Parking Chairs

[Skwink]

Edit: @ amadeus and Raminus75:
Do you have some sort of special characters in your sig? Whatever they are appear as smiley faces and are stretching out the page for me.

Same for me too.

 

[Formaldehyde]

 

[downtown]

New Rule: You can only use a chair to cover your parking spot if you dig out at least one extra spot. That way, you can protect what you did and the whole street gets cleared out sooner.

 

[MobBoss]

Get a house with a garage and driveway. Issue solved.

 

[Silurian]

Let them eat chairs

 

[Bill3000]

Move to somewhere warmer. Issue solved.

But we don't want to live with the savages.

 

[Formaldehyde]

I don't think this practice is anywhere near as odious as the one used by some Long Island beach communities. They make it illegal to park anywhere inside their towns without having a permit only available to residents, so they can effectively keep the riff-raff from using the state-mandated public beaches.

 

[bhsup]

That, Forma, sounds like a great business opportunity. Offer charter boats to haul folks to the state beaches, anchor off shore and skiff the folks to the shore and just wait all day and then pick them up and take them back to New Jersey or Conn or RI or wherever the 'rif raf' are coming from.

 

[mrt144]

I would just run over the chairs. Also this is not too off from Canonsburg PA where

The parade is perhaps regionally most famous for the long-standing tradition of enthusiasts placing chairs, benches, and beach chairs along the parade route to reserve their seats, sometimes a week or more ahead of the parade. This has caused controversy among some residents and business owners, but the tradition continues to this day.[8] The seat saving ritual has attracted the attention of CNN, Jay Leno, and David Letterman.[11]

 

[Dachs]

That, Forma, sounds like a great business opportunity. Offer charter boats to haul folks to the state beaches, anchor off shore and skiff the folks to the shore and just wait all day and then pick them up and take them back to New Jersey or Conn or RI or wherever the 'rif raf' are coming from.

They mostly come from Staten Island, I hear.

 

[illram]

I am not a huge fan of reserving spaces although I get the sweat equity angle, which is unique to a place where snow is factored into the equation.

Here, people either need to be tough and intimidating enough to stand there and scare people away, (not difficult here, SF people are notoriously passive aggressive and avoid direct conflict, in fact you can usually tell if someone is an east coast transplant by how aggressive they are) or they are sneaky and deploy counterfeit/stolen "tow away" construction signs.

 

[Formaldehyde]

That, Forma, sounds like a great business opportunity. Offer charter boats to haul folks to the state beaches, anchor off shore and skiff the folks to the shore and just wait all day and then pick them up and take them back to New Jersey or Conn or RI or wherever the 'rif raf' are coming from.

Just down Long Island a bit are water taxis galore to take you over to federally-owned Fire Island. A great deal of the city escapes there every weekend during the summer. Or they go farther up to the Hamptons. And there are other nearby areas which do pander to public access to their beaches, such as Long Beach. But nestled amongst them are these enclaves, and even private beach clubs, which do all they can to restrict the public from using "their" public beaches.

There are laws against doing such things here in Florida. There must be a means for the public to access any publicly-owned beach (which they all are) every so many thousand feet. And on some beaches on the east coast, you can even drive on the beach and park almost anywhere you wish.

 

[warpus]

Heh, I've never heard of such a thing. We use the first come first serve system here. You can't reserve a parking spot in any sort of way. You can try, I guess, but it wouldn't work.

How do tourists deal with this? See, if I was looking for a spot, didn't know about this local custom, I would just move the chair and park. Would my car get messed with?

 

[Bamspeedy]

So I take it Chicago doesn't have Alternate Side Parking ? Doesn't make sense to 'reserve' spots if you have to park on a different side of the street every day.

I would just run over the chairs. Also this is not too off from Canonsburg PA where

The parade is perhaps regionally most famous for the long-standing tradition of enthusiasts placing chairs, benches, and beach chairs along the parade route to reserve their seats, sometimes a week or more ahead of the parade. This has caused controversy among some residents and business owners, but the tradition continues to this day.[8] The seat saving ritual has attracted the attention of CNN, Jay Leno, and David Letterman.[11]

They did that here too for every Oktoberfest parade until the city passed a law that said they can't 'reserve' the spots until midnight the day of the parade. So any lawn chairs, blankets, etc. that are along the parade route before midnight would be confiscated, even if it was on the lawn of a homeowner who lived along the route and belonged to him.

 

[Formaldehyde]

So I take it Chicago doesn't have Alternate Side Parking ? Doesn't make sense to 'reserve' spots if you have to park on a different side of the street every day.

You typically have to alternate once or twice a week. I don't know of any city which requires you to play that stupid game every day except in the most congested areas.

They did that here too for every Oktoberfest parade until the city passed a law that said they can't 'reserve' the spots until midnight the day of the parade. So any lawn chairs, blankets, etc. that are along the parade route before midnight would be confiscated, even if it was on the lawn of a homeowner who lived along the route.

That's just being rude.

 

[Bamspeedy]

I don't know of any city which requires you to play that stupid game every day except in the most congested areas.

Where I live, the nearby city is just starting to test the idea of only enforcing the alternate side parking for a few days after each snowfall. Prior to this (and if you live outside the 'test area'), we had to play 'that stupid game' every November 1 to April 1.

http://www.cityoflacrosse.org/CivicAlerts.aspx?AID=504

 

[Formaldehyde]

In NYC, any sort of snowfall at all usually cancels alternate side parking. They use the same crews to clean the streets and to shovel / spread salt, and the snow typically limits the ability to find new spots, or to even be able to move your car.

 

[Whomp]

Get a house with a garage and driveway. Issue solved.

Ther'e's no room for driveways in the city.

How do tourists deal with this?

Park in a parking lot or parking garage?

See, if I was looking for a spot, didn't know about this local custom, I would just move the chair and park. Would my car get messed with?

Making a "carsicle" is the most popular option though as Forma said "keying" could be a possibility.

 

[illram]

In SF (again, non snow city, so all bets are off on how useful this anecdote is) we have a 3 day rule where you get cited and then towed if you are in one spot for more than 3 days even if you have a permit for that neighborhood. (Unpermitted it's 2 hour limit almost everywhere)

Although I rarely, if ever, see that enforced. I have gotten one of those notices maybe once in 7 years of street parking.

 

[Brighteye]

I can understand the idea of having put personal effort into a space guaranteeing it to you, but I don't think it's fully thought-through. As has been mentioned, someone else has to have cleared his car out to get your space. If he doesn't want his space, that means that there aren't enough spaces on your street anyway, and the two of you would have been competing for the nicer spaces even in good weather.

The solution is to make sure that there's enough parking space all the time, not hope for bad weather to allow you to reserve the space you like.