Meathead City: Winter Parking "Place-Savers" and Other Primitive Behaviors

Giddyup!

Hyde Park Cowboy Attempts To Own the Street
5300 Block South Kimbark

People who fantasize about Chicago as a Presidential City worthy of the global spotlight might interpret the tons of furniture moved to curbs after every snowfall as a sign of collective generosity, gifts made by regular people for the benefit of the less fortunate, the furniture-deprived, or to anyone with a pickup who can collect all the free junk placed on the asphalt altar as a sacrifice to the snow god.

If you need cheap lawn furniture for next summer, or maybe a few sawhorses for your basement shop, or maybe some milk crates for your kid's college dorm, or a usable ironing board, or a step ladder for the attic, or you just want to make a donation to the Salvation Army or to the guys that drive the scrap metal trucks down the alleys of Chicago, you can always find what you need by cruising many of Chicago's neighborhoods.

Free Furniture in Dick Mell's 33rd Ward!

Take My Furniture! It's Free!

[Source: Chicago Tribune http://blogs.chicagotribune.com/.a/6a00d83451b4ba69e2010536e2cf33970b-pi]

After hanging out in Chicago for awhile, however, visitors might be disappointed to learn that all that furniture on the street is not meant for the needy.

Instead, using junk to claim a shoveled parking spot fits right into an ethically dubious tradition of getting what you can for yourself from the public domain, with a Sopranos-style edge.

Not that different from passing a kitty around the office at Christmas to make sure the boss can buy something nice for his wife, bribing the Alderman, or making sure your unqualified kid gets a padded job with the City.

The Parking Ticket Geek says it better than I can:

Street parking is first come, first serve. No matter the season, no matter the conditions, no matter if you happen to have your junk out on the street. No exceptions.

It's like standing in line, or waiting your turn. It's something you should have learned in kindergarten. It's a societal tradition that is so deep, so ingrained, it trumps this so-called Chicago tradition of using trash to save your parking spot.

I'm happy to say that Hyde Park, the Presidential Neighborhood in the Presidential City, is mostly free of this cranky vigilante behavior. In contrast, apparently, to Richard Mell's 33rd Ward, the neighborhood that gave us conjugal *&@#&% pottymouths Rod and Patti Blagojevich.

[See transcript of Federal wiretap for deleted obscenity].

Even so, I've found a few cases of people trying to import the primitive "dibs" custom to Hyde Park. Just two instances so far, but they are so conspicuous in their meat-headedness that they are worth highlighting.

Take the note found on this lawn chair left at the curb near the southeast corner of Kimbark and 54th, in front of a student rental building:

"Move This Chair at Your Own Risk :)"

Dubious Claims and Vague Threats on Kimbark

Because the anonymous owner of the above lawn chair is in violation of City Code 10-08-480 (hat tip again to Parking Ticket Geek at the Expired Meter), he or she will have to do better than make woolly and unattributed references to John Locke's Two Treatises on Government and the philosopher's idea of Usufruct to dissuade me from appropriating his or her lawn chair for donation to the back alley scrap recyclers.

Locke's theory worked nicely to dispossess Native Americans of any rights to North American land, but unfortunately it does not supercede Chicago City Code.

Anyone want to get that chair before I do?

Finally, here's a case of someone with the trappings of a conscience, as befits the landed gentry of Hyde Park: the ladder leaning against the inside of this homeowner's fence is occasionally left standing on the street, but then stored out of reach when the parking situation eases up.

Much more discreet. After all, this stately home is exactly 3.0 blocks from President Obama's Kenwood mansion. One wouldn't want to be too much of a meathead in a place where the world might be watching, would one?

[This post also appears at Hyde Park Progress]

Comments

[socialjustice4achange]

This tradition is a part of Chicago life, but we aren't giving away the furniture. What we are doing is claiming a space along the parade route for the day when the cubs win the series and the bears win the superbowl on the same day.

[SuZy0925]

Don't know if you're from Chicago, but I'm 54 and have lived here all my life, and this practice has gone on since I can remember. It's obvious that you have your mind made up and no one is going to change it. But, on my mom's block commuters park up the entire neighborhood by 8 a.m., walking to the nearby Blue Line, not to return until 6-7 p.m. My mom's tenant, a single mom with a set of triplets who works nights, shovels out a spot for herself, and according to you while the commuters take up her precious parking spot she should park 4 blocks away and walk a mile every time she has to drop her kids at school, go the store, pick her kids up from school. One guy, fat as a whale, lives three blocks away and drives the three blocks just so he doesn't have to walk, like he couldn't use the exercise. If commuters want to drive over and shovel out a spot and put a lawn chair there, I'm all for it. One guy lacking a pair of cajones ran over her chair and then took off, not knowing we were watching. One day he'll come home from licking his boss's boots and his locks will be frozen. It's the Chicago way--don't like it? Too bad!

[goddesscon2001]

I disagree with David..it is not free parking..that is why we pay taxes and it is why purchase licensing for our vehicles .
I have shoveled many a parking space..I have rarely placed things in "my" spot.. I do understand how some might want to claim right of ownership on a cold wet day..but heck..we chose to live in Chicago..we know to expect this type of weather..
Now being a bit more comfortable on the financial end..we have a snow blower..we go down the end of our street to the corner..and when we do behind the garage..we make sure our neighbors can do so as easily as we do..
The last large snow fall..I saw my neighbors working together to get the snow moved..
If we focused on our communities more then our individual selves...we wouldn't need crappy furniture to save a parking space..
I do agree we should let the junk dealers have a free for all on curbside pick up..at least someone would have a job...

[itakethetrain]

"it is not free parking..that is why we pay taxes and it is why purchase licensing for our vehicles."

goddesscon2001 -- Vehicle stickers and license fees have zero relation to the cost of maintaining our streets or the value of the land you're parking on. Those fees are also a tiny fraction of the price the privilege of driving and parking in the city would command on the free market. And you're also forgetting that everyone in the city pays taxes that subsidize your parking and roads -- even the one-third of households that don't own cars. Yes, according to the Census, one million Chicagoans don't drive, and they still get to pay the price for your parking.

So no, it's not technically free -- especially not for those of us who are paying for it for you! But for you, it is essentially free.

[jackspratling]

Have you really gone through the experience of shovelling out a parking spot in front of your house as clean as you used to shovel your parent's driveway and gone to pick up some milk, only to come back to see an out-of-state Jetta parked in the spot you cleared, leaving only patches of ice and snow for you to drive over?

See, dibs aren't for parking spots, they're for CLEARED parking spots-- as in, shovelled out and clear of snow. Nobody's saying that once December comes around you get to save a spot. That's what transplants in Lakeview and Wicker Park forget.

Now, if you can clear your spot and not care that you have to do it again, and again, and again, and your ultimate reward parking on the ice and getting stuck while Suzy from Iowa gets to leave her Mom's Lexus sprawled out over the two spots you cleared, hey, you win.

I however, seethed with fury when that happened. So I moved to the suburbs where I have my own driveway, which I clear only once every snow fall.

[Greg Boose - Huffpost Blogger]

My sister had all four of her tires slashed for taking someone's "chaired" spot after midnight. Totally blew her mind.

[David Hoyt - Huffpost Blogger]

Very Al Capone, cream of the crop. Whoever did it should run for Governor, they'd probably win.

That's why we need citizen's committees to simply whisk these chairs into the back of a pick-up every time they appear. Then no one can make bogus claims!

[itakethetrain]

I love the idea of a citizen brigade clearing off the junk so nobody can ever blame another driver for moving it.

That, or we need to open up use of the public way for other non-automobiles. I'd love to rent a car-sized lot of land for just $150/yr. for my garden. And with land that cheap, we should have no trouble creating affordable housing. I know of manufacturers who produce small modular houses that would fit in a parking space.

[47th]

Totally blew her tires also.

[Skua]

When there is a really big snow in Chicago, it turns all the available parking lanes into "primeval wilderness". If cars are parked there, the next snowplow down the street traps it with a ridge of snow and ice. If nothing is parked there, it becomes a trackless waste.

If we lived in advanced cooperative society, every able person on the block would then come out with shovels and move all the snow away, but this is primitive individualistic society and we have to find individual solutions. If I go out there and shovel away the snow for a couple hours, I have created a space with my own labor. If I drive away and come back and someone else has taken my space, I have been made a sap. I could then steal the space someone else has created, but that would make me a thief and a sap. I can make up my mind to dig out a new space every day, which will be ever more laborious as the snow deepens and freezes, being made a continual sap of by space-thieves.

So I stick a chair out there. It says, "There is someone whose work created this space and who hopes it will be here when he/she comes back." Is this so wrong to say? Is it so right to throw the chair upon the parkway and self-righteously plant your own car there, saying, "I have struck a blow against 'dibs'!"

[David Hoyt - Huffpost Blogger]

I feel your pain.

However, the only payment you make by shoveling a spot is on the back-rent you already owe for parking there already.

In fact, most of us are already deeply in debt to the public treasure chest for being allowed rent-free parking to begin with. One can't appropriate a public good by "improving" it without approval and then claiming it as one's own. For example, you may choose to clean the toilet at your workplace to ensure an odor-free experience the next time you visit; however, should you place a sign there claiming the stall as your own (because you scrubbed it), I think you'd have a tough audience to convince.

There are 2 possible solutions (since the Capone types who run the City don't care about the issue):
1) Put parking meters absolutely everywhere and let them run for all the time that a place-saver is on the street, or;
2) make permit parking much more common, and in the reduced "open" parking areas, tell Streets and San to go pick up the furniture and donate it to the Salvation Army.

[itakethetrain]

Great post and great reply! As someone who doesn't drive, I find these kinds of claims on public space rather disturbing, considering I pay for our public space through my property taxes. Where's mine? Maybe I should call "dibs" on a parking space and plant a garden in it or something!

[Skua]

This counterargument would be more convincing if the city actually plowed out the parking spaces. But it doesn't. Where is the "public good" when it is buried under two feet of snow and ice, and doesn't come back into existence until somebody digs it out?

The toilet analogy is not convincing either unless the toilets are SO filthy that they are actually unusable. To be clear: I don't think 'dibs' is defensible any old time. I don't think it's defensible when there are two inches of snow on the ground. But when there is SO much snow and ice that the space doesn't really exist until someone digs it out, then it changes the equation.

Let me make another point: if I, as a somewhat moral human being, am coming down the street looking for a parking space, I WANT to know which spaces I can take, and which spaces I cannot, without making somebody feel enraged or compelling someone else to do a lot of work. I almost feel that if there were no chairs I would have to go knocking on doors asking, "Who dug that space out? Will that person need it again? If I take it, is some nurse who works the evening shift going to have to dig or hike in the cold and dark?"