Best Of Broward-Palm Beach 2009

They say it’s the year of change. But the change you’re not seeing from the bailout-giving government is the kind that jingles in your pocket.

That’s where we come in. New Times Best Of Broward-Palm Beach 2009 is filled with more than 200 ways to live large on little — and how to splurge well when you’ve got a bit more coin in your pocket. So empty out that piggy bank, because we’ve got the change you can believe in.

Click here for the 200-plus items.

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Suburban tweeners rock out to mall punk, DFW's hottest musical export. No, really.

With its rolling hills, lush green grass and meandering drives—all far removed from the Spring Creek Parkway drag where it's located—the Plano Centre complex hardly appears a natural home for a rock show.

The sterility of it is jarring. From the outside looking in, it appears to be simply a park. Only there's a massive building plopped down right in the middle of the property, a 33,000-square-foot structure originally built to house conventions of the type a city like Plano stands a chance at scoring, which is to say,conventions on knitting and the like... full story >>

Storm clouds are gathering over the city's use of the Wastewater Enterprise Fund

Some people decorate their yards with garden gnomes, others use happy frog sculptures. Gertrude Cox has gargoyles. Four of the winged statues have the faces of cats; two feature the snouts of dogs. All of them guard the front walkway of her home in Athmar Park.

"People love them," Cox says of the three-foot-high metal beasts. "They're always making comments about them."

Cox installed the statues six years ago, around the time that she and her late husband, Ivan, decided to replace their front and back yards with decorative concrete — light pink, to match the roof... full story >>

Scenes from the health-care struggle in Jefferson City

The walls of the Capitol in Jefferson City are etched with lofty phrases about liberty and justice. But the quotes from long-buried visionaries aren't what make Adrain Graham think about Independence Day. Her reason for confronting Missouri's House of Representatives is etched in the scars trailing down the left side of her body.

Last year, Graham was celebrating the Fourth of July outside her tidy home on Kansas City's East Side. She lit a firecracker and placed it in a metal tube that was meant to fire it safely away, like a canon. She waited but heard no sound, no fizzle as... full story >>

Burger Jones, Five Guys, Smashburger

If you think a burger's just a ground-beef patty slapped between bun halves, you probably don't live in Minnesota. Here we take our burgers as seriously as Easterners do their pastrami and Southerners do their barbecue. We can probably blame this fixation on the brevity of our summers. When the weather turns warm enough to enjoy without extreme bundling, we do everything we possibly can outside, including eating and cooking. So as soon as the snow melts, and often before, we dust off our spatulas and fire up the grill.

Local burger connoisseurs have a collective understanding... full story >>

Behind BadPhoenixCops.com: The Blogger Who Took on the Phoenix PD — and the Homicide Detective Who Might Be His Best Source

The ugliest donnybrook to hit the Phoenix Police Department in years started with one man's divorce.

That man, Jeff Pataky, wasn't a cop. He had nothing to do with cops, not at the time. He was just a software engineer-turned-blogger whose marriage had ended. But before all the issues in Pataky's divorce could be settled, he managed to create a slugfest that now threatens the stability of the Phoenix PD's homicide bureau.

It all began in 2007, after Pataky's soon-to-be-ex wife, Julie Cioppa, filed for an order of protection, claiming her ex-husband had abused her. After... full story >>

A Beautiful Risk

On a damp Wednesday evening, while chain-smoking on the patio at a Tenderloin gay dive bar, Stephen Gray decided he wanted to rehearse. His performance, which would be part of an art exhibition put on by male sex workers, was a little more than a week away. He had yet to show it to anybody.

Gray downed the last of his straight-up Maker's Mark, stubbed out a Marlboro Light, and trotted back into the dim caverns of Deco, one of his regular hangouts. Still, for what he wanted to do, he'd need permission from the bartender.

As he squeezed into a group of men ensconced at... full story >>

Hornswoggled!: Welcome to Gerald, Missourah — the town that did just fall off the turnip truck

At their monthly meeting on May 8, 2008, the elected officials of Gerald, Missouri, agreed to demolish the old cattle barn, discussed problems with a resident's ditch and chewed on the idea of creating a website for the town of 1,200. All in all, routine business.

Until just before adjournment, when the powers that be unanimously approved the hiring of Bill Jakob, a resident of the nearby town of Washington, as a "reserve" police officer. The following day Jakob, a dark-haired, moderately tattooed 37-year-old with a doughy physique, would log his only official day on the city's... full story >>