X Marks the Spot
‘lawn chair’
courtesy of ‘Jess J’
A few days ago, a neighbor started claiming a carefully shoveled parking spot with a giant urn—the message being, “Take this spot, and your ashes go here.”
Now another neighbor has taken the opposite tack, and placed a cute stuffed monkey in a space. What a great idea. I mean come on—who’s going to steal a spot from a smiling stuff animal, most certainly some adorable child’s favorite toy? Can’t you just hear the tiny little sobs of sorrow and disbelief?
Clearly our neighborhood is short on patio furniture and long on creativity. I’ve not found the skull and crossbones or the defenseless kittens blocking a spot yet, but they must be out there somewhere. What creative spot-savers have you seen?
Like
Comments
12 Responses to “X Marks the Spot”
February 17th, 2010 at 3:22 pm
Here in DC, I’ve seen a lot of lawn chairs. Which, you know, is illegal. Which also prevents a lot of folks in various places from being able to get to work on time because half the parking was on ‘Snow Emergency Routes’ and half was street parking now blocked by some stupid assortment of deck furniture.
February 17th, 2010 at 3:28 pm
But if I was, I would think that at this point, I would be ignoring the “saved” spot chairs and park there anyway.
Just one of the many reasons to sell your car. You won’t miss it after the first month.
February 17th, 2010 at 3:32 pm
@ NotACarOwner…
If only the Metro was within walking distance of my work, I would take public transportation every day. MetroBus is too unreliable from Takoma.
February 17th, 2010 at 3:45 pm
To me, a lawn chair screams “park here,” even if it is a little farther to walk. Muwahahaha!
February 17th, 2010 at 4:43 pm
For the record, as a Chicago native who was born and bred in the midwest … putting random items in parking spots as a place holder is a definite characteristic of a residential location used to massive amounts of snow. Welcome to my world, DC :)
February 17th, 2010 at 5:13 pm
This snow has definately made me think a little more seriously about ditching my car and putting up with the mile or so walk from College Park metro to my office.
and, I know that it is a lot of work to dig a car out (I luckily have a garage space for the time being), but it seems like a really jerk move to make it so that no one else can park in your spot. We dont have reserved parking people, thats just part of living in a city. While I sympathize a bit, part of me wants to see these people get ticketed for being jerks.
February 17th, 2010 at 9:05 pm
In my neighborhood I’ve seen orange cones left in parking spaces, and people using one car to take up two spaces.
February 17th, 2010 at 11:02 pm
The conversation about parking is comical – on tonight’s Nebraska avenue commute home, with only one lane in each direction instead of two, it was just a lot of people parking/hardly moving. Except I was on my bike passing everyone in the half snow lane !
February 18th, 2010 at 4:13 pm
Last night I had my car tire punctured by one of these morons “claiming” a shoveled out spot on a PUBLIC street.
Does that mean I should have staked a claim to the spot I dug out a few spots away? Noooooooo.
WTF is wrong with people.
When I confronted the owner of the house this morning, he did the deny, deny, deny…feigning ignorance, and claiming that “people had been stealing his spot too…”.
Gotta love the uptight.
February 18th, 2010 at 7:00 pm
Wow, Mike and Elliotte. Popping tires and parking across spaces – as my mom would say, that’s rude, crude and unattractive. And the tires especially uncalled for. Sorry to hear it.
Glad to hear the love for car free, though!
February 19th, 2010 at 9:01 am
[...] the Mount is causing all manner of parking difficulty throughout the city, leaving residents with flat tires, flared tempers and a sharp increase in the alcoholism [...]
February 23rd, 2010 at 11:27 am
[...] the snow is melting and parking on streets is becoming easier by the day, we’re seeing fewer spaces marked with chairs or tables. Sure, if you spend hours digging out a parking space, it’s understandable that you’d [...]