Ron the Yarn Spinner

 

DIBS –It’s a Chicago Thing

                                                                                                                                              

"Dibs on that last slice of pizza!" "Dibs on the front seat. I called it." It is more than likely; you have heard expressions like these during your lifetime. Calling dibs means you have staked your claim and professed your right to something ahead of anyone else.( It is said the name is derived from an old children’s game, and you can Google it you like.) Dibs, however, becomes especially meaningful to Chicago residents in the winter months.

 

If lived in Chicago  and your vehicle, parked in the front of your home, was buried  by fallen snow, perhaps augmented by the passing of a beefy plow-equipped MAC truck, the dibs system came into play. Ever since His Honor the late Mayor Richard J. Daley urged citizens to help shovel the streets during the Great Storm of 1967 (and we did), Chicagoans have practiced dibs with the implicit blessing of City leaders.

 

With “Dibs,” Chicago folks jerry-rigg their own personal parking space in the front of their homes (or nearby) with a placeholder—sometimes with maybe a traffic cone, but who has one? More often, it is with junk. Some things you could find on the street could constitute as Dibs markers include (but are not limited to):

 

·       Carpenter’s Horses

·       Brooms with chairs

·       Ladders

·       Buckets

·       Lawn furniture

·       Large Flower Planters

·       Stuffed Animals

·       Real Trash

·       Old Polk Bros. Santas

·       Temporarily out-of-work Nativity Characters

Some people actually tour snow-bound Chicago neighborhoods each winter collecting photos of dibs-work.

Is Dibs legal? Absolutely not, it violates the Chicago Municipal Code, but it you must get to work, and you get up two hours early to dig out your car and shovel out a parking spot you (rightfully?) feel you  have “earned” the spot when you come home. Dibs fosters an unusual amount of respect (or, just fear) for an unwritten rule nearly all Chicagoans obey: do not mess with Dibs. Both private citizens and public officials observe it, and it is what has kept Dibs alive for decades.

Chicagoans know the potential fallout of disrespecting Dibs: flat tires and frozen car doors are the most common forms of retaliation.

Now you might think Dibs is unique to Chicago alone, and you would be right. Travel just ninety miles across the Cheddar Curtain to our lake front neighbor and on to Milwaukee’s snow-bound thoroughfares and you will not see any Milwaukeeans shoveling out street parking spots and calling dibs on their handiwork. You know, dibs. It is a Chicago Thing.