Not a productive post

[two-stabs.livejournal.com]

My apologies if you're the one whose lawn chair I ran over (and over) and then parked on, but you shouldn't leave garbage in a public parking spot.

Comments

[badseed1980.livejournal.com]

The same person in my neighborhood who left her walker out in a parking spot and then complained when it was removed during the last snow emergency has left it out in a parking spot again. WTF?

[emcicle.livejournal.com]

it drives me crazy when people "claim" a parking spot with chairs/trash cans/what have you, when there is barely any snow on the ground anymore! wtf is right.

[two-stabs.livejournal.com]

To my credit, I went up and rang the house bell first but no one answered.

[maelithil.livejournal.com]

Good for you. I hate that shit.

[kpht.livejournal.com]

If you want a parking space that bad, make sure your next residence has off street parking. The end. No one owns a space. I hate that it's condoned in Boston. I can understand it's a bitch to shovel out and I see the other side's point, but that's what owning a car in the city comes with. It's unfair that people who were out of town or working during a storm can't get a space on their street because someone else has marked a spot.

[leko.livejournal.com]

I'd only do that in a car that you don't mind getting keyed, because I'm sure that's the result of doing that sort of thing.

This is also why off-street parking is a requirement for me wherever I live.

[frederic.livejournal.com]

A great art installation would be an assemblage of harvested "snow chairs"...

[miss-chance.livejournal.com]

Are you kidding? A couple of my favorite dining room chairs were "snow chairs!" :) no joke. I'm not giving them up for an art intstallation.

Great term, "snow chairs." :)

[intuition-ist.livejournal.com]

i've idly toyed with the idea of renting a pickup truck and collecting the various crap people leave to "mark" "their" spots.

the city has to get serious about sending the message that it's not OK before the hard-liners (and car-keyers) will get it.

[vibrantabyss.livejournal.com]

If you ever want to go on a gathering run, let me know. I'm in.

[zmgmeister.livejournal.com]

When you're in Rome, do what the Romans do. If you don't like our neighborhood customs here in Somerville, feel free to leave. Nobody asked you to move here.

[badseed1980.livejournal.com]

So, darn those pesky city employees who came around and removed the crap that people had put out to save parking spaces after the last snow emergency, because they're malcontents who don't like the neighborhood customs?

[plumtreeblossom.livejournal.com]

Well done. Park with pride.

People are idiots.

[nvidia99999.livejournal.com]

That explains most social phenomena.

[prog.livejournal.com]

This is interesting to me. Am I misremembering that there was a d_s thread from several winters ago that was much more sympathetic to spot-claimers, after the publication of a Boston Globe article about tensions between the city of Boston and certain of its neighborhoods on this same issue?

(The whole topic, including the vigilante "break the rules and we'll cut key you" attitude that arises from otherwise sane people, gives me the heebie-jeebies.)

[aki.livejournal.com]

I don't drive, so I'm not the best to comment on this... but seriously, the amount of work that goes in to ice covered snow? You should get to save that damn space.

[masswich.livejournal.com]

And I am sure they will be offering their apologies when your tires somehow get flat overnight...

Actually, I don't really like people saving spots, but when there is a lot of snow and someone spends an hour shoveling a space out, I can sympathize with the thought.

[emcicle.livejournal.com]

i can sympathize with them for a day, maybe two if it's really a lot of snow, but after that, i think it's overkill. and people around here try to keep claiming a spot when there is less than an inch of snow on the ground, and that's just ridiculous (especially the neighbors across the street from me who have offstreet parking!)

[geekpixie.livejournal.com]

This totally makes me think of that "this is not Boston" ad they aired last year..not sure if it's still around. But here's the youtube link.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QMlqVcxmYkc

[surrealestate.livejournal.com]

The first time I saw that ad, I fell off my chair laughing. So perfect.

(The others in that campaign were pretty great, too.)

I have a friend who...

[nvidia99999.livejournal.com]

Has his own parking spot, but nonetheless he always parks his car in a garage when it snows because he is worried that it would get damaged by liding cars and snow plowers... Is this so unusual?

Re: I have a friend who...

[ron_newman]

liding?

[vibrantabyss.livejournal.com]

I used to respect saving spots, at least somewhat. Then came home one day and found a chair in the spot I'd pulled out of that morning. And the people there tried to argue it was theirs since they put the chair in it. Tossed the chair, told them I'd never respect their saving it again. After two more storms, where I came home and had a nice spot all dug out with their chair, they gave up digging (or at least saving) spots. never ran over their stuff tho... just tossed it up on the sidewalk.

[mraudet.livejournal.com]

sorry folks, but if i dig out the spot it is mine for a few days. i live here. this is my home. this is my neighborhood. you want to park here so you don't have to pay for parking and walk to the square or the T? then park in my spot at your own risk. side mirror got broken? must have been one of the plows...

you want a parking spot? start shoveling that snow bank and make your own. this one is temporarily mine! take advantage of my efforts and you get what you deserve. this is the way it is.

[two-stabs.livejournal.com]

The fact that this chair was put in place prior to the storm aside, you are a huge piece of shit, or more likely, an internet tough guy. How many side mirrors have you broken, Rambo?

[mraudet.livejournal.com]

the irony of your ad hominem post calling me an internet tough guy is excellent. well played.

[pierceheart.livejournal.com]

What pisses me off is the asshole who used to park in front of my apartment (even side) during the snow emergencies, after the ticketers/towers come through, just to go see his baby momma.

Now he's parked on temple st, even side, after I left him a note on his windshield last time.

He's gotten honked at by the plows both times, now I just wish the plows would clip him.

[belladonna.livejournal.com]

Hear, hear! There, there!

[hrafn.livejournal.com]

Aw, man, that was my best "lounge around watching the snow fall while drinking lemonade" chair :( :( :(

[aimeedonofrio.livejournal.com]

I'd be a tattle tale and call 311 to report 'trash/abandoned property in the street'. A street name would probably be enough info, an address would be even better.

My experience with other 311 reporting (out street lamps, missed recycling) has resulted in amazingly speedy results.

[pierceheart.livejournal.com]

311 doesn't always work fast enough to catch scofflaws - NYE I emailed them about this (http://community.livejournal.com/davis_square/1604676.html?thread=18408772#t18408772) and they said they'd get to it.

They never did.

[sonofabish.livejournal.com]

If some lazy fuck wants to capitalize on my efforts in shoveling out a spot for my car, well, it's winter and sometimes ice creates some really nasty gouges in the paint of car. Pity. Lack of respect for the efforts of others sometimes translates directly into lack of respect for your property. Rules of the neighborhood.

[two-stabs.livejournal.com]

Right, except I shovel my own spot out... I'm just not enough of a d-bag to mark it afterwards. It snows, I shovel the spot, I use my car, I look for a spot when I get back.

Also, your internet tough guy is showing. But if I see any fat dudes messing with my car I'll know where to send the cops. ;)

[ratatosk.livejournal.com]

This is a question for people who grew up with the practice of marking spots, and are really solid on the rules of it.

If you were to take off your I-am-on-the-Internet hat, ignore any emotional stakes you had in this, put on your ethnographer hat, and try to write this stuff down so that your great-great-great-great grandkids would get something historically accurate, how would you explain the rules of spot marking?

A good account of it should explain stuff like the following (both how to do it right, and examples everybody would agree constitute Doing It Wrong):

Now, nobody involved actually thinks they are evil -- pretending otherwise is naive. People who put chairs in their parking spaces aren't going home, kicking puppies, and beating their kids or anything -- they're performing their role, as they understand it, in a complicated social practice. These are not a bunch of drunk teenagers looking for any excuse to engage in petty vandalism. It takes a certain level of civilization to carry an actual chair out to the street -- a weird, highly visible act -- instead of just randomly trying to disable any cars you don't like, and hoping nobody's got a camera trained on you at the time.

So, I've dug out a spot, and pulled my car out -- what is fair game to mark it with? Does it have to be a chair in order to be done right? I've moved empty trash barrels out of the street when they were rolling around. I don't know if they were meant to mark spaces or not, but it seems like there might be some implicit rules about using markers that don't get blown around and damage other cars.

Okay. I've gone away for at least a few hours -- this is the whole point of marking the spot. During that time any number of things can happen: sanctimonious intermeddlers come around and move my chair, the DPW picks it up, somebody runs it over accidentally, a snowplow pushes it around, the wind blows it away, somebody comes along in a van picking up all the free chairs -- in the real world this stuff happens all the time, and is probably the primary reason spot-markers aren't there when I get back.

Now, as a member of the community acting in good faith, when I get back from work and find my previously-marked spot taken, how do I know what to do next? Do I rely on somebody who was at home and watching out their window to let me know who took my chair? Does the scheme rely on knowing my neighbors and being able to identify which cars go with which neighbors?

So, say my neighbor John parks in my place, I know where he lives and can go knock on his door and say "John, you bastard!", and stuff will get resolved. But Mary just moved in, and I don't recognize her car -- does that make her more or less fair game in terms of doing stuff to her car?

Assuming I have determined Mary's at fault here, and decide to do stuff to her car, do I think of myself as exacting vengeance? Making myself feel better? Just trying to not get her to do it again? How do I decide what dollar amount of damage to do? Would I normally have some escalating sequence, starting with leaving a note, and ending with broken glass? If so, how does it work? Again, these are otherwise upstanding members of the community here, not self-identified child-beating puppy-kickers.

Okay, now assume I am a good faith driver, I've come back to find my parking space taken, and I need to park somewhere else. How do I know where it's fair game to park? Let's assume I dug myself out before everyone else, so I don't know who once had chairs in their spaces that got picked up, and which spaces are legitimately empty. Do people just pretty much park in the same spaces, so I would know from experience that Suzy and Bill always park in those spots over there, and leave out chairs, but nobody ever owns the spaces in front of John's or Mary's houses? How do I avoid screwing anyone over at this point?

[pierceheart.livejournal.com]

How do I avoid screwing anyone over at this point?

You either don't worry about it, as you aren't screwing anyone over legally, or you do worry about it, take your chances, and hope the social customs police mraudet and sonofabish don't slash your tires.

As for the idea that the police won't do jack about it, hah! When my insurance company starts sending claims officers to the PD, and from there, to the mayors office ('cause I have an insurance company that gives a shite about how well police control crime in the areas where their insured parties live), I think you'll start seeing a better PD response to this.

Proof that unemployment in Somerville is UP!!!!

[nvidia99999.livejournal.com]

Two years ago, this thread would have been only half in length! :)