Try as we might, we’ve yet to be able to muster more than a squinty-blur of possible Christian Bale (via Patrick Bateman) self-immolating attraction to Sen. Marco Rubio, though, given his recent flamboyant flare-ups in the face of the gay question, maybe we ought to give ol’ eyes-too-wide a second glance? He doth protest a bit too much, after all.

On June 13, Rubio double-fisted the queer issue, providing us two new reasons to hate – or be playfully suspicious of – him. We all know that li’l Marco has been hopscotching his own Latino constituency over the immigration reform bill that he’s both writing and avoiding. At last count, 71 percent of Floridians support the “path to citizenship” – which is more like a 13-year marathon – that Rubio can’t decide whether he supports or not. Well, on a Thursday radio interview, Rubio did make clear that there was one thing he didn’t support absolutely, and that was bringing the gays into the equation.

Gay immigrants! What’s next, marrying your Chihuahua?

Seems that Democratic Vermont Sen. Patrick Leahy had introduced an amendment to the bill that would extend protections to same-sex married immigrants, in response to which Rubio told an interviewer: “If this bill has in it something that gives gay couples immigration rights and so forth, it kills the bill. I’m gone, I’m off it, and I’ve said that repeatedly,” he stomped his feet, according to The Hill. Poor dear.

As if he weren’t through exhibiting his apparent heterosexuality, Rubio continued his pink spiral on the same day at a Faith and Freedom Forum. There, when buttonholed by Think Progress on matters involving the Employment Non-Discrimination Act, Rubio soft-shoed some nonsense about not being a “bigot” before being a bigot and saying, “By and large, I think all Americans should be protected, but I’m not for any special protections based on orientation.”

That’s cool, Marco. We don’t like you either. Call us, OK?

$175 MILLION

TOURIST DEVELOPMENT TAX REVENUES FOR ORANGE COUNTY IN 2012, FROM AN ESTIMATED 56 MILLION VISITORS WHO SPENT MORE THAN $30 BILLION IN THE COMMUNITY

6.4 PERCENT

ORANGE COUNTY UNEMPLOYMENT RATE, DOWN FROM 11.3 PERCENT SINCE MAYOR TERESA JACOBS’ ELECTION IN 2010

45 PERCENT

INCREASE IN AVERAGE HOUSING SALES PRICE IN ORANGE COUNTY SINCE 2010; 23 PERCENT IN THE LAST YEAR

“BUT MOST IMPORTANT, WE HAVE YOU: THE HEART AND SOUL OF THIS COMMUNITY. YOU ARE THE PEOPLE WHO MAKE THINGS HAPPEN. YOU BRING THE MAGIC. YOU BRING THE CULTURE. YOU BRING THE DIVERSITY. YOU BRING THE HEALING. YOU BRING THE TEACHING. YOU KEEP THE FAITH. YOU BRING THE LOVE THAT MAKES ORANGE COUNTY A SUSTAINABLE, THRIVING COMMUNITY – OUR HOME FOR LIFE.”
–ORANGE COUNTY MAYOR TERESA JACOBS
SOURCE: STATE OF THE COUNTY ADDRESS, JUNE 14

STATE OF SCHLOCK

If you’re the type of gal on the go that likes your chatterbox morning TV served with a side of caffeinated boosterism and a smudge of civic pancake, then Friday’s juiced-up State of the County address – condemningly titled “A Sustainable Orange County – Our Home for Life,” because this is a fallout shelter – was just the kaffeeklatsch for you. Presented out at Full Sail University in a manner that made moments appear better through overt pixelation, the presentation exemplified everything that you already expect from the down-home upsell of Central Florida’s creative crackerism: We’re state-of-the-art, but we like churned butter on the front porch; we’re a digital destination of the future, but we’ll throw a rotten orange at your face if you so much as spit on our lawn. Bless your heart. Charmed, we’re sure.

But if you came for substance on Friday morning – full disclosure: We watched live from TV because we knew there would be no substance – you’d have been hard-pressed to make out a single sentient revelation atop the sound of insular old-money back-patting. In a performance that saw Jacobs fawning over event sponsors the Central Florida Hotel and Lodging Association (textgate besties!) and state Sen. David Simmons (“the executioner,” Jacobs called him, echoing the “kill shot” sick-time language of yore), Jacobs did her best to traverse the minefield of monologue missteps about The Jetsons and flying cars before disintegrating into the hokum of a colloquial statistician. Every weekend when Jacobs and a member of her “kitchen cabinet” – husband Bruce – are at Home Depot to get stuff to presumably fix their kitchen cabinets again, they notice that the lines are getting longer. Why?

Because the recession is over!

Real figures necessarily followed – unemployment’s down, tourism is up, house prices are up and commercial permitting is on the rise, largely because government is bad, said Jacobs, and she’s trying to streamline everything. Our convention center is awesome, the Brazilians love us so much that Jacobs is about to bone up on Portuguese, and Disney is God. Oh and hey, you guys, the new performing arts center “will change how the world sees us and how we see ourselves.” It is, in short, a funhouse mirror.

But that comedic distortion wouldn’t, in the end, be enough. Jacobs’ centerpiece for her toastmastering was a “branding” exercise intended to inform the world that we’re not all about vomiting turkey legs off of rollercoasters into the laps of hookers at conventions. No siree, we’re asking the world to “imagine” that Orlando is a hub for modeling, simulation and training – we make fake wars! – as if that were a secret that Orlando Mayor Buddy Dyer hasn’t been keeping for the past five years of his overwrought speeches. Anyway, even though this may be news to everyone else, Jacobs announced that the mean folks in Virginia and Alabama already have plans to steal this sweet drone-flavored pie away from us, so we’re forming a blue-ribbon panel (!) to stop them. You know, right after the pie-eating contest at the end of one of Central Florida’s nature trails, full of “crisp air” in summer. Ack!

The only real development – or obligatory new technological leap – this year came in the form of the “Orange Stats Dashboard,” a sort of beta attempt at a searchable government transparency database that, at least for now, is little more than an electronic brochure full of pie charts designed to make the county look good. And, if you’re to ask Jacobs, the county already looks great – because of “you, the heart and soul of this community.” Feel better? Get off our lawn.

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Godhead’s in the details
A youth spent obsessing over pop biographies was the basis for a life of information-digging

By Billy Manes

The notion that screaming it all from the rooftops basically amounts to revealing nothing seemed well-suited to the media-saturated pop reverberations of the 1980s. Buried under layers of angular makeup and tightly wrapped in the required uniform of synthetic fluorescence, the videogenic favorites of the day may have ridden their percolating ambitions into household-name status, but they were, in effect, mere advertisements for versions of themselves – substances reduced to styles, sometimes with the help of substances.

There was something to that A&R-manicured distance, though, an almost rhythmic allure that begged for teenage inquisition. For this suburban Floridian – about as far removed from high-street London as from Mother Russia – that magazine-cover magnetism would lead to an early obsession to trivial detail. I had an emotional attachment to Duran Duran, and it was effectively my duty to justify that via feverish reconnaissance.

The bible of the time, at least as far as the U.K. hit parade went, was Star Hits magazine (the cleaned-up American cousin to Great Britain’s Smash Hits), because in its florid, join-our-club lexicon there existed a sense of taking the piss out of the sterile publicity machine, if only for the sake of revealing the flaws of our pin-up princes (and princesses) in the face of adversity or adverse inquiry. Wham! touring China for the first time was far more hilarious and engaging as a series of personal reactions to travel mishaps than it was as the sort of camera-ready sociocultural tourism it was crafted to be, after all. Don’t bore us; get to the chorus.

As the ’80s crested, my own fascination didn’t decline with the magazine’s subscription base (both iterations soon closed shop). As an avid Pet Shop Boys fan, I was introduced to the longform pop memoir in a roundabout way through singer Neil Tennant (a former Smash Hits editor, of course) and keyboardist Chris Lowe. For their first two unlikely tours – they used to say they’d never tour – the duo enlisted fellow Smash Hits alum Chris Heath to document their bumbling treks through Asia (Pet Shop Boys: Literally) and America (Pet Shop Boys vs. America) in a manner that relied heavily upon candor and immediacy. Just reading the tales of willfully incorrect transcription by U.K. tabloid scribes and of Tennant being refused restaurant entry for wearing, gasp, shorts was intensely immersive. It seemed to round out my record collection with an intimacy otherwise lacking.

That cautiously revelatory bar was raised tenfold with the 1995 release of Boy George’s Take It Like a Man, in which the shamed Culture Club frontman and his sequined habits smashed around the pop-world gutter and eventually vomited on Duran Duran bassist John Taylor’s shoes under a table in a New York nightclub. That book’s biggest revelation – that Bush singer (and Stefani-husband) Gavin Rossdale once had an affair with George’s cross-dressing sidekick Marilyn – is still a source of broadsheet titillation. If the tabloids could take George down pop’s slippery mirror, then he would take the glitterati down with him.

In the ensuing years, the pop memoir has blended with the Twitter climate of familiarity through oversharing. John Taylor recently recounted his cocaine-rimmed blurry ’80s through the pleasantly entertaining looking glass of recovery (In the Pleasure Groove: Love, Death, and Duran Duran), landing him an unexpected worldwide bestseller. Last year’s Cyndi Lauper: A Memoir found the kooky wailer rambling about her checkered past, abortion included, riding the hair-color hit parade down to its inevitable nadir. Blind ambition has a price.

But what becomes of the seemingly unambitious who find themselves swept up into the swish of the hit parade? Everything but the Girl singer (and solo artist) Tracey Thorn brilliantly addresses that conundrum in her new memoir, Bedsit Disco Queen: How I Grew Up and Tried to Be a Popstar. For much of the book, Thorn breezily – though sometimes archly – chronicles a Top of the Pops material world of ’80s excess and what it looked like from the sanity sidelines. It wasn’t so much that Everything but the Girl weren’t trying to be successful – indeed, they did score several chart hits in their prime – but rather that they didn’t want to play along with the puppetry of sell-out social climbing. They were tenuously connected to leftist politics, playing benefits for the Labour Party and crafting indie bedsit dramas with a thumbed-nose jazz approach.

But even that ambivalence wouldn’t spare them indignities. In 1985, Thorn and partner Ben Watt (who wrote his own medical memoir, Patient, in 1996 after nearly dying of a rare disease) were recruited as “delegates” to play to students in Moscow.

“Before we went on stage a magician performed, in top hat and tails, pulling doves out of thin air,” Thorn writes. “Then a woman in a pink evening gown came on to introduce us, her long speech in Russian referring to two famous names of English pop: John Rotten and Tracey Thorn.”

By the mid-’90s, following Watt’s brush with death and an artistic low, the band’s career found new life in odd places. First, Thorn guested on a Massive Attack song, “Protection,” then Todd Terry remixed their 1994 acoustic single “Missing” into a dancefloor anthem, selling millions of copies and landing them near the top of the charts around the world (it reached No. 2 on the U.S. charts). The odd appearances began anew; the junkets were beckoning; U2 called upon them to be openers on their tour. Fearing the consequences, Thorn declined. A decade later, Thorn bumped into Tennant at a party – in my pop memoir world, everybody goes to the same parties – and discussed the idea of yet another go at notoriety.

“[Tennant] immediately asks what I am doing these days ‘with my lovely voice,’” Thorn recalls. “‘Shouting at the kids,’ I answer. It’s meant to be wryly funny, but comes out sounding like Waynetta Slob. He looks dismayed.”

These little pieces, the seemingly mundane details that plague even the most glittery life: These are the bits that matter, and these are the books that taught me to look for them.

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Purple rainmaker
I Would Die 4 U: Why Prince Became an Icon
by Touré | Atria Books | 176 pages

This was supposed to be The Prince Book: the book that combined voluminous insider information with deep knowledge of the star’s music and, most importantly, a 21st-century perspective on what this weirdo and his music actually mean.
This is not that Prince book.

To start with, omnipresent cultural and political commentator Touré leans heavily on the same exact sources quoted in every other Prince article or book. He offers little new insight and almost zero new factual information.

But what propels I Would Die 4 U beyond mere disappointment is Touré’s utterly banal attempts to explicitly connect Prince to cultural, musical, ethnic and societal traditions. It’s the worst kind of freshman-year essay conceit, filled with dozens of dull-witted and unimaginative “I bet you never thought of that” assertions and the drawing of through-lines which, quite frankly, do not exist except in the author’s mind.

There’s a whole chapter here (“I’m Your Messiah”) in which Touré posits that the lyrics of the Purple Rain era were actively intended by Prince to utilize historical antecedents to deliver a complex and sophisticated message to the world about faith and love and life.

Look, we all know what happens when Prince actually tries to make a religious album: We get the ham-fisted and graceless lyrical explorations of Lovesexy. (Great album, but definitely not poetry.) And it was recorded four years after Prince was supposedly weaving obscure Bible verses and ancient iconography into “Let’s Go Crazy.” In other words, correlation ain’t causation, and Touré may hear it, but that doesn’t mean it’s there.

One gets the sense that the author hung out one night with Questlove (who is quoted extensively in the book), listening to Prince outtakes, and was suddenly struck with several interesting potential theories all at once, many of which were probably rooted in the fact that “Hey, one time I played basketball with the guy.” (Which, as Touré often reminds the reader, he actually did.) Unfortunately, the result is both philosophically superficial and incredibly thin on actual information, leaving the reader wishing that Questlove would just go ahead and write his Prince book. Because, seriously, that would be the Prince book. – Jason Ferguson

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Fugitive poet
I Dreamed I Was a Very Clean Tramp: An Autobigraphy
by Richard Hell | Ecco Press |
293 pages

Hell is other people, in Richard Hell’s new memoir. The book is structured as a series of reminiscences, mostly of people he’s written with, had sex with, or both. Though Hell (né Meyers), an accidental rock star who identifies as a poet, has published two earlier novels of the “thinly veiled aubiography” stripe, he calls this his first and only true accounting, and certainly he spares no effort in making himself seem attractive, cool or even much of a worthwhile person. Then again, he’s not so nice to his friends, either.

Neon Boys, Television, the Heartbreakers, the Voidoids … the bands Hell led in the ’70s and ’80s read like a roll call of punk’s formation. Like a lucky few who also came out of New York’s atonal, avant-garde No Wave scene, Hell managed, though he had almost no musical training, to write at least one genuine contender for classic-song status (“Marquee Moon”), as well as a bona fide punk-era anthem (“Blank Generation”).

The book itself drips with a repellent, gorgeous honesty. Hell is offhandedly brutal to some of his longtime cohorts, randomly kind to others, and though he details some less-than-admirable actions, seems at some points to think he invented sliced bread – the false humility of the junkie’s massive ego. (And yes, his junk years are explored, but it’s the least interesting part of Clean Tramp.)

Hell is quite good on his male friendships, drawing clean-edged, sensitive, distinct portraits of each man. Women’s breasts, hair, or the sex acts he has with them get that same level of attentive clarity (at one point he recalls – from 1967 – “a sad, hysterical girl with red capillaries on her nose and cheekbones, and large breasts that looked like twin Eeyores”) but the women themselves seem interchangeable, not quite human.

Hell and his fellow ’70s punk icon, the ethereal Patti Smith, had pretty much the same influences (French Symbolist poets: Lautréamont, Verlaine, Rimbaud), the same aspirations (poet/rock star), came out of the same tiny intersection of time and place (junk-infused 1970s Lower East Side), yet in her recent memoir Just Kids, Smith gets it across in half the pages with twice the beauty and grace and suffusing soul. I Dreamed I Was a Very Clean Tramp is earthy, with a few flashes of sublimity ... a better portrait of an era than of a man or a self. – Jessica Bryce Young

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Redheaded stranger
Roll Me Up and Smoke Me When I Die: Musings From the Road
by Willie Nelson with Kinky Friedman | William Morrow | 192 pages

Willie Nelson means a lot of things to a lot of people, and his latest book Roll Me Up and Smoke Me When I Die, a combination autobiography and road journal, is largely narrated by exactly those folks. The iconic country star’s latest batch of stories mostly serve as introductions to the most pivotal people in his life – family, business partners and band members – who then take up the pen to offer personal dear-diary-style accounts of how Willie has affected them. At its best, it’s full of detailed gems that recount specific (usually hilarious) incidents during Willie’s lifelong road trip, and at its weakest, it’s a series of personalized greeting cards sent by the songwriter’s dearest friends (but at least they’re Hallmark-quality).

Interspersed with crass jokes (“If a frog had wings, it could get bird pussy!”) and indulgent-but-awesome photos (Willie smooching his horse, presumably called Music), it’s a quick read that does occasionally step out of his music world and into exciting other realms, like his childhood, Occupy Wall Street and the world domino championship he cleverly fixed. He also offers a predictable trick to quit cigarettes, unendingly lists his music heroes and even ruminates on the medicinal quality of his farts. You’ll have to pardon the admitted prodding to purchase his new music, because it’s rare that legends leave journals, and besides, Lefty Frizzell would remind us (if he could) that Willie’s always been successful by being clear that if we’ve got the money, he’s got the time. – Ashley Belanger

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Psychedelic Zelig
Shell Shocked: My Life With the Turtles, Flo & Eddie, and Frank Zappa, etc.
by Howard Kaylan with Jeff Tamarkin | Backbeat Books | 304 pages

The performance rights organization BMI has named the Turtles’ “Happy Together” one of the Top 50 Songs of the 20th century. Oh ... that guy. Now you’ve placed Howard Kaylan – that hushed, confessional singer in the verses, modulating to the keening, psychedelic/vaudevillian voice in the choruses.

Although the Turtles were never seen as a banner-carrier of the ’60s music revolution, Kaylan has the stories to compete (and possibly win) in the rock & roll tell-all pantheon. For instance, there’s his first evening out in London in 1967: accidentally insulting the Moody Blues, getting eviscerated (verbally) by John Lennon, and vomiting on the velvet jacket and pants of rising star Jimi Hendrix, all in rapid succession – that’s a winner right there, but there’s plenty more where it came from.

Once the Turtles are stopped in their tracks by a legal entanglement, the story of Kaylan and his perpetual vocal partner from high school forward, Mark Volman, gets more interesting as they wend their way through the entertainment world. Within two weeks of their hit band’s demise, Kaylan turns down the lead vocalist role in the then-nascent Steely Dan because Volman wasn’t on the ticket; the duo then auditions for and joins Frank Zappa’s new version of the Mothers of Invention. Later, the duo survives the Montreux venue fire made world history via Deep Purple’s song “Smoke on the Water.”

In an ancillary career as backing singers, Kaylan and Volman created those intriguing, ridiculous backing vocals on the T.Rex recordings – tiptoeing a line mimicking strings or horns, and selling the fantastical jiggery-pokery of Marc Bolan’s lyrics like commercial pitchmen. Salacious and psychotropic tales aside, the underlying story of Kaylan and Volman sticking together through the sine-wave peaks and valleys is a sublime parable – and possibly their crowning achievement. – Matt Gorney

The city approves a second amendment to a lease agreement between the city of Orlando and Webster Drug Stores Inc. for property located at 29 S. Orange Ave.
Translation: We won’t even try to stick our hands (again) into the bizarre pearl-lined web of funding between the city, the Downtown Arts District and the property known as the CityArts Factory. The city justifies keeping this bricky beast afloat because things are open there and are sometimes free. The property, still owned by the old drug store company that used to reside there, is up for a lease renewal, and the drug dealers are offering a cut rate of almost $3 less per square foot. The caveat being that if the city chooses to renew in a few years, the fair market value will likely increase, as will the rent.

The city approves a license agreement with Eat More Produce for location adjacent to City Hall.
Translation: Just as the city’s food truck operators peel out in doughnut histrionics over new regulations, the city will now allow a pop-up Thursday farmers market in the breezeway connecting City Hall to the CNL Building. In exchange for a $1-per-month rent, Eat More Produce will get a 12-foot-by-12-foot kiosk to peddle organic honey, salsa and nuts. According to the agreement, Eat More Produce pretty much has to pretend it’s not there, though, with no egregious advertising or noisemaking allowed. Still, for a dollar you could do worse and eat less.

On one side, there’s the city, which recently passed a “temporary use permit” pilot program that regulates how food trucks do business in the city. City officials say they had no idea just how popular food trucks would be in Orlando until the city was suddenly brimming with them. Over the past couple of years, the trucks have become a staple in the city’s food scene, appearing regularly outside popular neighborhood bars and at special events like Tasty Tuesdays in the Milk District and TheDailyCity.com’s Food Truck Bazaar. Until recently, the trucks operated fairly unhindered in Orlando, as long as they didn’t violate existing city regulations. The new pilot program, put together with the help of a food truck “roundtable” made up of food truck operators, neighborhood leaders and local restaurateurs, spells out where local food trucks can do business, how often they can sell food at various locations what permits they need to be legal.

On the other side, there are food truck operators themselves. Some of them have remained quiet about the new regulations, but others say the new rules are unfair and threaten their businesses.

“These new rules and regulations, this changes everything for my current business model,” says Al Ruiz, operator of the Fish Out of Water sushi truck, which has built a lot of its business partnering with local bars, such as the Falcon in Thornton Park and BART in Mills 50, that will let the truck park in their lots and serve patrons. The food truck pilot program says that private businesses can only host the food trucks one night per week. “We’ve chosen to work with the best craft beer and wine bars, and for two years, this model has done great for us and our community. The new pilot program basically could knock me back to working six days a month, as opposed to the six days a week I’m currently working. It’s simply unfair.”

Food truck operators like Ruiz have banded loosely together to convince the city to change the pilot program, which is designed to be in place for two years. During that time, says city spokeswoman Cassandra Lafser, the city may tweak the rules. “This is a pilot program,” she says, “so by the very nature of it being enacted, we’re always listening to stakeholders about their suggestions for future changes and considering enacting those into the pilot.”

And the stakeholders – at least some of them – do have suggestions. A local lobbyist, Dan Pollock, who says he’s got a lot of friends in the local food truck community and therefore a vested interest in how this food fight turns out, has lent worried food truck operators his expertise. He started a Facebook page called Food Trucks for Fairness, which says it’s a place for food truck operators, supporters and local businesses to network on the subject. He says the group is hoping to reopen discussion with the city about inherent unfairnesses in the new program. For instance, the temporary use permit prohibits food trucks from using Styrofoam packaging – though not an onerous rule in and of itself, Pollock points out that local restaurants are not prohibited from doing so. Food trucks will also be required to provide recycling containers for customers and to empty municipal trash cans that exist within 25 feet of their trucks.

Because Pollock isn’t a food truck owner, some say this isn’t his fight and that it’s a small but vocal minority of food truck operators who are blowing the potential impact of the new rules out of proportion. In fact, some of the rules encoded in the program were already in place before. It’s just that the trucks weren’t always abiding by them. For instance, city law has always made it illegal to serve people curbside, on sidewalks or in other rights-of-way. The pilot program explicitly tells food trucks they can’t do so. Lafser points out that if the trucks were doing it before, they shouldn’t have been. The pilot program, she says, clarifies things for the trucks and should make it easier for trucks to do business here.

But so far, the new rules have already resulted in what some are calling the first “casualty” of the food truck scene. Last week, the Falcon Bar and Gallery in Thornton Park announced that it would no longer host food trucks outside the bar because the business’ landlord is concerned about the pilot program, which states that any truck doing business on private property must first obtain a notarized letter from the property owner. No letter, no food truck.

Fish Out of Water’s Al Ruiz says this is a direct hit to his truck, which used to be at the Falcon every Thursday night.

“I am truly heartbroken over losing this venue to serve at,” he says. “We worked very hard for two years building a grass-roots following and a great relationship with not only the owners of the Falcon, but their staff as well as some adjacent businesses. … [I] am hoping that the people of Orlando won’t lay down on this subject, as it will affect everyone in some sort of way. I just want to work with my friends in the community. Working in a mall parking lot as being my only option just isn’t fair.”

Taproom at Dubsdread Half-pound burgers with golf-course views. 548 W. Par St., 407-650-0100; taproomatdubsdread.com

Junior Colombian Burger Hand-formed patties and secret sauce. 5389 S. Kirkman Road, 407-355-3506; juniorcolombianburger.com

Fleming’s Prime Steakhouse Great deal: a $6 prime burger with bacon during happy hour. 8030 Via Dellagio Way, 407-352-5706; also 933 N. Orlando Ave., Winter Park, 407-699-9463; flemingssteakhouse.com

Matilda’s on Park Kangaroo burgers worth the waltz up Park Avenue. 358 N. Park Ave., Winter Park, 407-951-5790; facebook.com/matildasonpark

Charcoal Zyka The chapli kebab burger offers an Indo-Pak twist. 10249 S. John Young Parkway, 407-440-4210; charcoaljoe.com

Oblivion Taproom Burgers with enough weight and flavor to stand up to rare drafts. 5101 E. Colonial Drive, 407-802-4800; obliviontaproom.com

Pine 22 More than 300,000 ways to conjure up a burger. 22 E. Pine St., 407-574-2160; pine22.com

Hannibal’s on the Square A fave among the city’s burger cognoscenti. 511 W. New England Ave., Winter Park, 407-629-4865; hannibalslounge.com

The Capital Grille Smoked bacon mixed with beef makes for one luxurious burger. The Mall at Millenia, 4200 Conroy Road, 407-351-2210; thecapitalgrille.com

Fork in the Road Food Truck The bison burger with bacon jam is a food-truck fave. 407-484-3593; forkintherd.com; facebook.com/eatforkintheroad

Chimi King Dominican burgers make you want to get your dembow on. 11937 S. Orange Blossom Trail, 407-535-6652; facebook.com/Chimiking1

The Crooked Spoon The truck is no more, but try the burgers at their Clermont gastropub opening in July. 407-927-1587; thecrookedspn.com

The Ravenous Pig A dense burger befitting a proper gastropub. 1234 N. Orange Ave., Winter Park, 407-628-2333; theravenouspig.com

BurgerFi A national chain with squishy-good burgers. 538 S. Park Ave., Winter Park, 407-622-2010; burgerfi.com

B&B Junction Taking the farm-to-table approach seriously. 2103 W. Fairbanks Ave., Winter Park, 407-513-4134; bbjunction.com

RusTeak The certified Kobe burger is for certified burger maniacs. 1568 Maguire Road, Ocoee, 407-614-3765; rusteakwinebar.com

Marlow’s Tavern The “Everything and the Kitchen Sink” burger is impressively composed. Pointe Orlando, 9101 International Drive, 407-351-3627; marlowstavern.com

Nona Tap Room A solid half-pound patty marinated in Guinness. 9145 Narcoossee Road, 407-440-4594; nonataproom.com

Giraffas For less than $12, get a filet mignon burger with fries. 5415 International Drive, 407-641-1514; giraffas.com

Brian’s Restaurant Burgers of the classic greasy-spoon variety. 1409 N. Orange Ave., 407-601-5944

Five Guys Burgers and Fries The best of the big chains (until we get an In-N-Out Burger).
Multiple locations; fiveguys.com

Johnny’s Fillin’ Station A longtime favorite of many in the city. 2631 S. Ferncreek Ave., 407-894-6900; johnnysfillinstation.com

The Rusty Spoon Half a pound of grass-fed beef stuffed with bacon and gruyère. 55 W. Church St., 407-401-8811; therustyspoon.com

Hamburger Mary’s Some fab to go with your eventual flab. 110 W. Church St., 321-319-0600; hamburgermarys.com

K Restaurant The “daily grind” burger with ground brisket is one we’d eat daily. 1710 Edgewater Drive, 407-872-2332; krestaurant.net