Dibs: the last word from theexpiredmeter.com

Hey Moron! Get That Crap Off My Street!

Hey moron!

Yeah, I’m talking to YOU.

Don’t look around like you don’t know who I’m talking to, you goofball.

Yeah, you, the selfish dumbass who’s just dumped two plastic lawn chairs, or milk crates or orange cones or whatever crap you have lying around your garage, onto the street in front of your home, to try to save that parking space.

Oh.

It’s OK, you say. Because you shoveled out that space all by your lil’ ol’ self!

Wow! Now it all makes sense to me, it’s so transparently obvious now…

Ummm, no, not really.

Boo-F@cking-Hoo! Cry me a river you pansy!

Let me slap some sense into your thick skull.

First, you do not, I repeat DO NOT, own the street–no matter how much snow you shoveled off the pavement.

The streets are owned by everyone. You, me, all the taxpayers. We pay for the streets via gas taxes and city vehicle stickers we purchase every year.

Street parking is first come, first serve. No matter the season, no matter the conditions, no matter if you happen to have your junk out on the street. No exceptions.

It’s like standing in line, or waiting your turn. It’s something you should have learned in kindergarten. It’s a societal tradition that is so deep, so ingrained, it trumps this so-called Chicago tradition of using trash to save your parking spot.

I don’t care if Mayor Daley and most of the alderman give you a smile and a wink and look the other way. They’re a bunch of lilly livered, frontally lobe challenged sissies as well.

So unless you’re old or sick or feeble, you have no excuse for being so pathetic.

Second, you’re from Chicago. You live in the city. You’re not some milquetoast suburbanite, who pulls into their three car, heated garage every evening. You live in a city where you have to park on the street. You’re tough and strong, damnit!

Chicagoans used to be a brawny, hard scrabble bunch. Remember? Chicago is the “city of the big shoulders”, Carl Sandburg says. People with character, strength and resolve. Individuals with a strong backbone and not a limp wrist. NOT a city of faint hearted people and weak spirit whom are bothered by a little bit of snow shoveling.

What the hell happened? When did you go soft Chicago?

Have you been reduced from the “city of the big shoulders,” to the city of “crappy lawn furniture on snowy streets”?

Third, it’s not neighborly to hog a parking spot and throw a bunch of your personal flotsam and jetsam onto the street. It’s unsightly, it’s ugly, it’s littering, it’s uncool.

What happened to chivalry? What happened to a sense of community in our neighborhoods and on our blocks? Are you that self-centered, boorish and immature that you’re gonna try to save that parking space with a folding chair? C’mon now!

So listen up nitwit! Here’s what you’re going to do.

You’re going to take all that crap you left on the street and put it back in your yard or garage or basement or into a dumpster where it belongs.

Next, you’re gong to take your show shovel and dig out ANOTHER space. That’s what good neighbors do. That’s how kind and considerate neighbors behave. That’s how Chicago should act.

Now that you’ve reclaimed your self respect and manhood, you should feel better about yourself. Stand tall, stick your chest out and walk like you’re from that big city called Chicago.

Got it?!?

Good!

Dibs: I'm not going to take it anymore

Tuesday, Jan. 20, 0701 hrs, West Rogers Park. I'm late for shacharis at Agudah Israel of West Rogers Park. Not my normal davening house, but there's a bris milah immediately following davening--the nephew of friends of mine. So I want to attend. The parking trick at KINS* when the north parking lot is full is to park on North Shore just east of California, which requires coming down Washtenaw from Pratt since North Shore is one-way westbound. I sit behind a school bus loading children at the school on Washtenaw. Why is a school bus boarding kids at a school in the morning? Odd. Finally I turn on North Shore. No spots east of California, but a beautiful spot just west of KINS--and there is dibs furniture in the space. A pair of folding chairs. I shoveled this spot, and now I own it, say the chairs.

NOTE: placing dibs furniture to hold public parking spaces for personal use is illegal in Chicago. It is also tolerated in Chicago, and the mayor condones the practice. It is selfish and un-neighborly in my humble opinion. According to law, placing personal belongings on public property makes them hefker--ownerless. Anyone is free to pick them up.

I am fed up. I turn on Mozart and find an open, dibs-free spot a few spaces down from North Shore. I exit the vehicle through the passenger door (my door doesn't open due to snowbank) and walk to KINS. On my way, I glare at those folding chairs and imagine depositing them next to the KINS garbage bins. Does the space "owner" realize how selfish he is?

Mazel tov! The boy's name is Yosef Shragga Knopf. Moshe's New York Kosher catered the breakfast. Fred Eckhouse Photography. Outstanding.



*the large shul building in which Agudah Israel is located.