When I got home from Eugene’s last Sunday evening, I saw there had been, pardon the expression, grilling while I was out, so I screwed up my nerve and went to talk to the neighbors about trying the electric charcoal starter. Fortunately, the wife answered the door and she was really very nice, as always, and said they’d be happy to try the electric starter and that the building manager had mentioned she might try one, too. I was delighted, because it had been in the back of my mind that if the neighbors liked the electric thing OK, I would need to find some way of suggesting it to the building manager, thus risking one of our usual unpleasant interactions.
We had a brief heat wave here this week. It was 97 degrees on Thursday and still very warm in the evening. I left more windows than usual open when I went to sleep and was awakened at 4:30 a.m. by a man yelling obscenities at a woman who now and then yelled back, but he clearly had the upper hand. It was a horrible way to wake up.
Thursday was Bike to Work Day. By chance, I found myself riding down Market St. with the supervisor from my district, who, disappointingly, blew through every red light he came to, trailing a herd of constituents who all did the same. I stopped by a press conference at City Hall to hear the executive director of the Bike Coalition, Leah Shahum, speak, along with the various supervisors who’d ridden their bikes to work, and then I went on to my own place of employment.
I arrived to find a motorcycle blocking four bike parking spaces, but fortunately that building manager and her assistant sprang into action instantly and made it vanish. They figured out whose it was, had him move it, and told him never to park there again.
After work, I went to volunteer at an energizer station outside Rainbow Grocery, which was a fantastic spot to get new Bike Coalition members by mentioning the ten percent discount Rainbow offers SFBC members who bike to their store. We recruited thirteen new activists, I think.
This past Friday night I saw that the building manager was getting ready to grill, which marks the fourth week in a row we’ve had grilling. “Grill” and “grilling” are pretty much swear words at this point, as far as I’m concerned. Peeking out the window, I saw that she had the electric starter I’d given the neighbors, and it looked like she also had the pictorial instructions I’d printed out for them. I was delighted, and when I still didn’t smell anything after 30 minutes or so, I concluded it had worked perfectly.
Then my apartment completely filled with smoke, about as bad as it’s ever been. Tom came down and said his place was even worse than mine, and that all the hallways smelled strongly of smoke. Neighbors in the front of the building, nowhere near the backyard, said their place was also full of smoke.
Tom and I had planned to watch a DVD that evening, and I wasn’t sure whether it would be better to have the windows open, in hopes the smoke would blow through, or closed, to try to keep it out. Tom said he thought we’d be better off, in this case, with the windows closed, so I closed them, and in about three minutes, it was stifling hot as well as smoky, so we had to give up on the DVD idea and just leave the building.
We went to a café and stayed there until it closed, at 10 p.m. Tom said, “I think it’s reached the point where I’m going to have to weigh in,” which was great, because the building manager has framed this as a case of a single crackpot (myself) whose complaints are absolutely beyond the pale. We returned home hoping the charcoal would no longer be burning, but it was still going.
I told Tom we would need to go down to the backyard and request that the charcoal be put out so we could go to sleep; the actual cooking portion of the program was long over, and the building manager and her three guests were just enjoying the fumes at that point. I’d told Tom he was in charge of doing the talking, so he walked outside and greeted the building manager, who didn’t see me—yet—and answered him in a friendly manner: “Hi, how are you?”
I should have kept my trap shut and let Tom say, “Fine, but you know, it’s pretty smoky inside. We were wondering …” But of course I interrupted and answered her question, saying, “Smoky is how we are.”
She instantly got angry and said, “Linda, I’ve done everything you’ve asked me to do.”
I said, “The entire building is full of smoke, and it’s really hot inside with all the windows closed to try to keep the smoke out.” She smiled in a most unpleasant way and shook her head, as if to express what an obvious loser I am (and that does seem to be the attitude of many grillers and smokers when ill effects to others are brought to their attention, according to my Internet research). Tom and I left, and she did put the charcoal out, and we retired to our respective apartments.
In the morning, I put on clothes that reeked of smoke and dried myself off after a shower using a towel that also reeked of smoke. This is not OK. I was hoping the electric charcoal starter would do the trick, but it didn’t. At all.
Fortunately, Tom said he is going to contact the landlord this time, and propose that we buy the building a propane grill. At this point, I would buy every last person in this building his or her own propane grill plus a handsome bookmark from the Levenger catalog if it would end the miserable experience of the charcoal grilling (particularly considering that it came on the heels of many, many lousy experiences with cigarette smoke).
If I thought it was just a horrible smell, I could probably deal with it, but I know it’s got yucky stuff in it that’s not good to breathe, plus there’s my little cat Hammett to think of. I can leave the building if it gets too bad, but he, practically speaking, can’t. Schlepping him from café to café in his box every time someone decides to grill is not really an option.
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