People & Places >>

• Best Political Battle
  Annexation
  In Broward County, at least, all politicians lie about annexation. They say they want to grow their city. They say they want to be inclusive. But the fact of the matter is that none of 'em want to touch the county's poorest unincorporated areas, which include less than 6 percent of the 1.7... More >>
• Best Scandal
  Josephus Eggelletion's credit card
  Back in 1999, this newspaper discovered a startling fact about Josephus Eggelletion, who was then a state representative. Eggelletion had a cushy little job at the Broward County School Board, which paid him nearly $48,000 a year. The problem: He worked only 18 weeks but still collected his full... More >>
• Best Intentions
  Lois Frankel's bid for governor of Florida
  Lois Frankel is a Democrat, pro-choice, a feminist, and Jewish; she supports gay rights and affirmative action, questions the efficiency of the FCAT, has tenaciously fought the tobacco industry, speaks her mind, and frequently criticizes Gov. Jeb Bush -- the man she called a "thief" repeatedly... More >>
• Best News for Gays
  Another gay mayor in Wilton Manors
  Progressive isn't a word often associated with South Florida, but the area certainly qualifies in one way: Wilton Manors is one of only two cities in the country to have an (openly) gay mayor and a gay-majority city council. (The other is West Hollywood, California.) And as far as anyone can... More >>
• Best Bureaucrat
  Bob Weisman
  When it comes to longevity, Palm Beach County Administrator Bob Weisman has beaten all the odds. Having served as the county's top dog for ten years, he's not only survived far longer than the average four- to five-year tenure of most county administrators but is one of the longest-serving... More >>
• Best Local Website
  Broward County Property Appraiser's Office
  Greed is both America's driving force and its incurable sickness. One particularly egregious symptom: the obsession with property values. The lust for high-end real estate reinforces old prejudices, creates paranoiac provincialism, and often leads to a stifling conformity that strangles the... More >>
• Best Buyout
  Pete Witschen
  Fort Lauderdale Assistant City Manager Pete Witschen has been trying to get out of his job for a few years now. He has applied for most every open city manager position in the country -- and came very close to escaping South Florida a few times. But his dismal record in Fort Lauderdale haunted... More >>
• Best Judge's Decision
  Barry Seltzer's dismissal of Fred Shotz
  We're no fans of Plantation Councilman Ron Jacobs. He's one of those suburban politicians that, when you see him in action, you wonder how much Valium and other assorted sedatives you would find in the medicine cabinets of those cozy middle-class and upper-middle-class neighborhoods in... More >>
• Best Argument for the Death Penalty
  Lucious Boyd
  Lucious Boyd savagely raped and killed Dawnia Hope Dacosta, a 21-year-old church singer who was saving herself for her dream man. Two other women swore he raped them as well, but juries didn't believe them. One of those women, Michelle Galloway, wept and shook in our arms when we found her for a... More >>
• Best Argument Against the Death Penalty
  Richard Scheff
  Really, how can one argue for capital punishment when the state's decision rests on the word of people like Scheff? This guy is the kind of cop who doesn't let the facts get in the way of a good case. Frank Lee Smith -- a poor black man with a hard past and no money -- faced the chair because... More >>
• Best Working Man's Agitator
  Elgin Jones
  Declared the "working man's hero" in the Sun-Sentinel this past January, City of Fort Lauderdale engineer Elgin Jones has filed lawsuits against his employer for racial discrimination, claiming he was passed over for a job because he's black. The 39-year-old also moonlights as a government... More >>
• Best Charity
  Florida Philharmonic
  Last fall was a very bad season for charities not involved in post-9/11 relief efforts. This is why the Florida Philharmonic's ballsy, successful campaign to raise $2.5 million was so remarkable. Coming on the heels of so much bad press for the philharmonic -- the musicians' strike in 2000 and... More >>
• Best Political Gaffe
  Judie Budnick's cursing rant
  Back in the year 2000, this newspaper reacted with well-justified righteous indignation when Judie Budnick, vice chairperson of the Broward County School Board, came out with her campaign slogan: "This Bud's for Us." She also threw in a play on the Budweiser frogs: "Bud... Nick." We asked her if... More >>
• Best Centenarian
  Al Ross
  In 1917, Brooklyn-born Al Ross decided to join the U.S. Navy when he was barely 16 years old. As a seaman first class during World War I, he patrolled the Atlantic coast from Norfolk, Virginia, to Jacksonville, Florida. When the war ended, he worked as circulation manager for a publishing... More >>
• Best Herald Writer
  Carol Marbin Miller
  That Miller wrote more than 250 articles between January 2001 and April 2002 doesn't qualify her as best writer, even though that's a heap of stories. Interpret the quantity as a sign that Miller stays doggedly on top of her beat. For a year, Miller followed a story she broke on April 12, 2001,... More >>
• Best Sun-Sentinel Writer
  David Fleshler
  This kid ain't one of those prima donna, two-story-a-year, long-lunch types. He cranks. From Enron to citrus canker to mortgage fraud, he reports the hell out of events and writes 'em like a champ. In just the past couple of years, he's told us that Florida has more lightning per square mile... More >>
• Best Palm Beach Post Writer
  Frank Cerabino
  He's a veteran columnist who knows his way around politics, scams, and condo developments. He seems as comfortable writing in his deft and creative way about the rich and famous as he does about the hoi polloi. But he's not just a reporter; he's a newspaper Renaissance man. In addition to his... More >>
• Best Proof that a Good Copyeditor Is Hard to Find
  Sun-Sentinel, Sunday, April 28, 2002
  The copyeditor is like a baseball umpire: No one notices unless there's a screwup. And hey, in the newspaper business, everybody makes mistakes. That's why we run corrections (really, really small, somewhere we hope no one will see them). And sometimes, it's more likely the writer's fault. Like... More >>
• Best Correction
  Palm Beach Post, February 6, 2002
  "Because of knucklehead errors, a photograph caption in The Palm Beach Post Monday incorrectly identified one of the Three Stooges, as well as Abbott and Costello. The caption misidentified Curly Howard, at left, one of the Three Stooges, as Curly Joe Howard. Curly Howard, whose real name was... More >>
• Best Shameless Journalist Gathering
  Reporters outside the funeral of National Enquirer's photo editor, Boca Raton, October 2001
  Bob Stevens had worked for supermarket tabloids for 30 years, pasting alien heads on celebrities and making us believe that indeed Elvis is alive. His career was cut short last October after he died from inhalation anthrax upon opening a letter laced with the fatal white powder at American... More >>
• Best Local Zine
  Slug
  Say what you will about Michael Koretzky, but he is undeniably irrepressible. And every now and then, he is very, very good. From his turbulent times at XS/City Link to his brief helmsmanship of the now-defunct weekly Free Times in Palm Beach, Koretzky keeps sharpening his role as universal... More >>
• Best Local Boy Gone Too Far
  Vanilla Ice
  At its best, boxing is a balletic display of mental and athletic prowess. But who needs that when there's a bunch of has-been trash-talkers whose royalties ran out in '96 who are willing to get the crapola beaten out of themselves on national television? As evidence of this truth, we turn to... More >>
• Best Radio Personality
  Hank Goldberg
  Manning the afternoon drive-time shift at WQAM-AM is no soft gig. It's easy to get lost in the afterglow of popular morning and midday hosts Neil "God" Rogers and Jim "Mad Dog" Mandich. And because he's "only" a sports-talk host, Hank "The Hammer" Goldberg doesn't get the style points he... More >>
• Best Power Grab
  Lori Parrish
  You have to love Lori Parrish, if not for her unabashed Flo-at-the-diner looks, then for her brash, shameless attitude. She's a woman comfortable with who she is. Parrish is a good ol' girl who knows what she wants: power -- more power than most of us could ever possibly imagine. She wants us... More >>
• Best Radio Commercial
  Ed Kaplan
  It was just another night on Eddie K.'s 10 p.m.-to-2 a.m. shift on WQAM-AM (560). Because it was the tail end of March, South Florida's king of late-night sports talk had plenty of raw material. Blah-blah-blah Heat, blah-blah-blah Marlins, and, of course, blah-blah-blah gambling. Then, right... More >>
• Best New Show on Public Radio
  Liquid Assets
  Alternately intriguing and annoying, this weekly hour of winetastings, wine talk, industry insider gossip, and general gourmet chit-chat would be unbearably precious if hosts Mark Spivak and John List weren't so goddamn knowledgeable. The oenologically challenged may still come away with the... More >>
• Best TV News Anchor
  Dwight Lauderdale
  We give up. We have succumbed. We tried to resist him. We tried to keep his charms at bay, tried to forget the way he soothes our collective psyche like a steady drip of aural opiates. We didn't trust him, not with that convenient, store-bought name and dangerously smooth demeanor. But Dwight... More >>
• Best Hair on the Air
  Benno Schmidt
  When Benno Schmidt reports for NBC 6 News, whether it's live coverage of "Brazen Bandits" robbing a convenience store or yet another sad story about an elderly person found living ankle-deep in animal poo, his hair looks fabulous. Almost escaping the frame of his closeup, Benno's locks are like... More >>
• Best Weathercaster
  Rob Lopicola
  Irony, thy name is weather. Especially here in South Florida, where the damn thing can turn on a dime and, historically, has been our greatest blessing, bringing tourists and settlers, and greatest curse, bringing Hurricane Andrew and its ilk. Dealing with this loaded material -- the one bit of... More >>
• Best Mile of Palm Beach
  A1A south of Worth Avenue
  Warning: Do not attempt to drive or bike down this winding, mile-long stretch unless you carry the maximum dental-insurance coverage. The opulent and luxurious multimillion-dollar estate homes on both sides of the road are sure to make your jaw drop. Many of the mansions are tucked behind lush... More >>
• Best Mile of Broward
  Wilton Drive
  If you've been around long enough, you probably remember when Wilton Drive was just a stretch of sleepy small-town road -- something to get through on your way from one part of Fort Lauderdale to another. No more. In the past five or so years, the drive, which begins where NE Fourth Avenue ends... More >>
• Best Place to Walk Alone
  John U. Lloyd Beach State Park
  Every Florida tourism ad ever made shows someone out for a solitary stroll on the beach, watching seabirds skim over the lapping waves as the sun lights the sky afire. What greater contentment can there be than a barefoot hike with the sea breeze in your face? Well, OK, there are a few. But a... More >>
• Best Place to Enjoy the Everglades
  I-75 Rest Area
  Some things just shouldn't be too civilized. The Everglades is one of them. Even as the state and feds plan to spend untold billions to clean up what we've already done to the River of Grass, the Moloch of commercialization still rears its reptilian head at tourist traps like Everglades Holiday... More >>
• Best Park in Broward
  West Lake Park/Anne Kolb Nature Center
  If you combine West Lake Park with the Anne Kolb Nature Center next door, you have one of the biggest public spaces in all of South Florida: almost three square miles of water, mangrove, and room to roam -- all just a whistle away from the ocean. West Lake has a wonderful kids' playground, a... More >>
• Best Politician
  Miriam Oliphant
  Since winning the supervisor of elections post in 2000, this longtime school board member has pushed Broward County's voter-registration rolls higher than those of Miami-Dade's for the first time in history. She's also revamped the way locals vote -- but not without a fight. When she first... More >>
• Best Park in Palm Beach
  Okeeheelee Park
  Never mind its four Little League baseball fields, five football fields, 27-hole golf course, and 40 picnic shelters. The 900-acre Okeeheelee Park goes beyond the traditional role of a community park and takes the meaning of the word recreation to the extreme. Case in point: the five waterski... More >>
• Best Scenic Drive
  State Road A1A
  When bicycling enthusiasts organize tours, they head to northern Palm Beach County. And for good reason. While there are few bad views from State Road A1A anywhere along the coast, once north of the pomp of Palm Beach, the back-to-nature scenery is downright stunning, and reminders of Florida's... More >>
• Best Place to Spot an Alligator
  Big Cypress Seminole Indian Rest Stop
  You will not require any additional instructions to find the Seminole Rest Stop on Alligator Alley. If you do, you're clearly beyond help, since it's the only gas station on the nearly 80-mile stretch of toll road. Nor will you need many clues to pick out Wally, the rest stop's resident gator.... More >>
• Best Reminder that South Florida Is Still the South
  The Rundown
  When a tourist from the big city saw a bevy of bunnies running from a freshly cleared sugar-cane field, he freaked and phoned People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals. But little did that Yankee carpetbagger know that that's just the way it's done in Pahokee. Every January during sugar-cane... More >>
• Best Place to People-Watch
  Department of Motor Vehicles drivers' licenses office
  The DMV is one of those extraordinary settings where social status and income take a back seat to bureaucratic decree. Almost everyone drives, from the salt-of-the-earth working class to the mega-wealthy. Almost everyone, therefore, must show up every so often in person for eye exams and mug... More >>
• Best Place for Boys to Meet Boys
  H.G. Roosters
  Nothing like a big red cock on your logo to drive home the message, one clearly announced in this liquid dispensary's official motto: "A great place to bring a date, or to find one!" Housed in a stone-and-peach building just minutes from the airport and downtown, ringed by gay-friendly... More >>
• Best Place for Girls to Meet Girls
  Whole Foods Market
  California is renowned for its tofu-and-granola lesbians, but there seem to be more vegetarian lesbians per capita in South Florida than in Los Angeles and San Francisco combined. Pick your type -- Birkenstock, butch, lipstick, or new age -- and she'll be roaming the aisles at the Fort... More >>
• Best Place to Meet Members of the Opposite Sex
  South Florida Blood Banks
  What are the two greatest impediments to meeting that special someone? Temporal constraints and disjunction, of course. (You know: being in the right place at the right time.) If you could just get Mr. or Ms. Right to sit still for a while beside you, the magic would flow like words from a... More >>
• Best Place to Break Up
  Fort Lauderdale Hollywood International Airport
  Admit it: Once you've decided to end it, the painful part isn't ejecting Mr. or Ms. Wrong from your life; it's facing the music when you break the news. There are, quite understandably, personal safety issues to consider. Well, buck up, all you heartbreakers out there: At the airport, all the... More >>
• Best Place to Make Up
  Fort Lauderdale Beach
  Tell your ex you've planned a surprise, and let the wooing begin. Setting the scene is everything, and this is one of the few stretches of Fort Lauderdale beach covered with bare sand instead of condos. Just north of the hustle and bustle of Las Olas, you've got instant romance that won't cost... More >>
• Best Democracy in Action
  Lake Worth Beach Bond Referendum
  The great thing about this hotly contested March 12 election was that the whole town got involved, whether for or against the $19 million bond issue to renovate the aging 1920s casino and surrounding amenities of the town's public beach. It was topic A in local conversation for months, and every... More >>
• Best Place to Spot Celebrities
  Worth Avenue
  Celebrities have money. Too much, really. They're so loaded that they're compelled to buy mansions they don't live in, sports cars they rarely drive, art they don't appreciate, and apparel they look absurd in. And we love 'em for it. We've carved out bastions for these dear ones to procure such... More >>
• Best All-Night Show
  Swifty Laundromat
  All the world's a stage, some dead guy said. Nowhere is that more apparent than in the human pageant of South Florida. And nowhere in South Florida features a better midnight matinee than Swifty Laundromat. The chain of 24-hour wash-'n'-drys seems designed for drama with its wide-open, cleanly... More >>
• Best Place to Park Accidentally
  I-95
  Sweet jumping Jesus in a shit stream! Will this construction never end?! More >>
• Best Terrorist Fish Stories
  Shuckums
  Hard to believe that this innocuous restaurant and bar, situated across the street from the serenity of Young Circle Park, played host to some of the most hated extremist zealots since World War II gave us the SS. A group of the September 11 hijackers and murderers came to this watering hole to... More >>
• Best Place to Get Killed
  North End
  Got a death wish, with no Charles Bronson in sight? No problemo. Just take an unwary stroll through the tourist mecca of West Palm Beach. Among its other attractions, the area north of Okeechobee Boulevard boasts the highest concentration of murders anywhere in Broward or Palm Beach counties.... More >>
• Best Place to Walk Your Dog
  Jupiter Beach
  Observe canine near ocean: head aloft, nose sniffing air, body in full alert. With our much inferior olfactory capabilities, we cannot know the rich text that a dog reads when it gets near the beach. A German shepherd has some 225 million sensory receptors with which to decode scent in its... More >>
• Best Spy Spot
  Custom Bikes
  The boys of Custom Bikes are modifying Harleys in this building's first floor, but if you're heading either west or east on Sunrise, take a gander upward for an architectural flourish that would do James Bond proud: The second-floor windows are shaped in a perfect 007. Say, are those rocket... More >>
• Best White Elephant
  International Swimming Hall of Fame
  The long-ago kings of Siam dealt with overmighty subjects by presenting them with rare white elephants from the royal stables, animals sacred in Buddhist tradition. Bestowal of such a remarkable creature was an honor all but impossible to refuse, but proper upkeep for a pale pachyderm was a... More >>
• Best Weekend Getaway
  Eden House
  Like the Bahamas, or Cuba before Castro decided he wanted to run the place into the ground, Key West is one of those surreal locations that seems just to be waiting for you to show up and spend your money. But if you're going to make the road trip all the way down there -- a journey for which... More >>
• Best Landmark
  FunTyme Tropi-Golf
  Let's face it: The Hollywood Broadwalk is cool because it's retro. This slice of blacktop on the sand is sooooo '50s. Rather than art deco like South Beach, this place recalls the time when cars had fins and families were, well, families. And what exactly was the glue that bound those bratty... More >>
• Best Local Boy Gone Bad
  Thomas Abrams
  Less than eight months ago, Thomas Abrams was the toast of the town, raking in millions as a big, swinging financier and earning respect and admiration for his foundation, which he claimed provided millions for impoverished children. Then in October, the day before he was to host a... More >>
• Best Museum of Local African-American History
  S.D. Spady Cultural Arts Museum
  Located in the 1926 home of Delray Beach educator S.D. Spady, the museum is a tiny gem of cultural preservation. Runaway slaves seeking refuge from bounty hunters settled in Delray Beach around 1894. The museum features the history of two African-American communities that sprang up from the... More >>
• Best Place to Take Out-of-Towners
  Wakodahatchee Wetlands
  "Where can you take us to see an alligator in the wild without getting too close?" Chances are that if you ever find yourself hosting two or more out-of-towners, you'll be asked this silly, impossible question. The answer to your out-of-town trouble may just be a visit to this quirky, 50-acre... More >>
• Best Public Art
  Solar Time Panel
  "What the heck is that?" is probably a common reaction to this large, rectangular metal panel perched on three round pillars facing the library. The horizontal slab is tilted slightly upward, as if it's a mirror for the library's imposing façade. Or maybe, you might speculate, it's some... More >>
• Best Architecture
  Broward Center for the Performing Arts
  That cranky old architectural genius Frank Lloyd Wright said it best: "No house should ever be on any hill or on anything. It should be of the hill, belonging to it, so hill and house could live together, each the happier for the other." Substitute building for house and you have an apt... More >>
• Best Reason to Live in South Florida
  Skyrocketing home values
  You curse the devilish traffic and the paucity of open space, but these signs of overcrowding mean money in your pocket the day you sign on the dotted line of a warranty deed. Soaring land values mean money for nothin'. According to a recent Sun-Sentinel article, the median sales price for homes... More >>
• Best Place to Beat the Heat
  A Rented Prowler
  Guised as a smarmy version of Fernando Lamas, comedian Billy Crystal has for years espoused, "It's better to look good than feel good." It's an apt mantra for Fort Lauderdale's waterfront milieu, where appearance is everything. After all, just how comfortable can those women on Las Olas... More >>
• Best Hotel in Broward
  Diane Motel
  We like Hollywood Beach. We like the smell of burning sausage and popcorn (or whatever the hell it is) on the Broadwalk. We like its chaotic, totally Florida feeling, the sense that everyone there is from somewhere else. Hell, we even like the Canadians. And when we escape for a weekend on the... More >>
• Best Hotel in Palm Beach
  Hotel Biba
  Phillip Gesue and his partners had to chase out the South Dixie Highway hookers to start in on the renovation of the old Mount Vernon Motor Lodge. The 1940s Bahamas colonial-style building had seen better days; well after the El Cid district it neighbors had gone high-end funky chic in the... More >>
• Best Tourist Trap
  Sawgrass Mills Mall
  For visitors (or even us locals, who should know better) looking for a place to hemorrhage money, the nearly two miles of corridors of the Sawgrass Mills Mall offer more than 400 opportunities to spend. Get an aqua-massage. Buy new shoes in one of the more than 35 shoe stores. Have your jewelry... More >>
• Best Movie Place to Take the Kids (and a Six-Pack) (1 Comment)
  Swap Shop Drive-In
  What better place can there be for Joe Six-Pack and clan? You got little kids and a taste for a beer and a flick, you get to the Swap Shop. After all, there's first-run movies there -- that's right, first run. Second, it's a great bargain; you drive in for a mere four bucks, while kids nine and... More >>
• Second-Best Local Boy Gone Bad
  Tony Gentile
  Gentile's guilty plea to charges that he communicated over the Internet with a Fort Lauderdale detective who posed as a 14-year-old girl, transmitted explicit photographs, then arranged to meet this "girl" at a Circle K, is shocking. But it doesn't induce that extra frisson of outrage one... More >>
• Best Nostalgic Store Sign
  Dunkin' Donuts
  Judging by the authentic pink-and-orange Dunkin' Donuts logo sign dating back to 1952, you might expect a waitress wearing cat's-eye glasses and a kerchief-accented nametag that says Madge or Flo to start calling you "honey." Accented with neon, the faded letters sit on a white-painted... More >>
• Best Local Girl Gone Bad
  Joyce Julian
  She had the whole world in her hands -- and then she had to take off her judge's robe. And her judge's panties. And, thus half-naked, she drunkenly ran around in a hotel hallway on Amelia Island during a legal conference. Then, as if that weren't enough, she filed a false report claiming she was... More >>
• Best Local Gift Gone Bad
  Lauderhill plaque to James Earl Jones
  Lauderhill civic leaders scored big when Tony and Emmy Award-winning actor James Earl Jones agreed to speak at their celebration to honor Martin Luther King Jr. And what better way to show their appreciation than to honor the versatile actor who played the aging ballplayer in Field of Dreams and... More >>