So what’re you gonna do about it Whitey?
I and my family lived in Chicago just south of Lincolnwood for decades. I’ve never heard the phrase.
Grew up on the Northwest Side, went to NU, drove down Dempster every day for years. Never heard the term, and never saw the maneuver in Skokie.
Have lived in the Chicago area for 24 years; I’ve never heard the term.
That said, I have heard another non-PC term for the same driving maneuver, used by a friend of mine who grew up on the Southwest Side (he very likely learned it from his blue-collar grandparents, who raised him). He refers* to it as “n******ing your way into an intersection”, and clearly the term is borne out of a belief that members of that racial group are more likely to engage in it.
*Well, referred (past tense)…I haven’t heard him use the term in many years, so maybe he’s gotten a clue.
Grew up in Evanston, still have many friends and family there and live 15 minutes away, raised Jewish, never heard the term in my life until this thread.
I’ve never heard the term either.
Ha, indeed. I’m not from Boston but I’ve seen people pull that shit all the time. I never knew that was associated with being Jewish in certain parts of universe. In LA, that’s associated with having a car.
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Never heard it. I grew up in the northern suburbs and worked in Lincolnwood for a while. My ex sister-in-law is from Skokie, and my nieces and nephews and their families live there. I will have to ask them about it.
The maneuver itself is not unknown; sometimes it’s the only way to get out!
Asked my sisters - they never heard of it. Weird - seems as tho my wife and I may have come up with this ugly term. Not a pleasant thought.
Trying to come up with a situation in which this is the ONLY way to get to one’s desired destination. I can think of MANY situations in which it avoids personal inconvenience by inconveniencing others… Gee, I want to turn left right here. But don’t want to go through the hassle of making a right instead and finding someplace where I could pull a u-turn, go around the block, …
Well, I will edit. Sometimes it was the only way to get out that suits me, especially if I see an opening coming up. Since I now live downstate, having ten cars at a light is heavy traffic, and I am unsuited to driving up north anymore.
It’s pretty normal and expected in the greater Boston area. It’s just the way people drive and most folks accept it as a minor inconvenience that they themselves benefit from at other times.
I see it quite a bit in Chicago but I’ve never heard it called that name before.
–When I was younger we referred to that as the urban sprawl. Not sure if it was meant to be pejorative as we were all urbanites ourselves.
Nothing’s ever the ONLY way to do it. But sometimes it’s the only sensible way.
I currently live on a cul-de-sac, where in the morning the traffic on the main road I have to turn into is frequently clogged on the near side by about a block in either direction, and the far side has fairly consistent high-moving traffic, with a gap every minute or so. If I just wait patiently behind my line, someone will often move up to block my exit, even though there’s no particular benefit to sitting in my way rather than out of my way. So yes, I move into the near column while I’m waiting for my gap. Never had a situation where the near column that I blocked moved up more than about half a dozen car lengths in that time, so nobody loses their place. I figure I’m causing a few people trivial-to-no actual inconvenience, while saving myself major inconvenience, and I’m cool with that.
That’s a situation in which I would consider this maneuver no big deal at all - in fact probably the appropriate move. When it would rise to the level of rudeness IMO is if things cleared such that the near-side traffic could flow, but is blocked by your car.
I often see it on main streets where someone will block traffic which is moving at the speed limit, and prevent them from making a green light. In such situations, I think it rudeness for the merging driver to inconvenience traffic in order to avoid some inconvenince to themselves by going around the block or whatever. Just my opinion.