We know, we know. When you walk up to a bar on a sweltering summer day, and the maître d’ asks if you prefer inside or outside, the obvious answer is to get in that chilly AC. But there’s something about sipping al fresco, amidst the city’s classic summer sights and sounds—neighbors walking their dogs, a parade of 12 O’Clock Boys—that feels like a rite of the season.

The outdoor patio becomes the point. Gathering with friends you haven’t seen in a while, with a beautifully garnished drink in your hand, becomes a special occasion. And if you know where to go, you’ll find that the city’s seasonal craft cocktail offerings are worth breaking a sweat for.

Case in point: Sugarvale in Mt. Vernon. Its outdoor seating consists of small café tables, picnic tables, and benches installed during the pandemic, which have become a go-to spot to post up and people-watch near the Washington Monument.

Beverage director Collin Schnitker has been excited about the warm weather for months. “We’re a craft cocktail bar, but, to me, we’re a neighborhood bar above everything else,” he says.

Nearly a decade into his tenure, Schnitker still approaches each new menu the way a chef does. He looks at which ingredients are in season, and pursues the unexpected.

“It’s a creative thing,” he says. Outside of Sugarvale, he produces music and film through his label Shiny Boy Press, now approaching 50 releases. He uses those same artistic instincts to show up behind the bar.

He breaks his menu philosophy down into three sections. The first is “the big swing,” a strong concept usually borrowed from food. Previously, he’s used pho and tacos al pastor as inspo for drinks. This summer, Schnitker is featuring the “Uncle Albert,” which spotlights broccoli juice (he promises it tastes better than it sounds) with Uncle Val’s botanical gin, Pangur Irish Poitín, ginger honey, lime, black pepper, and ranch powder tinctures—all garnished with olive oil droplets to tease its savory flavors.

The second is the classic riffs, where he takes something familiar and pushes it somewhere new. The last is simple: find an ingredient he’s never worked with and figure out how it can appeal to customers.

This summer, these goals are showcased in new drinks like the Mai Taigo, a riff on the Mai Tai that wasn’t complete until Schnitker took a walk around the corner to see his friends at neighborhood restaurant My Thai Go. He went over, explained what he was thinking, and came back with Thai tea and Thai chilies. The result is cold, bright, and built for a warm evening outside.

Another is the Telenovela, a cilantro-forward cocktail that gets its name from a connection Schnitker couldn’t resist: cilantro, soap, soap opera, Mexican soap opera. The drink fuses tequila, a wheat-based spirit from the company Empirical made with cilantro, and a house-made roasted coriander syrup that gets blended fresh with cilantro every day. There’s a little pepper liqueur. A little aquavit. It’s approachable, but strange in the best way— something that sounds like a margarita but drinks like its own thing.

That balance is welcoming and adventurous, as is the whole vibe at Sugarvale. The menu is built to have something for everyone, including NA versions of all the shaken cocktails. Schnitker designs each menu to span the full range: savory drinks, easy-sippers, and “drinks your mom could order.” He wants people to feel comfortable asking questions, admitting when they don’t see what they want, and letting the bartenders take them somewhere new.

Nine years in, he still talks about the bar like it’s a living thing—something that gives back what you put in, that belongs to the neighborhood as much as to anyone who works there.

“There is something for everyone here,” he says. “I just want people to feel welcome.”

Now that we’re all in the summer sipping spirit, here are a few more local bars to hit for refreshing libations before the season passes us by.

The Coral Wig
Tucked in an alley near Mt. Vernon’s Hotel Ulysses, this concept—lauded by Bon Appétit—draws on owner Lane Harlan’s childhood in the Philippines and her husband Matthew Pierce’s upbringing in St. Kitts, giving the drink menu a tropical, rum-forward sensibility perfectly timed for warm weather. Inside is tiny, dark, sexy, and sumptuous, while the outdoor patio is small and feels like a secret, which is part of the appeal.

The Dive
We don’t know about you, but, to us, cocktails taste better when served in a vintage cartoon glass with a crazy straw. This is the kind of nostalgia you can expect at The Dive in Canton, which pours signatures like the cucumber gin and melon-forward Pinball Wizard and blue-hued Mermaid’s Tale with rum and amaretto. Don’t leave without ordering a pizza and a swirl of house soft-serve. 

Fadensonnen
In Old Goucher, this courtyard at natural wine bar is a popular spring-summer hangout. Recent upgrades include a roster of all-Spanish bottles “designed for long afternoons and evenings in the garden.” It’s also a known venue for community events, so be sure to peep the online calendar of live music, markets, and other programs before you visit.

Golden West Cafe
At this nearly 30-year-old institution on the Avenue in Hampden, beverage director Dee Acosta builds her drinks around ingredients that trace back to her New Mexico roots—prickly pear, agave, lavender, peppers, and nixta (corn). “Using traditional ingredients is an act of cultural preservation and resistance,” according to Acosta, who connects the bar’s approach to Indigenous food sovereignty and a broader effort to help modern communities reconnect with ancestral knowledge.

Go for the Spaghettini, an Aperol and High Life pony poured into a coupe glass, or the Espresso Tonic, made with La Colombe coffee and the NA spirit Pathfinder—proof the NA program gets the same level of care as everything else on the menu.

Pink Flamingo
Set in the longtime home of dive bar The Dizz in Remington, the space is now a rum-forward tropical tavern from  Brendan Dorr and Eric Fooy of Dutch Courage in Old Goucher. The cocktail list, developed with bar manager Nick Pikounis, leans into a lineup of more than 150 rums.

The signature Dizzy Flamingo is a two-rum daiquiri with lime and sugar, while the Whirlybird riffs on a Jungle Bird with black pot-still rum. For something lighter, the Road Less Traveled is a spirit-free amaro mule. Vivid tropical murals and a patio make it an easy add to a summer crawl.

Spirits of Mt. Vernon
Employee-owned since 2024, this North Charles Street staple is stocked with a carefully curated selection of wine, spirits, and beer. But regulars know the cocktail program running behind the counter is the real draw, especially on a sticky summer evening when the patio fills up. Order a chilled glass of Vinho Verde or an icy shaken martini to help cool off.

Tiki Garden
Boozy slushies are the stars of the show at this island hideaway on East Cross Street Federal Hill. Icy iterations include a classic pina colada or rum runner, plus mango daiquiris and prickly pear margaritas. In keeping with the theme, there are also a variety of tiki-inspired cocktails and shots. But if you’re out with a crew, consider the Volcano Bowl of rum punch topped with a flame.

When The Walters Art Museum mounted the exhibition Revealing the African Presence in Renaissance Europe in 2012, Dr. Myrtis Bedolla saw an opportunity. She approached chief curator Dr. Joaneath Spicer about a collaboration, one where contemporary artists represented by her own Galerie Myrtis would create new works in direct response to the exhibition. Spicer not only said yes, she generously met one-on-one with Bedolla’s roster, sharing her research.

“The work they created was informed by all this scholarship,” says Bedolla. “We called it the ‘new knowledge,’ because there was historically this notion that all Africans in Europe during that period were enslaved, when in fact they were not.”

Featured alongside works by Black Renaissance masters were now-Baltimore-based artists, including the multidisciplinary Jeffrey Kent and a young painter by the name of Amy Sherald, whom Bedolla represented at the time. In the end, visitors from across the country came to witness this creative change and correction of the artistic historic record.

This magical moment was just one among many over the past two decades of Galerie Myrtis, Bedolla’s brick-and-mortar space located on North Charles Street in Old Goucher. And it captures something essential about how Bedolla has built this gallery—by putting artists in conversation with history, with institutions, with each other, with ambition, clarity, taste, and stewardship.

Bedolla grew up in Chicago, where her parents were devoted collectors who instilled in her a love of art. She sharpened her professional instincts in Washington, D.C., where, with Creative Artisans, she helped artists develop their portfolios as an advocate, representative, and advisor.

Those relationships organically evolved into her becoming a curator and gallerist. In 2006, she opened her first exhibition space in Capitol Hill and, in 2008, she moved Galerie Myrtis to Baltimore.

“It’s a city with a deeply rooted creative community,” she says, “one that is both historically rich and unapologetically authentic.”

From the beginning, her work reflected a clear mission. She would create a platform for African-American artists whose work she knew was vital but underrecognized and subsequently undercollected. The milestones have accumulated steadily since. By 2022, a partnership with Christie’s placed her artists in the secondary market alongside blue-chip names.

“It signaled to collectors and institutions that they belong in those conversations,” she says. “More importantly it expanded the possibilities for how their work could circulate and be valued globally.”

That same year, an invitation came to curate the Venice Biennale.

This anniversary year offers a moment of reflection. The gallery’s annual Art of the Collectors exhibition brought together works by African-American and African Diasporic artists, from emerging talents to celebrated masters. In hallmark Galerie Myrtis style, informed and creative programming ran alongside the exhibition, including a sold-out special edition of her intimate salon-style conversation series, Tea with Myrtis, always free to the public.

“Building community is just as important as mounting exhibitions,” says Bedolla. “The two are inseparable.”

In this next chapter, assistant director Ky Vassor and director of sales Noel Bedolla, Myrtis’ son, will take on more of the curatorial work and artist roster development. That includes newly signed artists from the who’s who of local Black artistic talent—photographer Devin Allen, painter Jerrell Gibbs, and collagist Bria Sterling-Wilson—which has Bedolla particularly energized about the future.

As for her role, the founder is focusing on writing projects, curatorial projects, and deeper institutional conversations.

“The canon,” she says, “is still being written, and I intend to have a hand in that.”

On Sunday nights, Wet City typically takes the night off on West Chase Street. But twice a month at the end of the week, this beloved bar, known as the spot for Spagett cocktails and some of the city’s best wings, will be jam-packed with people, swaying in their seats, enveloped in the sounds of iconic musicians. Think Sly and the Family Stone, Herbie Hancock, Daft Punk, Amy Winehouse.

This is “The Evening Ritual,” a monthly record-listening session focused on unplugging and fully immersing in sound. At the front of the room, behind the decks, is John Canale, also known as “Basement Selector,” staging a quiet rebellion against the digital streaming age. He carefully pulls an album and drops the needle—a gesture so practiced it looks like a prayer.

“It’s the physical act,” says Canale. “Choosing the record, pulling the vinyl out of the sleeve, smelling the cardboard and the paper. It’s a ritual that is very analog, very tactile. And when you do that with a room full of people, it becomes a restorative, meditative thing.”

A kid from the Philadelphia suburbs, Canale came of age during a golden era of ’90s radio, where DJs curated an education on the cultural anthropology of music, rather than just simply playing hits. He listened obsessively and channeled a passion for hip-hop and streetwear culture into a fashion career, working with creative heavyweights like Marc Ecko in New York City.

When a role at Under Armour brought him to Baltimore in 2014, he arrived with a veteran tastemaker’s eye for detail.

“I’m creative at heart,” says Canale, who specializes in graphic design, branding, and merchandising. “This is another facet of me that I’ve been wanting to explore for a long time.”

About 10 years ago, he became enamored with the concept of the Japanese jazz kissa—intimate, smoke-filled listening cafes where music isn’t background noise, but the guest of honor. He was thrilled to discover there was something called the Baltimore Kissa Society. After attending a few of their events, he felt inspired to launch his own.

Each session celebrates one groundbreaking album. Last February, the first centered on Stevie Wonder’s Innervisions. By the second, which spotlighted Herbie Hancock’s Headhunters, the room was filled to the brim. The platform has since expanded to other popular venues like Good Neighbor and Mera Kitchen Collective. He now also collaborates with guest DJs like poet Celeste Doaks and curator Crave, using these sessions to showcase even more musical perspectives and advocate for a radical return to active listening.

But it’s not just about music, it’s about gathering.

“Community, friends, strangers—for something that is an intentional and focused moment,” he says. “It’s one thing when you engage in [music] alone…But when you engage in it with a group of people, it can really restore your senses.”

In early November, 216 Read Street was abuzz on the western edge of Mount Vernon. People from across the city were browsing through color-coded shelves of clothing at the new Tall Grass boutique. They hugged friends, sipped wine, danced to DJ Pangelica, and admired the beautifully decorated cake at the center of the opening-night celebrations.

Saba McCoy wasn’t quite sure how the night would go, but the packed room was confirmation of her decision to open her first store, which had been a dream of hers for years.

Inspired by the self-help book The Artist’s Way, she finally said those words out loud during a dinner party last February with friends. Serendipitously, Mo Rothman, who was thinking about closing the brick-and-mortar for her beloved Bottle of Bread vintage shop, was there. It suddenly became clear that this was where McCoy’s new business should be. After Rothman made her last sale that summer, McCoy moved in.

“I felt like I would always regret it if I didn’t just take that opportunity,” says McCoy, who also works as a full-time brand strategist.

Part of the allure was that she’d been working from home and wanted to better connect with her community, having returned to her childhood home of Baltimore from New York a few years earlier. She felt eager to contribute something meaningful to her hometown. “I wanted to do a thing where I felt really out in the world.”

That spark, combined with her careful eye and intentional curation, is now a reality in a bright, airy shop with white walls, eclectic accent furniture, and a sophisticated mix of vintage finds and contemporary designer pieces. Everything she sells is stuff she loves or wears herself. And her eye for detail is everywhere.

The opening party also hinted at McCoy’s deeper vision. More than just clothes, the space feels part gallery, part showroom, part creative incubator.

Contemporary artworks, many sourced by her mother—an Eritrean native and lifelong appreciator and collector of the arts—line the interior, celebrating both her individual style and her East African heritage. She plans to activate the outdoor area with intimate performances and collaborate with Therefore, a nearby creative space, for pop-ups.

Located halfway between Park Avenue and Chase Street, Tall Grass sits on a block experiencing a quiet renaissance. Nearby, Black-owned independent businesses such as Mt. Vernon Records, Bluestone Goldsmithing, and a Cakes In The City have also opened, creating a corridor of creativity and design-forward retail.

For McCoy, the goal of Tall Grass is simple: create a space where people feel welcome, connect with objects and each other, and leave inspired. The shop is open on Saturdays and Sundays from 11 a.m. to 6 p.m.

“Come in and say hello,” she says.