One of the strange thing about this year is the way it’s provided a ready-made excuse for those who are happiest nesting in their own hoods.

There’s zero good reason to jump in the car or on the bus and head to East Vancouver for the residents of New West, who’ve got all the amenities of the big smoke in the Royal City.

And why bother hopping on your custom-built fixie and riding out to New Westminster when your idea of Greater Vancouver starts and ends with Commercial Drive?

Luckily for beer fans, and chicken afficianadoes, not everyone is making the least of the COVID-19 lockdown. This weekend Commercial Drive’s truly great DL Chicken Shack will make the mighty trek to the undeniably awesome Steel & Oak Brewing Co. in New West. And it will stay for more than a couple of hours, with DL stationing itself at the brewery on both Saturday (noon to 8 p.m.) and Sunday (noon to 4 p.m.)

On the menu will be DL’s Hot Chicken Thigh sandwiches, along with combos where you can load up on coleslaw or macaroni salad. Depending on one’s spice tolerance, there’s mild, medium, hot, extra-hot, and get-the-goddamn-milk-ready, preferably in a commercial fire extinguisher.

Providing the beer (choose from options like Inline IPA and Kotuku Pale Ale) is of course Steel & Oak, which features a new social-distancing-conscious patio.

In announcing the cross-municipal-boundaries food-and-drink collabo, DL Chicken Shack co-owner Dough Stephen said “Beer and fried chicken couldn’t be a better combo. We look forward to meeting some new faces!”

Although he didn’t ask for a shout out, he also deserves a huge amount of credit for choosing to leave the neighbourhood when—like the rest of us—he has every excuse not to.