In this week’s peek into Baltimore arts, we chat up a Baltimore-born comic who is hoping to move on to the finals of “America’s Got Talent”, learn how line dancing saved a Baltimorean’s life and go behind-the-scenes of a film set in Charm City. The audience and judges gave comedian Mike E. Winfield a standing ovation after his first performance on NBC’s “America’s Got Talent” in late May. “They were literally chanting my name,” the Baltimore-born comic said. “It was more like an out of body experience… When I walked back, Terry Crews [the show’s host] was like ‘Do you feel it? Do you feel your life changing at this very moment?’ I was so struck by everything happening I was like, ‘I don’t know.’”

North Ave. Market is closing its doors, the business announced Monday on Facebook and Instagram. The latest iteration of the combination arcade, bar and music venue located in the Station North Arts District opened in early 2020. The arcade’s Facebook page, which describes itself as “not your average market!” said Monday that the space was permanently closed. The owners could not be reached for comment, but former North Ave. bartender Mars Magma said the business’s last day open was Saturday and that the property was sold to a Baltimore developer.

Last week’s Democratic rally in Rockville, headlined by President Biden and featuring an all-star cast of party luminaries, was a big hit, a rollicking show. It gave the party faithful the red-meat rhetoric they were looking for, and just as important, it gave them hope. Maybe the midterms won’t be as disastrous as the Democrats once feared. As I sat in the press section of the raucous gym at Richard Montgomery High School, penned in by the camera riser and some temporary fencing, I found myself wondering, why Maryland and why now?

In May, literary critic Christian Lorentzen published a Substack newsletter about being bored. “Hollywood movies are boring. Television is boring. Pop music is boring. The art world is boring. Broadway is boring. Books from big publishing are boring,” he wrote. Since I have been rather bored, too, I paid $5 to read the entire piece, but was unconvinced by his conclusion, which lays the blame for artistic stasis on the primacy of marketing. The risk aversion of cultural conglomerates can’t explain why there’s not more interesting indie stuff bubbling up. I had hoped that when the black hole of the Donald Trump presidency ended, redirected energy might allow for a cultural efflorescence. So far, that hasn’t happened.

As Baltimore students head back to school, consider the long odds they face to have a successful year. A 2019 national test found that more than half of Baltimore City’s eighth-grade students scored below basic in reading or math. Fewer than 1 in 3 Baltimore City public school students scored “proficient” on the last state assessment before the pandemic. That was before prolonged school closures caused students to fall even further behind. In 2021, Baltimore City reported that 65 percent of secondary students and half of elementary school students were failing at least one class.

One of Gov. Larry Hogan’s top policy priorities — a plan to relieve traffic snarls along the Capital Beltway and I-270 — got the green light Thursday from a key federal agency. “This is a major milestone for the most important transportation project for the National Capital Region in the last 50 years. With the Biden administration’s final approval, we are ready to move forward with this transformative project,” the term-limited executive said in a statement. The Federal Highway Administration issued its “record of decision,” the final step in the National Environmental Policy Act process that spanned more than four years, less than a month after federal officials told the state of Maryland that final action on the $7.6 billion project had been deferred indefinitely.

Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Md.) made it official on Friday and confirmed that he’s seeking to become chair of the U.S. House Committee on Oversight and Reform. Raskin sent a letter to colleagues in the House Democratic Caucus asking for support of his bid to lead the powerful panel, where he is currently chair of the Subcommittee on Civil Rights and Civil Liberties. Multiple Democrats are jockeying to become the top Democrat on the panel after current chair, Rep. Carolyn Maloney (D-New York), was defeated in her primary election earlier this week. “I am grateful to Carolyn Maloney for her leadership of the Committee during the most thoroughgoing assault on American democratic institutions in more than a century,” Raskin wrote in the letter.