Terrible Snowstorm Etiquette of the Day: The Preemptive Chair Strike

The above photo comes to us from friend of Cities Tania deLuzuriaga in Boston, where residents have been bracing for an expected two feet of snow this weekend. If you are not from a part of the country with severe winter weather, you may be unfamiliar with the native practice of placing furniture in the street to stake out parking spots. The anonymous Savin Hill driver behind this chair and garbage bin, however, is doing it all wrong.

Snowstorm spot-saving is a touchy subject – also an art form – but the generally agreed-upon etiquette is this: If you spend 45 minutes shoveling your car out from under a two-foot snow bank, you have a reasonable right to save that real estate for your return. A parking space is public property…until someone has thrown her back out liberating it from a blizzard.