Sidewalk Grilling

This one time

Was thinking about this one night in January 2021, when all of my neighbors were hanging out on the corner. During Covid no one was allowed inside our local bar, but you could drink on the sidewalk. Fine in the summer, miserable in the winter. It was so cold you had to hold the beers in your bare hands to keep them from freezing. Phil the bartender would just hand us a bottle of whiskey out the bar window and we would pass it, all slugging from the same jug, because we’d all already had Covid, most of us having gotten it from this bar.

It was around midnight and I was so cold already I couldn’t feel my knees. We were all shivering but no one wanted to go home, because then you would have to be alone. Nobody wanted to be alone, not in the middle of January, not in a pandemic where everyone knew someone who had died.

(Let’s switch it to present tense. Why not?)

I’m leaning on the chainlink fence with my neighbor Polish Andrew, who is more or less impervious to the cold. He’s a big guy, wearing camo sweats and a fur-lined hat. This night, he’s the drunkest man I’ve ever seen. He squints over in the distance and he says, “Here comes Old Man Steve.”

A note about Old Man Steve. He’s a former construction worker from Detroit turned experimental filmmaker. He hung out with Nan Golden back in the day. He once told me he decided to make movies after trying to see a porno in Times Square and walking into a Wim Wenders movie by mistake. He has maybe eight teeth and he talks like he’s spent the last four decades gargling asphalt.

But something’s wrong. Steve’s crossing the street from his house like normal, but he’s leaning on some contraption, moving real slow.

“Oh shit,” says Polish Andrew. “Does Steve have a walker?”

“Maybe he slipped on some ice or something. Hope he’s okay.”

“His age, miracle he didn’t break a hip.”

When Old Man Steve gets close though, I realize it’s not a walker, it’s a grill. Crossing four lanes of traffic, moving two miles an hour, pushing a grill in the cold.

“Anybody got charcoal?” Steve hollers.

Immediately my neighbor Dave makes a beeline to his apartment. He comes back lugging a giant bag of charcoal and some lighter fluid and he dumps it in the grill and we get the thing lit up. Yeah, we’re on the sidewalk, but the cops barely exist anymore, and they’ve stopped arresting anyone for anything a long time ago. The flames are nice and high and everyone settles in around it, warming their hands like it’s a trashcan fire in an old movie.

Next thing you know Phil the bartender comes outside, gripping a pack of wieners. “I found these in the fridge,” he says. “I have no idea how old they are.”

“Hot dogs don’t go bad!” yells Old Man Steve. “Throw ’em on.”

My neighbor Justin pipes up, “I’ve got prime rib back home.”

Tahir next door says, “I’ve got chicken.”

Svetlana tells us she has a bag of frozen shrimp her old roommate left before she moved out.

One of the Italian guys from the Club comes screaming, “Tilapia!”

Now the whole sidewalk is filled with neighbors bearing food—the steak, the shrimp, the fish. Somebody, lord knows who, brought asparagus. It all goes on the grill. No one has any cutlery, no napkins, no plates, we’re all just devouring the food by hand, ripping it into pieces, passing it along. Meg hates seafood because she respects the ocean too much, but even she’s scarfing. Nick shows up with armfuls of potatoes. The landlady Mary upstairs yanks open her window and we think she’s going to tell us to shut the hell up but instead she puts a boombox in the window and starts blasting Sly and the Family Stone.

And then, wouldn’t you know it, it begins to snow.

“We are levitating!” hollers Old Man Steve. “We are tapped into the central nervous system of the universe!”

And we keep grilling. Hunter’s there, Jake’s there, Victoria, Canadian Dave, Never Late Kate, everybody’s there. People are digging stuff out of freezers that is probably inedible, but to me it all tastes like paradise. That’s the genius of the grillmaster, Dave. Everyone on earth should have a Dave around.

And as we’re plucking the final charred tiny little years-old frozen shrimp off the grill and choking them down, I finally remember how fucking cold I am. I mean, it’s maybe ten degrees.

I’m shaking so hard I can barely hold my beer.

The neighbors disperse, it’s time to go home. Later I will soak my feet in a bathtub of hot water for an hour until I can feel them again.

Polish Andrew slaps me on the back. “Cheer up, buddy,” he says. “It’s been a tough year. But you know what’s coming next?”

“What, Andrew?” I say.

“Springtime. And you know what happens in springtime?”

“The birds come out? The flowers bloom?”

“No buddy. Springtime means shorts weather. Shorts weather is my season. I might be a fat ass, but my calf muscles are banging.”

Polish Andrew pulls up the cuff of his camo sweats.

You know what? The guy’s got great legs.