A Little Known Chicago Snow Storm Phenomenon!

[This, is DIBS]

In 2011 after our first major Chi-snowpocalypse, we discovered something amazing. Today was our first major snow since 2016. We've been lucky. BUT it brings back a big and sometimes controversial tradition.

Backing up-- 8 years ago, we moved to Chicagoland. I never thought the weather would be any worse than the midwestern state we came from. Wrong. In 2011 we experience the real "storm of the century" with 26 inches or something crazy. We were snowed in for days.

Then, it kept snowing on top of snow. It actually became "normal". Plows were tackling it and roads were passable.

After about 5 days, we had to go to the city. Main roads were slow and slushy. We moved to the side streets. I never thought about what a nightmare have a parking space or driveway is. It's a constant battle for street parking regardless of the weather. Seeing a Toyota packed into a block of snow? It makes you gasp.

You see giant clean spaces that took hours to dig out. On top of it, they probably had to push their car out and shovel more. In these clean spots were a variety of objects. A card table, a pair of lawn chairs, a couch, even a really cool midcentury chair, it's a placeholder?

I asked my Chicago friends what the hell was going on and was told, this is DIBS. Dibs means, you lay claim to the work you did to get your car out and that work counts for something. In an ideal world, you get home and your DIBS marker is still there and your hard work pays off and you park.

Not a big surprise that there are those who believe in the "law of dibs" and those who think it's ridiculous.

I asked some of my friends how they feel about it, and is it even real?

I support dibs, but only with more than 10 inches of snow from a single storm.

Yes, you absolutely do this. When I lived in Lincoln Square, if you dig out your spot, that's your spot. We dug out spots and our neighbor tried to call dibs on it while we were out. He put a fold up chair in our spot.... The fold up chair ended up on his "frunch" stoop.

Uh hell yes...chairs plastic jesus, whatever means dibs means mine, worked hard to make it mine.

My grandma lived on the south side, and you'd better pray is she every caught you moving her 'dibs' lawn chair. You've never seen wrath until it was from an 86 year old woman. It's a real thing.

I think dibs is bullll but I’d be scared of getting my car keyed.

I put the link below to THE comprehensive place for the best DIBS pictures there are. Chicagoans submit many after major storms. It's so worth going through them all. The archive has photos from 2011 to present.

What happens if you decide to screw it and pick up the table and chairs set and toss it aside and park? If it's in the street isn't it up for grabs? Meaning garbage? This goes on for a while before the City gets involved. They are usually too busy cleaning up the main roads to deal with Dibs Wars right away.

The "official" site of Chicago Dibs is the awesome tumblr site check them all out at the link below!
http://chicagodibs.tumblr.com/archive