Others in our condo complex use charcoal or gas grills, but according to both the fire department and the condo by-laws they’re not supposed to. We’re going to play it safe and get the electric one.
A general rule of thumb, if your building is wood framed, bad idea. If you are using the squat hibatchi type, bad idea (they can tip, and red hot coals raining down on passers by is generally considered bad tact). Me? Forbidden in the wood framed apts I lived in while in GA, the concrete bldg I live in here in MIA has several grills on balconies. I drag mine out to the courtyard and fire it up (I live on the first floor).
As for the Liquid Smoke, I am not sure which level of Hell you may go to for thinking that substitutes honest-to-God smoked meat, but that level probably does not have visiting hours. Or water.
For the unaware, BBQ beef is NOT slices of roast beef with cold Barbeque sauce poured over it right before serving. That is one of my strikes against Buffalo, NY. Barbeque beef takes eight hours at least to prepare. Personal pet peeve of mine.
At my old apartment my roommate and I had a charcoal barbeque (this was in Calgary, AB). The list of rules that we got with our lease said that we could have a barbeque on the balconey, a charcoal or propane one. However, it said that it was illegal to bring a propane tank inside the building… since we were on the sixth floor, unless we wanted to hoist the tank up on to the balcony, it pretty much ruled out a propane barbeque. Incidentally, I don’t know if this is actually a law - the resident manager said that propane tanks couldn’t be brought inside due to a “fire hazard”. This seemed pretty dubious to me, since if it caught fire on the balcony the building would burn just the same.