Vans I find beautiful for their utility, their discreteness. I don’t own one, but my friend does, and I’m reminded how lucky I am to have a friend with a van who also likes to escape into the mountains on occasion.
This essay will be a little longer and shaggier, bear with me. And probably messier. I started it at home but I am finishing it now on my phone headed north on Route 395, riding shotgun, me and my friend carrying a pair of negative COVID-19 tests in our pockets—two negatives within two weeks, to each his own—to go disappear in the Sierra Nevada.
The van is outfitted for such trips. Two beds, a kitchenette, a sun canopy and chairs, lots of room for surfboards, climbing shoes, camping gear. If the weather cooperates, this weekend will include trail runs and hiking and exhaustion relieved by cold swims in a lake, proper appetizers at cocktail hour that we’ve been texting about for a week (we are civilized), and long talks under the sort of night skies that are difficult to describe without saying blanketing, or milky, or celestial. And it will mean, most likely, two good friends talking shit, reminiscing and planning future trips, and some vulnerable stuff, too—the sort of conversations the pandemic has been inspiring lately, reminding me how much friendships mean to my daily life.
I’m also reminded, at this time, that daily life in a van means something less nice for many people.
Driving next to mountains that reach over 10,000 feet, I’m reminded that approximately 60,000 people are homeless in Los Angeles now, and many live in their cars. The newspaper runs stories about Lyft drivers who sleep in the driver seat. Families who fight other families at night for safe parking spaces. Last year, the Santa Monica Daily Press coined the term “vanlords” for people who rent out parked vehicles as temporary hostels. For $300 a month, people sleep in vans parked in Venice or Santa Monica—vans that don’t even run—in front of million-dollar homes; stickers on the bumpers say, Van life is not a crime. “Bottom line, being homeless requires people to do sketchy things to get shelter and sleep,” one tenant told the newspaper. “Without those, it’s hard to keep it together.”
Recently, researching my next book, a work of nonfiction about L.A. that’s forthcoming next year, I found what I believe to be the first record of a family in Southern California living in a van, Mike and Merilee Ferrier. In 1966, Merilee did a lot of driving. Each morning, she drove the family RV to Burbank to drop Mike off at his factory job. Next, to El Monte to leave the baby with her mother. Finally, to West Covina for her job at a department store—and then, after work, Farrier reversed the commute, grabbing infant and husband, before parking in a lot downtown where they ate dinner and went to bed. Each day’s loop required 128 miles of driving, 10 gallons of gas. “We’ve really begun to feel that the freeways, particularly the Hollywood Freeway, which is a beautiful road, belong to us,” Mike Farrier told a reporter for Cry California, a 1960s environmental magazine. “It’s not the same feeling you get about a house and a lot, of course, but it’s definitely a sense of ownership.”
After the article came out, reporters from other publications wanted to interview the Farriers. It seemed ludicrous that a family lived out of their car. Unfortunately, the editor of Cry California said the Farriers were unavailable, quite literally: the magazine had made them up. It was a hoax. “I thought it was obvious,” the editor said in an interview with the New York Times.
As of 2019, according to the Greater Los Angeles Homeless Count, 16,528 people in the Southland live full-time in vans, cars, or RVs.
I am reminded, driving next to the majestic Sierra Nevada, of the time my friend and I climbed Mt. Whitney. It’s the tallest mountain in the contiguous United States, and we did it fast, eleven hours, though it took us two tries. The first attempt ended in vexation, relatively close to the top, when we were turned around by a storm that suddenly blew in, hurling graupel and ice, and I found out I’d forgotten my crampons. I have this in my mind, staring through the windshield, because this past Wednesday I heard the head of the City Council say on the radio they’re anticipating a “tsunami” of homelessness this year, due to the coronavirus. Which reminded me of a different afternoon, sometime last year, in a canyon in Griffith Park, two old white men in sunglasses on a tennis court, chatting.
“Everyone thinks the landlord’s made out of millions,” the first one said.
“You take care of your properties because you care about them,” the other said.
“These people are animals, they ruin everything, renters. You know what their problem is?”
“What’s their problem?”
“Envy,” the first one said. “They’re envious. If they’d worked hard their whole lives, if they worked like us, they’d own property. Evelyn, my wife, she overheard one lady, who didn’t know I was the landlord, Evelyn says this lady wanted revenge against her landlord over something, so she runs the water all night, so the utility bills go up. Can you believe that shit? The selfish bitch. Everyone thinks the landlord’s a millionaire.”
“I’ll tell you the only solution for that.”
“What’s that?”
“Go out, buy an AK-47, unload a full magazine into the bitch.”
“That’s what you’d do?”
“It relieves the stress.”
“I wish. I’ll tell you something about envy. The first Porsche I ever bought, someone ripped the goddamn emblem off. First week, tore the goddamn thing off. Who the hell does that? Pure envy, these people. Now if they’d done something with their lives, worked hard, worked like we did—I mean, why the fuck you gotta go piss on a brand-new Porsche?”
“So, you going to the club?”
“Yeah, let’s go relax.”
The Sierras are stunning, still holding snow, and the Owens Valley below is lushly green. A pandemic sure will make you grateful. On the back of my friend’s van, there aren’t any stickers, just a frame he installed around the license plate that reads “NOT RICH, JUST RAD.” It’s a reminder, a good reminder, that sometime soon I really should go piss on a brand-new Porsche.
The New York Times article mentioned is “Ode to a Freeway”
From the Santa Monica Daily Press, “Vanlord parks homeless crisis in residential neighborhoods”
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