Dean Bog’s weekly video series provides a closer glimpse at all of the most unique aspects of his hometown, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.
In a recent episode, he revealed further insight into one of Pittsburgh’s long-time traditions: saving a parking space with a chair.
It’s called the “Pittsburgh Parking Chair”. Residents leave a chair out in front of their homes, as a means of guarding their parking spots. The tradition is likely to have started when people wanted to make sure that all of their hard work in clearing a spot did not go to waste after the snowstorms hit.
After all, if you were going to spend all of that time digging out your vehicle, you wouldn’t want someone else to swoop in and steal it.
In the video below, Bog says:
“This is a Pittsburgh parking chair. It was placed here, probably by the owners of this house, and it means this is my spot and you can’t park here. …I think that have probably started with snow at least from what I’ve heard, we would shovel and a neighbor could pull in your spot and it would be a feud with the neighbors.”
It’s technically illegal to claim it as your own but in Pittsburgh, neither the police nor the people seem to care. It’s this widely accepted DIY neighborhood-ly solution.”
If you have spent hours digging your car out of the snow, the last thing you want is to lose your parking spot. Maybe you can take a play from Pittsburg’s book and throw a chair in your spot!