Jim Pollock treats the Miracle on 34th Street tradition like a series of date nights.

Every evening from Thanksgiving weekend to New Year’s Day for the past 29 years, he has come home from work, washed up, and opened his home and heart to the hordes of people who visit the 700 block of 34th Street in Hampden to see the “most outrageous Christmas lights” in Maryland.

Known on the block for his 10-foot-tall tree made out of 104 hubcaps, he also welcomes about 1,200 visitors per night into the makeshift gallery in his living room to view work by local artists.

“This tradition is about finding a moment of peace and togetherness in all of this chaos,” says Pollock. “We do this for the city that we love.”

The Book of Mormon
Nov. 3-15. Hippodrome Theatre at the France-Merrick Performing Arts Center, 12 N. Eutaw St. Times vary. $58.50-147. 410-837-7400. Simply put, The Book of Mormon is not for the faint of heart, but we heartily recommend you see it. Hailed “the best musical of this century” by The New York Times, the nine-time Tony winner and Broadway smash hit follows two young missionaries on their quest to convert African citizens to the Mormon faith. Throwing politically correct niceties to the wind, it tackles religion, race, and sexuality through satire, song-and-dance, and a dash of explicit language. From South Park creators Trey Parker and Matt Stone, it’s a bold, witty show unlike anything on the stage before it.

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Zadie Smith
Nov. 3. The Johns Hopkins University, Hodson Hall, 3400 N. Charles St. 6:30 p.m. Free. 410-516-6286. When we look back, Zadie Smith—alongside the likes of Jonathan Franzen, Michael Chabon, and Junot Díaz—will be one of the authors who helped define the beginning of the 21st century. Born in London, the young writer graduated from Cambridge before penning her remarkable, award-winning debut, White Teeth, in 2000. Tackling topics of race, identity, history, and culture through elegant prose, acute wit, flirting plotlines, and magic realism, her social dissection of modern London inspired critical comparisons to Charles Dickens, Martin Amis, and Salman Rushdie. This month, hear Smith discuss her writings as part of the President Speaker Series at JHU.

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Baltimore Blast
Nov. 7-Feb. 2, 2016. Royal Farms Arena, 201 W. Baltimore St. Times & prices vary. 410-347-2020. Indoor soccer season is back, and its time to kick things off with our oft-overlooked hometown team, the Baltimore Blast, as they return to Royal Farms Arena at the beginning of the month. Starting with Saturday evening matches against Chicago, IL, Syracuse, NY, and Harrisburg, PA, see this year’s stellar lineup, with the top three point producers Tony Donatelli, Lucas Roque, pictured, and Pat Healey all back for another shot at the Major Indoor Soccer League championship.

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Jerry Seinfeld
Nov. 6. Joseph Meyerhoff Symphony Hall. 1212 Cathedral St. 7 and 9:30 p.m. $65-155. 410-783-8000. What’s the deal with Jerry Seinfeld? In an era when it seems like every entertainer is trying to “expand their brand” and diversify into some kind of performer/diet guru/fashion designer/tech visionary/chakra healer, Seinfeld has, thankfully, kept it simple. Sure, he has made forays into film (the 2002 documentary Comedian; 2007’s animated Bee Movie), and yes, he can be found tooling around town with his funny friends in the delightfully idiosyncratic web series Comedians in Cars Getting Coffee, but he has never strayed far from his core talent: He tells jokes and he does it well.

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Pearls on a String: Artists, Patrons, & Poets at the Great Islamic Courts
Nov. 8-Jan. 31, 2016. The Walters Art Museum, 600 N. Charles St. Wed.-Sun. 10 a.m.-5 p.m. Free. 410-547-9000. thewalters.org. In this new exhibit at The Walters, explore the exotic treasures of the great Islamic empires with over 100 artworks dating back to the 16th century. Through three vignettes of paintings, ceramics, textiles, and luxuries, delve into their rich cultural history and discover the relationship between imagination, collaboration, and creativity.

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Charm City Fringe Festival
Nov. 8-15. Locations, times, & prices vary. Now in its fourth year, the Charm City Fringe Festival
returns to Station North to celebrate Baltimore’s diverse performing arts
community. Starting on Thursday with an opening party at Joe Squared, this
weeklong event features a medley of 20-plus performances by local and regional
talent, including Baltimore Improv Group, Baltimore Shakespeare Factory, and
Gilded Lily Burlesque. See theater, comedy, improv, and dance at venues like
Terrault Contemporary, Mercury Theatre, Gallery 788, and Church & Company,
followed by after-parties with shows, music, and drinks at Liam Flynn’s Ale
House and Joe Squared each night.

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Waterfowl Festival

Nov. 12-15. 40 S.
Harrison St., Easton. Fri.-Sat. 10 a.m.-5 p.m., Sun 10 a.m.-4 p.m. Free-$15.
410-822-4567
. Head across the bridge
and celebrate the Eastern Shore for one fall weekend full of wildlife arts,
tidewater culture, and local activities in the historic town of Easton. Now in
its 44th year, the Waterfowl Festival attracts thousands for its esteemed
artwork, with paintings, photography, sculptures, and carvings on view and for
sale. Also, don’t miss its bucolic, bay-oriented activities, like goose- and
duck-calling contests, dock-jumping dog competitions, and retriever, live bird,
and fly-fishing demos, all of which you can observe or participate in.

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BSO Pulse: Wye Oak
Nov. 12. Joseph Meyerhoff Symphony Hall, 1212 Cathedral St. 5 p.m. $35. 410-783-8000. We have to hand it to the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra and WTMD for their cool new music series, Pulse. The pairing of BSO musicians with rising indie-rock bands creates one-of-a-kind concerts that connect the present to the past and takes another step in the symphony’s ongoing quest to evolve with modern times. In this second installment, see local duo Wye Oak perform a night of genre transcendence or listen live via 89.7 FM.

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Bazaart Holiday Art Market
Nov. 27-28. American Visionary Art Museum, 800 Key Hwy. Fri. 5:30-8 p.m., Sat. 10 a.m.-5 p.m. Free-$20. 410-244-1900. This holiday season, it’s time to boycott the big boxes and instead buy your loved ones some unique local gifts. At AVAM’s annual holiday market, browse original works by more than 40 regional artists and craftspeople, including paintings, sculpture, paper crafts, metalwork, jewelry, textiles, and apparel, with early-bird shopping at the First Dibs preview party on Friday.

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Miracle on 34th Street
Nov. 28-Jan. 1, 2016. 700 block of 34th St. Free. 5-11 p.m. Christmas comes early in Hampden again this month, just as it has for the past 67 years. Shortly after Thanksgiving, the festive neighborhood tradition of Miracle on 34th Street returns with the entire block decking their digs in bright holiday lights, sporting everything from illuminated Bohs and Miss Utz to crabs, flamingos, and the famous hubcap tree. Through New Year’s Day, join the throngs of locals and tourists alike to get in the holiday spirit with this Baltimore classic.

Cargo Vessels

Dunmanway

December 23, 2014

Amid the Christmas decorations, tree, and lights, sit hundreds of gift-wrapped shoeboxes, stacked along the walls of the cramped Stella Maris Seafarers’ Center in Dundalk. Sent by local churches, schools, and charities, and filled with toothpaste, shaving cream, gloves, and scarves—as well as pens and stationery for writing home—some 1,500 presents will be delivered by volunteers to seamen docked at the Port of Baltimore this season.

“The sailors come from all over the developing world: Sri Lanka, Indonesia, the Philippines, former Soviet bloc countries, most working on eight- to 10-month contracts,” says Monsignor John FitzGerald, who oversees the center, a mission of the Archdiocese of Baltimore. “It’s a lonely life. They miss holidays, the births of children, and funerals of parents.”

Part logistics hub, chapel—FitzGerald celebrates Mass in four languages—and Internet cafe, the center provides services to 12,000 seafarers a year, many of whom e-mail and Skype with family from its computers. Volunteer van drivers also offer seamen, often in dock for only 12 hours, the chance to refill prescriptions at pharmacies and, like the visiting Chinese seafarers today, to shop for themselves or loved ones at their favorite American stores like Walmart and Best Buy.

“Everything in the U.S., you can buy in China. Bose headphones, UGG boots, and iPhone 6, but it costs a lot more. [An] iPhone 6—$150 more,” says Jianteng Li, 36, in heavly accented English as his mates pose for photos in front of the center’s Christmas tree, still apparently an exotic religious artifact in a country that remains officially atheist.

“My wife e-mailed me,” Li shrugs and smiles. “She wants UGGs. Two pairs.”

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King for a Day

South Linwood Avenue

December 30, 2014

There is free ice skating here later for kids participating in Baltimore’s 75th Annual Doll Show, but right now they’re busy playing with their favorite dolls—the term is applied broadly—and looking forward to the contest. It’s a beauty pageant of sorts for toys, and the rules are simple: entrants must be 14 or under and may only enter one doll in one category—such as foreign, antique, best stuffed, action figure, or most unusual. “The judges ask the kids questions about their doll, which is great, because they get to talk about something they love and be taken seriously,” says Trish Jefferson, who’s been coming since 1957 and is watching her granddaughter run around the rec room inside the Dominic “Mimi” DiPietro Family Skating Center.

One 5-year-old enters her obviously well loved, worn, stuffed panda, which she’s had, she explains, since meeting Tai Shan, a giant panda, at the National Zoo.

“How old is your panda?”

“One-hundred and thirty,” responds the girl, not missing a beat.

After the category winners receive their ribbons, two overall winners are named the show’s official King and Queen. Along with trophies, they’re handed authentic-looking crowns and seated in a throne for pictures. “Queen” Kimore Spencer, 12, won for her vintage, box-kept, African-American Barbie. Edward Clark, 11, won both “most unusual” and “King” honors for his dead baby shark, preserved in a jar. “A friend of my father’s brought it from Florida,” he says, proudly, noting it’s a blacktip shark as he points out the telltale fin markings.

Afterwards, in line for skates, he adjusts the crown still atop his head.

“I’ve never ice-skated before,” he admits, “but I’m not taking this off.”

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Hampden’s Ball

34th Street

January 1, 2015

“Somebody get me the time,” pleads 58-year-old Bob Hosier, pacing in his row-house living room in a diaper, bonnet, and bib. Surrounded by friends and family—including an actual baby whose diaper is being changed on the sofa—Hosier is nervously trying to sync the televised New Year’s Eve ball-drop in Times Square with the light-post ball-drop he’s been rigging up in front of his house for the past two and a half decades.

“It takes 22 seconds for our ball to drop,” explains Hosier, who, along with starting the audacious holiday-decorating phenomenon known as the “Miracle on 34th Street,” appears each year as “Baby New Year” at midnight to anxious throngs. “If it took a full minute, I’d need a 60-foot pole and the city wouldn’t go for that.”

Just before the climatic moment, Hosier kisses his wife and daughter, and then, as fireworks fly, he opens his front door to wild applause, popping champagne as he waves to the crowd.

“There he is!”

“Hey, Baby New Year!”

“Oh, that’s one sexy diaper!”

Fortified by 100-proof Old Grand-Dad, Hosier mingles with members of the fawning, and, for the most part, only mildly intoxicated crowd, who offer toasts and kisses, rub his belly for luck, and pose for delirious selfies.

“You know,” says an onlooker to his girlfriend, “waiting for him to come out of his house every year, it’s like he’s our version of Punxsutawney Phil.”

“The difference,” his date smiles, scanning the beefy, nearly naked Hosier, “is just a little less hair.”

If last December you had walked down Hampden’s West 34th Street, past the giant candy canes, Teddy-bear soldiers, lit-up archways, and singing and dancing dolls, you would have eventually come to Sharon Whalen’s sloping front yard. There, at 712 West 34th, you would have found a metallic Santa crab—with gold-painted wrenches for appendages—sitting atop a giant sleigh, which appeared to be pulled by eight smaller crabs.

Obviously not store bought, the crab is more sculptural than decorative. Conceived and constructed by Whalen’s neighbor Jim Pollock, it injects an artist’s sensibility into the over-the-top Christmas kitsch lining the block. The “Miracle on 34th Street,” as it’s been dubbed, would not be as astonishing if it were all commercial decorations and no original art, nor if it were all original art and no traditional lights and figures. It’s the combination of the two that makes the block so special.

“We as a city need more art,” Pollock says. “We need to see art on a daily basis. It’s a softening of the streets…. If people would take a chance and put art in their front yards and not worry about some critic’s criteria, we’d live in a much more interesting place. We’re taught that we have to please our boss, please our mate, but if people would go outside conformity and say, ‘I don’t care what anybody says; this is who I am,’ that’s a powerful gift to give yourself and your community.”

Last year, Pollock’s own display included a bare Christmas tree frame from which dangled 10 more of his small golden crabs, two Natty Boh beer can angels, four Old Bay Seasoning boxes, and a handful of colored lights. Above his porch, 10 of his white, pencil-steel snowflakes were affixed to the red-brick facade. Four snowmen—each made from white-painted bicycle rims, stacked large, medium, and small—stood on the porch roof while two snow angels hung from the porch’s ceiling.

Pollock also created one of 34th Street’s best-known holiday landmarks: the Hubcap Christmas Tree. A crowd favorite, it’s a towering, eight-foot assemblage of battered hubcaps wired together in a pine-tree shape and decorated with flashing colored lights. It’s topped off with a yellow, plastic stegosaurus where you’d expect a golden star.

Pollock, 42, is a trained artist who graduated from the Maryland Institute College of Art and has exhibited in galleries, but he doesn’t buy the notion that a credential or résumé separates artists from ordinary folks. With that in mind, he mentions his neighbors, Bob Hosier and Al Morgan, who own the block’s most brightly lit houses.

“Bob and Al use the traditional Christmas decorations that I grew up with as a kid,” Pollock says, “but what makes them folk artists is their determination to push beyond the usual limits. They want to create something different from anyone else; they want to make their homes look the best they can, so they add something new, something different every year. That’s what artists do.

“What I like is that everyone on the street is doing something different. Across from my house is a tree decorated with giant gold ornaments. Right next door is a front yard filled with new-folk-art reindeer. Next to that is a house that’s all blue with angels, because they’ve lost some family members. Next to that are the hand-painted Whos from Dr. Seuss’s Whoville. Next door lives a portrait painter who has painted Bethlehem landscapes for a crèche. Everyone’s expressing themselves rather than trying to fit a pattern.”

Pollock grew up in Southern Maryland’s Waldorf, out where the new subdivisions met the woods. As a youngster, he would roam through the forest looking for deer antlers and unusual branches to carve. Eventually, his sculptures won him a scholarship to MICA. After graduation in 1989, Pollock and three college friends moved into the 700 block of 34th Street.

The week before Thanksgiving, they noticed many of their neighbors hanging Christmas decorations, so they decided to get in on the fun. Being 1980s punk rockers, they strung some lights in the shape of a giant X on their rowhouse.

No one seemed to mind. The “live and let live” vibe of the block appealed to Pollock so much that, even though he’d moved out of his rental in 1992, he came back and bought the same house in 1993.

That’s when he really got caught up in the block’s obsession with Christmas decorations. “I hunted the alleys of Hampden to find materials for my art,” he says. “I’d find these busted-up, thrown-away bicycles and tricycles, and when I took off the rims and put them side-by-side, it became obvious to me that they were snowmen.”

“It’s not critics who build nations. Artists do. And we can all be artists if we want.”

He was so excited that he kept grabbing more rims and welding them into different postures—some were riding a sleigh, some were blowing trumpets, some were grabbing snowflakes out of the air. Pollock stuck them in his front yard and his neighbors loved them. His next-door neighbor traded cases of cat food for one.

At one point, a neighbor suggested that Pollock open his house to exhibit and sell his artwork over the holidays. He warmed to the suggestion, threw out all the beer cans and pizza boxes in his front room, and painted the walls. He and a friend, fellow sculptor Jeffrey Harris, set up their work and opened the door. “We had 1,100 people come through that first year, 1996,” says Pollock. “It was more people than had ever seen our art before.”

Every year since then, Pollock has propped a hand-painted sign that reads, “Open House—Discover Two Artists,” against the Hubcap Tree. Last year, the entire front half of his first floor had been turned into a gallery. Stenciled snowflakes were painted onto the floor. On the walls hung Pollock’s non-holiday sculptures: weathered shovels with deer antlers blossoming from the top, a mask made from bent and welded wrenches, and dancing banjo players made from drill bits and coal-stove handles. Pollock himself, wearing a red, Santa-like hat, stood inside the front door, greeting each visitor with a grin.

Last year, he was open for 31 days and counted 25,400 people through the door.

Pollock has been working exclusively with metal—mostly from cast-off and recycled items—since 1994, when vandals burned down a shed housing his work. After losing 70 percent of his artwork, which, at the time, was made mostly of wood and fabric, he turned to a fireproof material. It was all metal, all the time. It wasn’t long before Pollock was spending his days finishing bronze casts for his job at Hampden’s New Arts Foundry and welding rusting pieces of junk into strange figures at night.

“My mom’s from the hills of West Virginia,” he says, “and my father’s from the hills of Pennsylvania. I subscribe to the old hill saying, ‘Use it up, wear it out; make do or do without.’ I’m a pack rat. I’m not willing to throw away anything that might be useful . . . Instead of adding to the trash, I’m trying to give the trash a second life.

“When people look at my art, they get that: I’m taking something old and making it new in their eyes because I’m using it in a new way. For example, if I pick up the handles from old coal stoves and say, ‘Those look like legs with feet on them,’ I’m on my way to a figure. I add an old pulley for a hip and drill bits for the arms. But I only let the materials suggest the forms; I don’t want to change the materials so much that people don’t recognize them. That’s where the pleasure comes in, that you can tell that it’s a coal-stove handle as well as a leg and foot.”

In Eric and Janice Willison’s 2005 documentary film, Metal and Man: The Art of Jim Pollock, Pollock demonstrates how he transforms discarded trash into sculpture. In one scene, he cuts down a 55-gallon oil drum with a disc saw until it resembles an insect’s thorax. He takes rusted, curly wire strands from an old fence and fashions them into wings. Then, he pulls two doorknobs off his own house, paints them with fingernail polish, and sticks them in the insect’s head. Suddenly, he’s got a giant cicada that he can hang from the ceiling for his open house.

He was similarly resourceful while creating his signature piece. On January 7, 1996, a historic snowstorm hit Baltimore and left behind a giant pothole on Keswick Avenue, just around the corner from Pollock’s house. For the rest of the winter, passing cars would slam into that pothole, and unloosed hubcaps would roll to the curb. Little did those drivers know that they were helping give birth to the Hubcap Tree.

Pollock and his neighbors collected the orphaned silver saucers and by November, they had a big enough stash that Pollock wired them together into a three-foot tree. A few years later—as friends, neighbors, and strangers donated more hubcaps—the tree had grown to six feet; by last December, it was eight feet tall. Pollock thinks it might grow a bit taller yet.

“The second year I had the Hubcap Tree up, these people came and said, ‘We come every year to have our picture taken in front of the Hubcap Tree,’” Pollock recalls. “I said, ‘But it’s only been up two years.’ That shows how hungry people are for traditions, especially secular, non-denominational traditions. It’s hard to unite a country that’s multi-cultural, but if we celebrated each other’s traditions instead of fighting over them, we’d be partying all the time.”

Pollock and his neighbors work hard to maintain the tradition and have, for the most part, resisted commercializing it. “People always want to know who organizes it and pays for it all,” says Bob Hosier. “It’s 22 individuals who design their own homes and pay their own electric bills. We don’t get a break from BG&E. We’ve had businesses who wanted to sponsor us, but if you had a sign out front that said, ‘Brought to you by…,’ it would take something away from it. It’s not a business; it’s not a show; it’s not an attraction. It’s a home that’s decorated for the holidays. Everyone is always asking me how much I spend on my electric bill, but I won’t say, because this isn’t about money. Everything else is about money, but this is about Christmas.”

Still, some folks treat the “Miracle on 34th Street” as something of an elaborate joke. Amongst the crowds last December, you could hear snarky twentysomethings poking fun at the tackiness of the displays. You could hear lovers of contemporary art sniffing at the unbridled garishness of the decorations.

“There are critics,” Pollock acknowledges. “There are people who call it the ‘Hub-Crap Tree.’ But it’s not other people’s opinions that matter; it’s your own opinion that matters. It’s not critics who build cities and nations. Artists do. And we can all be artists if we want.”