Dibs reform

Social engineering

Feb 07, 2022

It’s been snowing a lot lately. I was really hoping we’d get a mild winter this year since we had so much snow last year. Some weird part of my mind thinks that seasons have some on/off rhythm. Maybe dumb magical thinking on my part.

When we get a lot of snow and the temperatures remain below freezing, people start hoarding parking places. It’s dibs season in Chicago.

For the uninitiated, it goes something like this: You don’t have a garage to park your car in, so you’re out on the street. It snows, say nine or ten inches overnight, and now you have to dig your car out from under seven thousand pounds of snow. And it’s so cold out, that it has crusted over. And maybe a plow came down you side street and really jammed your car in.

Now, when you have to get to work or go to the grocery store, you don’t want to lose all that hard work so some Johnny-come-lately. So you save your spot. Fuck Johnny.

You grab some stuff that you’re not super attached to to claim your spot. Like a milk crate, and old broom and a broken folding chair. You have now claimed dibs on that parking spot.

I don’t know how long this has been going on, or if there are other Midwestern cities that do this sort of thing, but it feels particularly Chicagoan to me.

It isn’t legal to claim city property in this way, but it is never enforced.

What can happen, is that some person who doesn’t understand that the parking spot has been claimed (or maybe a stubborn person who feels justified in her actions), just wheels into the spot, tossing aside the markers placed by the shoveler.

This often leads to violent retaliation. Headlights or windows smashed, tires slashed…mean stuff. I don’t condone the destruction of a person’s property for violating the dibs code, but I do support dibs conceptually.

What we need is some reform to the unspoken dibs rules:

I’d like to have a rating system. Maybe a group of residents on each block would serve as judges. They’d rank each dibs set up according to originality, style, and sense of humor. This can be a great community-building activity.

Plastic outdoor chairs from the summer. Stackable, easy to grab from the basement. Waterproof…very practical —yawn. 5/10

Ah, cinder blocks and 1 x 6s, that dorm room book shelf you couldn’t throw away, now repurposed so save a spot for your old Subaru. Okay. 6/10

Ah, here we go! A rickety ironing board you’re hanging onto for some reason, and an old chair you’ll never re-cane. Giving us something interesting to look at, and giving these guys one last hurrah before you stick them in the alley in Spring. 6.5/10

Fantastic. Putting a smile on our face with a seasonal yard ornament and an old tube tee vee. Excellent choices. 9/10

Okay, here’s how we start to reap the benefits of putting social pressure on the quality of dibs equipment. An installation depicting the ole rec room in grandma’s house. Feels Archie Bunker, almost. 10/10

Also some new additions to the unspoken rules:

Dibs is 100% legal. No bogarting a legit dibs’d space
You have to actually shovel out the space. No claiming the spot under your car where the snow was blocked.
If you see a piece of furniture that would clean off nice and work inside your house, you can take it*. 100% for free. Maybe put a proxy in its place. Gotta be a broken lawn chair somewhere.