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Episode: 615
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Title: HPR0615: Urban Camping ep 2
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Source: https://hub.hackerpublicradio.org/ccdn.php?filename=/eps/hpr0615/hpr0615.mp3
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Transcribed: 2025-10-07 23:55:28
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---
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Hi everyone, this is Clat 2 and this is Part 2 in my Urban Camping mini series.
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In this episode of the How To Be an Urban Camper series, we'll be talking about Shelter.
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Shelter is kind of one of the basic needs, especially when you're urban camping, you give
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that a lot of thought, and in fact it's not that sort of one thing that you don't have
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when urban camping, it's the thing that really defines you as an urban camper, you don't
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have a place to stay.
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So how to find Shelter some good places to think about, and that sort of thing is what
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we'll talk about, and I guess I'll just run through the different options that you might
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have.
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So one of the places that you can stay if you're going to urban camp is in a car or a van.
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And when I said that I was staying in a van this most recent time that I was urban camping,
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people got really, they laughed at that, and it turns out that there's like a Saturday
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night life skit, I think, about some guy who lives in a van down by the river.
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So if you don't know that comedy routine, you should look for that online because it
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is actually quite funny, and it has nothing to do really with urban camping.
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Well, I guess it does, but not really.
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So yeah, you could live in a vehicle at the point, and here's an interesting story,
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here listener.
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I was sitting at a bagel store having a bagel and coffee, and this was in a fairly, this
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was in a pretty good area of the city, and I was just, I was minding my own business,
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but I heard behind me some people talking, and it was clear after a while that this one
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girl was sort of naming off this list of the things I want to do before I die.
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But it's a very, it was, you could tell it was a very fantastic kind of list.
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It was one of those kind of like, think big, list everything you could possibly want
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to do to achieve your dreams and all that other nonsense.
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And she was reading this list, and there was the usual stuff, you know, like, dance
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with, you know, I don't know, name some popular star, you know, I want to dance with this
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male star all night long.
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I want to go to Paris and London and wherever else, you know, and I mean, it was nice, I
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don't mean to make it sound like, you know, I mean, it was very nice, it was great stuff.
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But one of the things that she said was I'd like to live out of my car for a month, and
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this was literally right next to London and Paris and eat caviar, you know, and then
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it was like, and live out of my car for 30, for 30 days.
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And I just thought, wow, that is completely unexpected.
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So I don't know if it's becoming sort of quasi-hip to think about urban camping or something
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or what's going on exactly.
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But yeah, that's, that's what was on her list.
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And I thought that was interesting because people don't generally think of that really
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I think.
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Of course, the reality of living out of your car for 30 days or for longer than that becomes
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fairly complex because if you think about what that means, it means that you're well
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in a vehicle overnight and that you need to find a place to park that vehicle and you
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need to not be discovered.
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So these are very tricky things in some cases.
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And there are some places that are safe to do this in and some places where it is not
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safe.
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Skirlett and I found out the hard way that staying in vehicles parked in a city park
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or I imagine any kind of park overnight is a really, really bad idea.
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Whether it's posted or not, I think city parks generally close overnight could be not
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true somewhere, but at least in the city, in a traditional city with buildings and they
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have these designated city parks they close at night.
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And if you're in a car and you're parked near the park, you're basically loitering or
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trespassing or something like that.
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And they will, they being the police will harass you, awaken you at 3am, yell at you, threaten
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you, demand to see all of your personal identification, all that good stuff.
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So keep that in mind that you can't just park any old place you want to if you're going
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to be living out of your car.
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There is one known place that is actually fine with you doing just that, you're parking
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there overnight, sleeping there, whatever.
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And that is interestingly enough Wal-Mart, yes it's true.
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Wal-Mart has, I think it might even be a written social contract, it's going to say unwritten
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social contract, but they have some kind of rule that you are allowed to park in their
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parking lot and camp there.
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And this is why if you think about it, when you're driving around and you go out to Wal-Mart
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and way back in the back of the parking lot, there's always like that one RV, there's
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that one camper with like the generator on the back and stuff, you know, and you think
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you, you probably don't even think about it at all.
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I've noticed it before and I kind of wondered about it, but I always thought it was like
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someone traveling across country, stopping in at Wal-Mart, but a lot of them actually are
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there living in the Wal-Mart parking lot and you can do that for free.
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And no one will harass you, I should say no one from the law will harass you or from
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Wal-Mart, whether other weirdos will harass you, I can't really guarantee.
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But you can definitely do that, that's a great resource to know about, I've used it often.
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So keep that one in mind, another pretty good place are well populated rest areas, but
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rest areas tend to be on the highway.
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And that's not always convenient, so whether or not that would work for you or not, I'm
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not sure.
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And I wouldn't recommend this small creepy ones.
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I'm talking about the sort of the big, well lit ones, really the ones that have a lot
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of like all my truck traffic and stuff like that, those are great places to stay in your
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vehicle.
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Now, of course, there is always street parking and street parking can be great and it can
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be dangerous and it can be susceptible to being seen and yelled at, so it really depends
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and it all depends on you.
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And this is where urban camping kind of starts to hone your skills on sort of an awareness
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of your surroundings.
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And this is what I'm talking about, like by hacking society or social engineering because
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you become a lot more aware of how things are in a neighborhood.
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You need to, before you commit to parking on some street corner and going to sleep there
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for the night, you need to commit to getting to know that neighborhood.
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And ideally this is even something you do before starting your journey down the whole urban
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camping path.
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Scout out the places that you think you can stay and I mean really scout it out.
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And this is exactly what I did when I was going to be urban camping and I knew that I
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wasn't going to have really any friends or any building to stay in, but I just recently
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acquired a van for free.
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So I thought, well, I could try this.
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And so before I tried it, I would walk around the street at different times of the day.
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I kind of see what was going on.
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And so importantly, of course, at night, and I walked around the whole neighborhood that
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I figured would be the kind of the ideal target for my new home.
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And I did that.
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I completely scouted it out at all hours of the night and got a really good feel for
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what kind of neighborhood it was.
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And it was a slightly upscale neighborhood, so it was safe from thugs.
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But the flip side of that, of course, sometimes can be over watchful neighborhood watches.
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But there really wasn't in this place.
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I found that you could pretty much do whatever you want to, whenever you want to.
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There was a lot of college traffic and stuff like that.
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So it gives you a little bit of, you know, there's a lot of activity, a lot of hot at odd hours
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of the night.
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It was a really good place to kind of camp out for eight or nine months.
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Of course, if you're going to be doing that, if you're going to be camping out for eight
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or nine months, you have two different options.
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And I've seen actually two, both of these in practice.
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So one is kind of the quasi-wallmark approach, and actually, you know, I mean, depending
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on the neighborhood, obviously.
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But if you have friends or neighbors or acquaintances, and you can literally say, look, I'm going
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to live in my car for the next eight months, do you mind if I park on the street and do
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that?
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They might be fine with it.
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And believe it or not, I've seen exactly that.
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I've seen a person do that.
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It was a known fact that he was living, of course, he had an RV or whatever, a small
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RV.
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I don't know what else they're called.
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RVs, caravans, you know, these big kind of oversized vehicles with little houses on the
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back.
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So he had one of those.
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So it was quite well known that he was living there.
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He was staying there.
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It wasn't an issue.
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I wouldn't do that myself, but apparently some people can.
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It depends on your personal style.
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What I would do is move, rotate my schedule, you know, like on Monday, I would stay on
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this street corner, on Tuesday, I would stand on that street corner.
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On Wednesday, I would stay a little bit, not a cross town, but a little bit farther away
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and so on.
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And so I was never really, you know, I wouldn't literally just camp out in one spot, because
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that kind of invites interest, I think.
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Whereas if it just becomes another car that kind of sometimes parks here, sometimes parks
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there, depending on the day of the week, stuff like that, it becomes less noticeable.
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So obviously part of the goal here is to become not very noticed.
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You do kind of want to, well, you do very much want to blend into your surroundings.
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People don't typically look at the cars out on their street.
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I mean, if you think about what you notice when you go outside of your apartment or your
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house, do you really look at the streets around the area?
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Do you see who's parked it around your house?
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Have you ever noticed that a car has been parked somewhere for a long time?
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I think it varies.
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I really do.
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I think it varies a lot.
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I remember that I used to not notice those things at all.
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But lately I started, you know, I mean, and I guess you'll always kind of notice like
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a strange looking car, like a car with a window missing and it's just got plastic taped
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over where the window should be.
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That you'd notice if it was parked there for like a week and a half.
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But would you just notice like, you know, a Honda Civic just kind of parked out across
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the street for like nine days and kind of would you start wondering why it was parked there
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for nine days?
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So it's just kind of interesting to see what people do and don't notice and it'll typically
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surprise you, of course, what people do and don't notice.
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Although I have to say quite happily, I wasn't really ever noticed.
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I must have rotated quite well.
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The hardest time if you're doing something like that, if you're living literally in your
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vehicle.
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I think one of the hardest things is getting out of the vehicle.
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That's the hard part because getting into it late at night when no one's around.
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That's easy.
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Go in, you lay down, you go to sleep.
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Simple.
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But waking up in the morning, you know, when you're waking up and you don't know what
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kind it is and you don't know how many people are, you know, are people around your car looking
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at you or are they driving by and if you pop up suddenly will they notice you?
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All these kind of concerns of what are people really looking at.
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And of course, generally speaking, you will notice that most people, and there's always
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that really, really dangerous exception, but most people aren't noticing anything at all.
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That's just the fact.
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And you will learn that if you urban camp, you will learn that not just theoretically,
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you will actually see it in practice where people don't notice some of the things going
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on around their own neighborhood, sometimes in their own front yard.
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And then yet strangely, they'll notice if you, I don't know, litter or something like
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that.
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You know, people are so weird.
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It's just that you can camp out in front of their house for three days in a row.
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You could be a private investigator for all they know or a burglar, a potential burglar,
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and they would never even notice you.
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But then if you're walking around and you have dreadlocks or something, they'll yell at
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you for being a hippie, you know, bizarre stuff.
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But this, of course, is one of the dangers, too, is that when you're living in your car,
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people don't know who or what you are.
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And if you are noticed, the suspicion could be dangerous, actually, because they don't
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know if you're scouting out the neighborhood to see when people aren't around so you can
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break into their houses or whether you're just a bum.
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And if you're a bum, are you dangerous or not, or if you're not a bum, are you dangerous?
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Be mindful of how you might appear to people if they are noticing you, and that's important.
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Also be mindful of where you're parking.
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If you're parking near a bank or an elementary school or places that are in some cases should
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be a little bit more sensitive to the fact that some stranger seems to keep parking outside
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of that establishment, you know, every day, be very mindful of that, that's inviting
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trouble.
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Things that might not invite trouble are private lots.
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And it kind of, I mean, private means that you may or may not even have access to it.
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But depending, again, depending on how you can swing employment and stuff like that,
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you may luck out and get some kind of car pass, whether it's because you're a student
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or because you're employed for some establishment.
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You can get a car pass, like a windshield pass, to park in a place.
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That could be your free ticket to really every night safe parking every night.
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That really paid off for me.
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I about midway into this past year obtained a car, a little badge for the car for the
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van that I was living in, and it gave me permission to be in a school lot.
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And I thought that that could be really good.
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And actually it was.
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I got to park in the school lot.
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As often as I wanted to, day or night, no one would ever bother me.
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And people would just assume, you know, if it was parked overnight, people assumed that
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I was on the night crew or whatever, or that I just left it there for, you know, as a
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utility vehicle or whatever.
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So that was really, really beneficial.
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So if there's any kind of job that offers a parking space or something like that, then
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that might work for you as well.
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Don't forget those kinds of deals.
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Another thing that you could live in, of course, is an RV or a caravan.
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One thing to have a big advantage in that they look fairly normal.
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They're very self-sustained and they have a really nice level of privacy.
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The one thing that you realize in a car or in a van or whatever is that if you're out
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on a street, there's very little separating you from the outside world.
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You're just in a vehicle and it's fairly simple to kind of detect you and bang on the window
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and insist that you open up that kind of deal.
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And police will do that without hesitation.
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They really don't care.
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I don't know that they have a right to harass you, but apparently those streets that you're
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probably paying taxes on or whatever, they don't really belong to you to live on.
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So if you're doing that, that's a potential risk.
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Whereas the RV situation seems to be, and again, I don't know if this is a legal precedence
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or something or if it's just perception, but police don't tend to, at least in my experience
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and in the experience of this other person that I knew doing this, they don't seem to
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harass RVs because they don't really know if you're in there.
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They don't really know what's going on without RV.
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I mean, are you living in it or is it just parked there because that's where you parked
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it?
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So it's very difficult for people to harass you as long as you kind of are respectful
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of the area and stuff when you're in that kind of vehicle.
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And again, like I say, Walmart has no problem with you parking and they're a lot and just
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chilling.
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Remember that.
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So those are the vehicular options.
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There are also friends that you might have and this kind of goes back to couch surfing,
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but it's a little bit more broad than that.
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And that is that you could stay with your friends.
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Now, I know at least one person who, as far as I know, stays with friends a lot.
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Like that's the primary, that's this person's primary way of getting shelter.
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At least that's my perception.
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I don't know for sure.
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But I don't think I could do that that often.
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Well, number one, I don't have that many friends in this particular city.
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And I think if I stayed just with like the one or two people I feel close enough to actually
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ask that of, I think I would kind of wear out my welcome eventually.
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I think.
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Now, I could be wrong.
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But my personal style is that I think I would feel awkward after a month, you know.
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You can do it and then again, maybe not.
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And it really all depends.
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And this again gets into the social engineering stuff.
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In a very positive way.
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But if you're going to stay with people, obviously, again, you need to rotate your schedule.
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You don't want to impose on people every day, every night of every, you know, for a month.
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You probably want to kind of rotate that out.
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Make sure that you're spending enough time with them to make it seem like you're a gracious
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guest.
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And yet not so much time with them that you feel like you're imposing.
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That's an important distinction as well.
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And one of those that I learned the hard way as well.
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I used to think, well, yes, I'm staying with them.
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So that means I should completely make myself scarce during the day and just get out of
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their way.
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And then I just come back late at night.
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Well, that doesn't go over very well, actually.
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It makes you seem like, well, like you're using it as a hotel, which really you are.
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So you have to be nice.
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You have to be friendly.
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You have to be, you know, you have to be a good friend.
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And that's part of their deal.
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That's what they get out of this.
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They get their good friend right there in their own apartment.
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Hey, it's easy access.
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It's great.
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But at the same time, you have to be aware of other people's emotions enough so that when
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you are wearing out your welcome, you can make yourself scarce or you can just stop out
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and pick up dinner for that night or whatever you want to do to try to smooth things over.
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And of course, that is part of your responsibility for going to be staying with people.
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You have to kind of bring things home, you know, you have to be thoughtful and really
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make sure that you are contributing because it's not cool.
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I don't think to just entirely leach off of people.
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Or maybe it is cool in a very sort of abstract way, but in an emotional way, it doesn't feel
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all that good.
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They kind of, they get tired of you a lot faster if all you're doing is leaching off of them.
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The rotation idea is fairly important.
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I mean, and the schedule would be up to you.
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I mean, you could, you could stay with one person for a whole week and then another person
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for another week and then another person another week and so on.
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Or you could give one person two days and another person two other days and then stay
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at a stranger's place via couchurfing.com another day.
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It would really be up to you and what kind of friends you've got and how close you guys
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are.
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I guess that's an obvious option, but the main thing about that is just to be sensitive
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to the person's feelings and kind of the chemistry that you two have and at other times might
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not have.
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Very different to that would be squatting.
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It was really hard and I've never done it and I don't really have any desire to do it.
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Squatting is legally really, really controversial.
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Some people think that it's the smartest thing in the world.
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I happen to think it's brilliant.
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Buildings that aren't being used, yeah.
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You should use them.
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I mean, it's it's almost common sense, but of course, apparently someone owns the building
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or something and the best waters go in and repair a place and fix it up and make it
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actually respectable and livable.
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And in some states, there's a some kind of law that says that if they occupy that space
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long enough and can prove that they've occupied that space long enough, then those squatters
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get to, well, they get sort of de facto ownership of that building, common law ownership
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sort of.
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Some cities have that.
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Other cities I imagine do not.
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It really depends.
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And even in any of those cases, I figure you're going to go up against the law at some
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point probably.
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You know, you're going to get kicked out or you're going to be challenged as to whether
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you own that building or not.
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And that's a whole headache that personally I don't need and it's one of the big reasons
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that I like to be an urban camper because I can avoid that sort of bureaucratic mess.
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You could try it.
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You need to be careful about it.
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Not necessarily the safest thing.
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You've got to know the people you're hanging out with and it's a group situation typically
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or if it's not, then it's not all that safe and you should be really kind of careful
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about it.
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The building is an option.
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I just don't know if it's really the option that I would choose and I don't know much
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about it.
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So it's probably one of those things that I can't really speak, very authoritatively
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on.
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But it happens all the time, obviously.
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So if that's something that appeals to you and is of interest, give it a shot, do an
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HPR episode on it.
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Well, a variation, I guess, on the squatting idea that I have done is simply staying
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in random places.
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You name it.
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You've got all the places that you've been that you hang out at a lot and then think about
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think about all the places that you've been like the places that you hang out out hang
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out at a lot.
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And now think of them as potential homes.
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Let me tell you some of the different places that I've discovered are particularly good
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as shelter.
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Colleges are great.
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If you can at all pass yourself off for a college student or a college professor or a
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college anything such that you can get into a college building and then on a regular
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basis and then stay there overnight, it's a great place to stay.
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Colleges tend to be fairly active at even the odd hours of night because a lot of especially
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in certain departments, like the department that I was in, filmmaking, yet people multimedia,
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yet people making stuff all through the night, all through the day, it was never a dull
|
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place.
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|
I've always kind of imagined computer science departments would be the same way.
|
|
I would imagine that they would have a lot of activity because I'm sure people are
|
|
probably coding late into the night and stuff.
|
|
So depending on the department that you might be able to latch on to or that you might
|
|
actually be a part of, you might find that that's a great place to stay.
|
|
For maximum security and stuff, you kind of need to know.
|
|
For this to work really well, you kind of need to know the schedule of that department.
|
|
You need to know whether they lock all the doors of the classrooms or not.
|
|
When the janitors come around, when the first class is, it would be kind of weird if you
|
|
were like spending the night somewhere and like the class walks in and you're passed out
|
|
on the teacher's desk or something.
|
|
So yeah, you want to be mindful of that sort of thing.
|
|
You want to be mindful of whether or not you're supposed to be there, obviously.
|
|
Typically, when people find you in places that you're not supposed to be, they become
|
|
very suspicious.
|
|
They become very angry and it's difficult to explain it away if you're there overnight.
|
|
That makes it even more strange.
|
|
So you need to be aware of that and you need to typically have some kind of story ready
|
|
to explain why you might be there.
|
|
You can generally speak and get away with saying that you were studying and you fell asleep.
|
|
That works pretty well once.
|
|
Of course, that location is then pretty much dead to you because then you're not going
|
|
to be able to tell that story twice, probably.
|
|
So you should always, in this applies, obviously for every place that you're really not supposed
|
|
to be, whether it's a car or a building or whatever, you should go in assuming that you're
|
|
going to be caught.
|
|
You're going to be discovered maybe not tonight, but maybe tomorrow night.
|
|
You're going to get caught and so you need to have some explanation and you need to spend
|
|
some time thinking about those kinds of stories that you're going to tell someone.
|
|
And again, social engineering, you know, you're going to have to convince someone that either
|
|
you realize you're not supposed to be somewhere, but it wasn't exactly your fault or that,
|
|
oh, you didn't know you weren't supposed to be here at this time of night or whatever
|
|
or that you're waiting for a friend or that you were studying and fell asleep.
|
|
Whatever your story might be, you need to make it sound fairly plausible and you need
|
|
to be good at delivering a complete lie.
|
|
So enjoy your practice of social engineering.
|
|
Student lounges are not unheard of either.
|
|
I didn't know this person, but I heard about a person who apparently slept in the student
|
|
loung every night, like all semester, and I think, I mean, it was permitted because technically
|
|
speaking, the student loung was open 24 hours and he was allowed to sleep there, so apparently
|
|
he did that.
|
|
Colleges are good, really good for that sort of thing.
|
|
I've found, I've definitely slept in a few different locations in a college and work
|
|
places might be good, might not be good, it, again, depends on your job.
|
|
I really lucked out and had some great jobs for a while where I literally had, like, my
|
|
own office and I literally lived in my office for quite some time, I mean, that's gold
|
|
right there.
|
|
If you've got that available to you, you basically got a free apartment.
|
|
The potential risks there, of course, would be that your boss could find you and sort
|
|
of figure out that you're living in your office and that might freak them out and they
|
|
might want to fire you for it.
|
|
They might love it and think that you're really dedicated and might give you a raise,
|
|
you know, just really kind of depends on your boss, I guess.
|
|
But that's definitely something to think about.
|
|
It was really, really beneficial for me.
|
|
It worked out really nicely.
|
|
I saved a lot of money.
|
|
I got to be around computers all day and all night because this job was a computer kind
|
|
of a job.
|
|
So I had no problem with it and in fact, it just, yeah, it was great.
|
|
It allowed me to urban camp in any weather.
|
|
It was, that was really nice.
|
|
So if you've got that available to you, again, great, lesser, less prestigious sounding
|
|
and bleed me at only sounds for stitches that I had my own office.
|
|
I was not a deserting of the office.
|
|
They just had too many offices so they gave me one.
|
|
But other places that I've known people to stay are places that they might have access
|
|
to that other people don't.
|
|
So like a janitor's closet, obviously it's not just a closet, but a janitor's station
|
|
or whatever.
|
|
Known someone to live in one of those kitchen, all night kitchen.
|
|
I've known some people to stay there.
|
|
It wasn't, again, it wasn't in the kitchen, but it was like the room adjacent to the kitchen.
|
|
But they really, the only ones with access to that, so they could stay there whenever
|
|
they wanted to.
|
|
So just keeping your eyes out for places that you can inhabit, whether people know it or
|
|
approve of it or not is a really good policy.
|
|
And also just like if you're going to make a neighborhood your new home, you need to scout
|
|
out areas because just passing it during the day and saying, yeah, that looks like a pretty
|
|
great place.
|
|
I think I'll try that.
|
|
That's not enough.
|
|
You need to be there, you need to keep an eye on it, you need to see what happens in
|
|
that area.
|
|
Do janitors come by, janitors only come by every other day.
|
|
Are there security guards that are going to come by, you know, what's happening, what's
|
|
going on?
|
|
Or are there people who look dangerous, like if it's in a place where you don't feel
|
|
safe, you probably don't want to be sleeping there.
|
|
The disadvantage to all of these places or the risk that you're taking in all of these
|
|
places is that you don't have control over your environment.
|
|
And I'm not just talking about temperature control and stuff like that, although that
|
|
might be an issue.
|
|
But I'm talking about, you know, there's going to be a night where you go to your normal
|
|
place and you're thinking, oh, this is going to be great.
|
|
I'm going to get some nice sleep.
|
|
I'm just going to relax.
|
|
It's going to be great.
|
|
You show up and for some reason, there are 20 people there making a lot of noise having
|
|
a party or something.
|
|
So there's a danger to that kind of unpleasant surprise.
|
|
And there would be one or two times where I couldn't seem to find a place that felt secure
|
|
or that that wasn't being patrolled every, you know, 15 minutes by police for whatever
|
|
reason.
|
|
So there have been nights and there will be nights, I think, where you just have to kind
|
|
of sacrifice that night and just you get up and you go to an all night diner or something
|
|
and just chill because that's all the option that is left to you.
|
|
So be ready for that.
|
|
In my mind, that's going to happen anywhere.
|
|
I mean, I'm in an apartment now and 2 a.m. two weeks ago, people had a complete domestic
|
|
disturbance style breakdown of roommate relationship and yelling and police were called.
|
|
And this was at 2 a.m. and basically I got no sleep that night because of this activity.
|
|
I don't mind that very much when a night becomes suddenly, unpleasantly, unrestful and
|
|
and you are forced to move on out of your usual urban camping place and find some other
|
|
place to be that night.
|
|
Or if you're not able to find another place to be that night, then you just have to sacrifice
|
|
it and stay up all night.
|
|
It's really miserable sometimes.
|
|
It's unpleasant because you're tired, you can't sleep, et cetera.
|
|
But again, I think that happens kind of everywhere.
|
|
So it's not that big of a deal to me.
|
|
But it is something to be aware of.
|
|
And then finally, a word of caution, homeless shelters are not good places to stay.
|
|
I realize that they would actually sort of seem to be the ideal place to stay there.
|
|
Shelters for homeless people.
|
|
But again, just like I said in the first episode of this series, really not talking about that
|
|
brand of homeless and that brand of homeless tends to be a really troubled group.
|
|
And if you're not that, then you shouldn't go to those places.
|
|
I'm not saying to avoid anyone and to shun anyone or anything like that.
|
|
But I am saying that just because you don't have a home doesn't mean that you are homeless.
|
|
It really is a good thing about this new term, this urban camping term, because you're
|
|
kind of, you're doing this for a different reason.
|
|
And they don't really understand that at homeless shelters.
|
|
And a lot of the people there are homeless because they absolutely do not want to be homeless.
|
|
They don't want to be homeless.
|
|
They're simply homeless.
|
|
So it's a different crowd.
|
|
It can be frightening.
|
|
It can be dramatic.
|
|
I would avoid those very much.
|
|
They've got enough trouble to worry about dealing with the things that they ought to deal
|
|
with without someone waltzing in and just kind of saying, hey, I need a place to stay.
|
|
I mean, they would let you, but I'm just saying that the surroundings are not the greatest.
|
|
One thing that won't, one place that kind of is the greatest, at least in my experience,
|
|
so far, have been hostels, youth hostels, H-O-S-P-E-L-S.
|
|
And you find these in larger cities.
|
|
They're really popular over in Europe.
|
|
You can go to Europe, move into a youth hostel, $10 a night or something like that, and
|
|
it would be in Euros, so I don't even know.
|
|
But you get a bed, you have access to the kitchen, stuff like that, and it's just a bunch
|
|
of traveling, usually students staying in these houses with lots of beds.
|
|
So they can just house a lot of people at the same time so they can charge fairly little
|
|
and perfect.
|
|
And they exist here in America as well, so I think probably mostly in cities and stuff.
|
|
But if you ever needed a cheap hotel or something like that or you just wanted to get out
|
|
of your vehicle or college or office or whatever, for a night you wanted an actual bed or something,
|
|
remember those places, may or may not exist in your area.
|
|
That's about all I've got for shelter, I think.
|
|
Shelter, there's no mystery to it, scout it out first, make sure you know the area and
|
|
then take the plunge and try it out, try to spend the night there.
|
|
Be very aware of your surroundings, always, and always follow your instincts.
|
|
That's the huge one.
|
|
There was never a time that I got an instinct that I would ignore as irrational as that is
|
|
and unscientific as that is.
|
|
Simply kind of listening to your instincts, being aware of your surroundings, knowing
|
|
when it's a good idea to stay in an area and when to move on is very, very important.
|
|
So build that skill up, I guess, and see where it gets you.
|
|
And next episode, we will talk about hygiene, yes.
|
|
Hygiene is actually one of the most asked about aspects of urban camping that I get.
|
|
I think quite literally the one question that I get more than anything else is how do you
|
|
shower.
|
|
So you will find that out next episode.
|