I just heard a snippet on NPR–a guy (I have no idea who) apologizing for the “inconvenience” experienced by motorists on LSD last night. Unbelievable. I don’t think he should apologize one bit. Yes, the decision could have been made sooner, but I doubt it would have changed things. There are always those people who think that they can make it, even if they’ve been warned and know that others haven’t.
I am kinda wondering how I’m to get to work on Friday, though–I work on North Lake Shore Drive… Still, that is over 24 hours away, so it may be clear (maybe not, given the bitter cold that’s coming). I really don’t want to take the L in bitter cold on Friday.
It turned out to be a gorgeous day down here: sunny, mild and beautiful. I spent the DAY shoveling my car out and my driveway. I am beat. (my driveway is about 200 ft long). I don’t own a snow-blower… A neighbor came by when I was about 2/3s done and offered his blower, so the last bit was much quicker. Thank god for good neighbors!
So, as a born-and-raised Chicagoan, I’m still a little unclear about what exactly the dibs rules are.
If my car is in front of my house, and I shovel it out, I can call dibs. I got that.
Now, if my car is parked down the street, and I shovel that out, can I call dibs?
If my wife and I have cars, and they’re both parked relatively in front of my house, but creeping into the neighbor’s spot, or completely in the neighbor’s spot, can I call dibs on that?
Now, if the answer to number 1 is that I can, can I just find a spot down the street that’s empty, shovel it out and call dibs to reserve it for, say, a guest?
Can I call dibs if only minimal work was required to extricate my car. That is, is there an effort minimum to call dibs? For example, my car today is pretty much untouched because of the snow drifts. Meanwhile, across the street, or a few cars down, some are practically buried. I think it would take me maybe five minutes to get my car out, if that. Is it okay to call dibs in that case?
I’m being somewhat facetious with a couple of these, but I am genuinely curious as to the answer for #1.
Some schmuck over here made up for that by covering half our alley parking spot about 4’ deep with a snowblower. I mean I know he had to put the snow *somewhere, * but come on, was that really necessary? Luckily Tom Scud was let out of work early yesterday and had the forethought to move the car to the street, because Lord knows when the alley will be passable again. I just spent about 90 minutes shoveling out as much snow as I could find anywhere to put.
Also, even if I’d tried to get to work who knows how long it would have taken to get there? The Brown Line was apparently shut down between Kimball and Western for a chunk of this morning.
On the bright side, our cable (meaning phone, Internet, and TV) was down starting about 9 pm last night, but is now back up. But we never lost power or heat, so it could be worse. And we have plenty of groceries.
Also, a tip form my mom; Evanston public parking garages are free until Friday at midnight. Why she thought it would be a good idea for us to drive over there last night, leave the car, and then get home Lord knows how is beyond me, but maybe the info will be of use to someone.
I took a walk on LSD today around noon. A walk tight down the middle of it at Fullerton. They were still towing cars and I think I saw the bus that caused a lot of th problems. Downtown was cleared pretty quickly today. City has been impressive thus far.
I don’t believe in and get very annoyed with this practice about 99% of the time. Ok, today and the next couple days, it’s alright if you dug your car out and it is within a reasonable distance from your home.
But most of the time, it’s people who simply had parked there and left a car-sized hole in the snow. Here’s another one: people who put the junk in the spot before the snow has fallen! They see a 15% chance of flurries forecast, drag some lumber and kitty litter buckets out from the crawlspace, set 'em up reeeeal nice and head off for work. I can hear it now: “What, it might snow..”
I say you need to have shoveled the spot, no saves under 4 inches of accumulation, two days if you shoveled and one day for each 6 inches (rounded down after the first two days).
Hey, the city should lease special black and blue sawhorses! For $200/year, you can lease a snowhorse, subject to my above rules. Penalty for misuse: Three months in county & vehicle forfeiture.
Just got back in after my wife and I drove my son’s girlfriend home. By far the hardest part was getting out of, then back into the parking spot in front of our house. Other than that, piece of cake. The main streets are all plowed and most sidewalks are shoveled. Driving down the side streets, which they won’t start plowing till tomorrow, is where you take a risk. If you can stay in the ruts and don’t have a low-slung car, you should be OK. If you need to make a turn, though, good luck. Thinking this might be a problem, we brought shovels, and my 16-year-old and I did some digging at the corner when my wife, who was driving, got stuck. That done, we had to do a little additional digging to get her back into the space.
Confession: I used a construction barrier to block our parking space for the 45 minutes we were gone. On reconsideration, maybe I’ll see if I can get the boss to do a column on dibs etiquette after all.
Likely a snippet from the press briefing which I heard on WBBM-AM this afternoon…if so, that would have been Ray Orozco, Daley’s chief of staff, who indicated that it was his decision to keep LSD open until that point.
In a snow like this, absolutely people should be able to have dibs on the spot they spent hours digging out. I dunno, if it’s during restricted parking-plow rules, when streets are plowed (over 2 inches?) when you still need to dig out of what the plow pushed against the cars, people should still be able to call dibs.
This is silly. A couple inches should not give you dibs. Other than the fact that it makes the neighborhood look like a friggin ghetto, jackwipes down the street start calling dibs the moment there the merest rumor of snow and leave their crap on the street long after snow’s been a distant memory. And I’m only very slightly exaggerating here. I’ve seriously seen people put crates up after about two inches of snow and leave it there for a week after the snow had melted.
Other than possibly Philadelphia, is this a common tradition elsewhere? (And is it common in Philly? Seems like exactly the sort of things Philadelphians would do.)
These dibs barriers, is it customary to attach a note explaining why you’re reserving it? Sometimes do others simply move them and park there anyway? I don’t envy y’alls predicament one bit.
No and yes, respectively. I don’t know how *often *they’re moved, but I have seen some fistfights a brewin’ when someone moves someone else’s lawn chair from the street and gets caught doing it.
But overall, I’m amazed at how long some of these dibs spots go unstolen. I suppose it depends on the neighborhood and the parking availability, but the cultural taboo against touching another Chicagoan’s parking spot chair runs surprisingly deep.
Maybe you could compare it to what’s done in other cities, as well. Here in St. Louis, it’s common knowledge that you have an absolute, irrevocable, God-given right to the space in front of your house – plowed or not, lawn chair or not. In fact, one year the police dept. had to put out a statment that, no, there is nothing in city, state or federal law that guarantees the right to a parking space, that leaving a nasty note on someone’s windshield does not constitute a legal claim, and that parking in “your” space doesn’t give you the right to punch someone.
My apartment building is only a few steps from a CTA Red Line entrance, so I went to the Dame Myra Hess Memorial Concert at the Cultural Center, mostly to demonstrate how intrepid Chicagoans are. The snow was actually pretty modest downtown, perhaps 14 inches, and most of the sidewalks had been cleared by the various building staffs. But it was eerie seeing the Loop almost empty, with virtually no autos anywhere. Here’s State & Madison—the “world’s busiest intersection”—at 2:45 pm on a Wednesday:
You don’t want to this. You may end up with a rock through your window (and I’m not kidding. Pretty sure we had a poster here who ended up with their car window smashed when they parked in a spot whose dibs marker had been thrown into the lawn–so they didn’t even move it themselves.)
Sometimes, but at their peril. People who believe in the dibs system often believe that punishment for violating it includes damage to the tires or finish of the offender’s vehicle.
Did some preliminary research last night and the Boss thinks there might be enough for a column, provided we can add an angle or two, as follows:
In the wake of the blizzard, I notice people have resumed the time-honored Chicago practice of “dibs” - using an old kitchen chair to save their shoveled-out parking spot on the street. I’ve never done this, but have always been amused by the idea. Where did it come from? How did it begin? Has it ever been sanctioned? Or outlawed? What is the City’s view of it? Do people in other cities do this? Is there a dibs etiquette? Maybe this would be a good topic for a hard-hitting Straight Dope Chicago column. --Tim R. Mortiss
