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Passive-Aggressive Parking

Townmouse points to this wonderful series of passive-aggressive “winter dibs” notes.

And, yes, we do think highly of ourselves here in NY — so much so that we wouldn’t think to claim ownership of a parking space, leaving it sitting vacant the entire day, just because we exhumed our car from it.

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This entry was posted on Monday, February 22nd, 2010 at 1:30 pm and is filed under Parking. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

7 Responses to “Passive-Aggressive Parking”

  1. Niall Says:
    February 22nd, 2010 at 2:44 pm

    A work colleague who used to live in Chicago, told me of an anecdote of someone taking the spot that someone else had dug out of the snow in Chicago, and the person shot him.
    he said that the general consensus was justifiable homicide

  2. Matt Says:
    February 22nd, 2010 at 2:49 pm

    I was coming here to let you know about this!

  3. townmouse Says:
    February 22nd, 2010 at 3:45 pm

    Fame at last!

  4. Mark Says:
    February 24th, 2010 at 5:08 am

    I just don’t get it… these people don’t OWN the spaces outside of their houses, why do they feel entitled to save it for themselves, even if they aren’t using it? (ie between 9 and 5, or whenever it is that they’ve driven off to their work) And if parking is so scarce it makes me think they must be living in an urban area in which case why on earth are they driving anyway?! (Can you tell that we here in England find this behaviour very peculiar!?)

    Sue it’s a pain digging out the snow, but I assume you dig the sidewalk as well - does that entitle you to park your car there too, or to bar other pedestrians from walking on it? Of course not; so why is it different when it comes to the public highway?

    Imagine if someone stored a big box container of their stuff on the parking space and justified it cos ‘the space is outside their house and therefore it is theirs’ - there’d be an outcry. Yet, somehow the same behaviour when it comes to cars is acceptable?!

    The City authorities should get along and just clear all the trash that these people keep leaving in the streets away: then they’d loose ‘their’ parking spot AND their chair.

    As for leaving notes likes this one on other people’s cars, well, gee, welcome to the neighbourhood! You’ve gotta love it when people leave a record of their ignorance AND their prejudice in one foul swoop….

  5. Hendrik Says:
    February 24th, 2010 at 6:44 am

    I think the note would have had a better response if it wasn’t for the obvious self-esteem issue this Chicago resident has with out-of-towners.

  6. Nate A Says:
    February 25th, 2010 at 4:43 pm

    I’m a police officer in Virginia. Actually responded to a call a few weeks ago because someone had been blocked in by another parked car in the snow. The person that did the “blocking” was upset because she had shoveled her car out of the snow the day before and when she returned home from work to HER parking spot, it was taken. So she proceeded to block the other person in. There were no assigned spaces in this apartment complex either. I informed the “Blocker” that what she needed to do was move her car so this lady could get out, and if “her space” is taken again, she needs to shovel herself a new parking space. People amaze me every single day that I do this job, and I’ve been doing it for 10 years now…

  7. Mark Bryant Says:
    February 28th, 2010 at 9:50 pm

    There’s a group on Facebook dedicated to this: “Just ‘cuz you left a plastic chair where your snow-covered car used to be…”http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=309975851840

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Traffic Tom Vanderbilt

How We Drive is the companion blog to Tom Vanderbilt’s New York Times bestselling book, Traffic: Why We Drive the Way We Do (and What It Says About Us), published by Alfred A. Knopf in the U.S. and Canada, Penguin in the U.K, and in languages other than English by a number of other fine publishers worldwide.

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