The fine folks from Kingsford Charcoal gave us some money to have a BBQ.  So we did, here is what happened…

All Photography by the immaculate Mariya Stangl

The  problem with throwing a BBQ in San Francisco is that half your friends are inevitably vegetarian, vegan, or some combination of gluten-free paleo something-or-other.  While the other half of your friends are red blooded carnivores who would eat Bambi if you cooked him right.  So we shopped for groceries carefully.  For every Rosemunde sausage, we bought an ear of corn.  For every grass fed burger, there was a veggie wiener made out of soy and some kind of brown stuff no one could quite identify.

Vegetarians, grazing in their natural habitat

And of course, we also had the meat eaters, who came equipped with charcoal, beer, and things with American flags painted on them.

This guy once ate bacon on Yom Kippur (allegedly)

We had all the food bases covered:  real meat, fake meat, fake meat that looked like real meat, chips, dips, pickled bits, cookies, condiments and even gluten free buns.  We had the Sunday NFL games streaming upstairs for the fans and we had everything to drink from domestic lager to fancy Italian Presecco.

How could anything go wrong?

Then There Was A Stand-Off

The grill got crowded.  The vegetarians wanted to cook green things, the carnivors wanted barbecue duck links.  Team Veggie, with an aggressive move threw down a pound of zucchini marinating in olive oil on the center of the grill…staking their claim

The meat eaters clenched their sausages in anger, the vegetarians waived their husks in defiance, the stand-off was about to reach a breaking point, when an oblivious guest stumbled into the mob, knocking over the lighter fluid…

And POOF!

The lighter fluid ignited the fire, the fire ignited the olive oil…the zucchini was never heard from again.  But thankfully the blaze shocked everyone back to their senses.   They realized there was plenty of room on the grill for everyone.  And so…

The coals kept burnin’

the drinks kept flowin’,

and everyone got somethin’ to eat.

Lady and The Tramp…very corny

And They All Lived Happily Ever After…