Does your city look like this?

Should Chicagoans be allowed to use furniture to save their shoveled-out parking spots in the winter? Opposing sides weigh in on the dibs debate.

Jake Malooley, Time Out Chicago Courtesy of Yahoo!

After the season's first major snowfall in early December, digital marketing company Proximity Chicago launched the Chair-Free Chicago campaign. Opposing the local winter tradition of calling dibs on a shoveled-out parking spot with household miscellany, the company began encouraging residents to declare their street a "Chair-Free Zone" using signs available on Chairfreechicago.org. Chicago native Andrew Kasprzycki, 37, Proximity's senior vice president/managing director and CFC's cofounder, offered his thoughts on why furniture belongs in your house, not on the street.

Why is dibs a bad thing? While snowfall can be a magical thing, snow doesn't magically turn public spaces into private property. It's a very un-Chicagolike tradition: When snow falls, all of a sudden neighbors become vehement and territorial.

If someone puts in the effort to shovel a spot, they don't deserve a claim on that space? If you push someone's car out of the snow, you don't say you own their car, do you? I also question how much sweat people put in. The snow that fell [in mid-December] was not enough that people had to dig their cars out, yet there are chairs all over.

Is there evidence that dibs is a problem? There's a thinly veiled threat of violence associated with dibs. People who've violated dibs have gotten their cars keyed. I once heard a story about someone breaking the back window of someone's car and putting a hose in there and turning it on.

Doesn't tradition carry some weight? Not all traditions are good. Political corruption is another Chicago tradition.

If you could make the rules of winter shoveling, how would things be run? Everyone would shovel their own spot but not feel a sense of entitlement. That's the kind of community-minded approach we should take in dealing with a Chicago winter.
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I remember growing up in Boston and dibs was an unspoken rule so you saw all kinds of furniture out in the street. Let us know what you think!

Stiletto,
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