Happy Birthday, Chris
June 17, 2021
Chris:
Hey man, it’s been awhile.
You seriously would not *believe* how messed up the past 14 months have been. With so many years under our collective belts, we thought we’d seen everything; how wrong we were.
While we all found our way through it — often awkwardly, occasionally elegantly, always earnestly — it definitely would have been easier if you would have been here. I can picture Zoom cooking classes, sipping cold beers in the middle of January six feet apart in your backyard, more than a few “you doin’ good?” text messages, and recreating those Neustadt-to-Steele Hail Mary touchdown passes from our much younger days. Oh, and livestream concerts.
One of the few good things the pandemic provided was ample (sometimes too ample) opportunity to remember and reflect. On the things we’d done, things we might’ve done just a little differently, things we wish we’d gotten to. Like, getting your RD350 running; what the hell was wrong with that bike anyway? Also, man, we definitely shoulda gone to Italy again.
Like many of us, I thought about you countless times during the lockdown. Fun stuff, mostly: food, music, motorbikes, guitars, our crappy cars, that time you drove your Jeep across the beach in Michigan, the epic dinner parties you’d hold and those unbelievably delicious crostinis with the cannelli bean paste you’d make. Damn those were good.
But also quieter times, when we’d share “true feelings,” like the time when you told me… well, that’ll stay between us.
A few other random things that popped up on my pandemic-inspired trips down memory lane:
· Remember in 1993, when we were both living with our moms in DG, which we’d always mercilessly make fun of each other about? Almost every single weekend we’d head to the city to see a band, go to a club, or hang out with friends, then take the Eisenhower home at 2 a.m. and wake up four hours later for work.
· The Rat Palace. We rented that crappy, marginally habitable basement apartment in the then-vaguely-sketchy neighborhood of Bucktown (shootings! gang graffiti! litter for days!) for use as our weekend base. Totally worth the $300/mo we split, despite the fact it got so cold in the winter (owing to the place having precisely one space heater) that the olive oil in the kitchen, sitting next to a window, froze. And there were, you know, rats in the walls occasionally. As you always did, you found a way to make that place as welcoming as it could be, making delicious dinners in that ramshackle kitchen and serving it on your vintage Formica table, typically accompanied with Concho y Toro wine (with the plastic bull taped to the bottle spout).
· The aforementioned Italy, and our trip in 2000. Of course, you served as our sommelier and culinary guide through two weeks in Florence, Tuscany and Umbria. Your radar for the best places to eat and drink was uncanny and unassailable. One night we were strolling the Florence streets, trying to pick a dinner spot. After passing several options that looked pretty good to my uninformed eye, you stopped in front of one with a hand-written menu on a sign outside, paused for about 5 seconds, then said, “this one.” To this day that remains one of the best meals of my life.
(unrelated side note: I appreciate you not telling anyone that I left the parking brake engaged on the rental car for 15 miles on twisty Tuscan roads. Or mentioning that when I bought train tix from Milan to Florence, I thought I reserved us seats. Apparently “I wanto seato” is not Italian for “seat reservation, please,” so we spent the two-hour trip standing in the vestibule. Mi dispiace.) Unsurprisingly, you were a good sport.
And not to embarrass you or anything, but there was also that time in the Cinque Terre, those small villages built into the cliffside at the edge of the Ligurian Sea. It was a time of our lives when we were both straddling the line between the carefree days of our late 20s/early 30s and the more serious/nuanced years that were soon to spring us into “real” adulthood.
Sitting on cliffside rocks, overlooking the sun setting on the cobalt blue water, we chatted about our hopes, dreams, fears, regrets, mistakes, triumphs, unfinished business. It was the most self-aware I think I’d ever seen you be. I felt honored that you confided so much in me. And true to my word, I’ve kept quiet all these years about you relating your secret dream of becoming an interpretive dancer. Wait… oops.
You know, during the months that ended up being your last ones, we didn’t see one another as often as I would have liked, as the inevitable tides of family commitments, job responsibilities and everything else made it not always easy to connect. But even though we might not speak for a few weeks at a time, we’d always pick up the conversation like we’d just switched over from call waiting. I hope you know that meant a lot to me, like it did for so many.
It also meant a lot that you seemed genuinely happy, as though you had finally found — or were finding — the best ways to be yourself. You did things you wanted to do, and spent time with people who uplifted you, prime among them your wonderful family. Like many of us, I always grinned when I saw pictures of your shoes on your Instagram account. (Aside: For those of you who didn’t follow his account, Chris would snap photos of his feet while standing in whatever airport he was departing from for his next work trip: New York, Miami, San Francisco, New Orleans. The list went on and on. I got to know Chris’ shoes pretty well.)
Dude, it’s been four years. Four. Life has changed a lot, but many parts (usually the important ones) have remained the same. Some of the players and venues have changed, but the basic tenets are intact: Be appreciative, be gracious, be present. You taught us that; more importantly you modeled that.
Please, please know: We remember you. We miss you. Often and always. We try — not always successfully but we try — to do the things you’d want us to do.
Happy 52nd birthday in heaven, man.
— Steele (aka Chachi)
P.S. a few other things:
· Gang of Youths is awesome
· What ever happened to your maroon Buick Rendevous?
· Wish you could see my dudes play baseball
· I still have a quasi-mullet, and a crappy car. I had a Les Paul but sold it, regretfully. I know: you would have talked me out of that.
· Three summers ago, a bunch of us got an opera box at Thalia Hall for Superchunk. We were like 10 feet from the stage. We all screamed the lyrics to “Iron On” at the top of our lungs.
· Phoebe Bridgers is also awesome
· What’s the recipe again for your crostinis?
