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City to begin hauling away space savers at 7 a.m. tomorrow

We learn that from the city's response to a citizen complaint about a potted-plant space saver in Charlestown.

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Comments

But wasn't the parking ban actually lifted 6pm on Tuesday night, thus making space savers ripe for removal 6pm TONIGHT?

Granted, they won't be out in the streets at that time, or least not in the numbers you would see them the following morning. So am I right but just answered my own question?

And did that sweater even have buttons?

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I suspect you're right - the city's not going to pay overtime just to collect tables, cones, chairs and the odd toilet.

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Do they collect at all in Southie? As a relatively new resident I'm interested to know. Doesn't actually affect me, as I have a garage, but I am pretty nosy, so there you go.

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Southie, no matter what you've been told, is not immune to the rules.

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Seeing != hearing.... I will believe it when the chairs, cones and detritus are all gone.

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at least in my neighborhood, it appears that the city doesn't even pay regular time to collect space savers. I've never seen them being collected or in a state of having been collected.

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I am not sure what is happening in your part of town but the City has paid millions alread in overtime and the streets in my neighborhood are not done. If the city did its stinking job and cleanded the steets there would be NO/NO need for space savers. How stupid can you all get. People do not put out space savers just for the hell of it or to get kicks. People who brake their backs and shoulders to do a job clear out a space for their vehicles, which we already pay the city of Boston to do, are not willing to see lazy no good for nothing slackers come along and take the space over. If you do not want to see space savers then encourage the city to do its job and clean off the snow so individuals will not have any reason to believe they should protect what they have worked to accomplish. The issue of space savers usually comes from "persons" who are leeches and pigs looking to live or survive off the hard work of others. Get off your butt, clean a space or work civicly to get your government to do its job then you can stop complaining about folks that do something other than talk about change. Stop whining and do something, clean a spot or get the community organized so we all can live there...just stop complaining!

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How is the city supposed to clean the snow off an area when your fat car is sitting in said area?
They don't drive around the city with giant hair dryers or magical fairy laser beams.

The city would be happy to clear the street curb to curb. But first you must not park there so they can do so. Considering all street parking is subject to No Parking During Snow Emergency rules you should consider yourself lucky the city didn't institute mandatory mass towing right before the snow hit.

Why not just sell your damn car if you don't have off street parking?
You can ride a bike or walk to the train. You'll be in better shape and so will the environment.

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First, shoveling snow is not that difficult. If you're throwing out your back or wrenching your shoulder, you're not doing it right. Second, shoveling does not impart ownership. If you don't want to lose a parking spot, then don't drive your car. Of course, if you don't drive your car then you can't bitch about the city not doing its job and other derpderpderps. The end result is this: Stop being such a little jag and just find a different spot to park in. The chances are very, very high that someone else will have already shoveled out a spot that will be open.

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I think they will only collect them as part of regular trash pickup. So Southie will be immune until next week.

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I'll give you my space saver when you pry it from my cold, dead hands.

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Uh... by definition, if your space saver is out in the road, you're not around to pry it away from, chief. So I'm just going to pick it up and throw it in a dumpster somewhere while you're at work or whatever. Then I will bask in the radiant glow of a thousand spittle-flecked sociopaths raging about how the space they decided they owned is returned to the commons from whence it came.

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I love armchair psychiatry! Of course your sense of glee will be nullified when the city removes the space saver and the person who takes the space leaves and that same "sociopath" puts his car and space saver back.

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Don't worry we will make sure no one can drive, let alone park, anywhere they really want to.

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Russell wasn't plowed out until Monday morning, and there are space savers all over in Charlestown. The city can try and take them away, but something tells me there are plenty more where those came from.

Charlestown is a lot like Southie with this tradition, god help you if move the wrong person's space saver.

I'm currently saving my own spot on that street, and everyone has been respectful.

...But that's real life, not the internet. More people should try that.

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I live in real life, thank you very much, and I've lived in Boston for decades, and *nobody* saves spaces in the North End, Chinatown, Bay Village, Back Bay, Beacon Hill, Downtown, or the Fenway; once in a while you see someone try it in the South End but they get laughed at.

It's really mostly a Charlestown / Southie thing.

Outer Dorchester, Roslindale, Hyde Park, JP, West Roxbury, etc. are a different story -- there are enough spaces to go around, so by saving the space you shoveled out you aren't trying to deprive anyone else of the use of a public street; space savers in those neighborhoods don't for the most part, cause a problem.

And it's only a matter of time before the old-school Charlestown and Southie folks who live by the rule "I've got mine, Jack, screw you" and who can't grasp the notion of a shared, limited, common resource age out, quit driving, die off, or get displaced by better educated people who can afford higher rents.

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Charlestown is a lot like Southie with this tradition, god help you if move the wrong person's space saver.

Must suck to have violent thugs for neighbors. Can't you get the police to clean up your neighborhood?

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They *are* the police!

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Note: people bitching and complaining are the people who do not have a space to save. It's like Yelp - mostly bad reviews for places because people tend to complain out loud versus praise out loud. Maybe things would be different if the complainers had the spaces.

Note: I do not own a car, and see no issue with saving spaces for limited time periods, 48 hours generally seems appropriate.

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I agree saving there's nothing wrong with saving a space you cleared for a day or two. And that's what the city gov't thinks too.
Also, that this should generate such venomous comments about people who save spaces is an indication that there is something else going on. Some people in the city are not living as other people think they should.

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In other words, you believe that, for 48 hours after a storm, those people who weren't lucky enough to find a space before the storm, and who therefore don't have a space to save, should just suck it up and use pay garages?

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Not like we didn't know this was coming, oh, like 3-4 days prior?

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Seriously. 4 days prior everyone knows a big storm is coming. Or 4 weeks, or 4 years. What does it matter? There are not enough spaces, with or without the snow, so we share them. On the day after the storm, you are still going to have at most 25% of the car owners possessing a street space. When do you think the other 75% ought to be allowed to park on the street again without fear of violent retribution?

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Not entirely. I don't live in South Boston or the North End. But I did live in Chicago where people also did this stupid crap. Shoveling isn't difficult and it doesn't mean you own the spot; it simply means you get to drive away. You won't lose the spot if you don't drive.

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Perhaps they are bypassing Dorchester, or maybe just tiny little streets like mine, but it's well past noon and the space savers are all still there.

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"City to begin hauling away space savers at 7 a.m. tomorrow"

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I thought Adam had posted this last night, not this morning.

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I got my garbage bag full of asbestos ready to be taken away.

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taking some more of the snow away?

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Better would be if the city drove around with garbage trucks and threw all the residents in the back.

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Let's not forget how the good people of South Boston and Charlestown reacted when *we* tried to send black kids to *their* schools forty years ago. Or ten years ago when the Charlestown "patriots" didn't want *their* Bunker Hill bridge bearing the name of a Jew. Some parts of our city will always contain a benighted subspecies and "space savers" are only the most recent example of their backward sense of entitlement.

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Some of the worst offenders are the yuppies. Case in point the south end sign below (main page).

The real problem is law and civility is giving way to a race to the bottom as people fear both retaliation, and getting stuck not having a place to park.

Menino created a political and legal power vacuum surrounding this issue. Human nature is going to fill it.

As many have said above. Everyone is forced to shovel their car if they need to move it anyways. At worst, you might need to park a few blocks over, but everyone should not be worrying about parking. But as more and more do this type of thing, spaces become much more limited and it feeds off itself.

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Wow, are people angry and venomous. #1. There is not enough parking in some neighborhoods. #2. Have a heart for people who probably spent 6 hours clearing their spot, then when they get home for the evening, the hard-working shovelers have no spot. #3 Do people really think the city should pay contractors to pick up space savers? I would rather have my tax $ spent for a better cause. Besides, they are still busy with snow removal. I bet city crews are busy doing the same thing #4 Who are the people complainging about saving spaces? It is a Boston tradition that has been happening for years.

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6 hours to shovel out a parking space?!?!!

HAHAHAH. UHub is the best. I did my whole driveway in half that.. 6 hours? How out of shape are you or how much do you smoke? You must have been taking 15 minute breaks after every 5 minutes of work.

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we shoveled for 12 hours clearing one spot, uphill both ways.

Really guy?

The elderly and disabled can get placcards and handicap spots in front of their houses. Everyone else has no excuse.

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Because it was a badly performing white high school with a poor population. They sent kids from Southie to Roxbury and Roxbury to Southie. You don't think they would disrupt the rarefied air of a neighborhood like West Roxbury, do you?

I'm not defending it. I'm just saying that the City of Boston did a shitty job of implementing a court order.

As for the Zakim Bridge, it was originally supposed to be named after Bunker Hill. Ever notice how the structures look like little versions of the Bunker Hill Memorial? After Zakim died, some powerful people lobbied to have the bridge named after a guy that a lot of Bostonians never knew existed.

Is Boston racist? YES. Do you need to take a deep breath and dial it back a bit and realize that some problems in Boston are related to class? YES

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Perhaps something local like "Victims of the Code of Silence Memorial Bridge" would have been better?

You are right about the class issues, though. However, the working class in Southie was benefitting from the disperate use of resources for public schools in their neighborhoods compared to predominantly minority neighborhoods. The politiciand did this rather deliberately to maintain minimal funding in white areas while holding taxes down by underfunding minority areas.

Were people in Southie told that they had to pay higher taxes to iron out the inequities, they likely would have still taken to the streets to protest "their" money being spent on "those" people.

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All high schools were included, like Hyde Park, where they also had some unpleasantries that just didn't become fodder for the national news.

As for Zakim, please. Just because some people never heard of him doesn't mean he didn't do a lot for the Boston area - including helping to heal some of the problems left over from busing (and, for that matter, the redlining that went on in Mattapan and Dorchester before that). There's a reason they named a bridge after him, not a tunnel.

Plus, you got the naming story wrong: The original plan was to just name the bridge after Zakim (with the nod to Charlestown coming in the shape of the towers); Paul Cellucci added the "Bunker Hill" part to the name after Jew- and black-hating townies objected.

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Yeah, people with no class.

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