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Comment by lowglow | Hacker News Reader

I park it wherever, but mostly try to stick to cities where it's legal to sleep in your van. While I have parked in San Francisco, Redwood City, and San Jose, right now I'm crashing in and around Palo Alto, CA.

I shower every morning at my local 24 hour super sport gym. I'm a sucker for hygiene.

I don't really worry about my van being broken into because I think I tend to stay in low crime neighborhoods. I'm also not really attached to any material possessions contained within. Things come and go, no need to worry about them while they're here.

I'm writing a tongue-in-cheek book about the van life experience tentatively called "Tech Bubble Burst: A survival guide to living in and out of your van." It's been a blast of experience so far. :)

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I think you should write a book, but don't go through the vanity press ripoff. Publish it yourself.

I have known people who live out of a van/truck camper until cops realize what's going on. They will harass you to no end. The tickets are expensive. The days of " Just move on." are over.

That said, in most counties, there is nowhere to park a vechicle overnight. We need to desiginate areas, in commercial areas, where people can legally sleep.

They have pretty much made it illegial to sleep Anywhere, without paying. Even Parks have time restrictions. I'm ashamed of what America has become.

If Jesus Christ reappeared, he would be hit with multiple municipal fines within a few days. It's just not right.

(If I seem mad-- I am. I had a friend who tried to live in the back of his truck, and take showers at a local gym. Cops harassed him nightly. Once the gym found out he was just using the showers--they made his life difficult. The one slime ball manager would time his workouts in order to use the facilities. Wonderful world we've got? Oh--yea, he was doing non-union construction. The last thing he wanted to do was workout at 6:30 a.m. in order to take a shower.)

I get why cops gave him trouble, but why the hell would the gym care? It sounds like the best customer: hardly uses the amenities (thus contributing far less to wear/tear) while paying the same rate as anyone else.

> Parks have time restrictions

OMG THIS.

So, I found about the last meteor shower one day before its peak. So my idea was to find a place – any place – that wasn't near any buildings. Forget about light pollution, I just wanted a sky devoid of direct lights. So, parks would be a nice option.

But try as I might, I couldn't find any parks that would allow me to stay after 6PM. There's one in Palo Alto that allows that for 'stargazing', but you have to request a permit in advance.

A permit? Really? For stargazing in a notorious light-polluted area? And that has to be filed in advance in business days? Come on.

At this rate I expect that you won't be allowed to park in the middle of nowhere in Nevada after the sun goes down.

My safe strat for the scenario is to go to the plentiful Rest Areas along the freeways: http://restareas.appspot.com/ Maybe inconvenient sometimes to go to and from, but then again, if I'm living out of a vehicle, I'm not all that concerned about convenience.

I'm surprised. I'd think with a van or camper or similar you can just park in any 24 hour walmart (or similar) parking lot.

Apparently there are some Walmarts where it's allowed to stay overnight, and some where is not. There's a list of where it's allowed. Then there's the whole culture aground it, for example is considered courteous to ah permission, and one shouldn't stay for more than few days... It so I read.

Parking and camping restrictions are very common. If you are fortunate to be near National Forest or BLM land it is much less restrictive. But it seems like most county owned open space in Colorado is full of restrictions at night.

This reminds me of this story of a Google employee living in a truck:

http://www.businessinsider.com/google-employee-lives-in-truc...

I would pay money to read this amazing book !

Your lifestyle reveals an incredible amount of privileged; it's really hard to think about how this could work for non-white, non-male, non-highly educated white collar workers.

Why non-male? I'd think a highly educated white collar white female would be able to pull it off just as well if not better. (To be honest I have trouble imagining one would want to though...sexist of me I suppose.)

Fear of violent crime. I'm not saying it's reasonable (statistically speaking), just that it's there.

Why would women fear crime more than men? Statistically, men are more likely to get robbed, beaten up and killed.

The English crime statistics have violent crime happening to men at almost twice the rate of women.

What I found interesting was a recent study that found rape has a much higher rate of PTSD occurrence than other crimes - maybe it's so uniquely traumatic (and the threat of it so terrifying) that it forces women to be more careful than men even when men are statistically much more likely to be assaulted by strangers.

> much higher rate of PTSD occurrence than other crimes

Well, you don't get PTSD after murder, and I would say that rape is the next worst thing that can happen to you, so I don't think it's that surprising...

Really?

Almost every woman I know has an innate fear of walking alone at night.

I'm not sure of the statistics, but my guess is that violent crime like rape happens far more to women to men.

A quick Google search brings up Canadian statistics [0]. In total, it's about equal (F: 50.15% M: 49.85%). Removing "criminal harrassment" and "uttering threats" (which are not really violent crimes) makes little difference (F: 48.62% M: 51.38%).

For rape ("sexual assault"), women "win" by far (F: 91.89% M: 8.11%), but it's much less frequent than "aggravated assault" and "robbery". Also, I'm assuming that "sexual assault" doesn't include prison rape (which makes sense, since that's not something you should fear in public), but it probably includes rape by friend/acquaintance (which isn't something that you should fear in public, and wouldn't rise if living in a RV compared to a house). Allegedly, rape by stranger (in public) is a rather rare form of rape (although it still makes sense to fear it and not put yourself in situations where it's likely to happen).

Men are the majority of victims of serious crime (after removing "simple assault") (F: 40.22% M: 59.78%).

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sex_differences_in_crime#In_Ca...

I wonder how much these numbers are a result of a kind selection bias, i.e. women don't put themselves in situations because of natural disposition/perceived higher risk (this is certainly the case in my experience).

Not necessarily, this lady made it work: http://www.sfgate.com/realestate/article/Software-engineer-l...

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