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Episode: 602
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Title: HPR0602: Urban Camping ep 1
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Source: https://hub.hackerpublicradio.org/ccdn.php?filename=/eps/hpr0602/hpr0602.mp3
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Transcribed: 2025-10-07 23:47:24
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---
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Hi everyone, this is Clat 2 and this is the first episode in my Urban Camping mini-series.
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This episode we're going to talk about what Urban Camping is, why you might want to do it,
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why other people do it, and things like that, and then the other episodes will go into
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more of a how-to sort of thing where someone who's actually been in Urban Camper will
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give you real life tips on how to make it happen for yourself.
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So Urban Camping is a new term that I learned fairly recently, and this has actually been
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an activity that I've been doing for a little while off and on, and I still do this off
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and on, and so we're calling Urban Camping what other people might call being homeless
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or being a vagabond or being a hobo.
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All of these kinds of terms denoting that you don't have a regular place that you pay
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rent on and stay there and kind of hang out there all day and stuff like that.
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I don't have any pretense about what makes a real live Urban Camper versus a wannabe
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or a poser Urban Camper.
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I don't really feel like I own the concept enough to start deciding who isn't a real Urban
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Camper.
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Otherwise, if you're someone who has, like, I don't know, eight roommates in a small
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little apartment and you just don't relish going there and being cramped and so you prefer
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to spend all your time out and about in the city and you want to call yourself an Urban
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Camper, I'm all for that.
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If on the other hand, you simply have no apartment whatsoever and literally stay out and about
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in the city because you simply have no place to go and you want to call yourself an Urban
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Camper.
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That works for me to another incarnation of this phenomenon might be if you're simply
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what we sometimes call a couch surfer.
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I mean, a lot of people know about couch surfer.com, things like that, places that sort of
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open their doors to, well, Urban Campers, I guess, or couch surfers or vagabonds or homeless
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people, whatever you want to call these people and they let them crash on their couch for
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a night.
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And I'd been thinking of this concept of Urban Camping for a while and I thought that maybe,
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I mean, when you first think about it, it doesn't seem like a very acceptable concept
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to sort of your average person on the street, well, I don't mean on the street, but your
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average person who might just be around you, it seems like a little bit of a revolutionary
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idea, something that might kind of scare them or freak them out a little bit if you go
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up to someone and say, hi, I'm a homeless person.
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They have a lot of preconceptions about that, which of course is why that term Urban Camping
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is kind of cool.
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It kind of separates it away from the crazy kind of mentally ill homeless that some people
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fall into, which is a tragedy in itself and not something to be taken lightly.
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So I'm not talking about people who lose their job and can no longer sustain a
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place to live.
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I'm not talking about people who are mentally imbalanced for some reason, whether it's
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some kind of trauma in their life or just a chemical imbalance or whatever it might be.
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And they simply can't operate in the same way that the rest of society does and sometimes
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can't even take care of themselves.
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Not talking about those people, not to belittle either of those two groups and say that they're
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not significant or anything.
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I'm just saying that's not what we're talking about when we're talking about Urban Camping.
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So Urban Camping is a more voluntary or at least semi-voluntary kind of thing.
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So there's a lot of negative association to this concept of not having a home of having
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an apartment, whatever, kind of makes people stop and look at you funny if you reveal
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that to them.
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At least that's what I thought would happen.
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And it does happen from time to time.
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However, the people who kind of know you and you tell them that you're in Urban Camping
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or you have no apartment, something like that.
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I have found they've been really, really intrigued by this idea of having nothing to tie you
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down and no imposed responsibility.
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You've got a lot of freedom, I guess, is what I'm trying to say and I think they kind
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of admire that.
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I got to kind of thinking about what they might admire about this and I started wondering
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if it was a distinctly American kind of dream or a fulfillment of a different kind of
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American dream.
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The big American dream being, if you're not from America, you wouldn't probably know
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this.
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But here in America, we have a term called the Great American Dream or something like that
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and it means that you kind of get married and you have kids and you move into a house
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and that's kind of what everyone's supposed to strive for traditionally speaking.
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And so thinking about Urban Camping, I was wondering if it was tapping into the antithesis
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of that where it's kind of that lone hero or that lone wolf or that one person who
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kind of breaks off from the pack and does their own thing.
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I wonder if, or I wondered if Urban Camping was kind of tapping into that sense of rugged
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individualism like you see in all the great John Wayne westerns or the good and the bad
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and the ugly with with Clint Eastwood's character wandering around kind of on his own, that
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sort of idea.
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And then I kind of pondered a little bit longer and thought, well maybe that's not, you
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know, as much as I love the idea of regional folklore and stuff like that, I also love
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the idea of the regional folklore kind of tapping into a more of a collective folklore.
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And maybe it's not distinctly American, maybe it's just actually distinctly human, maybe
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as social creatures where more, we do have a great amount of comfort in being together
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and being secure and kind of feeling that we're part of a group and all this other stuff.
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And in one way, something as simple as owning an apartment and kind of doing that kind
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of thing or having a home, having a place to call your own, that kind of gives you a communal
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feel.
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You're part of a neighborhood, you're part of a city, you're part of whatever group you
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feel you're a part of.
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You can invite people over to your apartment or your house, whatever.
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So that's that sort of social human dream, and I wonder if the urban camper out on their
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own kind of sending for themselves without these creature comforts sometimes might be tapping
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into the antithesis of that.
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As such, be very, very admirable to a lot of people.
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If they really look deep inside themselves and see what kind of inspires them, and this
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really been my experience more, more than experiencing horror and disapproval, a lot of the
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response has been that that's really kind of cool.
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Wow, I wish I could try that.
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That sounds really neat.
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I would love to do that.
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So I guess my point is that if you're listening to this and you're thinking of trying urban
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camping, then let this be basically an encouragement to do that.
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If you're listening to this and thinking that it sounds like a crazy idea, then listen
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with maybe a little bit of curiosity and just kind of see what might be appealing about
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it.
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And if you're listening to this and you think that this isn't something you could ever
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do, get too many responsibilities, whatever, still listen with open ears, because you never
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know what's going to happen in your life.
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I mean, not bad things, just in general, you might find yourself with some time and you
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might be able to go try this for a little while.
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So it is really fun and it's really cool and very, very, very liberating.
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It can't be understated.
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I don't think how liberating it is.
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So that's that brief introduction, I guess, to the idea of urban camping.
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And again, trying to wrap our minds around what I'm talking about when I say urban camping.
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I really honestly cannot nail it down.
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I have to say that for me, urban camping is a lot of different things and I think that
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it's fair to group all of these things together because a lot of them share just a lot of
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common problems as well as common benefits.
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So whether you're living in your car, living in your friend's living room, living on the
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street, which I hope you're not, squatting, sleeping over at your apartment that you do
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pay rent for, but for whatever reason you don't want to be there a whole lot.
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So you minimize the time that you spend there.
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All of these kinds of scenarios, I would classify as urban camping and I think you could
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benefit from what I'll be talking about in this miniseries.
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Okay, so let's talk about some of the ideas or some of the reasons, I guess, that one
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might try a life of urban campingness.
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First of all, at least for me, I think it's a great way to divorce the cult of stuff.
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So I mean that there's a big movement, I think in a lot of well-to-do countries that
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says that we really need to have possessions and things and my feelings on stuff go from
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very mild to very radical and on the mild spectrum, I just don't like having stuff to
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weigh me down.
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I like to be a little bit more mobile than having to worry about how I'm going to move
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a bed and a chair and a table and whatever else other people have, like bookshelves and
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books and plates and coffee makers.
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While coffee makers, I might make an exception for it, but stuff that you just kind of like,
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you almost start to worry about when you're not there, you know, someone going to break
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in and someone going to steal my stuff is a fire going to happen and destroy all of
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my stuff.
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You're going to get evicted because I can't pay a rent and then I'll have to last minute
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move all of my stuff, you know, you get like this sort of, you can't help it, you get
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kind of like obsessed over these things that you paid for and therefore you worked for
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and now you sort of have to take care of them for the rest of your life.
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So actually freeing one's self from that relationship, it's one of those relationships
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that feels fine at the time, it feels totally healthy and normal at the time, completely
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fine for you to have all these things and so much stuff that you actually have to move
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half of it out into the garage because it's starting to fill up your house so much, but
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still you go out and get more stuff and people bring more stuff to you on Christmas and
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on other holidays they bring stuff to you and you try to find more places for it and
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it feels fine and it almost feels like you could never ever get rid of that.
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I mean of course it does, right, that's the problem and you'll find I think that if
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you get rid of this stuff, you actually feel a hundred pounds lighter, I mean you just
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feel completely free.
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I find that urban camping for me enforces and kind of ensures that I look at things that
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I'm either offered or that I may think in the moment that I must have, I look at them
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with a real, I look at them twice, you know, you don't just grab it compulsively thinking
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oh I must have that now, literally when people offer me something, even if it has a perceived
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high value, quite often I have to reject it because I know that it's not going to fit
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in the four backpacks of stuff that I am able to transport.
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So it enforces that for me and I like that, I appreciate that.
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Now the more radical side of that, the radical end of the spectrum of that would be, I guess
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you could call it a conspiracy theory, but I actually believe it so it doesn't really
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seem like a conspiracy theory to me.
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But if you think about what's a great way to keep people occupied, kind of keep people
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from living their lives, one of the, I think the great ways of doing that for some organizations,
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some big scary group, government or a business or the same, since it's basically all the same.
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But if they were trying to keep a group of individuals consolidated and very busy with
|
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internal kind of affairs, such that they couldn't really break out and start looking around.
|
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One of the great ways to do that I would think would be to start keeping stuff on them
|
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and really encourage that they go out and buy stuff and get more stuff and then take
|
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care of that stuff and then when you run out of space for that stuff, fill up more space
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with it and then make sure that you've got a good place to store all that stuff and keep
|
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it safe and look after it and then grow a family around it and get lots of things dependent
|
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upon you, such that if you had to walk away at any point, everything in your life would
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basically crumble and fall apart and you'd feel horrible.
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So to me, that kind of ties into this whole cult of stuff and the great American dream.
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That's just a, that's the more extreme side of the theory, either way whether you like
|
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my mild or my extreme theory, urban camping does help kind of focus that and make sure
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that you're not caught up with those kinds of activities and that you're caught up with
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whatever else you want to be caught up in.
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I guess the danger there would be that some people don't know what else they would possibly
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do without those kinds of imposed focal points.
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So maybe that might not, might not be a good thing for you, but it might, it might be.
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So continue down this ultra paranoid extremist route for a moment.
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I think another reason that the urban camping lifestyle, as well as what that means, you
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know, meaning that you've only got so much stuff on you anyway, you're able to pick up
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and go at any time.
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You can pick up your three backpacks and walk for whatever reason and you can, you can
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fill in whatever reason you might need to get out of an area fairly quickly.
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You're extremely mobile.
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Another thing that this will help in my mind is lessening our impact as human beings
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on the ecosystem or the environment or whatever.
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I realize that it's a huge buzzword right now to say, oh, let's be green and that kind
|
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of bugs me that people use that term now, you know, we're green now.
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Companies are like labeling everything green and so you think, oh, good, if I get that,
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I'm lessening my impact on the ecology and this is great.
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And of course, we have no idea what they're talking about.
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It's just a word.
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There's no, they're not contract bound to say that they're doing certain things because
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they got a green label.
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It just means that they put a green label on their product.
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But urban camping, I think, could really be appropriately labeled green because by
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being an urban camper, you are, well, first of all, you're not having an apartment.
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And either way, anyway, you look at it, apartments are, I mean, their little self-contained ecosystems
|
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of sorts and that takes a lot of energy and resources to keep it going.
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Think of how much electricity and water and all that other good stuff that you use in
|
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your apartment or your house.
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That's a big impact for one person to have anyway, but imagine how many houses around
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you there are, how many apartments there are in your apartment building.
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It's a big deal.
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There's like a lot of stuff being used up and required, we of course require more energy
|
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to run all that and we're not really managing our energy very effectively.
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I mean, it's not like we're actually really utilizing wind power, solar power yet.
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It's kind of an issue, I think.
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And every time I have an apartment, I feel this way.
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I do feel like I'm using a lot more resources for a single human being than really necessary.
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And for a very long while, I was looking for like a cube apartment, like a tiny, tiny apartment,
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you know, maybe eight feet by eight feet.
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It would be really, really easy to heat that it would be very easy to light it.
|
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It just, it wouldn't take up a whole lot of resources.
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So those don't exactly exist, although my friend Deep Geek actually found an article
|
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I think that of course over in Japan, they've got these little sort of cube apartments and
|
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people can rent them.
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And of course, it's, it's accordingly cheaper for, for the small apartment than it would
|
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be a larger one, which of course in some places doesn't actually follow at all.
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Like in New York, you get a small apartment and you're still paying as much as most people
|
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pay for a normal size apartment.
|
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So it would be great to find that sort of thing.
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We don't have it at least here in the United States.
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So just having, having no apartment at all seems not like, like not a bad idea.
|
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Part of this too is that if there was a way to maybe, you know, just as a sort of a side
|
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thought to have society capitalize on the public spaces.
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And that's what urban campers do, right, because I mean, think about it.
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You've got a library, for instance, a public library or even a cafe.
|
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Now if there are 50 people in there, then that means that 50 apartment, or maybe 25 apartments
|
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out in the real world are all shut down.
|
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There's no power running on in them, it probably is, but, you know, it's, it's greatly reduced,
|
||||
right?
|
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So if everyone went to public libraries all day one day or if they went there every day
|
||||
for a month, they would find that their electric bills, their gas bills, things like that
|
||||
were reduced dramatically and accordingly, the footprint on the ecosystem would be reduced,
|
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right?
|
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Because now we're using less resources.
|
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I mean, I know that wouldn't be the entire solution.
|
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I'm not trying to say that.
|
||||
I'm just giving an example.
|
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But those libraries, if there's 50 people in them or there's one person in them, they're
|
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still running the same amount of electricity and everything like that.
|
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So it seems like we should capitalize on these places because they're there.
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They're turned on anyway.
|
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And if you go there, you can, you can exploit all of their resources that they're running
|
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anyway.
|
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And that seems very efficient to me.
|
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And as someone who's a geek and supposed to be, I'm very into like the Unix philosophy,
|
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I don't know, somehow I like efficiency.
|
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I really do.
|
||||
I admire efficiency.
|
||||
And so it seems very inefficient to have lots of people staying home in their apartments,
|
||||
running their TVs, running their air conditioning, running their heater, whatever, when they
|
||||
could all be out at the same place, doing the same thing, but sharing the same amount
|
||||
of resources.
|
||||
So, I mean, if you're concerned about that sort of thing, that might be another reason
|
||||
to try urban camping.
|
||||
Another thing about apartments, of course, is that you're paying rent on them.
|
||||
This has a whole host of interesting ramifications, right?
|
||||
So the first one for me, again, starting sort of with the extreme, and we'll filter down
|
||||
to another brand of extreme, for me, I really dislike the landlord rent model of building
|
||||
a society.
|
||||
I don't believe that most landlords, quote, unquote, deserve to be landlords.
|
||||
I mean, most landlords that I've ever had their mean and their slimy, and they always want
|
||||
to get as much money for the least amount of quality that they can possibly get.
|
||||
And you can tell me that that's the American way and say that that's the greatest business
|
||||
model ever, and that's why this country is so rich.
|
||||
All you want, the fact is that that's wrong because human beings need a place to stay.
|
||||
And so if you're going to require people to actually have to pay for a place, for shelter,
|
||||
which is a basic human need, I just have a problem with that.
|
||||
Sorry, I just do.
|
||||
And I apologize to all the land owners out there, and all the people with apartment buildings
|
||||
making a lot of money off of them, or getting a big headache from all the complaints,
|
||||
from their tints about them, whatever your experience might be, I don't agree with it.
|
||||
I think that shelter and food and things like that are basic human needs, and should
|
||||
therefore be provided for everyone.
|
||||
And I think that we are resourceful enough race that we could actually figure that out.
|
||||
Yeah, someone would be making not as much money somewhere along the line.
|
||||
I don't think that's really what we need to be concerned about personally.
|
||||
I like to urban camp often because I really like not being subject to a landlord.
|
||||
I enjoy that feeling very much.
|
||||
Of course, a more pragmatic thing coming from rejecting this landlord rent model is that
|
||||
you are saving a lot of money.
|
||||
You'll find that when you are urban camping, your paycheck, if you have a job, it all goes
|
||||
into your bank.
|
||||
It doesn't go to your landlord.
|
||||
It goes straight to your account, it goes into your pocket, whatever.
|
||||
That's a big deal.
|
||||
It's a huge deal in some cases, it depends on where you're living.
|
||||
But you'll find that, along with apartments, tend to be associated with a lot of other
|
||||
costs.
|
||||
So rarely do you rent an apartment, at least in my experience, and get all of your utilities
|
||||
included.
|
||||
There's usually extra bills, whether it's just a phone bill or just a TV bill if you watch
|
||||
television, or something more essential, like a heating bill or a water bill or something
|
||||
like that.
|
||||
There's always those bills, and then you'll find that there's always stuff that you need
|
||||
for your apartment.
|
||||
It goes back to stuff.
|
||||
I mean, if you've got an apartment, you're probably going to need basic things like, I don't
|
||||
know, dishes and dish soap and towels and curtains and trash cans and whatever else people
|
||||
get and put into their apartments.
|
||||
So all of these things really start to add up after a while, and you look at the amount
|
||||
of money that you've spent, and suddenly you're basically, if you're employed, you're simply
|
||||
employed to live in an apartment, and it's kind of weird.
|
||||
That's a great thing about urban camping.
|
||||
The related opposite end of that is that you may have no money at all, and you might need
|
||||
to urban camp for that reason.
|
||||
If you ever find yourself in that situation, I know this past seems like this past summer.
|
||||
A lot of people are actually looking for work and stuff, you know, because I guess the
|
||||
big thing was the economy, the economy was so bad.
|
||||
I guess it supposedly still is, I don't really know, but a lot of people seemed to be having
|
||||
some hard time.
|
||||
So if you're ever actually finding yourself in that situation and you are up to trying
|
||||
something drastic like urban camping, that's a great way to go, because in any amount of
|
||||
money that you do make, whether it's off of a freelance kind of position, or simply
|
||||
answering ads for work on Craigslist, like, you know, hooking up someone's home network
|
||||
or fixing their printer or fixing their computer, you know, those things, make money, and
|
||||
every since, or even playing a musical instrument on the street, you know, whatever your skill
|
||||
is, you do that, and every since you make, goes straight into your pocket, and it's not
|
||||
like you're working for anything, you're just working for yourself.
|
||||
And that's, that's a great way to save up a fair amount of money pretty quickly.
|
||||
And we'll talk, I mean, I'm not saying that there are no expenses when you're urban camping.
|
||||
There can be expenses to that, and your style of urban camping might change as to, you know,
|
||||
if you're employed or if you're not employed.
|
||||
But we'll go into that in later episodes.
|
||||
The final reason that I think for urban camping would be hacking society.
|
||||
And I know that film kind of weird, and almost obligatory, like, that's a hacker book
|
||||
for you episode, I should mention the word hack, but in fact, this is correct.
|
||||
You're hacking society, and you can take that almost any way you want to, but the ways
|
||||
that I think of it, is that I've hacked around the necessity that society keeps telling
|
||||
me I have to have, whether it's something as basic as a landlord who owns an apartment
|
||||
building, and will let me stay there for rent, or whether it's something a little bit more
|
||||
frivolous, like a telephone line and a television, you know, I mean, people here that you don't
|
||||
have, well, I don't know, any of those creature comforts, really, they do kind of, they get
|
||||
a little bit thrown off by that.
|
||||
But you're also, I think you'll also find that you're hacking around a lot of the rules
|
||||
and regulations that society sets in place even unofficially, because they're, and we'll
|
||||
get into this later as well, there are some rules on the, on the law books supposedly
|
||||
about being an urban camper or homeless or whatever, and it's, it reads very accepting
|
||||
and very tolerant, but I think you'll find that that's not the case, and in practice.
|
||||
So if you're, if you're doing this, you're kind of, you're getting around a lot of the
|
||||
things that people just don't expect, they don't, they don't want to accept that people
|
||||
can live and be happy this way.
|
||||
So I like hacking with people's minds and expectations in that way.
|
||||
Of course being, being homeless requires a little bit of social engineering in lots of
|
||||
different situations, whether you're getting a new job and you have to fill out an IW
|
||||
4 form or whatever, and suddenly they're asking you for an address, and you don't have one.
|
||||
So what do you do?
|
||||
You know, little things like that.
|
||||
It definitely helps you brush up on your social skills, your social engineering skills.
|
||||
So that's a great reason to get into it, really.
|
||||
You'll find, you'll find the opportunity to be a social engineer, presents itself a
|
||||
lot more if you're urban camping, because generally speaking, you're having to deal with
|
||||
people in, in ways that you've never had to deal with them before, and what we will go
|
||||
into that, oh, as, throughout the whole series, you know, I think we'll encounter some of
|
||||
those, some of those examples.
|
||||
So that's great stuff too.
|
||||
I think I said that was the last one, there's actually one more, and I, I associate it
|
||||
with hacking society as well, but it is a little bit specific, and that is, if should
|
||||
you have or feel the need to disappear off the grid for a little while, again, for whatever
|
||||
reason, whether it's because you want to get out of town, for a vacation, or whether it's
|
||||
simply because you need to not be in an address that you were formally associated with, or
|
||||
whether it's that you don't even want, that you need to probably just not have an address
|
||||
at all.
|
||||
So, however the reason going, being, being an urban camper is basically disappearing from
|
||||
everything, there's, there's really no precise record of you anymore, obviously it depends
|
||||
on how you work it.
|
||||
You might get a PO box, you might get a cell phone, you might get all these things in your
|
||||
real name, which actually getting a PO box, not in your real name is not easy, but getting
|
||||
another mailbox and a cell phone, all these things, I mean, if you don't want to be off
|
||||
the grid, if you don't want to disappear, you don't have to, I'm saying it certainly
|
||||
helps if you have no address.
|
||||
It's a lot harder to find people when you can't go knocking on a door and expect to see
|
||||
them on the other side of it, so that's something to keep in mind as well, might be a benefit.
|
||||
So, those are some reasons that you might want to look into urban camping, and some of
|
||||
the things that I really like about urban camping, I'm a really bad salesperson, so I'm
|
||||
not trying to convince you to do anything, but like I say, those are the reasons I like
|
||||
it. In closing, I want to give you just the pros and the cons of urban camping as I see
|
||||
it.
|
||||
I obviously don't want to make it sound all great and all easy so that everyone just
|
||||
gives up everything they've ever had and walks out and thinks they're going to urban
|
||||
camp for the rest of their lives, but I do want to give you, I guess, both sides of this.
|
||||
So, the benefits of urban camping gets you out of a house, well, quite literally, right?
|
||||
But if you're, you know, a lot of geeks are a little bit, I'd say, anti-social.
|
||||
If that's you, you will find opportunities to interact with people a lot more if you're
|
||||
out among people.
|
||||
So, you'll meet more people, that's a big plus, or not, depending on who you are.
|
||||
No more bills, really, that's a fact, extreme mobility, that's a big plus for me.
|
||||
Disassociation from the requirement of stuff, very important.
|
||||
You're lightweight, you're just literally lightweight, you feel completely light, you
|
||||
have nothing but, like, whatever you're carrying around with you, and even that stuff, I usually
|
||||
stashed somewhere.
|
||||
So, you're just walking around with nothing, it's incredibly liberating.
|
||||
Low maintenance.
|
||||
You'll find that maintaining just yourself goes down so much when you're urban camping.
|
||||
It's so simple all of a sudden.
|
||||
I guess it's because you don't have, like, a bathroom to stand in front of a mirror for
|
||||
three hours, you know, fixing your hair, or whatever people do.
|
||||
That's kind of, it's an interesting thing that I didn't really expect, I wasn't sure
|
||||
how that was going to go.
|
||||
We'll go into the specifics of that, too, by the way, later in the episode, in the series,
|
||||
but I did find that to be a really interesting one, that just kind of, the amount of time
|
||||
you have to spend on, I don't know, just being, it really goes down.
|
||||
Simplification, it really, really simplifies things, I found, drastically.
|
||||
I don't know what it is, if you're just too busy figuring out how you're going to get
|
||||
by that day, so you're very focused on what you're going to do, or whether it's literally
|
||||
just when you don't have an apartment to kind of fill with drama, as it were, then you
|
||||
don't.
|
||||
You don't get the drama, and I definitely appreciated that, and I've kind of been able
|
||||
to maintain the simplicity that I discovered through urban camping, even when I cease
|
||||
urban camping.
|
||||
By the way, the reason I cease to urban camping is simply a function of weather.
|
||||
It gets cold during the winter, and I don't want to freeze.
|
||||
So anyway, more benefits here.
|
||||
Stress relief in a big way, yeah, it's just, again, you don't have stuff to worry about,
|
||||
you don't have a place to worry about, you don't have money that you're always owing
|
||||
at the end of the month.
|
||||
It's just, yeah, there's enormous amount of stress just kind of flying away.
|
||||
Again, it uses resources that your local community is already using up, so it's a green
|
||||
lifestyle, you can put a little green sticker on you.
|
||||
You save up money, that's a good one.
|
||||
You disappear from people who might be looking for you, whoever those people might be, could
|
||||
be anybody, and it chooses not to heartake in a system that's set up that you might
|
||||
not agree with, and that's, of course, a big one for me as well.
|
||||
The disadvantage is the things to watch out for.
|
||||
It's probably not that compatible with a traditional family life.
|
||||
Obviously, if you have kids in a spouse right now, being an urban camper probably isn't
|
||||
going to really work all that well for you.
|
||||
And even if you think that, if you're close to your extended family, or your parents
|
||||
and stuff, and you think that urban camping might completely offend and horrify them,
|
||||
again, it just might not be something that you're able to do without really kind of causing
|
||||
a lot more drama in your life than maybe you want to.
|
||||
So that admittedly is difficult.
|
||||
There's no place to hang out with friends.
|
||||
This one is something recent, something I completely didn't expect.
|
||||
But when I was urban camping, just this most recent time for actually most of this past
|
||||
year, about what, eight months or something like that, I kept meeting people, and it would
|
||||
always come up like, oh, we should hang out, and it would always be like, oh, well, my
|
||||
place, yeah, we can't hang out at my place.
|
||||
Well, because I didn't have a place, you know, and so you don't want to, like, say that
|
||||
right away, depending on who it is, obviously.
|
||||
I mean, you don't really just want to say, oh, I actually am homeless, you know, you
|
||||
don't want to say that.
|
||||
So you kind of have to, like, sort of beat around the bush and kind of like, I don't
|
||||
really, my place isn't really good, or I have a roommate, and they're really stubborn,
|
||||
and they don't like visitors, you know, just come up with weird stories.
|
||||
So that really doesn't work very well.
|
||||
So be aware of that.
|
||||
Of course, other people, you just tell, hey, look, I'm an urban camper.
|
||||
I don't do the whole apartment thing, and they'll be fine with that, but it's still an
|
||||
issue, right?
|
||||
Because you still don't have a place to go hang out if they have, like, the grumpy roommate
|
||||
or, or they live with their parents still, or something, you know, I mean, it's kind
|
||||
of like, what do you do?
|
||||
Where do you go?
|
||||
There's no feeling of permanence, which for some people is a terrifying idea.
|
||||
For me, it's really quite comforting not to have a feeling of permanence, but some
|
||||
people don't like that from what I've heard.
|
||||
Some people like to feel like they've established a home base for themselves.
|
||||
They've got a place to go to.
|
||||
They've got a place to rely on.
|
||||
That kind of thing.
|
||||
A lot of people find comfort in that from what I'm gathering.
|
||||
So, urban camping makes that a little bit more difficult.
|
||||
There's a certain ever-changing setting for yourself when you're urban camping, or it
|
||||
might be something that you can rotate, like, every Tuesday, you're hanging out here,
|
||||
everyone's there, you're hanging out there.
|
||||
But there is that feeling of change, of frequent change, and a lot of people get freaked
|
||||
out about that by that as well.
|
||||
And then, finally, there's health and concerns.
|
||||
This is a big drawback.
|
||||
When you're urban camping, you tend to eat out, or you're not cooking for yourself, so
|
||||
you can't really monitor what exactly you're getting, or whether it's the healthiest thing
|
||||
around, for whatever reason, whether it's because you can't afford good food, or whether
|
||||
it's just because there's actually not that much really healthy food out there being made
|
||||
in restaurants and stuff.
|
||||
So, it gets difficult, I find, to eat healthy when you're urban camping.
|
||||
It gets difficult, certainly, to maintain temperature and stuff like that.
|
||||
I mean, you may or may not have a place that is really, I mean, if you have your own
|
||||
apartment, you can completely do climate control there.
|
||||
You can set the temperature to whatever you want it to be.
|
||||
Not a problem.
|
||||
Urban camping, you may not have that luxury.
|
||||
Things like that, things that kind of dictate whether you're healthy or not, basically.
|
||||
That becomes a concern when you're urban camping.
|
||||
You really do have to give some thought to that.
|
||||
That's probably one of the primary things that you have to think about, actually.
|
||||
So, that would be a big drawback of it.
|
||||
In that sense, having an apartment is simpler.
|
||||
Is it worth that trade-off, and definitely not for me, well, except when it reaches zero
|
||||
degrees outside, in which case, yeah, actually, admittedly, the apartment thing is actually
|
||||
worth it for me.
|
||||
So, it really just depends.
|
||||
That's about all of the good and bad things I can say about urban camping.
|
||||
I hope that I've at least explained why on earth someone would be interested in urban
|
||||
camping in this episode.
|
||||
Hopefully, I've given you an idea of some of the neat things about it, some of the bad
|
||||
things about it, and I'll come back next episode and talk about some specifics, and specifically
|
||||
on finding shelter while urban camping.
|
||||
Riding on an eastbound freight train, speeding through the night, hobo bill, a railroad
|
||||
bump was fighting for his life, the sadness of his eyes revealed, the torture of his soul,
|
||||
he raised a weakened weary hand to brush away the cold, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh,
|
||||
oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh,
|
||||
oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh,
|
||||
oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh,
|
||||
he smiled there where he lay oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh,
|
||||
oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, what
|
||||
It sped through the darkness, and the raging storm outside.
|
||||
No one knew that Hobo Bill was taking his last ride.
|
||||
It was early in the morning when they raised the Hobo's head.
|
||||
The smile still lingered on his face, but Hobo Bill was dead.
|
||||
There was no mother's longing to suit his weary soul,
|
||||
or he was just a railroad bum who died out in the cold.
|
||||
Reference in New Issue
Block a user