Home Is Where the Parking Lot Is [video] | Hacker News Reader

Home Is Where the Parking Lot Is [video]

nytimes.com

75 pointswdr128 comments

It's not uncommon for airline employees to have non-standard living arrangements, though seems more common to use apartments with 4+ people to a room with beds filled based on first come, first serve; basically time-share like low cost version of AirBnb.

Using trailers and employee parking lots sounds expensive for the employees and airlines too. Beyond that, guessing it's noisy and that theirs not much of use close to the parking lot.

My sister-in-law was a flight attendant for United Express for a while and shared a two bedroom apartment with seven other women. It worked great 95% of the time since most nights over half of them were away.

Thanks for sharing this video. I was worried it'd be about another employee who's taking advantage of their company perks (lifehacking..), instead it's an insightful video of people who are living in unconventional arrangements probably due to things outside their control.

While everyone interviewed seems to speak of freedom, I feel like their body language and state of their living quarters say otherwise. You have one person who breaks down when he mentions he's been there for 11 years. Why? The workers seem like they're making the best of their situation, dealing with it, but not necessarily reveling in it the way #vanlife Instagrammers would have us believe.

Even before the one guy broke down. You could tell the way he was repeating him self - "I'm happy here" "I'm happy here" it was very unhealthy and then he couldn't hold it anymore. Seems to be a lonely lifestyle.

I find myself reminded of a theater comedy where a guy is dating multiple flight attendants. The comedy comes from none of the ladies knowing about each other, and his carefully laid out schedule being disrupted by canceled flights.

Perhaps "Boeing, Boeing" - done as a film in 1965 http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0058981/ and in multiple stage and film versions.

Ha ha, that was a good play. I believe it was the introduction of the jet engine that fouled up his scheme.

Makes me think of Hero Protagonist from Snow Crash living in a storage lockup on the edge of LAX.

Isn't it Hiro?

yes, but clearly a pun.

Doh! Yes of course you're right, it is Hiro Protagonist.

I just typed comment without thinking! :)

I wonder about the practicality of essentially "boondocking", on a permanent basis. You'd need to run a generator for electricity (solar power would work, but I didn't see any panels), and you'd need to go somewhere occasionally to fill up your water tanks, and dump your sewage.

But I suppose, if you're only home a couple nights a week, you're not using tons of electricity, water or sewage capacity in any case.

I wonder how laundry works? Maybe they take care of that at hotels when they're overnighting on the road?

EDIT: From reading responses here[1], it looks like the average is about 4-weeks for a single person, obviously reduced by half for every person you add.

If you're just a single person, only there 20% of the time, it seems like you might really only be dumping and filling your tanks every 4-5 months.

[1] http://www.irv2.com/forums/f93/how-long-can-a-class-a-boondo...

With my dad being an airline pilot and having grown up in the "pilot community" I must say that this style of living is probably by far the exception rather than the norm.

My family, and all my parent's friends (most of which were pilots or air attendants), all had what you could call normal a house with normal lives etc. etc.

By most means life was pretty much the same as anyone else.

That was after he had a child — do you know his living arrangements before you were born, or perhaps before he was married?

How often did your dad sleep away from home? That could vary a lot, some schedules must plan to return home every day, but for longer routes that's simply not possible.

[1] says "Short haul pilots for low cost airlines typically start and finish their day at their allocated base", "between 2 and 6 flights a day", but "Long haul pilots fly all over the world and can spend a lot of time away from home. Trips can last from a few days to over a week"

[1] http://www.flightdeckfriend.com/airline-pilot-job-realities

Being able to walk to your job will provide you more happiness than a lawn and a very long commute.

Time and peace of mind are often underrated.

I'd love being able to walk to work. On the one hand it's very medieval -pre industrial revolution kind of thing, on the other hand you're right next to work... I don't want to be a five or ten minute walk away from work when someone thinks I'd be the ideal option to come in on off hours b/c I'm so close by.

I walked to work over 10+ years over the course of 3 jobs (10-30 minutes, depending) - I remember when I started thinking that would be a problem, but it really wasn't. Over that time there was maybe once or twice where I got called because I was close (and it was a true emergency, so I didn't mind). I found the benefits of having co-workers over for barbeques/drinks/etc. made me very popular in the office and outweighed any other drawbacks from being close.

The 10-minute walks were also nice for unwinding mental state from work. It's just a lot more calming to walk (even on a busy sidewalk) than to cram in mass transit or sit in traffic.

Not only does that likely happen a lot less than you think, but you'd probably still be off the clock more if you count your commute drive time.

If you're beginning to wonder about this sort of thing, I'd strongly recommend reading up on Really Narrow Streets, on the New World Economics website. The author has more or less managed to quantify what makes Old World cities so liveable, and he's beginning to get some traction among urban planners.

You might also find his discussion of the Industrial Revolution spirit -- what he calls Heroic Materialism -- interesting; I think he makes a strong case that the pre-industrial shouldn't automatically carry negative connotations.

I think I agree with that. By pre-industrial I meant that for many people where they lived and where they worked were geographically either identical or close enough (baker baked in their house, butcher slaughtered in the back yard, spinner spun in the house, serf worked at a nearby lord's land, etc.) I think there are some negative connotations simply because serious disease was untreatable and incomes were meager among other things (like power inequality and very low education).

A lawn I can lie and eat out on during the evenings and weekends? The ability to have real cats that roam and dogs that amble around freely?

No. You can't be so certain what will provide any given person with real happiness.

Why not have both? Cities have parks that you can lie and eat out on during the evenings and weekends. They also have dog parks. Free roaming cats are bad for birds, so keep them inside. https://abcbirds.org/program/cats-indoors/cats-and-birds/

The free-roaming birds in my yard (red tail hawks) are bad for rabbits and small dogs... :)

For me, the real reason for a yard is for my children to run around in it, to explore and play on their own without the need for planned activities or helicopter parenting.

It used to be permissible to let kids play in public parcs on their own but nowadays, that's a great way of becoming the person who writes "Home is where the bars are".

Public parks are not personal spaces to populate and use as you see fit. They are also public.

The rhetoric about free roaming cats is also only partly informed.

Firstly it is recognised that indoor cats are much more likely suffer from health issues relating to anxiety and depression. The why is not studied particularly well but it likely stems from completely destroying their ability to socialise, and restricting their roaming area (which for cats is very large). In many places keeping cats indoors is considered cruel.

Secondly, the effect of cats on the environment is completely dependent on where you are. This is because the danger of a cat comes from their predatory nature and most places - especially after the spread of humans - are lacking in active predators. Obviously there are areas where the risk posed by a non selective predator is very high; areas with endangered populations may want to encourage people not to gave cats or to regularly clip claws.

Again, as it turns out the world is a wonderfully diverse place on which homogenous rules are a bad fit.

There's a big difference between country-lawn and suburb-lawn.

Suburb lawn is mostly useless. Front yard is a road buffer that you have to spend time and money maintaining all summer for little benefit, back yard is so large mostly because parks and pools are too far away or don't exist because population density is so low (because lawns are so big).

Lawns are arguable, but having a backyard allows one some control over an outdoor space, so they can hold BBQs, a pool, garden, hang laundry, yoga, or place for kids to play.

Like the parent commenter said, [we] can't be so certain what will provide any given person with real happiness. For me, I would hate to drive more than 30 minutes for a work commute, but if I have kids who I'd like to enroll in a certain school district, perhaps it's a tradeoff one would make.

Isn't it simpler if you live next to your job during the week and spend your weekends in a cabin?

unfortunately, walking anywhere near LAX means you're going to be breathing in jet fumes.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com