Photo: Cameron J. on Unsplash
Snow falls. You spend 40 minutes digging out your car. You drive to work. And before you pull away, you put a folding chair in the empty spot, because that spot is now yours.
Welcome to the parking chair, Pittsburgh's most reliable winter argument.
How it works
The rule is unwritten but widely understood: if you shoveled it, you claimed it. The marker can be a folding chair, a kitchen chair, a laundry basket, a traffic cone, an ironing board, or a five-gallon bucket with a brick in it. The message is the same.
It thrives in the neighborhoods built long before anybody owned two cars, where the houses have no driveways and the streets are narrow. Bloomfield, Lawrenceville, the South Side, Polish Hill, Brookline. If your street has permit parking and 12-foot row houses, you know the chair.
The case for it
Digging out a car buried by a plow is real work. The chair is a handshake between neighbors: I did the labor, give me a few hours before you take the spot. On most blocks, people honor it without a second thought.
The case against it
Nobody owns a public street. The city doesn't recognize the chair, and moving someone else's furniture off a public parking space is not a crime. Plenty of newer residents see a pile of broken chairs in the snow and wonder what's wrong with everyone here.
City officials have taken runs at it over the years, and public works crews have hauled chairs away after storms. The custom never dies. It just waits for the next snow.
The etiquette nobody writes down
- Only chair a spot you actually shoveled.
- Take the chair in when the snow melts. A chair sitting on dry pavement in April is a jagoff move.
- Don't chair a spot in front of someone else's house.
- If you move a chair, understand that you have entered into a relationship with that block.
It's a tradition that only makes sense in a city built on hills, alleys, and streets designed for horses. Which is to say it makes perfect sense here.
Where do you stand? Sacred neighborhood contract, or public street free-for-all?