... More >>
• Best Landmark
  Kenann Building
  The mosaics and marshmallow curves on this 8-story circular building lift many a commuter's spirits at the busy intersection of Oakland Park and Federal Highway. How can you not smile at geometric renditions of herons, sea horses, and marlins? Fort Lauderdale architect Louis F. Wolff designed... More >>
• Best Lawyer (1 Comment)
  David Bogenschutz
  That's right. We're going with Bogenschutz, the shrewd advocate for damn near every lousy public official in Broward County (Ken "Jailbird" Jenne, Al "Urinal Man" Capellini, and "Weepy" Larry Seidlin are three recent clients). Sure, you can condemn him for representing high-rolling sleazebags.... More >>
• Best Local Celebrity
  Vanilla Ice
  Every town needs a resident freak to make life interesting and keep the gossips in business. Unfortunately, Britney Spears lives in California and former sheriff Ken Jenne is incarcerated. So it was our luck when the Iceman himself moved his digs to Wellington. Every fan of The Surreal Life... More >>
• Best Local Girl Gone Bad (Gone Good)
  Mary Carey (Mary Ellen Cook)
  Yeah, she's made lots of porn movies. Yeah, she has several times made a mockery of the democratic process in California, running for governor of the golden state on her "Porn for Pistols" campaign. And yes, she showed up for the first day of her celebrity rehab reality show on VH1 so shitfaced... More >>
• Best Local Legend
  Frank Stranahan
  In light of the economic downturn, the story of Frank Stranahan is both instructional and apropos. Long before the land boom of the early 21st Century, there was the high-flying 1920s. Broward was growing and the Ohio-born Stranahan was at the center of it all. A rather stern and extremely... More >>
• Best Meetup Group (4 Comments)
  Fort Lauderdale/Broward Volleyball Meetup
  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... More >>
• Best Near-death Experience
  Late Nights at the Entrada
  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... More >>
• Best Locally Generated Website (2 Comments)
  www.JumpOnMarksList.com
  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... More >>
• Best Festival
  Scottish Festival & Highland Games
  Sure, the concept might not seem all-inclusive at first blush. These annual gatherings are organized by a bunch of folks celebrating their Scottish ancestry, and to some extent their families' early arrivals in the U.S. of A. (Case in point: The Daughters of the American Revolution sponsor a... More >>
• Best New Trend (Not Music or Nightlife)
  Retirees Getting Tattoos
  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... More >>
• Best Dentist
  Nadja Horst
  Scented candles, ambient lighting, big comfy chairs, and a plasma widescreen... Is this a dentist's office or a health spa? Dr. Nadja Horst's space in downtown Fort Lauderdale is a bit of both, which distinguishes it from those sterile, fluorescent torture chambers that haunted your childhood.... More >>
• Best Place for a First Date
  Evening Holiday Light Cruise Aboard the Carrie B.
  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... More >>
• Best Defense Against Terrorism
  Vote Obama
  If hatred lies at the ice-cold heart of terrorism, then it's up to the next American president to make this nation less hate-able. The old white dudes we've put in the Oval Office these last few centuries have not fared well, what with their record of condoning slavery, nuking civilians, and... More >>
• Best Pirate Radio Station (2 Comments)
  Riddims 94.5 FM
  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)... More >>
• Best Place to Film a Zombie Movie
  Downtown Hollywood
  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... More >>
• Best Chiropractor (18 Comments)
  Dr. Donna Watson, A Place of Health
  A rule of thumb: If your ol' buddy Pain has come for an extended stay, it's time to knock on the chiropractor's door. Still, with chiropractor signs leaping out from every other shopping plaza, finding the right one can be grueling. Check out A Place of Health. You'll go for a spinal adjustment... More >>
• Best Place to Get Shipwrecked
  Peanut Island
  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... More >>
• Best Place to Watch the Sunset
  Jupiter Inlet Lighthouse
  A day in South Florida can be stressful: Billboards. Traffic. Hooters girls who haven't updated their uniforms since 1983, still wearing bright-orange shorts and pantyhose. You need a place where you can go to chill out and catch a sunset. Enter the Loxahatchee River Historical Society: You've... More >>
• Best Place to People-watch
  Seminole Hard Rock Hotel & Casino
  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... More >>
• Best Place to See a Gator
  Everglades Holiday Park
  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... More >>
• Best Charity
  Faith Farm
  You have a lot of old stuff you don't want: clothes, couches, kitchen utensils. You like to find good deals on all sorts of items. And maybe you are a hopeless drunk or drug addict who let life spin out of control. Faith Farm, the Christian-based furniture store and rehab center, has something... More >>
• Best AM Radio Personality (8 Comments)
  Jorge Rodriguez, WQAM (560)
  Folks in the radio biz have been waiting – maybe that's begging – for SoFla radio stalwart Neil Rogers to retire for years. Some of them are jealous, no doubt; even more are flagrantly insane. Some wise listeners, however, are simply holding for the day when Rogers' man-at-arms,... More >>
• Best Weekend Getaway
  Carnival Cruise Lines
  We booked the last-minute cruise on a tequila-infused whim. But just as the credit card went through, the feeling of dread poured over us: OMG, the Vegas-style shows might be really cheesy! Grannies will surround us at the slot machines! Bartenders, holding us hostage on the ship, could get away... More >>
• Best Weathercaster (2 Comments)
  Phil Ferro, WSVN 7 News
  A good weatherperson is so much more than a conveyor of information. He (or she, but in this case, he) should be even more than an expert meteorologist. Especially living in this sunny-one-minute-stormy-the-next part of the country, the best weathercaster should be an expert in the science of... More >>
• Best Building
  St. Regis Resort
  The white, arciform lines and teal glass move up from the beach like a giant, 24-story wave summoned by Neptune himself. Designed by the Miami-based architectural firm Arquitectonica, the St. Regis is marked by tiered walls of opulent windows looking out over the 29,000-square-foot pool deck,... More >>
• Best Place to Take Out-of-towners
  Big Cypress Seminole Reservation
  When we want to impress visitors, we show them a slice of Florida the way Juan Ponce de Leon encountered it 500 years ago. The beaches will never be the same, of course, but the Everglades have the same silvery light they always had, the same towering clouds, the tropical birds, and, yes, the... More >>
• Best Political Coup
  Lazavius Hudson
  A 1998 charge of disorderly intoxication didn't stop Fitzroy Salesman from winning election to the Miramar City Commission in 2003. And a 2005 DUI charge resulted in just a 20-month suspension from his official duties. So it's stunning that this battle-scarred politician would have his career... More >>
• Best Walk In Urban Sprawl
  Plantation Preserve Linear Park
  Well, we've pretty much done it. Gone off and destroyed just about all the natural beauty of this place from the Sawgrass Expressway to A1A. That's why little oases like Plantation Preserve are so treasured. The preserve is an old golf course that was abandoned for years until the city recently... More >>
• Best Politician — Broward
  Peter Bober
  A few years ago, selecting Bober as the best anything would have seemed unthinkable. He was, after all, just a weak Hollywood city commissioner ebbing and flowing with Mayor Mara Giulianti's political tide. But a funny thing happened to Bober on the way to mediocrity: He grew a pair. First he... More >>
• Best Politician — Palm Beach (1 Comment)
  Dawn Pardo
  Pardo is one of those rare politicians who has done more good before gaining elected office than most officials do in their entire careers. Pardo, of Riviera Beach, basically saved the municipal beach at Singer Island from developer Dan Catalfumo and his giant Ocean Mall project: She led the... More >>
• Best Value/Best Place to See and Be Seen in Palm Beach
  Ta-boo
  Since 1941, Ta-boo has been a bar and bistro for the well-to-do. Sinatra, JFK, and countless socialites have dined there. It's even said that the Bloody Mary was born at Ta-boo, stirred up to soothe a hangover for troubled Woolworth heiress Barbara Hutton. Considering its high-society... More >>
• Best Power Couple
  Stacy Ritter and Russ Klenet
  Out in the open, on the dais, is Stacy Ritter, a powerful Broward county commissioner. Slithering behind the scenes is her husband, Russ Klenet, a well-heeled lobbyist who is most famous for selling the commission a lousy touch-screen voting system that wasted millions of taxpayers' dollars.... More >>
• Best TV Station (1 Comment)
  WSVN-TV — Channel 7
  We're convinced: before you can become a female news anchor, you are required to attend robot school. Here you and other news anchors are trained to look and act exactly like one another — the same highlights, the same shoulder-length haircut, the same vapid, monotonous voice, which you... More >>
• Best Public Restrooms
  That One on the Beach...
  The best public restroom in South Florida is a marvel. It's got a gorgeous view of the ocean and is very near to all of Fort Lauderdale's best beach bars. It's a quick walk from both BeachPlace and Las Olas Boulevard. It's also robotic — self cleaning, if you can dig it — and runs on... More >>
• Best TV News Anchor (1 Comment)
  Laurie Jennings WPLG-TV — Channel 10
  With those huge tigress eyes, that expressive yet low-key voice, and her girl-next-door smile, Laurie Jennings is the mother of all news anchors in South Florida. She's also the mother of twin boys, as all the veteran news watchers in Broward and Miami-Dade know. That's what really makes... More >>
• Best Quote
  Fort Lauderdale Mayor Jim Naugle
  This year we have a quote that not only deeply impacted South Florida, but was heard 'round the country. It came from Fort Lauderdale Mayor Jim Naugle, via the Sun-Sentinel. What would you expect from a raving right-wing nut-job who calls himself a Democrat? The man once told New Times that he... More >>
• Best Quote
  Fort Lauderdale Mayor Jim Naugle
  This year we have a quote that not only deeply impacted South Florida, but was heard 'round the country. It came from Fort Lauderdale Mayor Jim Naugle, via the Sun-Sentinel. What would you expect from a raving right-wing nut-job who calls himself a Democrat? The man once told New Times that he... More >>
• Best Reason to Live in South Florida
  Perversion
  South Florida is the perversion capital of the nation, and life here is never boring. Our bungled elections have thrown the entire universe into a death spiral. We kill fat and aging widows with no talent and send them to the Bahamas to be buried. We are blessed with a giddy Democratic party... More >>
• Best Road to Avoid
  Oakland Park Boulevard West at 5 p.m.
  Oh sure. You got a killer deal on that home in Sunrise — so good that it was a little easier to endure the long commute back and forth from the job that lies east. Then gas prices hit $3 and headed for $4. So now you can't afford to circumnavigate this quagmire. Besides, I-595 is a parking... More >>
• Best Sports Writer
  Dave Hyde, South Florida Sun-Sentinel
  The best sports writing in any anthology is inevitably about the losers. Nothing beats the passion and drama of an athlete or team working ceaselessly toward a dream and falling just short. So South Florida, with our cornucopia of incompetent contenders in virtually every major sport, should be... More >>
• Best Sun-Sentinel Writer
  Brittany Wallman
  Around the New Times office, she's known as "The Wife of the Pulp." But just because she's married to New Times' own muckraking columnist Bob Norman doesn't mean we should keep Brittany Wallman from claiming a title she's due. Take it from writers who constantly try to get a crumb of fresh news... More >>
• Best Stadium DJ
  Brian Lenihan, Florida Panthers
  Miami's DJ Irie is the industry standard for what arena DJs are supposed to sound like, and he's the NBA's official DJ, which puts a lot of pressure on our other arena DJs to step their game up. One local jock stands out above the rest of Irie's competition. When the Florida Panthers brought in... More >>
• Best Stadium DJ
  Brian Lenihan Florida Panthers
  Miami's DJ Irie is the industry standard for what arena DJs are supposed to sound like, and he's the NBA's official DJ, which puts a lot of pressure on our other arena DJs to step their game up. One local jock stands out above the rest of Irie's competition. When the Florida Panthers brought in... More >>
• Best Car Wash
  Carwash Lube
  This award is unabashedly being driven by our economy. With gas prices at ridiculous levels, the days of the $20-$25 car wash aren't feasible for a lot of families anymore. If you have a multi-car household, it's even less realistic. If you've still got an automobile that needs to be cleaned,... More >>
• New Times) Theater Critic
  Christine DolenThe Miami Herald
  Christine Dolen is a busy writer with a busier mind. Her range is large: she can find a funky angle or a weird hook for just about any story, and she is always more interested in celebration than analysis. Maybe half of her writing constitutes real criticism; the rest is an attempt to get the... More >>
• Best Palm Beach Post Writer
  Jose Lambiet
  The Palm Beach Post has kicked some major ass this year, taking down a cadre of corrupt local officials, covering the hell out of the Dunbar Village rape, and producing an admirable series of investigative reports. (While we're at it, let's give a shoutout to the staff photographers, who have... More >>