Wheaton residents stake claim to prime parade watching spots

Phil Sigalia was unprepared for Main Street mania his first Fourth of July in Wheaton.

At 5 a.m. the morning of the parade, one slamming car door after another woke him. When he glanced outside, half the city seemed to be sitting on lawn chairs across his front yard.

Poor Sigalia wound up relegated to Bleacher Bum status, sitting on his own front porch, watching the lengthy Independence Day parade pass by.

Those days are gone. Thursday morning - a full 24 hours before the event's official start this year - Sigalia had five dark green high-backed resin chairs strategically spread out across a large area of his parkway. A colorful rope creating a border lazily looped between them.

More Coverage Stories Arlington Heights residents jump rules to claim parade spots [7/04/08]

Pity the fool that moves them.

Sigalia, and his neighbor, Anita Burger, were standing out front, having a friendly chat and watching the rest of the town claim their spot for the festivities.

"Nobody usually takes the chairs," Sigalia said good-naturedly, pointing out, in fact, that his set of four somehow multiplied last year. Someone made a close-but-not-exactly-matching donation to the cause.

The only problem: they don't stack properly.

He's got no idea from where the bonus chair hails.

Their suburban neighbors to the far north in Arlington Heights, meanwhile, are cracking down this year on those who stake out prime spots along the parade route too early. No one was allowed to place chairs on the parkway in that community before 7 p.m. Thursday.

Wheaton officials say they've never considered such a move.

"It just seems not to have been an issue," Assistant City Manager Mike Dugan said.

In fact, Wheaton Mayor Mike Gresk said the pre-parade preparations are heartwarming.

"I think it shows a pride and enthusiasm by your citizens," Gresk said. "This is classic small-town America."

Believe it or not, though, small-town Americana does come with a rule book, even if an unofficial one. And some of those lines are getting a little fuzzy in recent years.

For instance, the rule of thumb has always been this: no tarps. They kill the lawn when left overnight in the heat on the parkway. If you want to sit on one, fine, bring it with you the next morning and stake out your space with a blanket.

Anita Burger was faced with quite a dilemma Thursday morning when she saw her first tarp ever on her lawn, er, parkway.

Does she remove it? It's not a space issue, she's watching the parade over on Sigalia's parkway. She's just worried about the grass. But then she'd be compounding the faux pas-ness of the situation.

Don't touch thy neighbor's lawn chair.

Kim Klein made sure her dedicated domain along Main Street was protected early Thursday morning. Not only did she mark a rectangle of space in front of her house with the requisite lawn chairs - her sons affixed them all together with duct tape. Those babies aren't going anywhere before the parade.

They've been McGyvered.

The morning madness and mayhem was relatively calm and collected. A slow and steady stream of stakers pulled into side streets, dragged out their borders and set up shop.

Julie Lancia timed her Thursday arrival for the same time as the start of the July 4 parade. That way she made sure her family will sit in the shade.

If you wait until the evening, she cautioned, the odds of sitting in a sunny spot are pretty haphazard.

But that's when the scrambling gets amusing - at least for spectators.

People rush onto the side streets to find a spot, whip their chairs out of the trunk then run over to Main Street to make sure they grab the last available possible spot before the person parked in front of them, she said.

Klein said she's gotten used to the madness over the past 15 years.

"It's like my yard is everyone's yard on the Fourth of July," she said.

Still, Klein draws a line at understanding with another of the informal parade rules.

"Don't," she said, "ask to use the bathroom."