X still marks spot

As Bill Patts headed to work yesterday afternoon, he pulled his Jeep Cherokee Sport out of a parking space in South Boston and pulled his metal folding chair into it.

"It's every man for himself," said Patts, 42, a postal worker who felt entitled to reserve the West Second Street parking spot it took him an hour-and-a-half to dig out last week.

Despite Mayor Thomas M. Menino's proclamation that at 8 yesterday morning he would cease to allow squatters' rights on shoveled-out spots, some neighborhood streets were so littered with chairs that they might have seated a cocktail party. Metal folding chairs, traffic cones, and shopping carriages lined the streets in the Neponset, Cedar Grove, and Lower Mills sections of Dorchester. On the narrow streets of Jamaica Plain, where heaping, filthy snow banks narrowed the roadway, space markers ranged from old milk crates to colorful plastic beach chairs. None appeared to have been touched by city crews.

Menino's spokesman, Seth Gitell, said the policy is being enforced citywide. "No neighborhood of this city is untouched by the implementation of this policy," he said.

Gitell said public works crews were picking up the space savers along their regular Wednesday trash routes, as well as on streets where trash is normally collected Mondays and Tuesdays. He said the rest would be cleaned up when crews make their trash runs the rest of the week.

Still, not everything appeared to be going into the hopper. Two trash collectors on a pickup truck snaking along River Street and along side streets in Hyde Park ignored orange traffic cones and chairs on their route. One even restored an emptied trash barrel to a shoveled-out parking space.

The markers were banished because frustrated residents who spend hours shoveling out sometimes vandalize vehicles parked in clearly marked spots. Last month, a man was arrested for smashing a car window with a plunger during an argument over a freshly shoveled parking space. Tales of broken car antennae and deflated tires are legion.

There were no markers or empty parking paces to be found yesterday on Beacon Hill and in the South End. Most of the residents had not bothered to shovel their vehicles out from the blizzard.

On Auckland Street in Dorchester, however, it was a veritable furniture store. On one stretch were five trash barrels, three folding chairs, two plastic crates, a shelf, trash bag, TV set, metal trash can, and white plastic chair.

"You should be able to save your spot until the snow's almost gone," insisted Kevin Murray, who marked his spot with a plastic chair and said it took him six hours to shovel out his parking space and long stretch of sidewalk.

After adamantly declaring late last year that the city would only tolerate claims staked on parking spots for 48 hours after big storms, Menino found himself confronted with a record-setting blizzard and stiff opposition from residents.

Residents remained resentful yesterday, despite the mayor's extension of that deadline to 96 hours. "I lived in Southie for 50 years, and it was never any trouble; now, he's making trouble," said Charles Campbell of Savin Hill.