This makes a lot of sense to me- if a neighbour, with full knowledge of the situation, deliberatley took advantage of my work, then its an arsehole thing to do, if its someone from outside the loop, that has no reason to think other than “cool, an empty spot” then no point getting angry.
When the big snows hit here in Chicago I view it as free patio furniture upgrade time. If I see something in the street the would look good on my deck -yoink, into the back it goes without a flicker of conscience.
And one of the best things about having a crappy car is just driving over the flimsier looking stuff 
Seriously one of the major (top 3) reasons I moved out of the city was to get away from the parking nightmare. I’m considering moving but any place I go to WILL have a garage big enough for the car and my bikes.
As a matter of fact, I did dig out my neighbor’s car. She is approximately 70 years old and she asked me a few weeks ago if I would do so. Not that she had to ask. I dug out my neighbors because that’s the kind of guy I am.
In any event, nothing happened yesterday. I really only had an issue one time, and that was a few years ago. That doesn’t change that it’s always a matter of concern every year, because every time it’s different.
I’m not that guy. If push comes to shove, I do what I have to. But like I said earlier, that doesn’t mean I can’t be annoyed about it.
Well, you see, too many people have converted their garages to a Granny unit or 4 “hangar quen” non-running cars, or used for storing whaaaaaay too much crap. Then they think they get to own the spot in front of their house too. Fuck that. :mad:
This exactly. And I very much appreciate the OP’s acknowledgment of as much. As someone mentioned, the BEST solution would be for the entire block to have a street clearing party, in which they cleared the entire block. But lotsa luck getting that together on a regular basis.
You’ve got all kinds of choices with respect to where you live, where you work, and how you get from one to the other. IMO, none of them entitles you to exclusive use of the public street. I very much understand the frustration of folks who shovel out a space and then find it occupied. But I really cannot appreciate the idea that if such occurs you are justified in damaging another person’s property. Sure, the thought might occur to you, but acting upon it is simply criminal.
BTW - grew up in Chicago w/o a garage, and now live in the burbs on a street on which no street parking is allowed. Commute via public transportation.
I’m in one of six houses (detached) that don’t have driveways. There’s an alley, and a few people have garages in their backyards that they access from the alley.
It isn’t common, and I hate it. I hate not having a garage and I hate the alley (it’s window shopping for thieves).
When it snows enough in Portland that a car needs to be shoveled out, no one will take the space because no one can go anywhere 
This is why I moved from an apartment with street parking only to an apartment with its own driveway.
Because when I lived in the other apartment, if I cleared my spot and moved my car, it got taken over. AND if I didn’t clear my car, because it was Sunday or late at night or whatever, I got yelled at by this woman across the street. I mean, she fully expected me to come out even if it was snowing at midnight and clear my car that second! I hated her so much…
I definitely do not understand the people with garages who park their car on the street, though. It’s not right.
For the record, since it hasn’t been answered, the actual situation that gets people mad about this (I used to live in a place where it was street-only parking).
You dig your car out, and clear your parking space, and go to work.
Your asshole neighbor brushes off a 4"x4" patch of front windshield and maybe scoops out enough snow that he can barely force his car out and drives to work.
Your asshole neighbor comes back before you do and parks in the spot you cleared, since it’s clear.
You come home, and the only street parking spot left is the one your asshole neighbor left this morning, and it’s filled up with plow drifts and compacted, icy snow from where he drove over it without shoveling out, and you can’t get parked in there without skidding unless you shovel it yourself.
The issue isn’t other transient folks using an empty spot, it’s specifically the issue of the same gang of folks coming home from work but the assholes piggybacking on the shoveling of others without doing their share of the street shoveling.
I would totally be one of the people who takes spots that other people cleared. It’s not illegal, and fuck if I’m going to bust my own ass. I don’t get the sense of entitlement about digging snow off a public street. Nobody’s making anybody dig those spots out. If you don’t want to dig, don’t dig.
Yeah, I don’t understand the whole digging out thing. 'Round here, most everyone has either driveways, parking lots, or garages. For example, I have a garage, a driveway right in front of it that leads to the alley behind my house, and a parking pad along side said alley. Because my husband’s got a ton of 'em, only power tools live in the garage (I’m still astounded that people put cars in garages and not tools like the good lord evidently intended), our 2 cars are parked in the driveway and parking pad.
We have to shovel the driveway and dig ourselves out when the alley’s plowed, but there’s no digging out of the street infront of our house. Indeed, it’s illegal to park there during a big snow - it’s a snow emergency and you’ll get ticketed (and sometimes towed) until the streets are plowed curb to curb. (Other cities and suburbs have different arrangements; sometimes you can park on one side during the snowstorm until the other side is plowed, but in R’dale it’s all streets, curb to curb.) Here, a “snow emergency” is declared whenever it’s forecasted to snow 2" or more.
If you’re dumb enough to park your car in the street during a snow emergency here, you’ll get a steep fine **and **the fun of digging your car out.
If we didn’t have a driveway, I’m totally not certain what we’d do during a snow emergency. Park 'em at Rainbow, I suppose, and walk. Or something. But it’s not an issue, because we all do. And I live in a first ring suburb!
Dio, I am 100% not surprised by you saying this. As long as we’re clear that people who actually live in a street-parking neighborhood and do this are seen as a lazy freeloading assholes who doesn’t care for the general welfare of the neighborhood, that’s on the non-shovelers.
Me personally, I prefer to participate up to community standards when the alternative is being a lazy-ass at my neighbor’s expense, but then again I prefer to have good relationships with my neighbors. I figure it’s the same reason I shovel my sidewalk even though I’m the last house on the block and it literally ends at my property line–people jog loops around this cul-de-sac, and it’s my freakin’ sidewalk so I should shovel it (but that’s another rant).
There’s a tragedy of the commons aspect here, and I hate to say it because normally I hate that analogy but in this case we’re actually talking about a public good that benefits everyone in the neighborhood, that non-participatory assholes can screw up for everyone (as the unshoveled snow gets packed into ice, which is much harder to remove and much more dangerous).
Generally this sort of thing only comes up with actually in-city row housing or older apartment housing that doesn’t have provisions for every apartment having at least one car–that is, places where parking on the street is pretty much the only option.
Z - I’m not getting the venom. Maybe the spectrum isn’t quite so clearly between saits and sinners as you suggest (tho I have no problem assigning you and Dio upon such a scale!) 
Isn’t so much of life that in matters you deem important you end up exerting more effort than others whom you consider “freeloaders”? I’m always aware of whan I am assigning other people what I personally consider their “fair share.”
Dormont collects “parking chairs” all winter and makes a display out of them down at the pool come spring. It’s a really cool display after a bad winter.
I keep making sure any house I have has a garage and I’m very free with having folks parked across it ticketed and towed; even times when I don’t have a car. This fucked up city sometimes ------- my one neighbor didn’t have a car or use his garage for about ten years and he never complained about folks blocking it. When he did get a car and folks blocked it in or out, the police were less than sympathetic to his problem for a long time. Almost like a squatters rights thing.
I don’t get the “fair share” argument. If you don’t expect anyone to use the spot you dig out but yourself, then there is no intent to “share” anything. The work is purely self-serving.
Sorry, but IMO the bottom line is that you don’t own the street. Once you move your car, that space is public property. If you spent a lot of time digging it out, then I think you’re just a sucker for wasting the effort. I don’t get the self-righteousness and territoriality about a space a person knows is public property when he/she digs it out. I see it as being akin to going out and cleaning the sidewalk in front of your house, and then getting upset when people walk on it.
Of course, I say this as someone who doesn’t have to live in that kind of situation, so maybe my attitude would be different if I did, but then again, I would never choose to live in that situation. Hell, I don’t even shovel my own driveway. I pay a service to do it.
Those people who block spaces with chairs? Isn’t that illegal? Why isn’t that littering and obstruction of a public street? What happens if someone just tosses the chairs aside and parks there anyway? What is the chair blocker going to do about it?
I didn’t move the chairs, I just parked in the space that I had originally dug out, but had been used by a neighbor (not sure which one). He took things a step further by assuming that since he had “taken” the space once, that it was his. When I re-parked there, the next morning I got to break chunks of frozen dog (?) shit off of the window and door handle. That’s what I got for NOT putting out chairs. Hate the practice, but I don’t live there anymore, I have a garage, so it’s moot (for me anyway).
I believe this 100%.
It varies from place to place but its mostly against the law. Which is why Dormont collects them. And they, at least, have fined repeat offenders.
Granted. But always remember that payback can be a bitch and there are those out there who think “rather than get mad, I’ll get ahead”. Often quite legally. Be prepared for things like that to happen.
I think I read somewhere once about someone who always cleared the space in front of a neighbors house during bad snows. Folks, thinking as you do, would act as you did - just to come back and find their car gone. Legally towed, fined and impounded. Seems as how there was a fire hydrant there. It’s hard to say - maybe snow covered the hydrant and they didn’t see it and maybe they did see it and didn’t care. But fuck them - the laws the law.
That would be perfectly fair, and clever.