COLUMBIA SPY

Folks have come up with some ingenious (and mundane) ways to reserve the parking spaces they've shoveled out . . .   With traffic cones With a trash hopper - and a bag of trash (That way, you can say you were just setting out the trash.)  A chair, and a more elaborate one across the street  A plastic bucket  Another trash hopper   Another chair  The bench is back. And finally, a nifty bench-hopper combo Vehicles are supposed to have all snow removed before being driven. But unfortunately,  "Ain't nobody got time for that!"

Columbia Borough has declared a snow emergency beginning at 4 p.m. Monday and remaining in effect until further notice. Mayor Leo Lutz said parking is prohibited on these snow emergency routes: Locust Street, Front to Fifth streets; North Third Street, Locust to Cedar streets; Chestnut Street, Second to Fifth streets; North Fifth Street, Chestnut to Locust streets; Lancaster Avenue, Locust Street to Malleable Road; Kinderhook Road; Ironville Pike, Ninth Street to Borough Limit; Ninth Street, Ironville Pike to Lancaster Avenue. Parking is available in borough parking lots at Front and Locust Streets, next to Borough Hall on Locust and in the former telephone company lot in Avenue H between 2nd and 3rd Streets.

This snowman on Chestnut Street is likely to have a few friends if we get the snow that's forecast for this week.

This great blue heron was haunting the rooftops and chimneys on Chestnut Street on Saturday afternoon.

This afternoon several State Police officers loaded cases of beer onto a truck outside the Lazy K Lounge (as it was formerly known). Was it a raid? According to a Facebook page for PJ's Lounge, this bar went out of business last year: Go  HERE . (Unconfirmed reports suggest that a "speakeasy" was operating there.)

Seemingly lost, these drivers drove their big rigs across Third Street this afternoon after barely making the turn from Cherry Street.