Man wakes up at 5:30am to the smell of someone cooking bacon. There’s just 1 problem: he lives alone with his wife and she’s in bed next to him

Steve (@stevewatson.tnbui), the Chestnut Street raconteur who spins neighborhood tall tales for more than 460,000 followers as the “That Steve Guy,” says he woke at 5:30 on a Monday to the smell of bacon.

Then found his neighbor Jimmy at his stove, uninvited, cooking breakfast for a kitchen full of people who weren't him.

Why was his neighbor cooking bacon in his kitchen?

The smell woke him first.

“Woke up at 5:30 this morning to the smell of bacon, which would normally be a positive experience, except for only two people live here, and we were both still in bed,” Steve says.

He walked in and found Jimmy—”the one who's a little rough around the edges and red around the neck, but inventive”—at the stove in his socks, scrambling eggs, frying bacon, flipping pancakes.

What follows, per Steve's telling, is an interrogation that he keeps losing.

He asked why Jimmy was there: “Because Barbara kicked me out.”

Why inside: “Because it was cold.”

Why Steve's kitchen: “Because I'm making breakfast.”

Why breakfast: “Because it's too early for lunch.”

Steve tries to draw a line. “I don't want you making breakfast in my house at 5:30 on a Monday morning,” he says he told him. Jimmy, unbothered: “Don't act like you don't like pancakes.”

Then the house fills up. Audrey, the home's only other resident, pads out in pajamas, says “morning, Jimmy,” pours coffee, and takes the plate he hands her. Best friend Marcus—”who just happens to be gay and ubiquitous”—glides down the spiral staircase in a “cheer bear onesie,” takes a plate, and tells Jimmy the pancakes “look fabulous.”

By the end, everyone has a plate but him. “Jimmy's cooking, Marcus and Audrey are eating, the dogs are under the table, everybody's having a family breakfast in my house except me,” Steve says. “Happy Monday.”

Whether any of it happened is beside the point. Let's see what the people had to say.

People want more

One woman wanted even more stories as programming. “Wow, I really need a TV series of Chestnut St.! This is lovely,” she wrote.

“Frying bacon in only socks would be one of my first questions. That is just asking for it,” one person said. “Never fry bacon in only socks. I learned this lesson the hard way. Outside that, Jimmy sounds like an excellent neighbor with very sound answers.”

Check your back door

Sometimes, if they are crazy enough, people will come into your home and make it their home. Madison, Wisconsin, police say a woman came home around 10:30pm in September 2024 to find her lights on and a stranger cooking shrimp and pasta she hadn't bought. It was part of a whole plan. The intruder had combed the mail for the resident's name and made up a story about being given keys at a coffee shop before her arrest for residential burglary.

Pinellas County deputies in Safety Harbor, Florida, say a 19-year-old Marine slipped through an unlocked rear door around 4am, cooked and ate the homeowner's food, and told the man who confronted him to “go back to sleep” before bolting when the resident reached for 911.

Subplot reached out to Steve (@stevewatson.tnbui) for comment.

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