A Couple of Milk Crates and a Lawn Chair

I was driving through some side-streets today on the northwest side of the city. This is an area that is not hurting for parking spaces. It is mostly single family homes, and there are no shopping or dining areas nearby that would attract extra cars into the parking spaces.

I drove through and there were tons of spaces. Some were cleared out of snow all spic and span, some belonged to people who just drove it out of the snow bank, and most were somewhere in between. But there were LOTS of spaces. Definitely more spaces than there were cars.


Most of the spots were being guarded by furniture. For those of you who do not live in Chicago, this is a recurring phenomenon every winter. People dig their car out of a spot on the street and then they save their spot by putting old junked up furniture, paint cans, home-made barricades, milk crates, big bags of leaves, and whatever else might be useful in saving a spot.


The City of Chicago doesn't do much to stop this practice, though they did announce a couple of years ago that they would throw out furniture left on the street. I never actually saw that happen, but it may have.

The strange thing about today is that I live in an area that has very inflexible parking during the best of weather. On the sunniest day, you may not find a parking spot because of the two churches, one school, and various restaurants that are within a stones throw of my apartment. It seems logical that people in my neighborhood would be very eager for a big snowstorm just because they would then be able to "legally" claim a parking spot for their own for awhile. But I haven't seen that happen.

I also lived across the street from Wrigley Field a couple of years ago. That neighborhood has about 3 cars to every street parking spot, but I never saw that happen on my street.

But there I was today in this neighborhood filled with people who probably never have to worry about parking more than one house down from where they actually live, and they are carrying their entire furniture collection out to the street to save their spots.

I've got to get home and get my old bookcase outside by my temporary replacement Hyundai before the snow really hits.