so in parts of boston and the surrounding cities, on-street parking is fairly tough to come by. outside of a few places, you need a parking permit to even be allowed to park at all. my friend dave regularly spends 30 minutes looking for a place to park in his area of brighton.

anyhow, whenever we have a heavy snowfall, there is a common practice of putting a trashcan or chair or traffic cone in the parking space that you just dug yourself out of. the problem here is evident - on-street parking is not automatically private property, just because you shoveled yourself out (as everyone else did). what's more, if you dare to park in someone else's "spot," you can expect to have your car vandalized (i had the antennae on my car snapped in brighton).

suddenly in boston, this has become *the* axe to grind and the mayor has decided to take action: if you leave a parking spot holder and the cops/whoever sees it more than 48 hours after a snowfall ends, they will remove it. kind of a silly solution...

fortunately, in my part of somerville, i rarely have trouble finding a place to park, despite the snowdrifts. does this kind of unspoken practice of putting place-holders out happen anywhere else in the country?

KPH

it would never snow that much here, but man i'd love to see someone try in that in richmond.

I saw this once, after the great snowfall of 94 (or 96, I don't remember the year). Some neighbors tried this. I don't know how it worked out for them in the end.

This time of year in Chicago they enact new parking rules and it sucks.

It makes already impossible to find parking even more impossible.

Oh, and people here put chairs in spots to reserve them all the time. Though I'm not sure If I've seen it done during winter. hmmm

chicago is nuts about this, but the mayor backs the people who save a spot.

He sees it as you helped clean up the snow in an area of the city, so you have dibs on parking there. Seems totally ridiculous to me.

I'm glad there's always plenty of parking in my neighborhood, snow or no snow. I only have to parallel park five or six times a month - most of the time I just pull right into a spot outside of my apartment. Lakeview was aggravating enough - I can't even imagine what you have to put up with, Jen.

Oh well where we live we have a parking garage that's part of it so we're good.

But before we moved here I was in Wicker Park/Ukranian Village border and Josh was in Ravenswood. And my parking situation was much worse then his. It was absolutely awful.

Some guy interviewed in the paper said he's putting a toilet in his spot since the city doesn't pick up plumbing.

I'm glad I have a driveway and a big vacant lot next to my house.

in my old neighborhood in chicago people put out almost entire dinette sets. the people have spoken.

Hearing about this, I don't miss driving as much.