Sir Andrew Lloyd Webber's dramatic love story The Phantom of the Opera, presented here by Broadway Across America, was nothing short of breathtaking during its Houston stop. Directed by Harold Prince, Phantom showed us why it's one of the most musically thrilling, visually lavish Broadway musicals ever — and why it's the longest-running show in Broadway history. There is, of course, the music ("Think of Me," "The Phantom of the Opera" and "The Music of the Night"), with lovely melodies that become intertwined and then break free of each other. And who can forget the startling fall of the opera house's chandelier as it went swooshing over the audience's heads?

Molly's is Clear Lake's social ground zero, with only some dartboards and an Internet jukebox to distract you from good, old-fashioned boozing. Wednesdays are Big Ass Beer nights, when the haunt gets so packed it's almost stifling. Sure, there may be bigger and more upscale bars in the Bay Area district, but there's a feeling of home at Molly's that you can't find at the alterna-rocking Scout Bar or the boot-scooting Big Texas a few miles away. Get your cash in the jukebox early or suffer the consequences of an hour of Staind and Nickelback. We recommend Miles Davis's Kind of Blue.

Arts fans around the city hold a special place in their hearts for BooTown's Houston Fringe Festival. This year the little festival that could included a lineup of cutting-edge artists in theater, music, dance, film, performance art, puppetry and work that defies categorization. Spread out over several venues in the Montrose/Museum District, the week-long festival featured appearances by local favorites Mildred's Umbrella Theatre Company, Pandora Theatre, The 48-Hour Film Project: Houston, and Houston Metropolitan Dance Company, among others. Also on the program were Raleigh's Code F.A.D. Company (a group that mixes film, art and dance onstage) and San Antonio's ChinaCat (a dance/design/fire show production company — oooh, a fire show!). While well produced and steadily growing in scope and size, the festival still has an endearing "Hey, let's get together and put on a show!" feel.

Graffiti guru GONZO247 is equal parts artist, entrepreneur, organizer, curator, activist, teacher and all-around good guy. Working in the field for more than 20 years, GONZO247 has had his edgy, powerful work on walls around the country, as well as in galleries — including his own Aerosol Warfare Gallery, part of a store-front gallery/shop/studio he founded to promote graffiti and urban art. As a curator, he's presented a number of shows, including one recently that brought attention to the issue of battered women. He's also organized a video series to document graffiti artists' lives and work. Coming up he's got "Graffiti Gala 2010 Houston," a large-scale show and fundraiser benefiting the CKC StART Street & Graffiti Art Workshops, where he teaches others, from kids to seniors, how to create urban art. Those are his work credentials; as far as the good guy part, you'll just have to take our word for it.

Any theater group that can produce such a robust mounting of Tom Stoppard's dense and rich Arcadia is number one in our view. That it also imbues such a magical play with clarity, intelligence and a bit of self-serving charm is pure icing. Throughout the season, Main Street has produced all its shows with a lustrous dexterity that belies its pint-size venue, keeping us close and thoroughly enthralled. What a joy to experience (probably for the only time) Sophie Treadwell's rarely performed Machinal (1928), a chilling — and classic — indictment of faceless 1920s society. Alfred Uhry's The Last Night of Ballyhoo, a heartfelt comic tale of upwardly mobile Jews in pre-WW II Atlanta, was brilliantly detailed. Magical realism was laid on hot and heavy for Caridad Svich's world-premiere English adaptation of Isabel Allende's sprawling South American family saga The House of the Spirits, while the diva of all divas, Maria Callas, was conjured up for us, warts and all, in Terrence McNally's Master Class. Even Lans Traverse's clunker of an American premiere, Driftwood (whose fragrant title promised so much more), couldn't dampen the season. Main Street's abiding professionalism — its ability to do so much within a space that's so little — is the essence of great theater. It creates worlds where none exist.

Unfortunately, in Houston, if you want to play poker against actual people and not computer avatars, and you don't want to go to an "underground" room where there's always the possibility of participating in a police raid or having a gun pointed at your face, you'll have to settle for the bar leagues. None are better than the Snowman Poker League hosted by Mezzanine Lounge, usually three nights a week. The entire downstairs fills up with poker tables and players, and at Mezzanine, if you want to get away from that scene, you can simply walk upstairs to the bar's sprawling second floor, where the bartenders are great and the booze is cheap.

West Alabama Ice House has Outer Loop suburban icehouse charm right inside the Loop, with a healthy roster of beers in their coolers and an all-star cast of friendly bartenders slinging them for you. Most every weekend, something fun is going on outside on the expansive patio, from gourmet taco cookouts to live music from bands like Sean Reefer & The Resin Valley Boys. The bar celebrated its 80th year of service in 2008, making this one 82-year-old you won't mind hanging with on a Friday night for a few free hot dogs and a few cold Lone Stars.

When it comes to this year's crop of local films, For the Sake of the Song is far and away the most significant. Other films were as well done, others as interesting, but For the Sake of the Song captured an only-in-Houston story like no other. Taking home awards from this year's Nashville Film Festival and the Park City Film Music Festival as well as the WorldFest-Houston International Film Festival, Sake of the Song documented the history of local music venue Anderson Fair. Over the last 40 years, the venue has been a launching pad for some of the most influential acoustic music artists to ever grace a Texas stage, including Lyle Lovett, Nanci Griffith and the late Townes Van Zandt. Through four decades of a rapidly changing music industry and with an all-volunteer staff, Anderson Fair remained loyal to one idea: It's all about the music. And it's that spirit that For the Sake of the Song so vividly captures.

Here at Spring Branch/West Houston's gateway dive bar, the owners don't stop at pool and all those golf and deer hunter electronic games. Nor do they add in good-to-great cork dartboards and call it a day. Nope. The Burlap Barrel does strip-mall dive bars everywhere proud by also rocking a full-size, very well-maintained shuffleboard set and a cup-flip table. There's also a ping-pong table. As the Barrel is super-popular with waitstaff and other industry types from the many restaurants in the nearby Energy Corridor, Westchase and Memorial City Mall districts, all these indoor sports could help you unlock the heart of the Chili's server of your dreams. PS: As the official home of Kansas Jayhawk sports-viewing in the Houston area, the Barrel's unofficial official sport might just be (Missouri) Tiger hunting.

The Energy definitely doesn't promise you a rose garden over their debut album's eight gruesome tracks of suicidal Stooges- and Danish punk-rock-derived anthems. Led by singer and graphic artist Arthur Bates, the Energy is made up of some of our city's best and brightest punkers who somehow banded together to make the only Houston album this year that will make even your worst day feel like a picnic in comparison. "Girls Don't Like Me at All" is the sound of being locked down on a romantic merry-go-round with a gut full of whiskey and a handful of medicinal courage.