Old Major

03/06/2025

This Friday: Join us for the Rooted ‘N’ Sound Open Mic led by Baltimore nonprofit Black Yield Institute! Sign up to participate or attend the show. Don’t miss karaoke afterward 😉

Join us for our Rooted 'N' Sound Open Mic this Friday at .

We are excited to curate a collaborative and open space for people to share their talents and learn more about our work at Black Yield Institute.

Register by using the link in our bio.

03/05/2025

OM’s March event listing is out! In our typical style, we’re marching forward with an eclectic variety of fun events! Our bar+kitchen open at 6 p.m. on event days 🍝🍹

📖 Literature:
Thu. 3/6 & 3/20 | 6:30 p.m.: Baltimore Silent Book Club. Bring your own book! We’ll eat, drink, mingle AND read 📚

Thu. 3/13 | 6:30 p.m.: The Tomorrow Will be Worse: A SciFi/Horror Reading Series from returns! Local authors will read their works accompanied by musical performances 🎶

Thu. 3/20 | 6:30 p.m.: Write Night! Writers of all levels of aspiration and achievement are invited to work on writing projects! ✍️

Thu. 3/27 | 6 p.m.: Wretched Reads Horror Book Club. Led by , next book is “Tender is the Flesh” by Agustina Bazterrica. Screening of film “Soylent Green” (1973) follows.

🎤 Open Mics
Fri. 3/7 | 7 p.m.: is hosting an open mic at OM! Share your creativity!

Thu. 3/27 | 7 p.m.: Read the Room. A poetry and prose open mic!

😂 Comedy
Fri. 3/14 | 8 p.m.: Block Party. Presented by on 2nd Fridays, enjoy a showcase of Baltimore’s best Black improv comedians! Tickets in bio.

🎬 Film Screenings:
Fri. 3/21 | 6 p.m.: The Bmore Horror Club screens art-house horror film “Raw” (2016). Try movie-inspired cocktails!

Sat. 3/28 | 6 p.m.: Baltimore Anime Denizens (BAD) Meetup & Screening. BAD screens “The Night is Short, Walk on Girl.” With Japanese beer and cocktails!

👅Spanish Language:
Sat. 3/22 | 6:30 p.m.: Spanish Meet & Speak Language Exchange.

🏅Competition
Sat. 3/22 | 6:30 p.m.: We’re holding Bar Bee—our competitive spelling bee with a lil’ trivia!🐝

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There’s more, including Fed Up🥄 (a public service social), game/chess nights, and our activity-packed Smörgåsbord nights🎯🎲🎨🎤🎥📖

📧 If you’re interested in holding an event here, email [email protected]

🚨OM is closed Saturday, March 15.

Stay well!

02/28/2025

Spend a B.A.D. night with us! Baltimore Anime Denizens returns to OM for its anime gathering and screening! The bar and kitchen open at 6 p.m. Be sure to grab some food and drinks to get your golden ticket to the show.

This month’s feature is the classic film Urusei Yatsura 2: Beautiful Dreamer from director Mamoru Oshii. A bold departure from the original series, this mind-bending story blends Japanese folklore, time loops, and philosophy—so much so that creator Rumiko Takahashi almost rejected the script!

New to Urusei Yatsura? No problem! We’ll start with Episode 1 of the 2022 series to introduce you to the world of Lum and friends.

🎥 Urusei Yatsura (2022)
📺 Episode 1: Young Love on the Run (かけめぐる青春)
2022 | ⏳ 23 mins | Dir. Hideya Takahashi

🎬 Urusei Yatsura 2: Beautiful Dreamer (うる星やつら２　ビューティフル·ドリーマー)
1984 | ⏳ 98 mins | Dir. Mamoru Oshii

Plot: The night before the Tomobiki High School Festival, time begins to loop, reality unravels, and only Lum and her friends remain unaffected. As they search for answers, their understanding of dreams and reality is put to the test.

📽 Presented in Japanese with English subtitles🎌

Next month, B.AD. returns Friday, March 28!

02/27/2025

Horror fans, we’ve got a two-fer for tonight’s Wretched Reads Horror Book Club! 📖🎬

Oli Turner, co-founder of local horror-film collective, Small Doll Productions (), will dive into the dark and twisted world of Clive Barker’s “The Hellbound Heart”—the chilling tale that inspired classic horror film, “Hellraiser”! 🩸Attendees will also enjoy a screening of the 2022 remake!

⏰ Doors open at 6 p.m.—come early for food and drinks! 🍷🍛

02/20/2025

Embrace your inner child with some reading time! Join us for Baltimore Silent Book Club this evening at 6:30 p.m. 📚Grab your space and meet fellow book lovers👋We’ll eat, drink, mingle AND read!

OM’s doors open at 6 p.m. for food and drink service! Grab your space and meal, too! 🍝🍸

P.S. that’s sweet little Ainsley in the photo—she’s the youngest person to read a book at OM 😍

02/12/2025

One thing is for sure—we’re super positive and optimistic about hosting the “Tomorrow Will Be Worse” reading series () here on this Thursday, February 13! The series is dedicated to science fiction, horror and speculative literature 👽🩸

An awesome lineup of Baltimore creative writers will recite their works🗣️Attendees will also be treated to live music from Dominic and Erica Patoka Cerquetti 🎶

OM’s doors open at 6 p.m. for bar and kitchen service. Arrive early for food and drinks! 🍷🍝 The event begins at 7 p.m.

02/06/2025

We believe reading is more important than ever and welcome you to join our community of readers at Baltimore Silent Book Club this evening, 6:30-8:30 p.m. 📖 Bring any reading material or audiobook with you. We’ll eat, drink, mingle AND read!

Fun fact: February is both I Love to Read Month and National Library Lovers Month. Be sure to support your local branch! 📚

🍽️ OM’s bar and kitchen open at 6 p.m.! Unwind with a meal or drink and let’s hear about your book! 🍸

02/06/2025

Our February listing of events is finally out, and we hope you’ll find an activity to participate in with us!

Tonight we’re holding Baltimore Silent Book Club and screening the documentary, “What Happened, Miss Simone?” (2015). Our bar and kitchen open at 6 p.m.

More highlights:

📖 Literature:
Thu. 2/13 | 6:30 p.m.: Tomorrow Will be Worse: A SciFi/Horror Reading Series from 🔥 Enjoy an excellent lineup of local authors reading their works and also musical performances 🎶

Thu. 2/20 | 6:30 p.m.: Baltimore Silent Book Club. Bring your own book! We’ll eat, drink, mingle AND read 📚

Thu. 2/27 | 6 p.m.: Wretched Reads Horror Book Club. Led by , February’s book is “The Hellbound Heart” by Clive Barker. The discussion will be followed by a screening of horror film, “Hellraiser.”😱

🎬 Screening:
Sat. 2/28 | 6 p.m.: Baltimore Anime Denizens (BAD) Meetup & Screening. BAD returns for a screening of select episodes from “Urusei Yatsura 2: Beautiful Dreamer.” We’ll have Japanese-inspired cocktails!🎞️

👅Spanish Language:
Sat. 2/22 | 7 p.m.: Spanish Meet & Speak Language Exchange. Use, practice or improve your Spanish! 🗣️

🏅Friendly Competition
Sat. 2/8 | 7 p.m.: We’re holding Bar Bee—our competitive spelling bee with a lil’ trivia!🐝

Fri. 2/21 | Bingo Night. The Black Yield Institute is hosting a bingo night. Learn more about the organization and win a prize!

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Look out for more events and our activity-packed Smörgåsbord nights (karaoke, movies, sip and paint, board games, darts & reading) 🎯🎲🎨🎤🎥📖

We’re back on March 1 with the always-hilarious Major Laugh Comedy Show from 😂

📧 If you’re interested in holding an event in our space, email us: [email protected]

🚨Note that OM is closed Saturday, February 15.

Wishing you peace and well-being ♥️

02/01/2025

Laughter is good medicine, and Highwire Improv has the prescription! Get your dose of laughs at tonight’s Major Laughs Comedy Show! You’ll enjoy a night of fast-paced comedy games with some of the city’s funniest people. Grab a food and drink, and get ready to have some major laughs!

Old Major’s bar and kitchen open at 6 p.m. 🍴🍷 The show starts after 7 p.m. 🎟️ Tickets: $10 door

You can catch Highwire’s Major Laughs Comedy Show on at Old Major!

Tonight’s lineup!

Brad’s Dad is a hilarious indie improv troupe from Baltimore - they just want to make their (collective) son proud!

are the older sibling of your favorite movie theater candy, but more importantly they are a fantastic short-form improv team!

What is an improv show, exactly?

Improv is live theater created spontaneously by the performers with the inspiration of the audience. Unless noted otherwise, it’s a comedy show, made even more exciting, intriguing, and hilarious by the fact that none of it is pre-scripted! At an improv show you’ll see a wide range of creative and fascinating humans perform a highwire act by making comedy out of thin air! It can take many forms, including short competitive games, slice of life scenes, and full length sitcom or movie style performances!

A Highwire Improv show is truly a once in a lifetime performance, never done before and never to be done again!

About Highwire Improv:

is a nonprofit organization with a mission is to steward a community of artists committed to growth, collaboration, joy, and justice — in Baltimore and around the world—through improvisational theater. Learn more at https://www.highwireimprov.com

01/30/2025

🚨Join us for the Inaugural Wretched Reads Horror Book Club! 😱

Tonight, local horror filmmaker and co-founder Oli T. will lead a discussion on George Orwell’s “Animal Farm” (1945) 🐖They will explore the eerie and unsettling elements within this classic beast fable. Whether you read it in the past or are interested in reading it, we encourage you to attend and participate! 👋

🍽️ Bar + kitchen open at 6 p.m.—come early for food and drinks!
📚 Discussion starts at 7:30 p.m.
📖 We have copies available for sale, if you are interested

Ever wondered about our name? Yes, it is inspired by Animal Farm (which resonated with me even in middle school)! Old Major is a nod to the neighborhood, our building’s past as a well-known cop bar, and my love for dystopian literature and films. Seven years in, it is still our most frequently asked question! 🐗📚

🔪 Next up: Mark your calendar for Feb. 27, when Oli will guide us through Clive Barker’s “The Hellbound Heart”🔥

01/23/2025

If you believe reading is fundamental, we invite you to read with us tonight at Baltimore Silent Book Club at ! 📚 You are free to bring any literature with you in any format—audiobooks, periodicals, e-readers, etc. are cool with us 👍 Join us for an evening of eating, drinking, mingling AND, of course, reading 👋

🍴OM’s bar and kitchen open at 6 p.m. Get in early to grab your seat and a meal or drink (N/A options available)🥃

🎬 🄰🄻🅂🄾 🅃🄾🄽🄸🄶🄷🅃 …
We’re screening director Michael Radford’s dystopian film, “1984” (1984) based on George Orwell’s classic novel, “Nineteen Eighty-Four.” The film begins after 7:30 p.m.—be sure to order a meal or drink to get your golden pass for the film.

About the film

A man loses his identity while living under a repressive regime. Winston Smith is a government employee whose job involves the rewriting of history in a manner that casts his fictional country’s leaders in a charitable light. His trysts with Julia provide his only measure of enjoyment, but lawmakers frown on the relationship—and in this closely monitored society, there is no escape from Big Brother.

#1984

01/20/2025

🔥We’re heating up your Friday night with an epic birthday performance from local vocalist Jade Etienne (.eti)! 🎉🎂

🎤Jade is putting on a funk, R&B and disco show! She’ll be joined by an incredible lineup of Baltimore’s most talented artists, including: Indra Carpio-Pretel, Leo Zurita, Koleby Royston, Aidan Taylor, Jack Nelson, Ethan Bailey-Gould & Sarah Kent 🎶

Come out to celebrate Jade and show love for local talent 🪩💃🏽🎉

🗓️ Friday, January 24
🕕 Doors + kitchen open at 6 p.m. | Show starts at 8 p.m.
🍹Grab some food and drinks before and during the show. Special cocktails in honor of the birthday gal will be available!

01/18/2025

Got some anime fandom in you? OM is thrilled to welcome the Baltimore Anime Denizens (BAD) to our space for a new monthly anime meet up and screening series 🎉

On Saturday, January 18, the group will gather at 6 p.m. to enjoy food and drinks and discuss Japanese culture, including anime, manga, live-action film, tv, art, and more. The screening begins at 7:30 p.m. Be sure to get your golden pass at the bar for admission to the screening room upstairs⭐️

Our bar and kitchen open at 6 p.m., and we will have Japanese-inspired cocktails for the event🍹

BAD will show select episodes of classic neo-noir space western Cowboy Bebop (カウボーイビバップ) directed by Shinichirō Watanabe. Cowboy Bebop centers on the adventures of a group of bounty hunters who travel around the solar system chasing criminals, unraveling their dark and mysterious pasts throughout their journey 🚀

🇯🇵The screening will be in Japanese with English subtitles.

👉Future BAD screenings will take place on at OM👈

Follow:

01/16/2025

If you are in the mood for a movie, literature or language-learning, OM will feature all of these tonight! Our bar and kitchen open at 6 p.m. You are welcome to hang out with us in the bar or enjoy a meal or drinks before your chosen activity🍷🍽️

🎤 6:30 p.m.: Read the Room. OM’s prose and poetry open mic is for anyone who wants to read aloud any written material that they find moving, thought-provoking or soul-stirring. Don’t be shy—we encourage you to not just attend the event but to be a reader.

📝 6:30 p.m.: Write Night! This meetup is for writers of all levels of aspiration and achievement. We invite you to network and bring your writing projects! We’ll have some prompts if you need inspiration.

👅7 p.m.: Spanish Meet & Speak Language Exchange. Come use, practice or improve your Spanish!

🎬 7:30 p.m.: Small Doll Productions’ Film Screening of “Little Otik (Monster horror, dark comedy | 2000). A childless couple passes off an anthropomorphous tree stump as their baby, but things get out of hand when the monstrosity comes to life and demands to be fed.

01/13/2025

Who let the Bahamians out?! 🇧🇸 The Bahamas-born OM sisters send huge thanks to BAAWMAR (the Bahamian American Association of the Washington, DC & Mid-Atlantic Region, Inc.) for holding their New Year Social in our space on Saturday! 🎉

We were delighted to host the group again for a fun, convivial evening with lively Rake & Scrape music, tropical cocktails and food (including Yoli’s conch salad) 🥥🍹🐚

BAAWMAR, among other things, engages directly and often with Bahamians and friends of The Bahamas in the DMV 🌺 Seeing the group has made us even more excited for our upcoming trip to Nassau!✈️🌴🌊

Much love, BAAWMAR, and all the best for a happy 2025! ♥️

01/13/2025

Who let the Bahamians out?! 🇧🇸 The Bahamas-born OM sisters send huge thanks to (the Bahamian American Association of the Washington, DC & Mid-Atlantic Region, Inc.) for holding their New Year Social in our space on Saturday! 🎉

We were delighted to host the group again for a fun, convivial evening with lively Rake & Scrape music, tropical cocktails and food (including Yoli’s conch salad) 🥥🍹🐚

BAAWMAR, among other things, engages directly and often with Bahamians and friends of The Bahamas in the DMV 🌺 Seeing the group has made us even more excited for our upcoming trip to Nassau!✈️🌴🌊

Much love, BAAWMAR, and all the best for a happy 2025! ♥️

01/09/2025

Reading is the habit we hope you will never break in 2025 or beyond! Whether you are an avid reader or you strive to increase your reading, we invite you to join us at 6:30 p.m. for Baltimore Silent Book Club (). 📚If you are a first-timer, it is easy to attend—just bring your own book and meet us at 👋We’ll eat, drink, mingle AND read!

🍴OM’s bar and kitchen open at 6 p.m. Arrive early to get a seat and a meal or drink. If you are participating in Dry January, plenty of N/A beverage options are available🧉

🎬 𝘼𝙡𝙨𝙤 𝙝𝙖𝙥𝙥𝙚𝙣𝙞𝙣𝙜…
In recognition of Baltimore City’s continued drop in homicides over the past two years—which outpaces the decrease in the U.S. as a whole—we are screening the Academy Award-nominated documentary film, “The Body Politic,” released in 2024. Seating is at 7:30 p.m.—enjoy a meal or drink before heading upstairs.

About the film
The Body Politic is a harbinger of hope in a country plagued by gun violence. In Baltimore, Brandon Scott, an idealistic young leader with an ambitious plan to stop chronic violence, is elected mayor. Throughout his first year in office, we follow him as he fights powerful political forces to save lives in Baltimore and reveal a pathway toward healing for the nation.

01/04/2025

The OM team wishes you a very happy, healthy and positive 2025! We’re back from our holiday break and are looking forward to this month’s events and seeing new and old faces at the bar! 🍹🍴

Tonight is the Major Laughs Comedy Show from ! Our bar and kitchen open at 6 p.m., and the show will take place upstairs at 7 p.m. Tickets are available in our bio link and at the door 🎟️

More highlights:

🎬 Screening:
Sat. 1/18 | 6 p.m.: Baltimore Anime Denizens (BAD) Meetup & Screening. OM is excited to welcome BAD to our space to hang out and enjoy “Cowboy Bebop” (highlighting Ein & Ed episodes). Japanese cocktails will be featured in the bar!🎞️

📖 Literature:
Thu. 1/9 & 1/23 | 6:30 p.m.: Got new reading goals? Baltimore Silent Book Club is back on schedule. Bring your own book! We’ll eat, drink, mingle AND read 📚

Thu. 1/16 | 6:30 p.m.: Read the Room. Our prose and poetry open mic 🎤

Thu. 1/16 | 6:30 p.m.: Write Night! This meetup is for writers of all levels of aspiration and achievement 📝

Thu. 1/30 | 6 p.m.: Wretched Reads Horror Book Club. Led by , January’s book is “Animal Farm” by George Orwell. Oli Turner will discuss the horror elements of this timeless satirical novella 😱

🎵Music:
Fri. 1/24 | 8 p.m.: Jade Etienne and a host of other local musical talent will perform R&B, funk & disco 🎹

👅Spanish Language:
Thu. 1/16 | 7 p.m.: Spanish Meet & Speak Language Exchange. Come use, practice or improve your Spanish! 🗣️

Thu. 1/30 | 7 p.m.: Cine en Español. Screening of “La Nana (The Maid),” the award winning 2009 Chilean comedy-drama film 📽️
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Keep an eye out for addiional events and our activity-packed Smörgåsbord nights (karaoke, movies, sip and paint, board games, darts & reading) 🎯🎲🎨🎤🎥📖

📧 If you’re interested in holding an event in our space, email us: [email protected]

🚨Note that OM is closed Saturday, January 25.

Be well this month and always ♥️