Arts & Entertainment >>

• Best Place To Watch 14-Year-Old Girls With Short Green Hair Moshing
  Club Q
  At night this dank strip-mall billiard hall is transformed into a teenage nightclub for the colored-hair, my-mom-signed-my-piercing-consent-form young'uns. Featuring various local and touring punk and ska bands (many in their teenage years as well) on the small corner stage of Q's musty,... More >>
• Best Polka Musician
  Jimmy Sturr
  Warm up the accordion and the kielbasa, because when Jimmy Sturr comes into town, polka music becomes all the rage. OK, it's not all the rage. But at least part of it -- especially at the American Polish Club of Lake Worth (561-967-1116), where Sturr performs each year. In fact, with 100 albums,... More >>
• Best Comedy Club
  Uncle Funny's Comedy Club
  Uncle Funny's is pretty much it in this category for professional standup in Broward County. In Palm Beach County, there's the Comedy Corner, which is owned by the same guy who owns Funny's, Andrew Dorfman. In the past few months or so, Uncle Funny's has featured national talents like Dom Irrera... More >>
• Best Radio Station
  WKPX-FM (88.5)
  During the day the pubescent DJs manning the mics at Broward's hippest radio station spin an eclectic mix of cutting-edge tracks that range from the raw and grungy to the infectiously upbeat. Between adolescent banter sprinkled with giggles and gossip, high-school students taking what must be... More >>
• Best Movie Theater
  Gateway Cinema 4
  Twenty-four movies at the multiplex and nothing to see. That's the sad reality of moviegoing in most of Broward and Palm Beach counties. The multiplexes continue to amaze us with the sheer quantity of utterly banal schlock they screen each week. (On exactly how many screens can you show Enemy of... More >>
• Best Theater For Plays
  Florida Stage
  Every theater is saddled with the same basic challenge -- figuring out what audiences want. At Florida Stage, founder and producing director Louis Tyrrell isn't looking over his shoulder to see what others are doing. Nor is he serving up crowd pleasers just to sell tickets. Instead he's leading... More >>
• Best Local Jazz Artist
  Ira Sullivan
  Sullivan is the best jazz artist in South Florida. No, you won't find him performing regularly in the area's so-called "jazz" rooms, nor will you be overly impressed with his recent recordings. Ira is not the best for what he's currently doing, he is the best because he is the very embodiment of... More >>
• Best Local Rock Band
  Crease
  With local radio powerhouse Zeta putting Crease's single, "Frustration," in heavy rotation and the band's five-song CD, Six-Pack Shy of Pretty, selling like cheap drugs, it's doubtful that you haven't heard our local rock heroes yet. In an area parched for rock 'n' roll and hungry for noise,... More >>
• Best Artistic Director
  Rafael de Acha
  He may not have presented the most provocative play or even the strongest season this year, but New Theatre's Rafael de Acha made his mark on the South Florida theater scene by continuing to put a personal vision into his productions. In the last year, the artistic director presented eight new... More >>
• Best Imitation Of A "Best Of" Issue
  City Link Best of Broward/Palm Beach '98
  Only one publication qualifies for this category because only one started calling its yearly issue "Best Of" after New Times Broward•Palm Beach moved into Fort Lauderdale in November 1997. Six months later, what had formerly been known for years as "Survival Guide" (put out by City Link's... More >>
• Best Local Website
  www.justsurfit.com
  You're hanging out at home, somewhere in far western Broward County, but before you head east for a trip to the beach or dinner on the Intracoastal, it would be great to know what you're in for in terms of weather. After all, you could sit at home in the rain or wind. And sure, you could watch... More >>
• Best Bar Band
  The Weld
  A good bar band plays more than worn-out covers and classic rock standards; a great bar band blows your mind with a repertoire that's just as entertaining as anything you thought you ever wanted to hear. This the Weld does with a casual panache that appears effortless but it is actually an... More >>
• Best Bar On The Water/Palm Beach
  The Seafood Bar at the Breakers
  Poor Palm Beach County. Forty-seven miles of coastline means forty-seven miles of azure waves lapping and frothing at clean and uncrowded beaches. But barely a beachfront bar to be found. In the infinite, albeit unintended, wisdom of bureaucrat land planners and developers, Palm Beach County has... More >>
• Best Bar On The Water/Broward
  Le Tub
  Bathtubs overlooking the Intracoastal are what give this place so much charm. Like some clandestine hideaway, Le Tub lurks behind lush foliage and a big brown picket fence. Inside you'll find South Florida's wackiest theme bar, a wooded alcove of rusty tubs and toilet seats and a quiet place to... More >>
• Best Weekly Block Party
  Clematis by Night
  To families, block parties are a way to commune with neighbors, to fight suburban isolation with lawn chairs and potluck picnics, basketballs and bicycles. To college students, parties are a way to commune with the opposite sex, to fight social ineptitude with couches and kegs, bongs and bongos.... More >>
• Best Art Gallery
  Gallery Center
  You could spend days scouting the dozens of commercial galleries in Broward and Palm Beach counties for that perfect piece of art, or you could do one-stop shopping at Gallery Center. This 30,000-square-foot complex is more like a museum than an art mart, with a small outdoor sculpture garden... More >>
• Best Museum
  Museum of Art
  If we're talking exhibition space only, the best area museum would have to be Lake Worth's Museum of Contemporary Art, a small but aesthetically appealing and tremendously versatile facility that's intimate without being claustrophobic. But if we're talking museum in the larger sense of the word... More >>
• Best Gallery From The Dark Side
  Galerie Macabre
  Boys shove girly magazines under the bed when parents come home, and adults lock up the porn videos when kids are underfoot. Galerie Macabre is a warehouse-size "under the bed," where you can gaze at morbid and erotic art without fear of judgment. Lady Vanessa runs the place, displaying the work... More >>
• Best Festival
  Fort Lauderdale Cajun/Zydeco Crawfish Festival
  Multicolored beads under a blazing sky, 25,000 pounds of crawdads boiled alive, a whole lot of cayenne chased down by a whole lot more beer -- is it any wonder that we're finding it difficult to dredge up distinct memories of the Cajun/Zydeco Fest? Who or what was that Zydecajun playing the... More >>
• Best Kids' Thrill
  Butterfly World
  It could be debated what thrill at Butterfly World is the best for kids. Is it simply the thousands of butterflies -- including blue cyrbias, black and red piano keys, traditional orange monarchs, and more than 100 other species -- that flutter about? Or is it the hummingbird section? That's... More >>
• Best Place To See A Movie And Drink Alcohol (Without Having To Sneak It In)
  Cinema Cafe
  At the Cinema Cafe, they don't mind if you drink a little during the show. In fact, they encourage patrons to sip and nosh while, say, Jackie Chan kicks and chops his way across the screen. After all, they've let you in the door for a measly $3.50, so they'd love to make a little cash on the... More >>
• Best Name For A Strip Joint
  The Booby Trap
  Enough said, no? More >>
• Best Local Radio Program
  Zeta Goes Local
  Midday jock and station music-director Kimba -- no last name, just Kimba -- lends her husky, sultry voice to this Sunday-night show of music by area bands. From the stacks of demotapes and CDs mailed to the station, Kimba chooses the two hours' worth of tunes that make it on the weekly program,... More >>
• Best Rock Club
  The Culture Room
  The Culture Room takes this one almost by default because of the scarcity of rock clubs in the region. Major props go to the Culture Room for putting on its twice-weekly local band nights (Wednesday and Saturday) when few other clubs seem interested in artists with actual instruments. The space... More >>
• Best Dance Club
  Club Boca
  Club Boca's brilliance lies in its simple aesthetics and its variety. Situated on the ground floor of an office building and decorated in a hip but elegant style (regal statues of lions next to hanging graffiti pieces), the club covers the waterfront with its selection of dance music. Mondays... More >>
• Best Sports Bar
  Hot Shots Bar & Billiards
  Sports bars, in order to fulfill their promise as a man's paradise, need four things: plenty of televisions; a small army of hot, scantily clad waitresses; lots of less-than-expensive beer; and buckets of chicken wings. Hot Shots has all of these, but you'll have to forget about the... More >>
• Best Cheap Thrill
  Nancy M. Graham Centennial Fountain
  Revisit one of childhood's purest pleasures, playing in the sprinklers, at the four-year-old "dancing fountain." (It was officially named for the outgoing West Palm Beach mayor last week.) Venture onto the stone checkerboard during a lull, then register surprise as water shoots up from tiny... More >>
• Best Not-So-Cheap Thrill
  Snow
  With six snow-blowing machines, and facilities in Pahokee and Miami, Fred Abramovitch dominates the local snow business. Fred, the president of Royal Palm City Ice, hails from Toronto, Canada, and can't seem to leave his chilly past behind. He doesn't advertise his product, but especially in... More >>
• Best Graffiti Crew
  MSG
  More Stupid Graffiti? Whatever the name means, this posse's handle is not about food additives. MSG may be the best "writers" in the region because they've been at it the longest, persevering in one of the nation's most antigraffiti environments, South Florida. Fallen (literally, having tumbled... More >>
• Best Emerging Writer Couple
  Jesse and Lyn Millner
  She writes on a laptop at a spare, scratch-and-dent-sale desk in a walk-in closet filled with boots, blouses, and suits; he composes before an oversize screen in a separate study, surrounded by photographs, poetry books, and a cartoon starring Walt Whitman. She sets aside her muse from nine to... More >>
• Best Venue for Live Music
  The Chili Pepper
  The Chili Pepper offers the most flexibility of any midsize venue in Broward and Palm Beach. With two stages outside and one inside, the club can host as many bands as one could possibly want to see in a night. The indoor stage, with its front-and-center recessed dance floor, eye-level bars and... More >>
• Best Joke About Broward/Palm Beach
  Public Transportation
  Public Transportation More >>
• Best Blues Band
  Iko-Iko
  This South Florida institution is the area's best because they are, well, more than just a blues band. The group's founder and lead singer Graham Wood Drout helped pioneer this region's blues scene back in the early '80s with the Fat Chance Blues Band, and his knowledge and understanding of the... More >>
• Best Diva
  LaGaylia
  Histrionic vocals, drop-dead good looks, the haughty grace of a queen: LaGaylia is pure diva and then some. Holding court for years at Coconuts in Fort Lauderdale with the understated backing of acoustic group Wooden Ships, LaGaylia has recently been hitting local stages with Nickel 'N' Dime... More >>
• Best Local Acoustic Performer (1 Comment)
  Marie Nofsinger
  She came from Massachusetts and has long inhabited South Florida, but Marie's songs seem to drift out of western borderlands, all smoky with mesquite and a Texas-size longing. Standing resolute, cradling her guitar as both friend and shield, she sings of big empty skies and worn-out boots,... More >>
• Best Local Concert
  Medeski, Martin and Wood with DJ Logic
  It was the setting as much as the set that made this jazz funk trio's performance the best concert of the year. Keyboardist John Medeski went to high school at Pine Crest, a tony academy nestled in a northeast Fort Lauderdale neighborhood, and this show was a homecoming of sorts. Fresh from an... More >>
• Best Local Solo Musician
  Scott Avery
  A solo performer need not have a slew of computerized gizmos to be a one-man band, only a commitment to deliver as much music as he or she possibly can through his or her instrument of choice. When Scott Avery anchors a corner of a bar (such as Maguire's Hill 16 in Fort Lauderdale) with just his... More >>
• Best Production Of A Musical
  Das Barbecü
  Thanks to the proliferations of Broadway tours, South Florida audiences are never far from at least a glimmer of the Great White Way. What's harder to sample are the off-Broadway hits, shows that -- because of their quirkiness or bold attitudes -- don't quite fit into the mainstream. One such... More >>
• Best Production Of A Play
  Gross Indecency: The Three Trials of Oscar Wilde
  Take one Victorian homosexual on trial, add a 20th-century talk-show host, a courtroom full of lawyers, some Aubrey Beardsley drawings, and lots of cute boys in their underwear, and you'll have Gross Indecency: The Three Trials of Oscar Wilde. The show, an Outer Critics Circle Award-winner in... More >>
• Best Ensemble Cast
  Don Juan in Hell and A Christmas Carol
  "Acting isn't nice," says theater innovator Anna Deavere Smith, acknowledging the naked edges that cut the heart when a performance uncovers complex truths. OK, it's not nice. But sometimes it's quite palatable nonetheless. Especially when the people doing it are as talented and in sync as the... More >>
• Best Strip Joint
  Cheetah III
  Step right up, boys, what's your pleasure? Showgirls drenched in glitter dust and glam? Then head on over to Pure Platinum. Hardbodies slurping shots from each others' bellybuttons on the bar? Then Baja Beach Club has what you need. But if stripping is what you're after -- that is, the sight of... More >>