For the last two weeks I have heard nonstop chatter about how Baltimore has gotten its "snow legs" and that we have not been taken seriously in the national media. This lawnchair nonsense speaks volumes about why not. I spent my first 18 years living outside Buffalo, and while Baltimore may have more snow than the Queen City this year, never once have I seen such childish bickering by adults in my hometown. I even had a spot I shoveled "claimed" by someone else after I returned from a long weekend away with no snow in the interim! Grow up, Maryland. Like the spoiled child of a bad parent, just because the Mayor looks the other way when you misbehave does not mean no one else notices. Bring your patio furniture and lacrosse sticks in from the street and stop acting like crybabies. Until then, stop complaining!

This is quite scary, that a BCPS Teacher thinks that two $55 tickets equal $120. Who cares about spending money on snow removal, lets get some teachers that can do basic math!!!

People from cities like Buffalo or Minneapolis constantly deride the lawn chairs. What they don't understand is that those cities have curb-to-curb plowing plans, so residents don't do most of the digging. In cities that do not plow curb to curb the lawn chair has developed in order to incentivize people to clear snow from the street. Is the system abused? Absolutely. But until an alternative system is created it's probably the best available.

I love it LJ! Couldn't agree more. Putting chairs in the street to 'claim' spots is the most immature, selfish, and lazy thing ever. So what if you spent 3 hours digging your car out. Guess what? So did I! That's the nature of living in the city and having to deal with parking. If you don't like it then move to the county where you can have a driveway that is actually your property, unlike the public city street. How about I put a chair in my spot in July? It's the same principle whether there is snow or not. And if you can't grasp that principle then you are a moron. Parking is at a premium in the city all 12 months out of the year. And guess what? In July when I have to leave to run to the store for 5 minutes it will be one of you lazy and selfish hypocrites who 'steal' my spot.

As soon as my street is plowed curb to curb I will take my chair in. Until then the arrogant, chauffer driven Mayor Rawlings Blake can stick it.

Buffalo-ians might not use chairs and whatnot to save spots but I know it's a big tradition in Chicago, supposedly a sophisticated snow town.

(I've never been so happy to have a parking pad in my life!)

I am a reasonable person, but I am getting really fed up with the City's and the MTA's response to parking and travel. I shoveled my walks and neighbors' completely, we all shoveled our side street down to the pavement with no help from the City, and today I tried to be a good citizen and take the bus. After 1.5 hours wait at the stop, after falling 3 times on uncleard sidewalks, the MTA still could not tell us whether our bus was diverted, late, or running normally. NOTHING is working 100% post-storm. Just choose one thing and MAKE IT WORK. The City seriously needs to overhaul its snow response and make SOMEHTHING a priority and get it done 100% right. Either fix transit and sidewalks or clear the roads for all the cars. Charles, St Paul, and MD Ave still have obstructions more than a week later. Pathetic. You bet I'm putting a chair in my parking spot Monday, in fact, we'd be within reason to charge tolls on our street now since there's been no help from the City. Bring it on, Stephanie Rawlings-Blake!!!

I cannot, for the life of me, understand where people get this sense of entitlement from. Part of living in the city is the fact that you do not own your parking spot. Unless you own the property, you do not have a right to it - how clear does that need to be? I cleared out spots after both storms and found new spots after I left the old ones - that's how it always works and now should be no different.

Everyone in the city had to dig out a spot at one point or another, it's not like the snow only hit one section of Baltimore.

The entire concept of "saving my spot" on a public street is absolutely ridiculous and never should have been tolerated in the first place. It's indicative of a culture, economy and mentality of scarcity amongst too many in the city and it needs to be done away with - for good. There's a basic mathematical concept at work here that many city residents don't seem to grasp: if X number of spots are dug out and then vacated by cars in a given neighborhood then precisely X number of spots will be available.

There is a simple way the city can end this problem for good. Send a trash truck through neighborhoods and throw each and every "space saver" in the back. Oh and be sure to announce it on the airwaves so some of our more petty neighbors don't start World War III with one another.

Rawlings-Blake aka "the default mayor" has never had to handle anything important. shes worthless and i'm telling you Baltimore- we'd be better of with (gasp) Dixon in there. atleast she handled her business. a gift card here a gift card there but atleast stuff got done, right?

I live in Annapolis and I'm happy to say I have not seen one person saving a parking space. This is the case even though the Annapolis snow removal plan is to watch it melt. Says a lot about the type of people one calls neighbors.

I hope Kelly doesn't teach math - and residents of Highlandtown have been able to park in Patterson Park since the storm.

If I can move your chairs out of the road and you are not actually standing their to stop me then that is what I will do - so no, your parking spot has not been saved. How would you even know If I moved it, or someone before me? You wouldn't.

Vandalism happens year round - if you're so worried about that, you shouldn't be parking on the street in the first place, period! I've been moving chairs out of the way this whole time, and it's been well worth it.

Anyway, the bilizzard is over.
so is the mayor's reprieve.

If people leave their cars buried in snow for two weeks, and leave chairs and their cars on the streets, then how are the streets supposed to be plowed?
I dug out, went to work and had my spot taken. Since then I've been hiking to and from a supermarket's parking lot on icy sidewalks and in the streets.
I sympathize with those whose streets didn't get plowed.
But if your street did get plowed, but you've obstructed efforts to restore lanes and parking space, you're part of the problem.

Patapsco Jones what "got done" except theft from poor kids and alleys full of trash again. The only thing I can think of that Dixon did was cut trash pick up.

Hey Ms. Middlebrook, your husband "..had to park in a bus zone..."? No, he chose to park in a bus zone. He had lots of choices, albeit probably not convenient, for parking if he took the time to find them. Most children of Baltimore don't have choices. They have to go to public schools where they can learn that 55x2=120.

doug - the comment you're responding to was written by JBuckets, not me.

First 55 + 55 does not equal 120. Second, "vandilization" is not a word. If you are a Balt. City public school teacher, you ought to understand basic arithmetic and have a rudimentary understanding of the english language.

How embarassing for you and the public schools.

TVP - She's a real genius. Probably has tenure!

There's still plenty of snow piled up around my neighborhood. So if someone moves my chairs to take my spot, they will find themselves digging it out from all the snow I will pile around it. I'm just sayin...

Couple points. I live in Baltimore County and I haven't had my trash picked up since the storm. If the road conditions are a good enough excuse for not having trash pick up, then its good enough for me to leave out my lawn chairs.

Also, I am expecting a package from UPS. Today I checked the UPS tracking site which said my package was in Baltimore, but delayed due to adverse weather conditions. If the this is a good enough excuse for UPS, then its good enough for me to leave out my lawn chairs.

Comparing our area to buffalo and elsewhere is a stretch of imagination, and a willful suspension of reality for people who once lived in those areas to say that we should handle this weather, which is extraordinary in the last few decades, as well as them. Clearly things are not 100%, and simply acting like things are doesn't mean that is the reality.

I think that:

1- we should be able to claim credit for our work until the parking situation is back to normal. You'd never agree to do work of any sort if it was to just be taken away from you or you wouldn't get credit for it, esp if the work is strenuous like shoveling. This is especially true if you're elderly, etc.

2-having said that, I think people need to make more of an effort to clean their block out. A 1' wide strip down your sidewalk is just going to freeze up every night as the snow melts and be a hazard. Several of my friends have fallen and hurt themselves, and also broken phones, etc.

On our part of the block, the street is almost completely clear side to side, and our sidewalks are clear and dry, because we worked on moving the snow as we could every day, condensing it out of the way. As the snow melts, people should widen the cleared area on their sidewalks, widen their parking spaces, etc. That's going to get us back to normal the fastest.

How does it work if the deed to my house includes half of the street around it? Seriously, my deed is for an older standalone house, and the boundaries clearly go to the middle of all the surrounding streets, and the alley. I don't know if this is normal or atypical, but that's clearly the boundaries of my property.

Well, I think it makes a certain amount of sense to safe a spot for a day or two (although I did not) but it has been over a week!!!! I have personally moved 2 trashcans out of spots in my neighborhood, especially if you are gone all day it's really unfair.

Re: spot saving

You only did the work so you could get out of the spot. So did everybody else, but they all didn't use chairs to save their spots.

You're basically just greedier than your neighbors. Congrats.

Obviously, Kelly is thoughtful and versed in hyperbole. There's no evidence from the statement "that he basically had to pick either vandilization of his car or $120 worth of tickets" that she thinks twice 55 is 120. She should have just inserted "a buttload" in lieu of 120 so as not to confuse Baltimorons defending an ill-gotten idea that they should be allowed to "reserve" parking spaces.

Lazy, ignorant, selfishspace savers,

The snow is melting. Get your crap furniture out of the public streets. The city is no place for you as you have no concept of public property. The fact that you feel entitled to a spot that you dug out is sickening. Everyone dug out. You are simply using the traces of snow as an excuse to be selfish and feel justified. You absolutely make me lose faith in mankind. Keep blaming the government (our mayor) for all your troubles in the world. You have nobody to blame but your pathetic selves.
I will say that our mayor did handle it wrong however. She should have announced this ban days ago. She let you scum break the law for so long, you got complacent, and then you chide her now?
Unbelievable. Thanks to all who posted with similar opinions to my own as it may be the only way for these lowlifes to understand.

It's totally not shocking to me that people who command more space than is necessary during the spring and summer months "save" themselves spaces baracaded by snow without regard to who actually dug the space out.

Having lived in Europe for some time, I became accustomed to parallel parking my car as closely as possible to the next car in order to make room for as many cars as possible. Who hasn't thought to him or herself, "if only you had pulled up two feet, there'd be room for me?" It's shocking to me that people who must experience this thought themselves then park directly in front of their house (instead close to the next car) to save themselves four extra steps at the expense of an additional parking space.

It's a simple concept that if everyone take only what he or she needs, more people would have an adequate amount. Instead, I have neighbors who when seeing me park ask me to pull up so that they don't have to back up before pulling out of their space. City dwellers shouldn't expect to pull straight out of a space without having to back up once or twice.

People should be beseeched to act compassionately and with common sense all the year long, so we'd have fewer parking frustrations and, therefore, perhaps even people more willing to live in the city.

Okay people, its clear that we all hate each other, now get off your soapboxes, and go shovel something

If you steal someone's else's work without just compensation then you are a THIEF.

I am in a bit better position than most others, I am willing to have the thief's cars towed away from the spot I dug out.

I guess the thieves around here know that and leave my space alone. They steal other people's spots instead.

The mayor needs to learn to separate the hard-earned efforts of working citizens from the entitlement claims of thieves...and punish the thieves instead of the workers.

The catch-22 comes when the believer in the inherent goodness in all humankind leaves their hard earned spot unclaimed, then has it stolen. In frustration, that citizen decides to turn to thievery in order to claim someone's else's hard earned parking spot.

Why is it that everyone has a parking spot when the snow starts falling, but someone has to steal a parking spot later on?
Just my .02

While I mostly agree with the sentiments of Ms. Middlebrook's email, I am tremendously saddened and disheartened that a BCPS teacher apparently can't add or spell the word vandalization (twice). She put her name and position on the email. I must ask - how representative of the teaching workforce is this?

I took my wife to work into Baltimore on 83 south bound yesterday at 6:30 am. On the northbound side of I-83 at the curves, two city police cars were blocking two lanes because of ice on the one lane of 83 northbound. There was a fifteen minute back-up because of rubber-neckers going south and a half-hour back-up going north to get past the blocked lanes. When I returned northbound a half hour later, the traffic jam had turned into a half-hour wait northbound, and the southbound lanes were backed up to the Beltway. How hard is it to have a salt truck available to salt down the curves on 1-83? How about sending a salt truck along 83 once an hour beginning at 5am when you know that there will be slick spots at the curves? How about getting rid of all the snow on the sides of 83 where you can expect melting and then refreezing? Why isn't the state responsible for I-83 if it is an interstate highway? Am I the only one in the City who thinks about these things? Do I complain too much? This is the kind of crap that drives me crazy. If we had had yesterday a pick-up truck with a small salt spreader that could salt the slick lane on I-83, it would have relieved congestion for approximately 100,000 people stuck in their cars burning gas and late for work. Had to get that off my chest. By the way I live in the City and enjoy it, but Mayor Rawlings Blake should hold the City bureaucrats responsible for these kinds of things.

Kelly Middlebrook, the fine BCPS teacher she is, cannot only add but cannot spell "vandalization". I feel sorry for her students.

John,

Boy, your comment gave me a good hearty laugh. I would certainly hate to have you for a neighbor - you are selfish and egotistical, with a major sense of entitlement. Someone who parks in 'your' spot is not a thief, because the spot was never yours by ownership to begin with.

And unless you own a towing company or are have an inside connection (which I doubt as I can't imagine someone as selfish as you having many friends), most tow operators would laugh at you for attempting to have a car towed from a spot on public city property.

You are tool for implying that anybody who parks in 'your' space is jobless and lazy. Everybody had to shovel out a parking spot before, during, and after the storm. Those of us not greedy enough to put out space holders had to shovel MULTIPLE parking spots. Us more reasonable Baltimore citizens even *gasp* helped our neighbors shovel out.

Your time is up, buddy - no more space spavers because the rest of us are going to keep moving them to the sidewalk.

I drive a larger company vehicle to and from work daily and park it in a guest lot nearby my home and usually in the same space daily. I dug out the entire area around my vehicle and used a snowblower to all the open guest spaces surrounding mine being neighborly as I drive a large vehicle. I come home only to find each and every one taken and now I must drive 15 miles to a friends house to park it and have him take me back home. A total inconvenience for me but great for everyone else. Never again!

i live in buffalo and survived the October Blizzard of 2006.

unlike baltimore, we had 0 notice that it was coming and it crippled our city for a week.

Know what we did that week? everyone pitched in and we shoveled until EVERYONES car was free.

cause thats what neighbors do in buffalo!