Ahh, winter.

[moominmolly]

[Poll #672301]

If you're lucky enough to not live in a city where this happens, pretend you do for the purposes of the poll.

Comments

[dbang.livejournal.com]

Out here in the burbs this isn't an issue, but back when I lived in Somerville, it was. I'll admit it made me grumpy when I'd spend hours shoveling out a spot for myself, and then find some lazy wanker sitting in it when I got back from my first trip. "Dig out your own damn spot", I'd think to myself. I didn't generally put furniture or trashcans or whatever to save my spot, though, as it just seemed...I dunno. Blech. But I would go to great lengths to avoid moving my car until the whole thing was over and the street was clear again.

[aroraborealis.livejournal.com]

My favorite story along these lines was my boss, E, who shoveled out her spot and drove off somewhere, only to come back and find that someone ELSE had put a chair in the spot.

[water-childe.livejournal.com]

I'm with you. I spent the better part of almost 2 hours outside digging out our car, as well as helping our upstairs neighbor, and our landlord. Why should my backbreaking labor serve to provide someone else with a nice cleanly shoveled out spot? We're on a private way so actually, people whom aren't residents aren't supposed to park here, anyways.

[aroraborealis.livejournal.com]

We've received, as a gift from our neighbors, a number of very nice chairs in the wake of snowstorms. Also, a trash can, though we don't technically need any more of those. And some crappy chairs. But the best was the folding teak chair. We were kind of hoping for its mate yesterday.

[pumpkin-pi.livejournal.com]

ROFL! Who needs trashpicking when folks actually bring the stuff to you? :)

[maighread.livejournal.com]

I'm not sure I'd go so far to as to say reprehensible but it's closer to that than perfectly fine. Somewhere around slimy & cheap.

I currently have both a guaranteed off-street space & a huge public lot in front of my building. I park in the lot as it snows, wait for the off-street spot to be plowed & then move my car to the nice clean spot. No lines, no waiting.

When I've lived places where I only had onstreet parking, I would end up shoveling lots because I refused to hold my spot with trashcans & chairs. It's just not fair to the people who are looking for places to park while I'm not parked there.

[contessagrrl.livejournal.com]

I never used to do it, until this past winter. I hate doing it, but I'm unsure what else to do.

As you know, I do live in the city where the parking can be limited. The problem with my neighborhood is the day commuters. Our neighborhood is not resident only and there's no parking meters. This means many people drive in and park in our neighborhood to take the T. Normally, not a problem. However in the winter when the number of parking spaces are cut in half due to snow banks, it becomes a big problem. After the second time last winter that I literally could not find parking after work in any walking distance and was forced to park literally ON a corner, in an snowbank, waiting to get hit, I decided I'd had enough. I would be one of those people.

The problem is the day commuters (for whatever reason) don't come back until 7-7:30pm, two hours after I'm home.

But really, I hate that I do it. And it's really OK with me for other people to hate that I do it, too. It won't stop me, however.

[moominmolly.livejournal.com]

This year, I'm struggling with hating the whole practice in 90% of cases^[1] but having a young baby, making it hard to shovel out a new spot whenever I park.

[1] I think that your case, and the cases of people who for one reason or another just can't/shouldn't walk that far, are much clearer. You get to do it.

[niqui.livejournal.com]

The problem with my neighborhood is the day commuters.

that was also the case the only time i lived in a neighborhood where i participated in this practice -- we were about a block from the Ravenswood Metra stop. heaven forfend people pony up the couple bucks to park in the actual commuter lot when they could park for free in our residential neighborhood. :/

i'm much happier now that i have a lot to park in so i don't have to worry about the moral dilemma of whether or not to participate in spot-saving, since i really hate the practice but sometimes it's really impossible to park. i think the part i hate most about the practice is that in certain neighborhoods you're basically required to take part in it, if you drive at all.

[weegoddess.livejournal.com]

This may be unpopular, but I do find it reprehensible. It pisses me off more than most things. It smacks of the 'huh-I-don't-need-to-help-anyone-else-every man/woman-for-hirself' mentality and I saw enough of that after Katrina. So what if I spent time shoveling out and then someone else took the spot? I see that as the rough equivalent of helping someone else shovel out, just with a delay. We're all in this together.

Those on the street parking spaces do not belong to the person parked there. I consider shoveling the space out a public service, not a claim. And I WILL move chairs. I see the act of hogging an empty space when not using it as selfish and inconsiderate. Sue me.

[benndragon.livejournal.com]

You're nicer than me. I've been known to park over chairs, cones, etc. in order to express my displeasure at the "saving a space" notion.

[piratedan.livejournal.com]

I'm glad I'm not alone.

[the-xtina.livejournal.com]

I ticked both because I've lived both in places with and sans off-street parking.  When I lived in the latter places, I'd frequently shovel out more spots, so that others could park.  I'd also move cones/chairs/etc. out of the way, with a note taped onto it citing the part of the code where it's explained that doing that is Not Cool By The Law.

But I'm a bitch on occasion, so there's that.

[the-xtina.livejournal.com]

Although now that I see aroraborealis' response, I can see where 10% of place-putters would have good reason to do so.  (And, uh, B does the day commuter parky thing.  *amused*)  But hopefully she and others like her will forgive me if I blanket assume that most place-putters are pricks.

(My hands feel a lot better after having not knit all weekend, so I might go out spot-shovelling tonight.  Yea even though we have a driveway.)

[moominmolly.livejournal.com]

The note is a good idea. I think I'm going to try to shovel out spaces recreationally this year, too, and if someone claims one, they get a note. Or maybe the plowing will be enough?

[greeniezona.livejournal.com]

hey, you're travelling with an infant. i think we should get handicapped stickers!

[cutieperson]

wow. you know what? speaking as someone who is handicapped - NO. just no.
even the handicapped spots in residential areas do not belong to a specific person, and i sure as hell wouldn't think about holding one for myself and screwing over other handicapped folks.

[signsoflife.livejournal.com]

Honestly, this was only ever an issue for me for one snowfall -- I only lived in a place with no off-street parking (Somerville) with a car for two and a half winters. The local parking situation was tight but not crazy-tight. The thing is, in a really heavy snow fall (this was one of those four or five footers a couple years ago), digging out your car is a chore -- but digging out an entire space that *wasn't* previously protected by a car, and into which everyone has tossed the snow from their cars and the plows have tossed the snow from the roads, would be several hours of work. I didn't do anything to *save* the spot, but I did intentionally keep it the minimum possible size for our car (a Civic, from the year when they started making Civics small again).

I mean, I don't need to save spots -- I'm relatively young and able-bodied, and have a relatively young and able-bodied partner. And I believe in helping out your neighbors when they need it. But the whole "love thy neighbor" bit cuts both ways; I don't think it's right or fair to assume that you're the least resourced person on the block, and that it's your neighbor's job to shovel out a space for you -- for all you know, that young, healthy person may have crippling RSI and no local friends or family to help with their shoveling. I guess my point is that I'm no big fan of saving spaces, but the same reasoning suggests you shouldn't grab shoveled out spaces without thinking about the other people in the neighborhood, either.

[gingicat]

That's pretty much what I was going to say, so nop need to repeat what was so well phrased. :)

[cuthalion.livejournal.com]

I have off-street parking, so when it snows here in San Francisco, I don't have to worry about this.

[cutieperson]

<3

[taer-silveroak.livejournal.com]

I would have liked a neutral option for the second question.

[moominmolly.livejournal.com]

Well, it's such a divisive question that I didn't put one in on purpose, actually. Feel neutral? Don't answer that one!

[lyonesse.livejournal.com]

i also have four-wheel drive, which makes many spots more accessible to me than to mere mortals. otoh, winter snow is a lot of *why* i got 4wd, so my sympathy for those who didn't is limited.

[ectropy.livejournal.com]

Between my house and the grocery store (a short distance I walk), I saw a spot blocked off with two orange traffic cones. The spot was in between two huge SUVs... and about twenty feet from 10 free parking spaces that had been plowed out and forty feet from a huuuuuge store lot that never gets filled and never tows. I serious considered grabbing those two cones and chucking them into the grocery's parking lot, but decided not to when I remembered that it was front of the house where the pocket-bike rider lived - I thought about what kind of inconsiderate jackass lived there and decided I didn't want some crazy rage-filled dude to come running at me with a baseball bat.

When I first had a car in Boston, I had a Jeep. I loved that Jeep. It meant that when everyone was shoveling out their car and heaping snow wherever they could (all around mine), I could brush snow off mine and then drive over the mounds of snow; when I got back, my spot was still there because no one else had a car that was both short enough to fit, and four-wheely enough to climb the Everestine border surrounding the spot.
We live in New England. It snows here. If you live where parking is normally limited, then think about the results of buying a two-wheel drive car if you can afford to buy a 4WD or AWD - limited use three months out of the year. That's a big reason why I bought a Subaru.

[piratedan.livejournal.com]

I live in Chicago where the practice is prevalent (though we haven't had it this year-- no enough snow), i have a vehicle, I park it on the street, and I've done so for many years, through some fairly deep snowfalls.

I've always been against this "mark with a chair" practice. I realize, from personal experience, that all the work to dig a car out makes one posessive. However, it is still not YOUR spot. It never was. It never will be. It's a public street.

If anybody has trouble understanding that and brings upu the "I shovelled for two hours" argument, my reply is this: you did not do all that shovelling to make a spot to put your car in, you did all that shovelling to get your car out. You want to keep that spot? There is only one acceptable way to keep "your" spot... with your car.

I don't take the chairs (they are usually junk). I just move every last one that I see over to the curb.

[crouchback.livejournal.com]

I am really surprised no one has jumped you while you're doing that, or towed your car afterwards.

I never saw people do it in Hyde Park when I lived there, but if you did that in Canaryville, Marquette Park, Ashburn or parts of beverly, there would be people home and they would be really annoyed to see a chair moved.

Part of what was going on was that people in the area essentially had an agreemnt not to poach spots, and did do things like shoveling one another's cars out, and they really, really resented it when people who didn't pitch in (usually non-residents) came in and took a spot.

When I lived in Canaryville, there was a huge problem with Sox games and other events being held at Comiskey Park, in that some people would arrive hours before the event, park, and then toodle off. Snow wasn't that much of an issue during baseball season, but when the Jackson Five came in for the Victory Tour, people snagged all the residential parking for a few miles around, and that was very keenly resented.

Things were different if someone *asked* if they could take a spot.

[crouchback.livejournal.com]

One of the bizarre things about living in Hyde Park (after having lived all of my life to that point elsewhere in the South Side) was the whole concept of having to drive for blocks in order to find a parking space. This wasn't true in all of Hyde Park (although it was true for most of it during the day), but it was true for a lot of the area. The lack of chairs in the winter was another odd thing.

I've said it elsewhere in threads that are buried, but part of this, when I was growing up, was that neighbors would dig one another out, and that it was a community effort, and people home during the day would cover for people home at night and vice versa. If someone needed a spot and asked the person who had the chair out (usually it was right in front of their house), or someone in the neighborhood, you could move a chair and your car would not be towed later.

This even held for people from outside of the neighborhood, if they asked.

The only time I remember problems with this was when I lived in Canaryville, and people would decide that they could avoid paying for Comiskey Park parking by parking in the neighborhood, and would show up hours before the event to grab spots.

So you'd get home from work, and you'd find out that there was no parking on your block, and the Comiskey lots were nowhere near full.

Slashed tires were rarely the response. Usualy, someone who was a cop or related to one would get a city tow truck out there, and a lot of cars would end up dumped someplace nasty..68th and Union, say.

It's been a long time since I lived there, and the city has essentially given the chair setup the force of law in the areas where you need a resident permit to park. So I have no idea what it's like now.

I think the chair to mark the spot habit in Chicago is a left over from the days when neighborhoods were a lot more clannish than they are now.

[crouchback.livejournal.com]

Oh, and I think the same thing is true in Boston.

[dnereverri.livejournal.com]

This past December, a columnist in the Trib printed a reader letter, in which said reader described returning home to find that someone had parked a limo across the two spaces that he and his neighbor had cleared out -- and "reserved" with folding chairs -- that morning.

The reader and his neighbor (who arrived home at the same time) proceeded to pack snow back all around the car, high enough to prevent opening doors or moving -- and then sprayed water on the snow. It was frozen in place for a couple of months, the letter alleged.

So, challenging the "reservists" can be dangerous... But personally, I think the practice is ridiculous. If you're that worried about finding a parking spot, don't drive that day -- it's not like Chicagoland's public transportation is as bad as, say, Omaha's.

[hissilliness.livejournal.com]

I save my parking spot by driving Zipcars. Nyaaaaah!