Middle River, MD Indoor Activities

Created by Steve Geppi, the founder of Diamond Comic Distributors, Geppi's Entertainment Museum traces the evolution of American popular culture from the late 1700s to today with nearly 6,000 artifacts such as comics, dolls, and games. Along with rotating special exhibitions, the museum's permanent galleries each dedicate themselves to a specific period or medium. Rekindle your flame with favorite cultural characters such as Batman, Mickey Mouse, and Barbie as you place them in historical context via the museum's massive memorabilia-based timeline. Geppi's Entertainment Museum further enriches students' cultural and historical savvy on educational tours that examine pop culture in wartime or suggest preservation and pickling methods for first-time collectors.

While all of us spend each day moving, it takes an analytical awareness of self to become a movement expert like Jayne Bernasconi. The owner of Yoga on York leads a double live as dance faculty member at Towson University and an Aerial Dancer. She combined the aerial silks of her dance career with the asana of yoga, debuting her newly invented aerial yoga at the Aerial Dance Festival in Colorado in 2002. Her original creation represents but one of nine types of yoga taught at her studio, and stands alongside classic sequences, yoga and Pilates fusion classes, and yoga for kids.

Twin brothers and Parkville Lanes co-owners Edward and Brian Foreman have given sphere slingers a home for classic duckpin-style bowling since 1986 with 26 gleaming lanes. While the rules of duckpin bowling are similar to those of the traditional 10-pin game, bowlers play duckpin with softball-size bowling balls that lack treacherous finger traps, which they hurl at shorter, squatter pins with three throws per turn. Between turns, patrons can refresh at the snack bar, where steaming slices of pizza are chased with sips of brews and wine. Perfect for family-fun nights and dates with retired wrecking balls, Parkville Lanes can also accommodate larger parties for birthdays, wedding receptions, and bowling leagues.

Inside a practice space heated between 80 and 90 degrees, yogis Michele and Sean guide students of all ages and experience levels through the reinvigorating poses of Vinyasa power yoga. During up to two classes per day, the instructors help pupils master the style's breathing techniques and synchronized postures, which transition seamlessly into one another, much like a month of video-game playing leads to a Cheetos addiction. The heated room coaxes muscles into sinking into deeper stretches for increased flexibility and detoxifies bodies via sweat. A stock of free rental mats cushions guests throughout the session, and a free introductory course for new students allows novices to sample the Vinyasa style every Thursday night.

The Modell Performing Arts Center at the Lyric has a deep history that stretches back to the 1890s, when frequent polkas filled the air on summer evenings and the walls were decked out in beer-garden fashion. Throughout the following century, acts ranging from demonstrations of electric cooking to performances by Ella Fitzgerald and Robin Williams have inspired awe and given cause for recent restoration.

After earning her Bikram yoga instructor certification from the practice's founder, Bikram Choudhury, studio director Sarah Ittmann traveled the world teaching the 26-posture practice throughout the United States, Canada, England, and Ireland. Now settled in Baltimore, Sarah and her team of certified Bikram teachers host daily classes in a 2,000-square-foot space.

Since the hot temperatures—which hover around the 100-degree mark—incite healthy sweating and detoxification, staffers regularly steam-wash the antimicrobial, nonslip floor to keep the studio as clean as Mr. Bubble's standup routine. They also provide men's and women's locker rooms equipped with showers, toiletries, and hair-dryers.