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No kitty litter was used in the making of this Brighton space-saver sign

Missing space-saver sought in Brighton

One of the perils of using a favorite chair as a space saver is the risk somebody might take it - or report it to the city, which will do the same - as PlunkettPrime shows us in this picture taken today on Academy Hill Road in Brighton.

Earlier:
Snow storm, purloined trash can, space saver anger, cat turds and a handwritten note.

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Comments

I thought the first rule of space savers was "never use anything you're not willing to lose or have thrown through your windshield."

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Hats off to that individual for being civil about it. :)

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Who would put a nasty note on their own car, asking an unknown person to go out of their way to be helpful?

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take a gander at some of the bumper stickers you see around and then ask yourself this question again

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Civil people don't litter by leaving trash on the street.

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I would think the first rule of space savers is don't use something you don't want to lose.

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To be fair, there was no snow on the ground.

And it was in front of a fire hydrant.

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I snagged a lovey antique folding chair once that was being used as a space saver back when space savers were illegal. They should be made illegally again. This foolish 48 hour privilege has only increased the problem.

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They've been used in Boston since the late 1970s.

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In fact, they're still illegal. The Mayor has announced that the city will not enforce the law for some arbitrary number of hours after a snow emergency ends, but the law has not actually changed.

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Yes, roughly 10 years ago, Mayor Menino created his rule that people were allowed leave to leave things out in shoveled parking spaces for 48 hours after the end of snow storms, but again the tradition was tolerated back in the White administration. Menino just put a time limit on the practice. Before that, it was even more of a Wild West thing.

One the greatest lines at the South Boston St. Patrick's Day breakfast was back when Bob Kraft was angling to build his stadium down next to where the convention center is (it wasn't there then.) Senator Lynch (he was the state senator before Jack Hart, who had the seat before Linda Forry) said that all Kraft had to do to nip the controversy in the bud was to simply wait until there was a snowstorm, plow out the site, and put a chair down. Southie would respect that.

So yeah, if by always you mean never, sure, but to the rest of us, your facts are, in the lexicon of 2017, alternative.

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and clever ending, I wonder how long you spent thinking that one up. Unfortunately you are wrong, as it is not legal to claim a public parking spot as your own. Outside of acknowledging the mayors "rule" after snow storms, you'd need to get a permit to save a space for a set amount of time.

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Unlike the fiction written up by others here, I've got facts on my side.

Remember "Ask the Globe"? Here's a Q and A from December 24, 1988-

Q. As a recent arrival in Boston, I am puzzled by the practice of trying to preserve a parking space in front of one's house by leaving barrels or chairs on the street. My neighbors do this all the time, but when I tried it I was verbally abused and threatened. What is the city's policy on this matter? -- R.P., Brighton

A. Joseph Casazza, Boston's public works commissioner, says, to his knowledge, that the city has no stated policy on the practice, but "it is a fact of life in this densely populated old city -- which has too little off-street parking -- that people will try to reserve parking spaces." Casazza affirms, however, that no one has a legal right to confiscate a particular parking space on a public way. Everyone, he says, has equal access and anyone who is threatened should call the police, he adds. Casazza admits the problem is exacerbated in winter when residents shovel snow from parking spaces and expect to be able to return to them. He says the lack of adequate parking is most severe in the city's older neighborhoods, such as South Boston and East Boston.

But yeah, always illegal, never happened before Walsh, British intelligence is ending microwaves at Trump, and all of that.

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Casazza affirms, however, that no one has a legal right to confiscate a particular parking space on a public way.

Note that "accepted" is not the same thing as "legal".

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If I'm anything, I'm honest. Could I have just snipped out the soundbite I wanted? Yes, but I didn't. Read the whole response. From 1988. It was an accepted practice back then. Heck, I'd love to post up here the entire Globe article from December 20, 2003, when Menino created his policy, but here are some snipets of what was said-

The new stance is a sharp departure from the city's attitude toward what a Menino administration official once called the "law of the street," dictating that anyone who digs out a spot after the first snowfall holds claim to it.

While staking out spots is an urban phenomenon across the country, especially in crowded East Coast cities, it is so deeply ingrained in Boston that some travel guides specifically warn visitors against taking spaces. Despite an ordinance that calls for a $50 fine for the practice, city officials in the past have not enforced it.

"With all the problems we have getting snow itself off the roads and with all the enforcement problems you would have, we don't pay any attention," Boston's public works commissioner Joseph F. Casazza said in 1996. "It's the law of the street. Some people feel intense about it."

The new policy drew mixed reactions across the city, particularly in densely settled neighborhoods like the South End and Jamaica Plain, where the practice is common.

What is a law without enforcement? Nothing. What is the "law of the street?" Something.

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but as you yourself quoted "no one has a legal right to confiscate a particular parking space on a public way." which completely contradicts your first statement.

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I've gone way too gonzo partisan with this, but the reality is that it's always been allowed, though not quite legal. Always. The original poster came at this with some bizarre view of the past where at one point the city had a zero tolerance of the practice. The reality is what I have presented.

I mean, I've got the head of the DPW in 1988 saying that space saving happens and Menino over a decade ago making tolerance of the practice ingrained city policy for a limited amount of time, but I'm waiting for y'all to disprove those statements. When was there zero tolerance? When were fines levied? When?

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Space savers are "more" illegal today compared to before 2014, which is when the city passed the Haystack ordinance making it explicitly illegal for anyone to reserve any public right of way.

What makes space savers quasi-legal is city officials not-enforcing the law. They're as legal as DACA and driving 5-10 miles above the speed limit.

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No overnight parking, ever (well, supposedly you can get an exception from the cops, like if you have to leave a rental truck on the street overnight. But I've never seen that in practice) so no space saver wars. We get to argue about allegedly more important things like bike lanes and leaf blowers.

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I've seen an "Arlington overnight parking permit" on a car or two, not sure if it was real.

A friend of mine used to live in CT in a town where overnight parking was banned... unless you called the cops and let them know about the car/plate, which is what my friends and I used to do whenever we visited him on the weekends. I wonder if Arlington is OK with that as well (after all, the overnight parking ban is there to prevent the riff-raff from staking out houses, right?)

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