Man in Fall River MA was just busted for firing shots into [empty] cars that took over curbside parking that he had just cleared for his own vehicle. Yikes!
I read that in some towns it is customary to place lawn chairs in curbside spots that you clear of snow. On the other hand, curbside spots are public spaces that belong to no one. Any arguments or fights erupt over this matter in your neighborhood?
In our old neighborhood no one did anything to “hold” a spot they had cleared. And people would run up and down knocking on doors during a snow emergency if the tow trucks/plows were coming. But I think people were pretty careful to mostly park in front of their own houses when spots were scarce (we all had one-car garages back on the alley, which was usually plowed first, so it was usually a second car out front). It was a friendly place. 
I miss it.
You see it in parts of Boston. An odd one is someone claimed a space under the turnpike overpass in Allston, which is absurd because there’s almost no snow under a bridge. Boston has a rough sort of 48 hour rule and then their trucks will take away any stuff left.
It isn’t that big a deal because it usually happens in neighborhoods where the only people there are from the neighborhood.
I live in Brookline. No overnight street parking!! Thank heaven. Any time someone brings this up for change, a winter storm pops into mind: the real issue is many of the streets are reduced to one lane in sections, especially since so many morons either can’t or won’t park properly.
At times we have similar parking problems with morons in my neighborhood. Curbside parking is tight so in a snow storm or its aftermath some selfish boob will just “confiscate” a space in our assigned stalls in the back of our apartment building. Was a problem last year that almost caused vandalism of the interloper’s car.
“Dibs” is a long-standing tradition in Chicago and generally respected and supported by the mayor, although the city will eventually put a limit on it. http://chicago.cbslocal.com/2011/02/15/city-no-more-dibs-on-parking/
I live in an older, inner suburb kind of town and yeah, parking spot marking with chairs or garbage cans or cones is historically common. This year, for the first time EVER, the police made good on their threats to ticket/tow cars, with the result that everyone moved their cars off the street for the day, the plows plowed curb to curb, and now there’s plenty of spaces for everyone–no marking or wars necessary. it’s a goddam miracle.
I tell people where I live now about digging out and marking your parking spot in Boston and Cambridge and they have a hard time picturing it. What I always thought was absurd was when the city decreed you had to move your car and there was nowhere to move it. There are cars parked on both sides of the street for a reason. Where did they expect us to go?
I think people must have just loved us in the place where we lived last because we didn’t use the space on the street in front of our house, meaning they could.
Our city starts by plowing “snow emergency routes” (the main thoroughfares through the city). Then they do it one of two ways (depends on the city). They either do north/south streets one day, then east/west the next day. Or the other nearby city does even side one day, then odd side the next day. Sometimes you gotta park several blocks away to get a spot, but the street is plowed to the curb when they are done. They DO tow if you don’t move your car. Once they have gone past with the plows, you can move your car back.
Don’t have the parking problem where we live now and maybe they’ve solved it in Boston/Cambridge in the 25 years since I’ve been gone.
Was going to respond to this, but Marilyn beat me to it. Chicago is well known for this. When I used to drive down to Hyde Park often (where U of Chicago is), I’d see it a lot. I never dared mess with someone’s plastic lawn furniture at the curbside!
This past Wednesday after the major storm in Boston, I spent 2.5 hours digging a parking spot out of a solid pile of what seemed like close to 3 feet of snow with barely anywhere to put it. It was quite a challenging task. And I knew when I left the spot on Thursday, that when I returned in the early evening, someone else was going to benefit from my hard work. And yep, that was the case.
My daughter lives in South Boston, and helped her roommate dig out her car in exactly the same way as that described by soozievt.
People do put out cones, etc., but my daughter mentioned that this was tolerated by the city for only 48 hours or so.
And it is indeed the case that there is no place to park except on the street - no parking garage even if you were willing to pay through the nose to use it.
Our town plowed school parking lots first, plus allowed free parking in the new underutilized-someone-got-paid-off-for-it parking garage for the day, so that no one could claim they had no place to park. Also, it was only for snow emergency routes (not sure why my little street is called one).
Maybe we are “better” at this in our town because we get so much snow historically. They have really honed this process, and people are well versed in the rules. Last year we did have problems where one of the cities plowed snow into piles at the corners of blocks. We got so much snow that it made it a sort of mountain to navigate on the corners for pedestrians, and threatened to block the streets. This year they committed to trucking some of that snow out if it happens. It all depends on what your city decides to do in terms of policy and action on snow removal (and whether residents are willing to pay the taxes to support it).
I thought this was going to be about the idiots who decide that a dusting of snow means they don’t have to park like civilized people in parking lots- within the lines, not 3 feet apart from each other, etc.
I’ve never heard of this practice but parking on the street isn’t extremely common around here. Motor city: we were designed for cars and lots of them
“I thought this was going to be about the idiots who decide that a dusting of snow means they don’t have to park like civilized people in parking lots- within the lines, not 3 feet apart from each other, etc.”
Welcome to Seattle and its suburbia!
Here in PA it is custom to save your parking spaces with chairs, wash baskets, and all kinds of weird objects. During the past two years the police have been confiscating all those items; they store them on a large lot for people to go pick them up if they want.
MY problem is that my neighbor and I share a mailbox post that is on the property line. The approach to the boxes is entirely on my property, so they of course have assumed no responsibility for shoveling the required 8 feet length for the mailwoman. But as soon as I shovel, they park in that spot, instead of clearing their own driveway or in front of their own home. I park in my driveway,so they aren’t stealing a parking space from me, but it aggravates the heck out of me.
I am seriously thinking about getting a post office box and forcing them to move the mail box.
Where do you city folk park your cars when you all have to clear off the streets for the plows and trucks?
I remember “dibs” from when I lived in Chicago. We just tried to never move our car when we had a decent spot.
Like intparent’s, our neighborhood has alternate-side parking from November 1-April 1 (I think). But we are moving next week to a house with a wider driveway, a garage and no parking restrictions–the streets are wider there.