WSJ article - Chicago residents claiming their (snow) shoveled-out parking spaces.
January 11, 2001
Snow Causes Chicago Residents
To Adopt Dibs System for Parking
By JONATHAN EIG
Staff Reporter of THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
CHICAGO -- City streets here resemble a rummage sale. Lawn furniture litters
the curb sides, and so do plastic milk crates, scratching posts, vacuum
cleaners, lamps, fans and cardboard boxes.
But the junk isn't there for the sanitation department. Chicagoans in growing
numbers have decided that shoveling a car out of a parking space confers
ownership of the patch of earth beneath it. Any old thing -- an empty paint can
or stepladder -- can signify ownership.
It's called the dibs system -- as in, "I got dibs on that space." And many here
find it deplorable. "It's a commentary on the growing oafishness in our lives,"
says writer Studs Terkel, the city's unofficial historian and a longtime urban
activist.
Inviting Trouble
Ever since last month's record-breaking 40-inch snowfall, the dibs debate has
grown hotter. More controversial than all the unsightliness is the fact that
parking your car where someone has staked a claim exposes you to retaliation
-- a clobbered side mirror, a shattered window, deflated tires. It's a rough
system of justice, but this winter it drew the tacit approval of Mayor Richard
M. Daley.
"Tell people, if someone spends all their
time digging their car out, do not drive into
that spot," Mayor Daley said during a news
conference last month. "This is Chicago.
Fair warning."
The problem is a side effect of urban
revival. Competition for parking spots
hardly existed during the three decades in
which Chicago lost population, mainly to
the suburbs and the Sunbelt. But the trend
was reversed in the 1990s, making the
North Side of Chicago one of the nation's
hottest housing markets. As developers tore
down single-family houses and put up big
apartment buildings -- sometimes without
adequate off-street parking -- street spots
got scarce.
A big snowstorm makes things worse.
Plows rumble down the streets, heaping
snow against cars. Drivers with shovels
pile snow into the gaps between cars, thus
reducing the number of vehicles that can
park on a block. Then, the chairs and milk
crates and boxes spring up.
Blunt Warning
And out come the crowbars and hammers to wreak vengeance on those who
have dared to push aside the blockades. Occupying a North Side parking space
one day is a TV tray with a brick on it. In case the brick itself isn't enough of a
hint, next to it is a crude drawing of a skull and crossbones.
Chicago police say the parking predicament has led to fistfights and vandalism
reports -- exactly how many, the department doesn't know. "We don't have a
computer category for street furniture," says spokesman Pat Camden.
Jenny Loerzel's car was one casualty. A newcomer to the city, Ms. Loerzel
says she shoveled out several spaces on her block but never thought of
claiming ownership rights. "I'm from Iowa," she says. "We don't do that." But
when she came home late one night and found that someone else had put a
chair in a parking space she dug earlier that day, she got religion. She tossed
aside the chair and backed her Volkswagen Vanagon into the space. The next
morning she found both of her side-view mirrors smashed.
"I don't understand why you suddenly get to keep a spot when it snows," says
Ms. Loerzel, 27 years old. "My question is: How long do they get to keep it
now, until March?"
Alma Castro, who lives down the block, says she plans to relinquish her space
"as soon as the snow melts." Which could well be in April. Ms. Castro, driving
a Ford Probe, steers down North Whipple Street and stops in front of a pair of
plastic patio chairs. She gets out of her car, throws the chairs into a mound of
snow and backs her car into the slushy space she has come to think of as her
own.
"It took me a long time to clean it," Ms. Castro says, "and I'm four months
pregnant."
In neighborhoods transformed by the economic boom, divisions sometimes
break along lines of class and age. After digging out a space in front of his
house, 51-year-old John Malinowski marked his turf with a pair of sawhorses.
But when he returned home, he found that one of his new neighbors, the
owner of an SUV, was parked in his space.
"He decided he didn't want to dig his own spot," says Mr. Malinowski, a
computer programmer. "Probably late getting to the gym for a workout." Mr.
Malinowski exacted no revenge, but he is steamed. "If I was still younger and
cockier," he says, "I might do something."
An online survey by the Chicago Tribune showed that 50% of respondents
believed saving a spot is "selfish and sinister," while 43% said it is just fine with
them. One Tribune reader sarcastically suggested that the city post signs at its
borders reading, "Mayor Daley welcomes you to Chicago … but don't
park in a claimed spot. Fair warning."
The newspaper's survey might have been skewed by the fact that it was
attached to a column by Eric Zorn, who has complained bitterly about dibs.
Mr. Zorn's wife, unable to find a space after returning from the grocery store
one day, grabbed up all the lawn chairs, traffic cones and milk crates on her
block and flung them onto her neighbors' lawns. Mr. Zorn wrote about her
rebellion in the hope of inciting a citywide campaign to take back the streets.
So far, that hasn't happened.
"People do look at these spaces as their own property," says Michael Polelle, a
professor at the John Marshall Law School in Chicago who has written a
law-review paper on some of the legal issues surrounding snow removal.
Mr. Polelle says he doesn't know how the custom began, but he says the
mayor's endorsement of dibs this year has added a sense of legitimacy to the
tradition. "I don't know if he thought that one out," the professor says of
Mayor Daley. "Every time we get a bad snowstorm now it's going to get
worse. I think you might see some very uncivilized behavior. Then it will get
into the courts."
A spokesman for Mayor Daley says the mayor stands by his remarks but adds
that the city is trying to come up with a way to provide more parking by
removing more snow.
Meanwhile, some people suggest formalizing the dibs system. The Tribune's
Mr. Zorn has recommended a 36-hour limit on space-saving. Boston, another
city that has a dibs tradition, imposed a 24-hour limit several years ago but
hasn't had enough snow since to test it. Another Chicago columnist, in a shot
at yuppies, has suggested that new lawn furniture from Crate & Barrel and
other "poshdibs" should be freely cast aside.
But never swiped. On that, everybody seems to agree: No matter how angry
you might be about losing a space or having damage done to your car, stealing
somebody's curb-side patio furniture is never acceptable behavior. Some lines
of civility are not to be crossed.
Write to Jonathan Eig at jonathan.eig@wsj.com
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