It didn’t stop the savages in this town from stealing my bike seat and post! Nor did it stop them from stealing my first bike I had in this city when I forgot to lock it one night.
Sorry to hear that Eva. That’s a pretty fucking barbaric custom.
That’s why I keep my bikes indoors when I don’t have a beater. Plus anything I plan on locking up downtown is going to be ‘urbanized’. That means no quick releases on the wheels, and a cable securing the seat to the frame. Plus a solid (not bic-pen pickable) U lock.
They do it around here, as well. You’ve been on my street, you know how limited the parking is. Well, a couple of days ago after our snow, one of the neighbours put a chair out in a space which they hadn’t even shovelled. Idiots. Someone wisely tossed the chair out of the space.
It is strange. I never experienced it until I got to Baltimore.
I will start by saying this. . .I actually like shovelling and will often shovel out spaces just becuase I like being out in the snow working up a sweat. And, I NEVER mark my space.
Fortunately, my block tends to be uncharacteristically civilized, and I think that anyone taking a spot someone else cleared probably cleared another spot themselves.
That said, I think the spot-marking has it’s advantages. You just know that some of these folks would go blasting through unshovelled snow, only to return and snipe a space that someone else dug out nicely.
Even though I don’t mark a spot, when I see Joe Blow down the street mark his, I always figure, “well, at least he won’t be parking in mine.”
Finally, to Eva, what I would have done was put a note on your windshield that said, “You parked in a spot that I shovelled. I realize that you probably shovelled another spot that someone else parked in, but that’s not really my problem. If people like you didn’t take spots that they didn’t shovel, I probably wouldn’t have to put a chair in them.”
And then I would have smashed all your windows. (j/k)
That’s the spirit!
Let me know the next time you get 20 inches of snow in a day in San Francisco.
Just heard a report on our NPR station this morning. Seems that the 2 day after the snow emergency rule is still in force, but it’s not sure if/when it will be enforced after this blizzard. They were interviewing residents in Southie, Roxbury, and Dorchester, and they were pretty darn adament about slashing tires, smashing windows, and painting cars that offended their sensibility, and they were willing to be recorded saying that while using their real names. The level of contempt for the mayor was astonishing, many said they’d never vote for him again, one decided to run for mayor opposing him on this very issue!
One side note, now that people know that the santiation workers will toss anything left out, people have talked about using hazardous materials (paint cans, TV and computer screens, etc) to mark spots, thus either avoiding getting tossed or getting rid of stuff that is otherwise a hassle.
I’ve never had to shovel out a regular parking spot, though I’ve done it plenty of times while staying elsewhere or helping out friends. But people take this way too seriously. The only method I sort of approve of is the tactic of pouring water over a car that poached a spot and freezing the doors shut. I’ve seen that happen.
I thought all snow-bound big cities behaved this way. It really sucks. The only way I’d live in the city is if I had off-street parking. It’s just wrong. Though I feel for the diggers, they don’t own the road.
Yeah, they mark their spaces in this part of the city, too, but i’ve never heard of anyone breaking someone’s windows for violating the custom. That’s what i meant by “barbaric.” I think the custom itself is just selfish and silly.
Like Trunk, i seem to live on a street with an unusually civilized bunch of people. Everyone here shovelled their own car out, and no-one marked their space. We’re lucky, in that my street is literally only one block long, and is quite secluded with very little through traffic, so about the only people who park here are the people who live here.
I shovelled our car out the day after it snowed and went to the store. When i got home, one of my neighbours had parked in the spot i shovelled, so i just parked in someone else’s spot. There are enough spots, generally, for everyone in the street. Maybe, if there were a real shortage of parking spaces, people would start marking their space with a chair. But i still don’t think anyone would be breaking windows.
What really amazed me a couple of years ago when we had a 2 foot dump of snow (and when i lived in a different neighbourhood), was that people would still have a chair in their space a week after they had shovelled it out. Some morons seem to believe that they get to keep the space until the last tiny bit of snow has melted from the earth.
One thing I have noticed, as a non-car extracting person, is that if everyone were to actually fully clear their space of snow, things would be a lot better overall. Most folks just dug enough to free their car and no more. This results in fewer parking spaces since there is no fluidity of size. If an SUV is dug out and a compact car replaces it, you lose that extra space!
Now I can understand the problems if the snow is heavy and wet, or falls at night and you must dig out the morning you need to go to work. But this snow was powdery and fluffy, and fell conveniently (at least in Philly) on Saturday afternoon. Even with the game playing there should have been time for folks to completely clear their spaces. Yet most folks just dug away the front half of their car, drove it off and left the remaining snow to act as space barriers. Pheh!
Okay, I still don’t get it (said the Californian*). If the chair was on the lawn, not in a space, then how was the space saved? Seems like you were perfectly justified in thinking the space was available.
*whose building has a garage, no less 
Doesn’t happen here. At least not that I’ve ever seen. No tradition of marking spots with items, no vandalizing others’ cars over same. That I’ve ever heard tell of anyway.
Our snow removal services aren’t all that grand either. The muni has this charming habit of withholding services if it’s “not too bad” (in THEIR minds) if they consider the previous year’s snow removal costs to have been too much.
And I SWEAR that they wait to plow the “poor people’s” areas at 3am. Damn snowplows and sanders are noisy as hell. But no, judging from my home town, I don’t think all snowbound cities are like that.
Although, we get a hell of a lot of cars that do the “pull away from the parking spot wearing a staypuft marshmellow mound and let it all blow off on the highway” thing.
I’m so sorry this happened to you **eva[/b[