Doesn’t seem to happen here, but it’s illegal to park in the street in snow until the plows have cleared it. They tow any cars blocking the way, plow it, and then everyone can park without having to shovel. Much more efficient. Except for the people who got their cars towed.
Considering some of the streets in Boston, and the lack of off-street parking, the resulting traffic jam of dozens of tow trucks trying to operate within a ‘street’ the size of a narrow alley would probably make that impractical.
This reminds me (vaguely) of table saving at crowded restaurants with a long line to wait to order. People with friends have them save a table. This results in large numbers of tables being hogged people who are not eating creating a sort of artificial table shortage for people who actually just got their food and need to sit down.
Both the table saving and the parking dibs are based on hoarding scarce resources, but also making them more scarce by keeping the resource out of use. It’s a spiral of increasing scarcity as more people try to save tables, parking spaces or whatever because others are doing it.
I’m sure they do Chicago dibs anywhere where it snows a lot and people have to park on the street. It just happens to be named after a particular city. Kind of like the Baltimore doorbell, only they do that everyfuckinwhere.
