Snowmageddon 2011: Dibs

As just about everyone knows, I'm a big fan of tradition, especially cherished Chicago traditions. Eating Fannie May candies? Gimme some. Watching Hardrock, Coco and Joe at Christmastime? All for it. Marshal Field's? Wish it weren't Macy's now, but we can still stare at the holiday displays, right?

One Chicago tradition I can't hold, however, is "Dibs."

"Dibs," for the uninitiated, is a dubious custom that crops up every winter once a snow worth shoveling has fallen. Drivers dig out their cars and mark the spaces for themselves with whatever they can find around the house. Usually, chairs (either kitchen or patio, it matters not), but it could be just about anything that won't blow away in the stiff winter breeze. I've seen everything from vacuum cleaners to bags of cat litter thrown out in the streets to protect parking spots.

(I must mention that, as Svengoolie--a.k.a. Rich Koz--correctly points out on his blog this morning, nobody in Chicago really calls this practice "Dibs"; the term is a relatively recent media invention. For the purposes of this and future blog entries on the subject, "Dibs" it will be.)

There are many reasons I despise this "tradition," like:

1. All those chairs, milk crates, traffic cones, etc. make our streets look garbage-strewn and cluttered, like we don't give a shit how our city looks.

2. Parking spaces on public streets don't belong to individual homeowners or renters--they're property of the city. They don't suddenly become private property once the snow starts falling.

3. There's an implied threat behind those lawn chairs and chaise lounges: "Fuck with my space, and I'll fuck with you." We've all heard the stories of what happens when someone parks a car in a space that someone else cleaned out--everything from keying the finish to reburial via snowblower to having a hose turned on it and caking it under inches of ice. I've never seen any of these things done, but just knowing somebody could get so worked up that they'd bash your windshield in with a sledgehammer just because you moved their "dibs" marker out of the way and parked in "their" space is enough to keep most drivers searching for an unmarked spot.

4. Not all drivers wait until we have a major event like Snwomageddon 2011 to start marking their territory. I've seen "Dibs" called as early as the first flurries in November, when there's nothing to dig out.

5. It's illegal. Not that the city has the will to enforce the law, especially with a mayoral election just a few days away.

Much as I loathe "Dibs," though, the practice does make for, um, interesting photography.