I am going to say something that will probably start a fight, which I swear I am not trying to do. But I’m going to say it in the most Baltimore way possible.

Put that chair up.

More succinctly, if you’re headed out to the street right now to plant a plastic chair in a parking space, especially if it’s not one that you or someone in your household personally dug out, or that was not dug out by someone that you paid, I want you to turn around and put that thing back on your porch.

I said what I said. Please don’t hit me with that chair.

As we continue to dig our way out of the first significant snowstorm of 2026, there’s a lot of discussion locally about chair etiquette. Even Mayor Brandon Scott has weighed in on it, and he’s not a fan of chairs as space savers. Me, either.

Listen. I get it. In my entire history as a Baltimorean, both as a child and now as an adult, I’ve never lived in a home with dedicated parking, and have done my share of cursing under my breath when I come home from braving the ice and cold to find that my street now looks like an outdoor Ikea showroom.

Forgive the pun, but the chair thing has never sat right with me, mostly because of the limited dedicated parking. You knew that when you moved in, or your parents knew, and you’re still living there.

The parking problem comes with the keys. I bought my current house after having had a parking space or a driveway for 18 years in various homes in Florida, where snowstorms weren’t an issue. Hurricanes were, and your chair would have blown away.

I chose my current neighborhood because it was walkable and diverse, knowing parking was going to be dicey even on a clear, temperate day. I have been known to use Lyft to get to dinner or pick my kid up from lacrosse because it was worth the money not to drive endlessly around at night like in a sad parking scavenger hunt.

Add a healthy dose of snow, and the hunt becomes a whole different children’s game — musical chairs. I’ve read some Banner reader feedback on the issue, and it falls between those who agree with the mayor about taking your chances, and others who believe in the cone and chair game because that’s just how it’s done around here.

I admit that as of the writing of this column, I have yet to move my car, which I made sure to leave in a space right near my house. I didn’t want to make a long pilgrimage to dig it out. But I have made such cold, frosty journeys before, and it’s why I feel so strongly about this.

Sometime in the late 1980s, my sister had a snow day off from Baltimore City College and my parents had to work. They dug out my mom’s car and rode in together, but my dad offered us money to trundle down the hill on Stonewood Road in Northwood, where we lived. Being teenagers, we whined dramatically about it but wanted the money and the promised trip to the Pizza Hut later.

We later returned from said Pizza Hut, our bellies full of pan Pizza and birch beer, to discover that the space we had personally un-tundra’d with our own little Wet & Wild polished fingers was now occupied. By a chair. By someone who had not been out there digging. My father was not having it.

“Somebody get out and move that chair,” he commanded. I was reluctant because it is Baltimore, and I was trying to be cute and not catch hands from whoever left that chair. But Daddy was insistent, the chair got moved, and his Volkswagen Jetta got parked.

I was nervous that the owner of the chair would come back to find it gone and hurl it through the Jetta’s windshield. But the car remained unscathed and the snow eventually melted.

Look. I am a Baltimorean. I understand traditions, like putting Old Bay on everything or yelling “O!” during the National Anthem at an Orioles game. But I still believe that when you live in a city, particularly on a block without designated parking, there is a social contract of first come, first served, whether it’s snowy or not. You can’t claim a spot as yours after a storm if you didn’t have one before. Especially if you sat warm in your house and watched someone else dig it out.

That’s not cool.

Whenever I finally dig out my car from whatever snow is left when I move it, I know I’m going to feel some kind of way if I come back to no parking, or especially if there is a chair in that space. Will I move it? I’d want to. But there are doorbell cameras now, so unless I could absolutely not find anything else in a two-block radius, I’m not sure I’d take that risk.

Keep your chairs to yourself.