Parking chair

"Space saver" redirects here. For the car part, see Spare tire.

Two patio chairs reserving a shoveled-out street parking space in Pittsburgh's Squirrel Hill neighborhood
A chair and a small table marking a parking space as informally reserved in Chicago

A parking chair is a chair that is used by a vehicle owner to informally mark a parking space as reserved. Other objects are also used for this purpose, including trash cans, ladders, ironing boards, traffic cones, and similar-sized objects. In Boston, these are known as parking space savers or just space savers.[1] For curbside parking spaces, two or more items are normally used; for angle spaces, only one is needed.[2]

The practice of using parking chairs is common in snowy weather within urban residential areas of the United States, where vehicle owners do not wish to risk losing their vehicle's previously occupied space in its absence. Other spaces may be hard to find due to accumulation of uncleared and plowed snow, and the owner of a vehicle may have invested considerable work in clearing a parking space to free the car. This is common in areas where side streets are fully lined with parallel parked cars allowing only the center of the street to be cleared of snow, which then has the effect of pushing the snow onto the parked cars. The practice is widely criticized because it reduces the amount of parking, and is considered unneighborly and selfish.

This practice is especially common in the Northeastern United States (for example, in Boston[3] and Pittsburgh[4]), as well as Philadelphia, and the Upper Midwest and Great Lakes regions (for example, in Chicago, where it is referred to as "dibs"[5][6][7]). In Pittsburgh and Chicago, the use of parking chairs is considered to be an "iconic" regional practice.[8][5]

  1. ^ Emily Sweeney (February 10, 2022). "Threats, angry notes, slashed tires: the saga of parking space savers in Boston is unrelenting". The Boston Globe.
  2. ^ "Marking out some room of one's own". The Baltimore Sun. February 10, 2010. Retrieved December 25, 2010.[permanent dead link]
  3. ^ "Boston parking-spot savers - a winter guide". Boston.com.
  4. ^ Kirkland, Kevin (February 10, 2010). "Pittsburgh residents are using chairs, different items to stake out parking spots". Pittsburgh Post-Gazette.
  5. ^ a b Adams, Cecil (February 3, 2011). "How did parking-spot 'dibs' start in Chicago, and what are the rules?". The Straight Dope. Archived from the original on February 7, 2011. Retrieved February 11, 2018.
  6. ^ Cooley, Sean (January 8, 2014). "We wrote down the unwritten rules of parking dibs". Thrillist. Retrieved February 11, 2018.
  7. ^ Kass, John (February 4, 2015). "Dibs on parking spaces after snow is the Chicago Way". Chicago Tribune. Retrieved February 11, 2018.
  8. ^ Cite error: The named reference pg1292013 was invoked but never defined (see the help page).