Frank Arthur doesn't just tell stories—he acts them out. Between bites of a Reuben at an Arbutus diner, Arthur recalls creeping past the Pepsi building on a summer night in 1986 with Scrappy G, One Way, and a few other graffiti writers in tow. An assortment of construction equipment and trucks concealed them from cars whizzing past on I-83. The expressway was being widened, and Arthur and his crew had determined that an enormous pile of metal support beams would be their next urban canvas.

"We wrote our butts off," recalls Arthur.

Towson University's Fine Arts Building is relatively quiet on a Tuesday afternoon. That is, until you open the door leading to the dance studios on the first floor. Immediately, booming music fills the hallway, ricochets off the cinderblock walls, and gets louder as you approach room 1004, where a few dozen dancers in leotards and shorts pirouette, bend, and leap in time to the rhythm.

Henry Wong came to the United States from Hong Kong to finish school and study medicine, but things didn't go as planned. The lure of Western culture proved too great and pulled him away from his studies. As a result, Hopkins has one less doctor, but Baltimore gained a tireless, though unlikely, cultural advocate, who has quietly transformed the tiny space over his Mt. Vernon CD shop into one of the city's busiest concert venues.

When Baltimore's own Matt Porterfield becomes a big star—and we have no doubt it's going to happen—you want to say that you were with him from the start. So, first check out his wistful and unforgettable debut, Hamilton. (If you haven't seen it already, what are you waiting for?) And next, go see his latest, Putty Hill, which begins its Baltimore run on March 4 at The Charles Theater. After the critical success of Hamilton, Porterfield set his sights on the more ambitious Metal Gods.