In Baltimore, These Santa Clauses Bring Pork And Christmas Trees To Your Door

Santa Claus takes many forms throughout the holiday season: there's the work party Santa, the parade float Santa and the illustrious mall Santa. In Baltimore, there's the Santa on a cargo bike carrying several hundred pounds worth of Christmas trees, trailed by the scent of slow-cooked pork.

Every weekend from Thanksgiving until shortly before Christmas, Todd Coleman and Mike Santoro dress as Santa Claus, load Douglas and Fraser firs on their bikes and pack a cooler full of pulled pork sandwiches. The duo run Pork 'N Pine: a local legend of a business that is Baltimore kitsch personified, founded in 2011, that delivers BBQ and Christmas trees to your door. They can carry up to eight trees each at a time and deliver up to of 30 a day.

The two source their trees from a farm in York, Pa. and their sandwiches from local caterer HarborQue. The BBQ arrives deconstructed — that is, meat, buns and sauces are packaged separately for a customer to build into a sandwich. On a recent bitterly cold Saturday morning, Santoro loaded the final trees of the year onto his bike and mounted a pink, paper mache pig atop. It looked a little sorry: one of its ears held on by a thread.