Right after I wrote my heated tirade on street junk the other night, as I lay in bed, I thought, there had to be a be a way to help frustrated city residents in stopping this stupidity.
At the same time, I don’t want to encourage direct confrontations if it will mean heated verbal or even physical confrontations.
So instead, I have a more passive aggressive approach to solving this problem.
We’re calling it our “Dump The Junk!” campaign. It’s our effort to help cure Chicago of this queer “tradition” of using lawn furniture, milk crates, and other junk to save a parking space in front of your house after digging out from a snowstorm.
This practice is stupid and filthy and needs to stop. Street parking is first come, first serve–no matter what the conditions, no matter if you shoveled out a spot.
We, at The Expired Meter, have designed two small informational posters, that you can use to effectively communicate your feelings to your idiot neighbors, and encourage them to do the right thing.
It’s as easy as 1-2-3.
1-Just download the PDFs to your computer.
2-Using your computer printer, output as many as you need.
3-Spend a few moments outside tonight, taping these posters to your neighbor’s crap.
I would encourage using duct tape as packing or Scotch tape will not stick when it’s cold.
The hope is, that your neighbors will read the message, take the hint, do the right thing and extract their crap from the street.
The first, entitled PLEASE, is forceful, forthright and polite.
The second, called HEY MORON!, is rude, antagonistic and belligerent.
I’ll leave it to you to decide which one is best for you.
Perhaps, start out with the gentle and polite approach. If this doesn’t work, pull out the more aggressive alternative.
If this doesn’t work, call your aldreman and your local Streets & Sanitation office and whine, bitch, moan and complain.
Keep us posted on how this works.
Download the “Dump The Junk!” fliers here.
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These signs are great…I sorta wish people put their crap in parking spaces in my neighborhood so I could use them! Keep up the good work PTG.
You are my hero.
I think it’s far more effective to just sweep your block of the junk by moving all of it to the alley by the dumpsters. That way no one can retaliate for someone parking in “their spot” because it will be obvious all the marked spots are gone and the block becomes first come first serve again. Usually this works because the people who mark their spots are forced to park in the next available one and they’ll get the message that this won’t be tolerated. Perhaps posting these signs on trees and sign poles after clearing the block might help as well. The best time to do this is during the day when most cars are gone.
I do wonder if there are any legal ramifications from doing this. Can the owners of the junk call the police and charge you with theft? I don’t know. If a situation like that goes to trial I”m sure that would that would certainly make the news — perhaps national news.
But I don’t think we’re getting any more big snows this year so this all might be academic.
Mark-
I think this is a pretty good strategy as well. I’ve employed it many times in the past myself. I may have to resort to it again.
The point of the posters is to try to communicate why this practice is bad and encourage people to change their behavior.
Otherwise, guys like you and me end up hauling crap off the street to the garbage year after year, winter after winter.
It would be far easier and less confrontational to snow shovel a few more spots on the block. For example, I snow shoveled my side of the street, then any other spot I had to use due to people parking in the spots I shoveled. At this point, both sides are shoveled and nobody can put their garbage on the street. Let’s do for others people.
Alberto has it right. If you don’t want people claiming dibs then shovel more and whine less.
These signs (and the post on HuffPo) are all so right on.
Thanks for taking a stand on this meat-headed practice that is beneath the stature of a Presidential city.
[...] The city is starting to crack down and a few citizens are taking it into their own hands. [...]