How I do Stealth VanLife Parking - Tips and Ideas

look what we found ready ready for this RV central ok hey guys welcome back my name is Jared if you're new to my page consider subscribing today we're going to be talking about something that's asked pretty frequently and I'm gonna give you my tips on what I do and maybe give you some ideas on what else to do parking VIN life this is going to be interesting and everybody has their own take so this is my take here we go alright I'm here with AJ loves me right now assault assault driving a block money lose I'm all in the camera hey Joe show me around his hood right now because I've actually lived up here for the last couple days which is just outside of LA called Woodland Hills it's gorgeous up here and we came across this street then I'm going to show you right now the Woodland Hills RV park that's a street actually look at this this is this is a gorgeous RV by the way people that guy is van life at it's fun it's a little chevy express van it looks like our ford express van but these these fools are definitely living in the RV probably even in that man who knows this is great I mean this is my this is my hood these are my people yes so my name is Jarret Archie and I actually live full-time in this self built van that is a ram promaster 2500 it's a 159 inch wheelbase I named it ghost it stands for ground home operations stealth transportation the key word in that sentence is stealth I stay stealth because I park mostly in cities which is what I'm gonna go over today with all of you show you some clips of kind of outside the van and really why I do certain things while I'm kind of talking I'm gonna talk mostly about what I do which is stealth parking I'm gonna give you a couple little tidbits of other van lifers and what they may do but to be honest with you I'm more of an expert when it comes to self-parking in cities oddly enough I am parked to 300 feet from a police station right now so I kind of know what I'm doing here I'm gonna show you outside the van right now actually a daytime and nighttime parking in the same spot so you kind of see how I blend in with the surroundings okay guys just couple different tips and some trades that I have about stealth parking number one you want to blend in yeah I do have a 9 9 foot 6 inch van right with a bubble on top the bubble actually people think that it was there to begin with they did actually don't even know what that bubble actually serves a purpose for the bubble what I mean is is the roof end it's a tinted bubble that it just comes with the the fantastic vent now you can't change that top cover to be a different color you can have it clear white like my van which I'm probably gonna do in the future which gives it a more of an incognito look or you can do more of a flat look the reason I one of the fantastic Venton was because of that reason I wanted it to look was part of the van still that's the only reason on how you can really tell that I am living in the van right now I kind of want to go over the registration a lot of van lifers change their registration their license plates to RV recreational vehicle there's three different types of registration you can register your van as its self built you can actually keep it as the commercial VIN that it comes with it comes with a commercial VIN so you can keep it as a commercial very expensive what it's when you comes to insurance and paying fees and you can change it over to a non a recreational vehicle but like a residential vehicle or like a daily commute vehicle friend of mine actually did that the reason she did that is because she actually attached it to her address where she has mail sent to and things and she actually has renter's insurance on the van so everything that's inside the van is covered under renders in church it's another possibility you can do what a lot of van lifers do which is go to RV they switch it over to RV there's a couple things that you need to classify as an RV I think running water is one there's a couple other just silly little things in there mine clip mine definitely passes as a recreational vehicle but I'm not gonna change it over and this is why right here I take full advantage of parking in loading zones now I don't know what it's like in other states but the state that I stay in mainly which is California and Los Angeles mostly because of what I do loading zones I take full advantage of them a lot to parking them longer if I go into downtown areas the loading zone the commercial vehicle parking only guess what this bad boy I'm standing in right now is a commercial only vehicle and I can park in any commercial spots how am i different than other van lifers a lot of van lifers are travelling and yes I plan on traveling when I'm in the city when I'm in Los Angeles really isn't a city it's a huge suburb the way I look at it so I actually parked on the street I google restrictions I make sure that I'm not in a residential area where there's like you need a permit make sure you're not in any permanent areas there's a lot of permit parking around where I am but that's an easy Google search or just read the signs of when you're entering an area make sure that you can park there for me I like to plan out my next day the night before or two nights before so I'll either park next to a gym because I like to wake up and go to the gym in the morning or I'll park next to if I don't have any coffee I'll park next to a coffee shop so I can just wake up get some coffee and start my day and then maybe go to the gym or whatever that is really what I do I'll show you right now and this this little clip right here is actually just me outside of a Starbucks and I literally slept there the night before I try to find level as much level ground as possible but like most streets are they're actually dipped the way that rain water can run off of them into the gutters I sleep on this side of the bed because you don't want blood blur blood rushing to your head while you're sleeping so you have to make sure that you're wherever your head is it because if you're at a slight decline going this way which I'm standing on the driver's side of the van right now and the passenger side is on this side and obviously the passenger side is where the curb is and like I said it's going to it's going to go down that way towards the curb so my feet is gonna go that way so this is just little things that you want because if you sleep the if I slept that direction I wake up with a huge headache because all the blood rushing through your body into your head something to think about by the way when you're parked in the street I like parking on the street over parking in parking lots I feel like parking in a parking lot is just an invitation to go check out what is going on in that van if there is a van in a parking lot nine times out of ten someone has self built-in in his living out of it RV in a parking lot it's obvious RV pretty much anywhere other than a storage RV unit place is you're probably living out of it so I didn't want to bring any more attention to me than me already in a large twenty twenty-one foot you know van I'm a big white truck in a city full of other big white trucks as you can see work trucks look just like mine that's why I do that in my front area I actually big it look like a work truck I'll put something on the dashboard whether it's a vest like a work vest or a hard hat or I'll actually put a clipboard and I'll write fake notes on there to make it look like a work truck again this is what I do so when I do travel and I don't know areas as well as I know Los Angeles because I know Los Angeles when I go outside of Los Angeles what do I do well a couple different tricks if you haven't watched yet go check out the video of the interview that I did with adventure or bust it's their bus but it's called a venture or bus B UST and it's an amazing interview they they teach you a whole bunch of stuff it's it's long but it's very informative but the thing is they actually mentioned a couple websites in there what they use for parking and dump stations so when you're on the road you want to you you've got to think about googling ahead time where you're gonna be but for me what I do again I'm stealth actually find like three or four star hotels if you pull into one of those late enough at night nobody's really around for the most part there's not security and you can actually pull in stealthy again you just look like somebody that's at the Haute's that staying at the hotel that night or motel or whatever it may be and you just park in the back I actually did this when I went to tiny fest California and San Jose it was a last-minute decision I went I didn't I didn't look ahead of time where I was gonna go I when I got to the fairgrounds it was like 3:00 a.m. obviously nobody's around there was literally a hotel like a block away I pulled in at 3:00 a.m. and I just slept there nobody said anything I didn't get a door not because I again I look like a regular work van that's what I do if you really want to which I haven't done yet you could actually even go into the lobby and take advantage of their of their complimentary breakfast I haven't done that because I don't want to take that much advantage it's bad enough I'm taking advantage of their parking lot but when I drove cross-country with my brother Jeff and it was fully built out and we actually stopped you know to sleep at night that's what we did we stopped it like random parking lots that had hotels and we just you know we parked and slept there wasn't him you know we didn't get any door knocks it really wasn't that big a deal there was one morning Jeff thanks a lot it was like 4:00 in the morning 4:30 in the morning and he woke up in like a and he woke up frantically and he's like dude somebody's knocking on the van and I was like crap okay I got up again this is like day two ever in the van I get up I looked around nobody was around I turned it oh I I turned on my car and we pulled out of there and we stopped and got coffee and like literally like that was like 4:30 in the morning right around 7:00 8:00 in the morning so like four or five hours later he admitted to me that he thought it might have been a dream that somebody was knocking so thanks a lot Jeff I really appreciate that what else you won't want to consider is having fake signage you can get fake signage it's a magnet your van is metal so it'll stick right to the side of your van and you can get fake signage at like vistaprint it's or at other other sites to do printing services you can just print them out and you can have them right there on the side of your van it's actually that easy I'm not going to tell you what companies I have I actually have a couple that I a couple different companies that I use don't put something expensive don't put you know JT's TV hauling JT is my initials don't put JT's TV hauling because somebody might think that oh crap they have a whole bunch of TVs in that van I'm breaking in and I'm stealing a TV you know JT's toilets you don't want JT's toilets because toilets are expensive and somebody actually might want to rip you off when it comes to a toilet think about chemicals nobody wants to steal chemicals think about maybe junk hauling I kind of just gave one of mine away anything you can think of that somebody's not gonna want to break into your van and steal so get that fake signage come up with a cool name don't put any numbers on there I don't put a phone number on there you can put don't put 867-5309 if anybody knows where that's from kudos about a bing bada boom you got a sign on the side of your van okay I have the flat solar panels to keep me more stealth if you have actual panels again they look like racks they look like something you throw on you know a ladder onto it something like that so people may not actually think that those are solar panels oh my god somebody's living out of the van if you actually aren't thinking about it then they're probably not gonna care so guys if you're new to the page consider subscribing I do a lot of van life logging I do a lot of tips on van life I'll also be doing a lot more with traveling and a little bit of common in a little bit of building and I just built the my tiny woodshop in the back so there's gonna be a lot more to happen with that if you'd like you can follow me on Instagram my my Instagram handle I'll throw it up on the screen right now but it's ghost dot van ghost obviously because I'm stealth I post a lot more on daily activities on what I'm doing there thank you for tuning in to my parking my thoughts on parking my tips on parking what I wouldn't possibly you could do what I do you have any questions please comment below and let me know I'll see you next time [Music]

Channel: Jarrod Tocci - G.H.O.S.T.

Views: 449,546

Keywords: stealth van build, van build, how to, urban camping, tiny house, how to live in a van, stealth van, van conversion, van dweller, van life tips, tiny house on wheels, van life vlog, van conversion camper, stealth camping, van life parking, van life build, vanlife, rv living, tiny home, stealth camper, van life, how to live in a car, van living, vanlife parking, living in a van, where to park, diy van conversion, diy van build, boondocking

Id: 4G8omE30e9Q

Length: 13min 43sec (823 seconds)

Published: Wed Jul 18 2018