The Parking Space Dibs Factor

As I was leaving for work yesterday morning (Monday) and driving slowly down my street, I looked to my left and couldn’t believe my eyes, as I saw two metal chairs marking out a dug-out parking space where several inches of snow had fallen on the street only days earlier.

As I passed by the space, I just shook my head and wondered if this really was the suburbs or not, as that was one of the many reasons I moved out of Chicago and into the suburbs, was to avoid the bad parking situation, especially during the winter months when street parking becomes less plentiful like available food for rodents or squirrels, also during the winter season.

Having lived through various winters within Illinois & Indiana (1993-1994), I’d have to rank the winter of 1998-1999 as one of the worst winters I lived through, after Indiana of course! During that time period, I was still working at Douglas Press (AKA The Bingo Factory) in Bellwood, with a drive-time between 45 minutes to an hour long everyday.

That winter, I was living in Chicago with my roommates Noam, Suzanne & Ersin, (from Turkey). I used to hang out a lot with Ersin, when I wasn’t performing or going to sleep early, usually about 7:30-8pm each night, in order to wake up every morning at 2:30am and be out the apartment building door by 3:30am, so I could be at work by 4:30am, but anyway, it was early in January, 1999 when the great snowstorm hit and several inches covered the streets near where I lived.

I could never park legally in the zoned permit areas, due to the fact that my car was registered in another suburb, so I had to park on streets without zones, which always meant parking three or four blocks away, depending on how lucky or early I would come in each night. It must have taken me nearly two and a half hours to dig my car out from underneath all that snow

But in Chicago, like several other cities within the United States that experience snow, there seems to be an unwritten law that goes into effect each winter in which a person who makes a dignified effort to dig out his car from a snow burial, has the right to mark out his/her space with junk from his trunk, apartment, house or wherever one can find stuff.

Usually this junk/stuff consists of old lawn chairs, lawn ornaments, metal chairs, milk crates, wooden saw horses, orange safety cones, lumber or whatever else they can create or find that is considered doable, which is almost anything.

Sometimes I can empathize with them and others times I just can’t tolerate it, because after all it is a public street and anyone else can park there the other nine months out of the year when it DOESN’T snow. So, what’s the big deal, anyway? Yet, part of this unwritten law one MUST abide by it that is if one values their life or vehicle.

So when I dug out my car, I joined in with the rest of the snow-shovel gang and set up my own art project within the street parking space I had just dug out. In my space, I placed an upside down white laundry basket beneath a white two by four (piece of lumber) beneath a broken white toaster oven with four Kellogg’s Eggos inside and hoped someone would take them.

But of course they didn’t and at least I had a decent parking space on that street for the next two and a half months. My junk was never tampered with until the city came by in late March and threw away my things along with everyone else’s junk. I didn’t feel so bad then.

One year later, winter of 2000, Chicago mayor Richard M. Daley Jr., made remarks on the matter at his weekly press conference. He said, “That’s their property if someone spends all night digging out his car. This is Chicago. Fair warning!” Of course Chicagoans were upset, even as Daley’s press-secretary at the time Jackie Heard claimed that his remarks well all meant in fun, “tongue-in-cheek,” I believe were her exact words.

As for the parking situation on my street where I live, I did what any citizen would do; I called the village, followed by a phone call to the local police department, just as I did when my neighbors from across the way in the houses were I live were feeding rodents and other stray animals last spring and summer.

But a fellow has to do what a fellow has to do and besides, it won’t be winter for another eight days, good God!