"Parking Chairs"

[hugman]

you bust your ass digging out a spot, it's your fucking spot. that's all there is to it.  who's the asshole? the person who just wants to coast in on your back-breaking labor, that's who.

basically, it depends on where you live, though, as far as how much you can expect people to respect that. people in chicago do it correctly.  everyone knows what's expected and those who deviate from that are the assholes.

I was going to agree with you, Hugger.

Then I noticed you edited your post and still didn't capitalize the beginning of your sentences?  Sarah and I are both appalled! We respect basic gammer  as you said yourself (and I quote):

those who deviate from that are the assholes.

Ha. You know, Fredericks, I was just posting an extra long facebook (Facebook?) status update this morning and said to myself, "It's time to start capitalizing again. Enough is enough."  Sarah, I find the accusation that I would not capitalize as an "affectation" extremely insulting and also a ridiculous notion. It was born out of laziness and trying to keep my typing on pace with my thought process, then grew into a bad habit.  Fredericks, you are back on my good side. Sarah, you're on the bad, maybe even in my hate pit.  I'm very sensitive.

Bryan, the more I hear about Montreal, the more it adds to the good impression it made on me this past summer.

[Pat K]

Living in Buffalo all my life, I've never seen or heard of this until today. But that's probably just due to the fact that there are very few actual rowhouses in the city here - the vast majority of apartments in the city are in duplex or fourplex houses, so they've got little driveways in between that can usually accommodate at least 2 or 3 cars.

I can see both sides of this one, but I've gotta come down on the "no-chair" side of things. It's gotta be frustrating to live somewhere and not be able to regularly find  parking nearby. However, I can imagine it would be really, really infuriating not being able to find parking because multiple spots are empty but reserved with chairs. I think chair-people need to accept that parking injustices are just one of those little quality-of-life tradeoffs that you sometimes have to make when you live in a city.

The atrocity of the "yinzer doorbell" mentioned upthread, although I've never heard that term, is extremely common here, as is the mindset of not understanding what might possibly be rude about it.

So the city puts up signs a day ahead of time on the streets they'll be clearing snow from, and anyone who doesn't move their cars gets towed. They pick up the snow - suck it up, and shoot it into huge trucks - then return the towed cars(!), complete with parking tickets on the windshield.

This is utterly fascinating to me, especially the part about bringing back the towed cars.

[erika]

Buffalo also knows what they're doing when it comes to snow removal. For those of us further south it seems that snow removal is some sort of mystery that involves the plow going around once and then two-foot-high piles of slush that last for weeks. It's pretty freakin sweet.

[Sarah]

Sarah, I find the accusation that I would not capitalize as an "affectation" extremely insulting and also a ridiculous notion. It was born out of laziness and trying to keep my typing on pace with my thought process, then grew into a bad habit.

And here I thought you were channeling E. E. Cummings or Don Marquis.

[buffcoat]

Sarah, I find the accusation that I would not capitalize as an "affectation" extremely insulting and also a ridiculous notion. It was born out of laziness and trying to keep my typing on pace with my thought process, then grew into a bad habit.

And here I thought you were channeling E. E. Cummings or Don Marquis.

Nice job, Lubec, you drove off another one.

[Andy]

Seriously though. Nice job.

[Christina]

Sarah, I find the accusation that I would not capitalize as an "affectation" extremely insulting and also a ridiculous notion. It was born out of laziness and trying to keep my typing on pace with my thought process, then grew into a bad habit.

And here I thought you were channeling E. E. Cummings or Don Marquis.

Isn't this sort of the definition of an affectation?

[Stan]

Maybe Hugman was spirited off to the Mac "White World" with John Hodgman.

[todd]

Looking out my window in Chicago, I can see about 10 chairs and 5 cars.

[Chris in Somerville, Mass.]

There is long history of this going on in and around Boston.  Chairs, barrels, cones, old televisions, you name it.  Boston's mayor is reluctantly asking residents to remove their "savers" within 48 hours of a snowstorm to prevent lunatics from claiming a spot "for life" because they've shoveled it out a few time.  Newcomers unfamiliar with this kind of thing have inevitably found out the "rules" the hard way via vandalism and assault.  Now that the city sanitation department is physically removing the "savers" after two days most people are crying like the Bill of Rights was rescinded.  The whole practice is really not something I should condone, but hey,  I used to fucking do it myself!

[Pat K]

Newcomers unfamiliar with this kind of thing have inevitably found out the "rules" the hard way via vandalism and assault. 

Man oh man, if anybody ever actually fucked with my shit over a lameass parking chair, it would be ON. My main advantage: I would know where they lived.

[Sarah]

Or at least where they like to park.

[JustSheaNo]

I've seen it, but I wouldn't do it, and I live on a block with a number of hydrants, a church, inactive "active driveways" from which you will be towed, and some fake driveways.  City living makes you desperate for a spot, I guess.

[Jim McGriddles]

I was born and raised in a residential area of Brooklyn (Mill Basin), and there the chair situation depends on the amount of snow and the post-storm weather. If we got a ton of snow and it's sticking around for a while, we put our trash cans in our spots.  For the storm a week ago we didn't do it because everything melted pretty quickly: that being said, my brother was fired up when he found our neighbors had ganked his shovel spot and he had to park around the corner next to a snow drift.

It's not an anti-outsider move in that neck of the woods, because no one goes to Mill Basin unless they live there. I have noticed if the part of Boston I live in (Brighton, on the border of Allston) uses chairs, but given the general awfulness of parking in my area, I could imagine that blood would be shed if a shoveled spot got jacked.

I'll close with an awful spot-shoveling story: a few years back my girlfriend at the time lived in the Harvard Square area, and she had a car with CT plates that was illegally parked during a really bad snow storm (it was parked in a residential spot, not in front of a driveway or anything). We arrived at the car to find a few tickets on the windshield, and we started chipping at the ice and digging the mofo out. It was a bit of a struggle, and I am a fat kid, so we took a break at the halfway point and went in to warm up for a bit. When we got back the car had been towed: the tow driver had waited until we had dug it out enough for him to snatch it, and off he went. I did not win many Tommy Points that day.

[cas-vik]

Where I live South Philly no matter what the weather is half the block is filled with chairs and cones holding spots.  It drives me insane!