the list

Devon Allman and Donavon Frankenreiter are running a musical marathon. The 50-year-old guitarists plan to play 50 shows in 50 states in fewer than 50 days, a record they hope will be endorsed by Guinness World Bookers. Their crazy quest begins with an Aug. 5 doubleheader:

August is my favorite time of the year because I can celebrate my birthday, my wedding anniversary and salute fellow Leos from Tom Brady to Dua Lippa, all with one long afternoon of day-drinking and righteous revelry. Not advisable for the less protean Leos in the crowd, but it’s easier just to get it all out of the way at once. Roar.

So, August.

Let’s start with what else is great about Philly in August beyond just celebrating me. Like the BlackStar Film Festival along the Avenue of the Arts, August 2 through August 6. One of the things that an afternoon gig at the Rams Head in Annapolis, Md. and a nightcap at Musikfest, which for 40 summers has turned Bethlehem into a giant free-range radio. The Americaplatz performance by Frankenreiter, a professional surfer, and Allman, son of the late vocalist/keyboardist/Brother Gregg, is one of 500-odd free concerts by everyone from a steel-worker polka band to an American-standard handbell choir to specialists in Earth Wind & Fire & Radiohead. Ticketed acts include country musician Walker Hayes, the pop/rock group Train and El Gran Combo, a 14-piece, 61-year-old ensemble from Puerto Rico that can make the most phobic dancer twist and shout. (Aug. 3-13; 610-332-1300; musikfest.org)

Let’s face it, today’s car design sucks. Buicks mimic BMWs. Mustangs are steroidal bores. Virtually every body resembles a jogging sneaker assembled on the same line. An antidote to this dispiriting disease is Das Awkscht Fescht, the annual three-day candy store of venerable, venerated vintage vehicles. You don’t have to be a gear head or an aesthete to

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Geoff Gehman is a former arts writer for The Morning Call in Allentown and the author of five books, including Planet Mom: Keeping an Aging Parent from Aging, The Kingdom of the Kid: Growing Up in the LongLost Hamptons, and Fast Women and Slow Horses: The (mis)Adventures of a Bar, Betting and Barbecue Man (with William Mayberry) He lives in Bethlehem. geoffgehman@verizon.net

Philadelphia has done right for well over a decade it the BlackStar Film Festival and its dedication to uplifting the work of Black, Brown and Indigenous artists working outside of the confines of cinematic genre. Credit curator, exec director and founder Maori Karmael Holmes for making it all happen, again, and this year for centering its screening and social events in, on and around the Kimmel Cultural Campus.

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A.D. Amorosi is a Los Angeles Press Club National Art and Entertainment Journalism award-winning journalist and national public radio host and producer (WPPM.org’s Theater in the Round) married to a garden-to-table cooking instructor + award-winning gardener, Reese, and father to dogdaughter Tia.