Arts & Entertainment >>

• Best Film Festival
  Fort Lauderdale International Film Festival
  After 14 years this sprawling event is still pretty much the only game in town. Its days as a scrappy little upstart are long gone, replaced by an ambitious schedule that screens more than a hundred flicks from all over the world over the course of three and a half weeks. Sometimes it seems as... More >>
• Best Art Gallery
  Haitian Art Collection
  Long before Haitian art became fashionable -- a dozen years ago, to be exact -- gallery owner Katie Barr was struggling to make her mark in the competitive South Florida art market. She started out with a tiny space in a nondescript little shopping plaza in Boca Raton, where she attracted... More >>
• Best New Play
  A Bicycle Country
  Nilo Cruz's haunting A Bicycle Country, a play about three Cuban balseros, arrived at the Florida Stage just a few weeks after rafter Elián Gonzalez was rescued off nearby Palm Beach. Here's betting it will be remembered long after young Elián grows up. Set in Cuba and in the... More >>
• Best Production of a Play
  Quills
  In many American political plays, a guy (it's usually a guy) comes on stage and talks. The set, the costumes, the lighting -- they're all window-dressing, which helps to explain the sorry state of political drama. Doug Wright's 1995 work Quills, however, dissects the issues of censorship... More >>
• Best Movie Theater
  Carefree Theatre
  The Carefree Theatre is about as ugly as you can get in a movie theater: The seats are bereft of stuffing, the one screen is annoyingly old school, and the floor is, well, let's just say you wouldn't want to sit on it. But in a place about as arty as a late-night B-movie Baywatch rip-off, we're... More >>
• Best Free Thrill
  Locations along Perimeter Road
  Aviation has been around for oh, 80 some years, but the sight of flying machines still inspires awe in people. That's why dozens of aeronautics enthusiasts can be seen, practically any time of the day or night, parked at two locations on the fringes of Fort Lauderdale's major airport to watch... More >>
• Best Ensemble Cast
  How I Learned to Drive
  Paula Vogel's 1998 Pulitzer Prize winner How I Learned to Drive is not an easy play to sit through. Incest, alcoholism, self-destruction, and probing questions about the nature of love are the subjects it takes on. Told through the eyes of Li'l Bit, a woman who looks back at her youth and... More >>
• Best Gay Bar
  Cathode Ray Club
  Cathode Ray is more than a bar: It's three distinct places to hang beneath one television-strung roof. Take a left past the giant saltwater aquarium by the front door and you'll enter a plush foyer bar complete with wing chairs, honey-color wooden floors, and a pristine white piano. Feel like... More >>
• Best Blues Band
  Nucklebusters Blues Band
  Over the course of its 13-year run on the South Florida club circuit, the Nucklebusters Blues Band has served as the house band at a number of reputable local venues, including the legendary Musician's Exchange in Fort Lauderdale. Having suffered innumerable lineup changes over the years, the... More >>
• Best Band to Leave Broward/Palm Beach
  The Creepy T's
  We can only hope CBGB's has booked them for a show by now. The sloppy punk-rock sound of the Creepy T's was made for New York City, where vocalist-guitarist Derek Hyde and drummer Eddie Brandt recently moved the group. While part of the South Florida scene -- originally with guitarist Will... More >>
• Best Supporting Player
  Lisa Morgan
  Actress Lisa Morgan is a great supporting player in the sense that, no matter how cast, she magnificently supports the interests of theatergoers, directors, fellow actors, and playwrights. Last season she appeared most notably in two shows. As the twittery, resolute mother of the flapper Sally... More >>
• Best Solo Show
  Judith Delgado
  In a season fraught with top-drawer solo performances (Charles Nelson Reilly in Life of Reilly, Kathleen Turner in Tallulah, Melinda Lopez in Media Noche, and Jean Stapleton in Eleanor: Her Secret Journey), Judith Delgado towered over all. Playing fashion diva Diana Vreeland, the actress... More >>
• Best Acoustic Performer
  Raiford Starke
  Hailing from the wilds of Falls Church, Virginia, now making his home in Hallandale Beach, Colin Kenny, a.k.a. Raiford Starke, has injected the otherwise touchy-feely local acoustic scene with jagged, rawboned blasts of accomplished pickin', singin', and harp-blowin'. Sure, Starke plays a mean... More >>
• Best Road Show
  The Gin Game
  There's plenty of choice horseflesh in South Florida each winter, but the most appealing thoroughbreds to pass through the region were Julie Harris and Charles Durning. The two arrived as part of the touring production of the National Actors Theatre's The Gin Game, directed by Charles Nelson... More >>
• Best Theater for Plays
  Caldwell Theatre Company
  Artistic director Michael Hall brought together such a disparate collection of dramas, comedies, and other compelling offerings last season that it's difficult to characterize the personality of his Caldwell Theatre Company. From the tense, prickly production of Paula Vogel's How I Learned to... More >>
• Best Punk Band
  A New Found Glory
  A cursory glance at or a quick listen to A New Found Glory won't likely make you expect overnight success or imminent world domination. But that's because you're not 16 years old. If you were you'd probably know that the Coral Springs band is currently being courted by representatives from a... More >>
• Best Concert
  The American Analog Set
  The mellowed-out Texans who make up the American Analog Set made one of their album titles come alive at this West Palm Beach gig. From Our Living Room to Yours summed up the intimacy of the low-key performance, with the band's rich, orange-red blend of warm organ and electric piano, soft-spoken... More >>
• Best Pop Band
  Ed Matus' Struggle
  Some folks label the music of Miami's Ed Matus' Struggle "emo," which is ostensibly a shortened "emotional." But since emotional music, to us, encompasses everything from Edith Piaf to Henry Rollins, can we finally shelve the meaningless term? Ed Matus' Struggle just makes good music, no matter... More >>
• Best Cheap Thrill
  Swap Shop Drive-In
  Drive-ins are a dead breed, and that's a real shame. There's nothing more American than sitting in your gas guzzler, quaffing a beverage, smoking 'em if you've got 'em, and watching a slightly out-of-focus movie through your windshield. Try doing those things at a mall multiplex. The Swap Shop... More >>
• Best Production of a Musical
  Finian's Rainbow
  Last fall, the average playgoer had to wonder, Did we really need a revival of Finian's Rainbow? Despite a glut of Broadway revivals in New York, the Coconut Grove Playhouse certainly made a good case for the 1947 Fred Saidy-E.Y. Harburg classic, the familiar songs of which -- "How Are Things... More >>
• Best Location For A Dance Night
  Sonic Saturdays at Respectable Street
  Under a massive tower carrying high-tension power lines sits a Japanese Zen garden with glowing lamps hanging from trees. But the night air isn't still -- it's alive with spinning colored lights and dry ice, reverberating with throbbing drumbeats and the remarkable freestyle vocalizations of... More >>
• Best Sports Bar
  Champps Americana
  For the discerning sports fan who just can't enjoy the game without a proper repast in fine-dining surroundings, there's Champps. Here the emphasis isn't on the mammary measurements of the help but on the quality of the food and the décor. The huge, split-level dining room is divided by a... More >>
• Best Actor
  William Metzo
  There's not a huge demand in the theater for naked middle-aged men, but don't blame actor William Metzo. As the Marquis de Sade, in the magnificent Florida Stage production of Doug Wright's play Quills, Metzo gave a performance that required him to (a) stop speaking after the first act (since... More >>
• Best Actress
  Pat Nesbit
  Pat Nesbit is the sort of performer whose work finds its way to the foreground even if she's part of an ensemble, as she was in 1998's The Last Night of Ballyhoo at the Coconut Grove Playhouse. This past season, South Florida audiences were lucky to see her as one of two players in Donald... More >>
• Best Radio Station
  WLRN-FM (91.3)
  Maybe this selection says more about the dearth of decent local radio than about the quality of the programming on WLRN. We love the kids at WKPX-FM (88.5), with their earnestness, amateurishness, and ever-changing menu of tunes. But truthfully, name us one other local station you can listen to... More >>
• Best Bar/Palm Beach County
  Bamboo Room
  Wednesday night, 9 p.m. Stomp on up the leopard-print carpeted stairs at this barely year-old blues bar. No cover tonight. Upstairs, within the bamboo walls, bluesman in residence Keith B. Brown is just getting started on his Delta licks. Order up a Konig Pilsener, John Courage, or one of the... More >>
• Best Place to Get Hammered and Read Yeats
  Maguire's Hill 16
  We think Maguire's is the best place to souse oneself and absorb the Irish bard's musings on beauty and love because (a) it's a bar -- the booze is already there, and (b) it's a bar with three Yeats verses framed on the walls of the south room, a handy touch if you've forgotten your own copy... More >>
• Best Kids' Thrill
  Holiday Fantasy of Lights
  You'll have to wait a few months for the next Holiday Fantasy of Lights, but it's worth it. Between Thanksgiving and New Year's Day, Tradewinds Park becomes a drive-through, electrified fantasyland that is guaranteed to please the most jaded junior thrill-seeker. There's simply nothing anywhere... More >>
• Best Amateur Radio Station
  WKPX-FM (88.5)
  About six months ago, the Nielsen people -- the ones who survey radio and TV audiences -- came to us and wanted to know what we listen to in the car on the way to and from work. They're probably sorry they asked. We flip constantly between public radio (WLRN-FM, 91.3) and WKPX. Neither... More >>
• Best Museum
  Art and Culture Center of Hollywood
  Granted, Fort Lauderdale's Museum of Art may have shaken off some of its stodginess, the Coral Springs Museum of Art may offer the best display space in the area, and the new Palm Beach Institute of Contemporary Art may be the most promising venue in South Florida. But right here, right now, the... More >>
• Best Dive
  Fort Lauderdale Saloon & Cafe
  We probably don't need to say more than "65-cent drafts all day," but we will anyway. Two rooms greet the visitor, one with a faded, red-felt pool table and a jukebox posted on an ancient white-tile floor, and the other a barroom. The bar's surface is dark vinyl, the televisions above the bar... More >>
• Best Bar/Broward County
  Poor House
  Maybe most folks duck in here for their live-music fix, or maybe this bar's one of the last left where you can escape the coifed and lacquered minions of Himmarshee Street. Doesn't really matter. Fact is the Poor House reigns as a fine place to hunker down and drink. Maroon candles and tiny blue... More >>
• Best Hard Rock Band
  Hashbrown
  South Florida is clogged with bands trying to pass off anger, volume, and beefy muscles as some kind of artistic statement. This path-of-least-resistance approach works part of the time, covering up weak spots with a sheen of shouts and bar chords. Enter Hashbrown, a Fort Lauderdale group that's... More >>
• Best Local Writer
  John Dufresne
  John Dufresne isn't really a Florida writer, even though he lives in Dania Beach and teaches at Florida International University. But Dufresne doesn't trade in detective novels suffused with only-in-South Florida weirdness like most of our local scribes. There are no hurricane-liberated rabid... More >>
• Best Festival
  Fort Lauderdale Cajun/Zydeco Crawfish Festival
  What festival would be complete without plenty of head-sucking? We're talking about crawfish, of course, and the annual Cajun/ Zydeco Crawfish Festival comes with 35,000 pounds of the gnarly little crustaceans alive and kicking. Then throw in red beans and rice, crawfish bisque,... More >>
• Best Strip Club The Size Of A Living Room
  Morey's Lounge
  At first glance Morey's Lounge looks like your average hillbilly hangout. No flashing neon lights announce "Topless Showgirls." No billboard promotes special appearances by porn starlets like Barbi Leigh. No valet awaits in some feeble attempt to make it seem like you're doing something more... More >>
• Best Bar On The Water
  Ocean's Eleven Lounge
  One of this bar's best traits is its location, location, location. It's far enough north on Hollywood's Broadwalk to escape the teeming sunburned masses, but it's still only footsteps away from the tide. Mexican tile, honey-toned woods, and a cascade of white Christmas lights adorning the walls... More >>
• Best Drag Queen
  Daisy DeadPetals
  With drag queens a dime a dozen these days, it's increasingly difficult for cross-dressers to stay fabulous and original at the same time. How many more impersonations of Madonna and Cher can we take? Well, kids, if you're looking for originality, check out Daisy DeadPetals, née Ken... More >>
• Best Swingers' Club (1 Comment)
  Trapeze II
  "Do I make you horny, baby? Do I?" Austin Powers may claim to be the man who put the "grrr" in swinger, but he has nothing on the guys who own the Trapeze Club, which sends whatever image you may have of a swingers' club out the window. Behind its bland storefront are plush surroundings that... More >>
• Best Rock Club
  Respectable Street
  Respectable Street feels like three clubs in one: One moment it's a cozy theater for live music -- local, national, and beyond. Walk in on a different night, and it's a sweaty dance club throbbing with hotties and boisterous beats. During the day it'll change stripes again, becoming a comfy... More >>
• Best Bar Band
  The Dillengers
  The Dillengers have long displayed the integrity to be standard-bearers of the South Florida roots-music scene, although they have wisely opted instead for an enclosed universe: their house gig at Elwood's Dixie Bar-B-Que in Delray Beach (301 E. Atlantic Ave., 561-272-7427). There the... More >>
• Best Female Voilinist
  Randi Fishenfeld
  We said E Street Band saxophonist Clarence Clemons knew how to pick 'em, and here's proof: Randi Fishenfeld, the 37-year-old criminal lawyer turned electric-violin player Clemons chose for his other group, Band of Faith. When Fishenfeld goes into her patented gypsy number on stage, she becomes... More >>
• Best Band Name
  Poopy Pants
  Hey, now. Don't shy away from a band brave enough to call itself something slightly embarrassing. We've all had poopy pants at one time or another, with most of us perfecting the art of creating them at a very young age. North Miami troublemakers Poopy Pants are youthful, snotty, and irreverent,... More >>
• Best Place To Karaoke
  Ye Olde Falcon Pub
  The mood is never the same: One minute you have some raving headbanger still stuck in '80s metal straining every vocal chord to belt out an Iron Maiden song, only to be followed three minutes later by a housewife gently whispering Bonnie Raitt's "I Can't Make You Love Me." Or maybe the Motown... More >>
• Best Happy Hour
  Tarpon Bend Food & Tackle
  The point of happy hour has never been happiness. The point is excess -- more for less. So we like our happy hours dressed in something more than fried and something other than chicken wings. Tarpon Bend fits the bill on all counts. Drinks are two-for-one from 4 to 7 p.m. Monday through... More >>
• Best New Venue for Live Music
  Alligator Alley
  No neon bar sign. No pool table. No TV. At Alligator Alley there's just sweet, sweet music rolling out of a state-of-the-art sound system as hot and clean as any you'll hear in Broward County. Proprietor Carl "Kilmo" Pacillo and a consortium of investors opened the 10,000-square-foot club early... More >>
• Best Mission-From-God Bluesman
  Ernie Southern
  Bluesman Ernie Southern does it all: He plays a mean slide guitar, he wields a wailing ten-hole harp, and he sells a demo tape that just won't quit, especially when he delivers it personally in his purple Ford like a man (you guessed it) "on a mission from God." The line from the 1980 John... More >>
• Best Rock Band
  Band of Faith
  If you missed saxophonist extraordinaire Clarence Clemons when his boss -- the Boss, Bruce Springsteen -- came to town with his E Street Band, don't worry. This Palm Beach County resident has put together his own local band, and when the Big Man wants a band, the best players around are at... More >>
• Best Bartender
  Laurrie Pood
  In ever-transient South Florida, it doesn't take much to qualify as a local institution. Kim's Alley Bar, with roots back to 1959, undoubtedly makes the cut. And Laurrie Pood, who has been manning the bottles for seven years at Kim's, almost qualifies herself. Laurrie is the den mother of the... More >>
• Best Place To Hear A Cover Band
  Sneakers Sports Grill
  The last place you'd want to hear "Gimme Three Steps" or "Free Bird" is some faux upscale bar resplendent with oak, brass, and forest green Boltaflex. Bleeeecch. If one has to endure Lynyrd Skynyrd (a sad but unavoidable truth in the South), one should be very, very drunk. One should also be... More >>
• Best Place To Watch Women Lick Beer Off Each Other's Breasts
  Smith Brother's Lounge
  Saturday night and we're sitting out front at Smith Brother's admiring the parade of Harleys passing through the parking lot and avoiding the too-loud cover band inside the cramped bar. We duck inside for a refill, only to encounter a trio of scantily clad female bartenders squirting each other... More >>
• Best Jazz Artist
  Lyn Moore
  Get up close to singer-pianist Lyn Moore when she's out on the town during one of her solo gigs, and she'll blow your ears right off your head. Of course the jazz chanteuse hasn't been out and about much lately. Her five-nights-a-week solo gig at Toni Bishop's Restaurant and Jazz Club ended... More >>
• Best Place For Cheap Tickets To High Culture
  Broward Center For the Performing Arts
  Up front where the rich folks sit, with a beggar's billfold -- what more could an economically challenged sophisticate desire? Pick your poison: Jascha Heifetz playing Beethoven? Pinchas Zuckerman interpreting Bach? A great symphony, a play, a musical? You aren't going to fork over $70 to $100... More >>
• Best Dance Club
  Velvet Lounge
  Finally, a place for clubbers to get their party on in Fort Lauderdale. Don't get us wrong: Velvet Lounge is an upscale nightclub on a par with anything South Beach has to offer but sans most of the attitude. As the name implies, there's velvet aplenty: red and black velvet on the walls, royal... More >>
• Best Swing Band
  Oop Bop Sha Bam
  Screw Brian Setzer. To hell with Big Bad Voodoo Daddy. If those punks didn't have the fancy retro threads, they'd be lost causes. If you want to hear swing in all its original authentic majesty, try Oop Bop Sha Bam, which swings the house every Tuesday and Wednesday night at Mango's on Las Olas... More >>