Rough Living

by Vago Damitio

  Squatting is a very different situation. In most American places they can bust you for breaking and entering if you take up residence in an abandoned building. In parts of Europe, the laws are different. Know the law before you squat. While hitching in the Southwest, I used to scout out houses for sale as I walked an hour or so before sunset. If you can find one you are pretty sure is not occupied it’s usually pretty easy to return after dark and jimmy open a back door or window. Older, run down houses usually don’t have security. If breaking in to the house is too risky, you can usually find a porch, shed, or garage to get you out of sight and the elements. I’m not advocating you break the law, but if you are in need of shelter, this is one option.

  The Importance of Your Bed

  We spend one third of our lives in bed. We use our beds for sleep, romance, reading, and recovering when we are sick. If you have a bed, be very glad. If you don’t have a regular bed, here are a few options to get one.

  The Bedroll. I’ve had lots of bedrolls. The basic bedroll is a tarp or groundcloth laid out flat, a wool blanket over that (or two if you are in the cold), and a foam pad on that. Fold the blankets and tarp around the pad, and roll it up. Unroll it when you have a good place to sleep.

  If you have the space, the tri-fold cushions you can get at Walmart make great beds. Cushions of any sort can be great to sleep on. Foam is good but it collects moisture and can get heavy and cold. My favorite simple bed is a Thermarest. It has a self inflating bladder, rolls up small, and can be folded into a decent chair.

  I believe sheets are important. I highly recommend sheets. The higher the thread count the softer the sheets. Soft sheets can make an uncomfortable bed feel wonderful. Same goes for pillows. Crappy pillows can cause a bad nights sleep on a million dollar bed.

  Makeshift Bedding. Old curtains or material can easily be made into a blanket. The ideal size is at least 60” wide by 2 yards. I like to sew a footbox into the bottom. Heavy-duty 33-gallon garbage bags can be used to make a ground cloth, a poncho, or a small tent. Large ziplock bags filled with air make good pillows. A bunch of them makes a decent air mattress.

  Living in Vehicles

  If you plan on living in your vehicle there are a few things to take into consideration. First, make sure you can sleep comfortably in it. Pickups with camper shells, vans, and station wagons are your best bet. Second, make sure the vehicle is legal so you don’t get your home put in an impound yard. Third, pick your parking spaces carefully. I’ve found parking in secluded areas is almost always a mistake.

  The best places to park are places where there are people around and plenty of vehicles moving in and out all the time. I’ve parked in dead ends and had people report me to the police because it was "suspicious" to see a car parked there. Oddly, I’ve parked in residential neighborhoods where I didn’t know a soul for weeks on end and no one thought anything of it. I suppose they all thought I knew someone they didn’t know.

  The best places to park are where you have friends. My friends in Seattle allowed me to park behind their house for months. It made them feel secure because my being there discouraged the local druggies from congregating and doing deals in the alley. I did yard work and helped out around the house to keep things nice for them and me.

  I’ve lived in three different VW buses in Alaska, Washington, Oregon, and Hawaii. In every case, not having to pay rent allowed me to live alife I otherwise wouldn’t have been able to afford. With the money I saved on rent I was able to purchase airline tickets, train tickets, or able to go out on good benders now and then without a care.

  Maintenance. If you live in your vehicle, you better pay attention to the maintenance. This includes oil, brakes, and tune ups. It also includes keeping your tags current, your headlights good, and your insurance card up to date.

  Legalities. Laws vary from place to place. On Oahu, it is illegal to sleep in your vehicle from 6 PM to 6 AM. They call it habitation. The fine is larger than the fine for sleeping in the park. Know what the peculiar legalities are for where you are.

  Localism. There are some places that you don’t want to be. Parking in some neighborhoods is just plain dangerous. Not only might you wake up without your tires, you might not wake up at all. Know where you are parking.

  Sleeping In. Sleeping in can be a problem when you live in your car. Think about where you are before you go to bed. Otherwise, you might wake up to a surprise. If you are parked in front of an elementary school it may be quiet at night, but what about when the kids arrive. The urban street might seem quiet until the disco opens at 10 PM. One night, I went to sleep next to the remote control car racetrack. I woke up early.

  Gas. Gas is expensive these days. The funny thing is, it can vary a lot in a short distance. There was a difference of 18 cents a gallon at two stations less than a mile from each other a few days ago. Try to save on gas. One good way to do this is to use the city bus if you find a good parking spot.

  Getting Comfortable. Each car is going to be different. It’s not so hard for me to live in a car as I’m not a huge guy at five foot seven. Larger folks will have to figure out how to be comfortable if they want to live in their cars. Make sure you have space to move in your vehicle.

  Being Inconspicuous. If you want to attract attention you can do it lots of ways. You can hang towels and sheets in the windows of your car, you can pee in people’s front yards, you can throw garbage around your spot. I prefer to be inconspicuous. I don’t’ have too much stuff. I made curtains for my van that look normal, I use parks and libraries for their free public restrooms, and I put my garbage in trash cans. Even though I usually slept during the illegal hours on Oahu for months on end, I never got pegged.

  Drinking Booze. I like to drink once in a while. You have to be careful about it though. Especially when you live in a vehicle. Only drink when you know that you won’t need to move the vehicle. Never, put the keys in the ignition when you are drunk. This is not only to keep you from drunk driving, it is also to keep you from getting a needless ticket. Even if you only plan to listen to the radio and go to sleep in the back, a police officer can give you a DUI if the keys are in the ignition and you are drunk. Besides that, don’t drink and drive. It’s a good way to end up dead or in prison. There are better ways to kill or incarcerate yourself.

  Cooking and Eating. I like to barbecue in the park. I make coffee on a single burner propane stove in the back of my van each morning. I’m discreet about it. I don’t think anyone sees me cooking in the van. If I go to parks, I cook at the picnic tables. No one seems to notice or care.

  Living in vehicles can be fun, cheap and easy. I estimate that with insurance and gas it cost me about $100 a month to live in my van on Oahu. Much less than the $800 or higher most of my friends pay for rooms or apartments. Living in the Pacific Northwest was even cheaper.

  Cheap Vehicles vs. New Cars

  I’ve never been a rich man though I’d like to be someday. Maybe you figured that out by now. Because of that, I’ve never owned a new car. They’re too expensive. I see the price of a new car and I remember that my parents bought a house for that same price back in the 1970’s. Lot’s of people never own new cars. That’s okay, because there are plenty of decent cars out there that are dirt cheap.

  Fixing an old car is a much cheaper than the new-buying alternative. For $10k you can buy the shittiest new car or you can buy 10 decent used ones. What will last longer? Despite that, thousands of people sell their perfectly good cars every day so that they can get a new status symbol. Their loss, our gain.

  When I was 17, I met a bald guy that lived in a van and drove around the country giving motivational speeches to high school kids. Seriously. I wish I remembered his name. He was the original motivational speaker that lived in a van, down by the river. A couple of things this guy told us really stuck in my mind. He had a good ‘Don’t do drugs’ message which is what got his foot in the door of high schools. I don’t remember the specifics of that. What I remember him saying was �
�Don’t waste your time doing something you don’t love. Find a way to make your passion your career,” and, “Luck is where preparedness meets opportunity.”

  The other thing I remember was his used car economics theory. It went something like this. If you buy a new car, a cheap new car, it costs you $10,000. It lasts you a maximum of ten years. Instead of that, this guy said, why not buy a $500 car, put no money into it, and drive it until it is dead. That gives you two cars a year for the same price. Chances are some of those cars are going to last longer than a year. So, for him, it was twenty used cars versus one new one.

  The point I’m getting to is that the bald guy corrupted my way of thinking just like I’m hopefully corrupting yours. I blame him for everything. You can blame me for everything too. Ha ha.

  Here are the last couple of cars I’ve owned and lived in.

  1989 Plymouth Voyager Minivan… cost $175… name Pig.

  I saw an ad for Pig and had to check it out. The car was sputtering and stalling and no one could tell the lady who owned it why. She tried to donate it to charity, but they didn’t want a car with a mysterious problem. So she sold it to me for $175. I changed the spark plugs and it fixed the problem. I ditched one of the bench seats, turned the other sideways, picked up a cabinet off the street, and spent $10 to buy flower print fabric for curtains and industrial velcro to hang them with. I lived in it for six months before selling it for $500.

  1970 VW Bus…. cost $200…. name Paradise.

  There was a hippie guy parking this bus near the kayak shop I worked at. He put a sign in the window and I bought it. I was living in the bushes behind the shop where I had cleared a space and set up my hammock. I cleaned the bus up. I don’t know how this dirty guy had lived in the filthy thing. I bought fabric for curtains, nice sheets for the bed, and moved in. This is the bus on the cover of this book.

  1978 VW Bus….cost $100….name Turtle

  (Picture is the pop-top on the previous page)

  I was looking at this bus on the streets of Seattle when the owner came running out of his house and offered it to me for $100. A neighbor helped me get it running and it lasted me three years and four or five trips from Vancouver B.C. to California. I traded it for the laptop computer I’m writing this on because I couldn’t bring the bus with me to Hawaii.

  1977 VW Bus… cost… TV and VCR… name Belle

  This was my first VW. It was rusting away behind the radio station I worked at. They tried to give it away as a prize and I offered the guy my TV and VCR for it. He took the working TV and VCR. I bought a book on VW’s, fixed it, and then bought the interior from a junkyard before moving in. I took this bus to Alaska, where I lived in it and sold it for $1200 before leaving.

  Not bad, huh? I’ve owned more than twenty different cars. They’ve almost all been pieces of shit. That hasn’t stopped me from driving all over the United States and Canada in them.

  Overcoming the Darkness

  One of the hardest things about being houseless is dealing with the dark. I don’t mean being afraid of the dark. I mean, what do you do when it gets dark?

  In prehistoric times, I’m sure communities of cavemen and women sat around the fire, used torches, made candles, and utilized them as soon as the sun went down. People still do that, all over the world. It’s either that or go to bed.

  The problem we have in being houseless is that we have to fly under the radar of modern society. Make no mistake. Society does not want to see us having a great time while they toil and trudge to the office 60-hours a week. That’s the reason why the police routinely sweep through parks and areas where the homeless set up camps.

  If they see us having a decent time without the toil, it makes their blood boil. So even if you can scavenge up a decent little hut, make your own candles or set up a solar cell, and run plumbing to your cardboard shack; you can be sure that Joe Citizen will have John Law sweep through your little enclave and burn your corrugated castle to the ground.

  So what are you supposed to do? You’ve got a few options.

  1. Go to bed when it gets dark, wake up when the light comes.

  2. Stay up all night and sleep all day out in the open. You can sit in Denny’s reading and nursing that bottomless cup of coffee for at least a few hours.

  3. Be stealthy. Use only as much light as you need and cover it as much as possible.

  An old military trick is to put a red lens on your flashlight to make it less visible to the enemy. It works. Within limits. Obviously you don’t want to light up the hobo jungle with an eerie red light that will make Suzy Homemaker think of a Stephen King novel.

  Push lights are cool but not very efficient. They take a couple of AA batteries and provide a small amount of soft light. I prefer a small headlamp that directs the light where I want it and a key chain LED. Both can be bought at any outdoor or variety store. My LED key chain cost $8 and provides enough light to find my way in the dark or find something in a dark van. I’ve used it to read, but prefer the white light of a headlamp instead.

  I realize that some of this sounds paranoid, but like Abbie Hoffman said, just because you’re paranoid doesn’t mean they are not out to get you.

  Tarpatecture: The many uses of Tarps

  My friend Kalalau Larry introduced me to the term tarpatecture. Larry is a modern day Viking. He paddles kayaks, makes mead from honey and water, bakes bread in the jungle, and spends about half of his time living in one of the remotest places on the planet. The Kalalau Valley on the island of Kauai.

  Kalalau Larry Master of the Spiritual Pizza

  I was living in my VW bus on Kauai and Larry had built an incredible little shelter with tarps on the same vacant lot where I parked. You see when Larry isn’t in Kalalau he works in the real world and stays comfortably invisible under his brown tarps. When he is in Kalalau, he lives under the brown tarps too.

  Tarpatecture is using a variety of tarps strung between trees, bushes, rocks, or frames to shelter you from the weather. Ideally, a good tarpatecture structure has geometric implications which are pleasant to the eye in addition to being functional.

  Tarpatecture can be as simple as a lean-to or as complex as a bamboo dome. The key is using your tarp in the most effective way in the particular environment you find yourself in. I’ve seen tarps on sheds and even in giant trees.

  Aquillo Mallot’s Camps

  Aquillo Mallot is a homeless man of alternative housing. An occupational non-profit mercenary, Gypsy Moth Farmer, comfrey and mullen rancher, pie rat, and purveyor of exotic substances. He currently holds the position of Bishop of the Holy Primeval Coyote Church in his spare time. He is master of the Sacred Marriage bar none. He lives soully on food handouts, dead carrion along Interstate 5, and visions of extraterrestrial guidance. — by |zak Holden. Conchsense 1999

  Aquillo Mallot is a master of creating cozy and comfortable camps in the Pacific Northwest. I’ve seen him build huts from driftwood on the beach. I’ve seen him dig pits and cover them with fallen logs and tarps. He usually has a wood burning stove in his camps complete with metal flashing glued to the tarps the stove pipe goes through.

  Everything Aquillo uses is abandoned as garbage. He’s used tarpatecture to make derelict fishing boats into comfy homes after he used scavenged ropes and pulleys to drag the wrecks on shore during low tide and patch them up. The only limit to what you can do is your own imagination. Aquillo is proof of that.

  Trolls Under Bridges

  If you spend any time traveling among the house-less you will encounter some of the derelicts who live under various bridges all over the country. In my experience, they are a sorry lot who can’t figure out how to keep the rain off their heads any other way. Bridges are noisy, dirty, and uncomfortable. The one bridge I would recommend visiting is in the Fremont District of Seattle. There is a real troll there, made of cement, and about to eat a VW bug. Other than that I would suggest you find someplace else to keep dry.

  Beach Bumming

  If you are in a tr
opical climate it’s easy to live on the beach. Simply cover yourself with a tarp if it seems like it might rain and you are good as gold. If you are in the a little colder climate make sure you know how to build a fire. I’ll give you a few hints later in the book.

  The savvy vagabond goes where the going is easy. Head to the beach. The beach can offer you fishing wrecks like Aquillo uses in the Northwest of the US or wonderful showering and bathroom facilities like you find in Hawaii and Southern California. Not only that, you can fish for food and entertainment, swim (if it’s warm enough), and generally, you can have a fire on the sand provided your not in Waikiki or Laguna.

  The Beach Tarp Roll ‘burrito’. This is a great trick to have in your beach bum bag of tricks. Let’s say that you are sleeping out under the stars and it starts to rain. No problem. You are already sleeping on a tarp because sleeping on the bare sand is cold and uncomfortable. So what do you do? You simply grab an edge of your tarp and roll yourself into a beach tarp roll burrito and stay dry until the storm passes. You don’t even need to get up!

  Showering is easy at the beach. Most marinas have free showers available. A lot of public beaches have showers available too. If they don’t you can always get a membership at the YMCA or 24 hour fitness. One thing you don’t’ want to do is let all that salt and sand accumulate on your body. It’s an easy way to get rashes and begin to look like a real down and out bum.