Take it to the media. Backyard grilling is very much an All-American thing, it’s one of the Holy Trinity of the Fouth of July along with tiny American flags and fireworks. How do you suppose the average homeowner would react if told he could not do any backyard grilling? The screaming! The wailing! The gnashing of teeth! The rending of garments!
You’re being treated like a second-class citizen because YOU live in an apartment. Not being permitted to participate in a sacrament of American goodlife, because you aren’t some rich snob out in Pocatello with an acre of grass and a quarter mile of driveway!
The media would eat that up, if you couched it in those terms. Except for maybe Pocatello. Substitute snooty district full of mansions where applicable.
I have to part ways with you on the curry, however. I luuuuurve me some curry.
So you go around feeling incensed over non-issues and making childish, false comparisons to Constitutional law when people - and well within their rights - don’t allow you to do whatever you want? And now that includes the Fire Marshall?
Well, check out your local fire codes, I’m with the others on this, but it could just be the management.
When my parents moved to the apartment/townhouse complex they’re in now, it was alright to put the grill on the front patio because it didn’t have anything overhanging it and it was x amount of feet away from the building. Now, however, new management has taken over and, kind of like a homeowners association, everyone’s grass has to be a certain length, the grills can only come out when they’re going to be used, and may only be out for an hour at a time, and they can’t keep the screen door they had installed because no one else has one and management doesn’t want to fork over money for everyone to get them. It’s a continuity thing, I think.
They also don’t allow extravagant Christmas and Halloween decorations. Blasphemy!
Anyway, check your fire codes. If they do specifically ban grills on patios, you’re SOL. If not, well, check your original lease and see what it had to say about it. You may have something to go with, or you may just need to keep your cooking indoors.
Not only that, but, the time they invest defending your suit in small claims court will probably be negligible (small claims court and all). Any money they spend fixing up your place will be offset against increased rent that they charge the new tenant. And if they are, for some reason, unable to rent your place for a while, and you were not at the end of your lease, you’ll be lucky if they don’t get a judgment against you for their losses. I’d choose another option if I were you.
This is not legal advice, I’m not your lawyer, you aren’t my client, etc.
BTW, I agree with others who say it is fire code or insurance related.
There seems to be a new trend in leasing, at least in the last two places I’ve lived in, that paying an extra month’s rent on breaking a lease covers their losses. I expect that collects more money than itemizing the losses (and attempting to collect from a long gone tenant) once the apartment has been rented to a new tenant. And easier on the nerves of all concerned.
Based on the letter I received yesterday, I bet it’s an insurance thing. I’m assuming our building got new insurance or the insurance company has new guidelines, because as of Sept 7, “due to insurance liability”, no grills are allowed on balconies, and ground floor grills must be 15 feet away from the building to avoid the possibility of fire. Until now, grills were specifically allowed on the balconies.
Are you sure that you were singled out; maybe everyone got such a notice. And have you tried asking the building management for the reason?
The notice only went to people with grills. Which makes sense. I wasn’t singled out among the people with grills, but out of a few hundred apartments, only a handful had grills to begin with.
The previous management company was not much better either, we got a knock on the door at 7AM on November 1st from an assistant manager who asked us to take down the halloween decorations (There was a transparent pumkin decal on my patio door, that’s it). 7AM!
I agree with everyone who posted about it being a fire code violation.
There was a big story in our paper here about it. Evidently the building/housing codes don’t allow grills on balconies or patios of apartment buildings on account of the fire hazard.
At my condo they wouldnt allow “charcoal” grills, but everyone was allowed propane grills. I wanted to have fire so I ended up moving out of town. Much better now.
I’m putting a check mark in the “fire code” column, but with this protest: Since almost nobody grills with real charcoal anymore, it’s just stupid. What used to happen was that charcoal grills, left unattended, would blow over, usually after the grilling was done, scattering red-hot coals over a wooden deck and POOF! But most grills are propane these days, too heavy to blow over, and if they do, they go out instantly. So the “fire code” is obsolete, but nobody will ever change it because once a safety law has been passed, it’s never rescinded, no matter how stupid it is.
I assumed “acquiesce to gastronomical fascism” meant that you’d get rid of your grill and start following your fellow Americans obediently through the drive-through at McBurgerWorld.
ANYWAY – I moved off campus in 1992 and probably rented 6 apartments through the 90’s before I bought a house. Not being able to grill was a complete deal breaker.
I don’t know your town intimately, but there HAS to be a place to rent that you can grill.
Even if it means a small Hibachi or a Weber “Smokey Joe”.
(I’ve already grill thrice this week and have two more meals planned on the grill. One is “macaroni & cheese with grilled vegetables” that I saw the guy on Barbeque-U make).
I’m still confused. This racism is directed against whites, blacks, and hispanics? That’s some kind of powerful racist mojo if it can hit those three groups with the same stick.
I think it is fire code, I’ve never lived in an apartment that allowed them. I had a neighbor that used to use a charcoal grill on his balcony. We lived on the eleventh floor and there was a lot of wind since the building faced the highway. The smoke went into my apartment. I let it go the first time, but the second time, I called the management office to complain. He never did it again. If it had been a propane grill, i don’t think it would have bothered me, unless the smell of meat cooking made me hungry.
A propane grill, most likely. Charcoal grills are still prefered by those of darker skin around here. While I haven’t heard of it specifically, it’s wouldn’t *surprise *me to see a ban on charcoal grills (probably citing the blow-over safety concern) that was in fact veiled gentrification. How would I prove it? I couldn’t, of course. No one’s going to label a bill “Gentrification Proposal 1.456.307: Charcoal Grills Outside Private Residences”!
I live in Chicago. We watch neighborhoods change color like a jawbreaker candy in the mouth of an epileptic. You get a little paranoid after a while.
