Sure, there are plenty of music festivals around Maryland. But on September 15, we’ll have one right in our own backyard: the Charm City Music Festival.

“I’ve been a promoter here for 15 years and always wanted to do a festival downtown,” says Paul Manna, of 24-7 Entertainment, who is organizing the event. Performers include Weezer, Flogging Molly, Stephen Marley, and Eve 6. But Manna wanted to feature local musicians, too, like the All Mighty Senators, pictured. “My vision from the beginning was to incorporate as much local visibility as possible,” he says.

The term rock opera usually conjures up images of earnest classic rock pieces like The Who’s Tommy or Pink Floyd’s The Wall.

But the performers in Baltimore Rock Opera Society—with amusing acronym BROS—take a different approach when they put on their genre-defying productions.

“We try to take the excess of hair metal and arena rock and jam it down the throat of opera,” says Aran Keating, BROS artistic director. “We want world-turning events happening in these shows. And there is literally no limit to what we can do on stage.”

Startling images have been popping up on buildings around Station North. Seemingly overnight, bold stripes and peculiar geometric shapes cover a wall overlooking the parking lot across from The Charles Theatre; an enormous elephant lurks around the corner on Lafayette Street; there’s a portrait of community activist Dennis Livingston adorning the side of a house a few blocks away; and a cupped hand cradles a pigeon on a vacant North Avenue storefront.

Ah, the beauty of e-readers: The person sitting next to you could be scrolling through anything: a crime novel, a recipe book, or the latest in erotica fiction.

The latter is certainly the case with the Fifty Shades of Grey trilogy, a controversial love story about a couple who engages in sadomasochism. Written by British author
E. L. James, the series’ first installment soared to the top of The New York Times e-book fiction bestseller list.