Van Life "Stealth" Parking Tips, Do's, Don'ts, ETC.

what's up guys this is going to be a very interesting video because I've done it before I've talked about it with so many people it's probably the number one asked question in all of fan life there's so many different opinions and ideas I'm gonna try and do everything that I can I actually did a sit-down interview style with a buddy of mine as well that I'm gonna integrate into this video and hopefully we come to a resolution by the end and yeah I don't know what else to say so if you want to check out some stealth marketing tips some ideas are not even just stealth parking bunch of parking in general let's get it going hey guys if you guys are new to my channel consider subscribing what I do here at all different types of videos I think last week I did a very interactive vlog style which I'm gonna be getting more into guys like this Matt Foley t-shirt guys don't know who Matt Foley is and you want to get it too then life probably learn who he is but anyways I've been living Van life for almost 3 years now I've done two different van builds my first one pretty much practically all myself with my father my second one I call it a DIY assist build which I'm sitting in right now the van is called ghost stands for ground home operations stealth transportation just release these hats on my website jerry TOCOM slash shop so go check that out what you tuned into this video for was pretty much stealth parking how to park whatever it may be there is no such thing as stealth parking we call it stealth parking in the van life world but it's not like we are hiding from anybody at the top of the video I actually said that I'm going to integrate a conversation I have with my buddy Marty Marty has been also living that stealth lifestyle for a long time for I think maybe 18 months or something like that I'm not really sure but he's been in for a while him and I recorded for an hour and a half marty also has a podcast called from the van check that out I've been on it twice but he interviews people from his van and it's just AIT's a more of a casual conversation he asks he wants to get to know the people more than what's in your van so if you want to know the actual people behind van life check out from the van just giving him a plug because I think he deserves it I'm not getting any kickbacks from that I just love Marty and and his girlfriend Colette is also amazing as well so check out from the van and I'll put that link in the description below I've got me and Marty and frame right now I got Colette he's behind the camera well we're gonna talk about some stealth parking on this video I wanted to bring in an expert I felt that I'm pretty good at stealth parking but I feel that this guy right here is a truly an expert this is Marty Benson and Colette Colette behind the camera is doing some work actually you know let me spin around the camera so we can see Colette real quick hi Colette she's so cute Colet and marty both live in a Mercedes Metris of all things which is like the little sister to a Mercedes Sprinter mm-hmm I guess right I the way I described it to people is that it's a little bit larger than a Dodge Caravan everybody knows what a Dodge Caravan is a Mercedes made cargo van that's a little bit larger than that it's sort of like the biggest small van which is why I chose it yeah we feel really far away I'm gonna bring us a little bit yeah sure does that work yeah it's gonna be a little more intimate with us so we can get into we can get into parking garages yeah fit in your standard parallel spot and we were joking earlier that like King about our fan is that I feel like when people see it nobody in their right mind would live in a van that small so we don't get messed with it's too small for two people and a 50-pound dog Colette was like knocking on wood yeah I did a stealth barking video a while back and I was just trying to give as much information out there from my own personal knowledge that I have encountered with the stealth parking community and how I stealth parked and I was trying to give some tips and some traits of people out there that do this I think that's kind of what I wanted to do here yeah because you recently traveled yeah we did 11,000 about 11,000 miles we did 22 states and four Canadian provinces okay we didn't pay for parking we didn't get a speeding ticket we didn't get a parking ticket the whole time that were in the whole time and you were gone for how many months it was only seven and a half weeks so we were like hauling yeah we were we were really moving and then I did it I went I'm from South Carolina okay and so I drove home for the holidays last year which is like a 10 or 13 state thing and it was the same sort of deal just like crashing in streets and stuff and in Northern California trips where we stayed we spent a bunch of time in Los Angeles and then we've stayed a couple of weeks worth of nights in San Francisco and all around California and you predominantly stay or you're your residence is Southern California yeah yeah we live in sandy County yeah so you know the parking laws in the San Diego area better than pretty much everybody I know here pretty specifically yeah we we have an idea of what's going on and the thing in Southern California because it's such an attractive place to be whether you live in an event or not these communities have sort of caught on to the fact and also because it's like a like this like vagabond surfing community has been a thing since the 50 the communities have caught on and almost all of the coastal communities in Southern California have some sort of prohibition on sleeping in the street sleeping outside sleeping in vehicle parking a resident or recreational vehicle overnight and they vary from town to town because we're sort of tuned into that living in Southern California full time when we've gone on the road I think it's given us a bit more like acumen for understanding what the problems are gonna be even in a place that we've never been to we just sort of keep an eye out for what the local laws are but it comes down to it like finding a place to park first and foremost the thing you need to be really good at is just reading street signs yeah and knowing where a vehicle whether there's a person in it or not or whether it's outfitted for habitation or not whether a vehicle is gonna be legally parked in a place it's your first hurdle so before we get into like before we dive really deep into stealth parking and we also we're gonna be bouncing a lot of ideas off each other things that we've encountered over the last you know almost three years for me they don't want a Minuteman like well just a year and a half just your knife before we get it all that best way to find you is Instagram probably yeah from the lab all one word from the van marty is also my stand-up comedy buddy we're gonna hopefully hit the road at some point on some sort of tour some go to van life tour but also marty runs a podcast with colette from the van doesn't come from the van right thanks glad yeah so Marty and Colette do a amazing podcast that I've been on now twice so go and check that out please and give them a listen download whatever all that podcast we're also from the van comm we're hoping to vlog soon all right so stop barking because all kind of many going to really what I've encountered a recent by the way my whole stick being in ghost was I've never gotten a door knock I got my first door knock everybody very recently about a month ago I was leaving Portland it was the last week I was in Portland and I got my very very first door knock it was from the police I was sleeping in a very heavily residential area somebody called and complained that I was running a generator people know my van I don't have a generator there's no way for me to run a generator it's just that my friend and I were literally parked from bumper-to-bumper backwards from each other somebody in a very high-class neighborhood up in a neighborhood made a phone call and said there was some swished activity from a generator or whatever and a cop came by 7:30 the morning gave me a knock it turns out I got business out of it his bike partner his bicycle partner wanted to build a van now I'm consulting the police work could not have been nicer to us they were super interested in the van they realized really James like he actually I was like when he knocked I actually walked out the front door you know made sure it was a police officer 7:30 the morning I really care I walked out with like you know no you know dress nicely and normally I guess or I don't know normalized but I was like hey you know everything okay and he's like yeah I managed I hate to do this to you bro but got a phone call about it you're running a generator and then he not only told me he's like dude you're in he taught you pretty much told me I was an idiot for parking that mm-hmm and I was like duh and he was like dude literally four blocks away you could park and I will not bother you he told me where to park like where to live pretty much and then we started talking and he's like so what do you know he said what he did for work and I was like wow a youtuber consultant and he's consulted for what and I'm like small space design so yeah I was I here check out the van and I had my bed up and you can't see my toilet I've heard that if you have the door open in a residential area and I have an LLC which I do you have an LLC and you say that this is a mobile office they cannot give you a vehicle habitation take get if they don't see a bedroom or a bed and a bathroom facility then you are a mobile office I don't know true that is I would imagine that that also changes from jurisdiction to jurisdiction okay Portland there are so many variations in terms of the wave that municipalities have tried to control and limit the vehicular habitation thing that probably works in most cases and at the end of the day man this is it something that having knowledge of the law is super useful but you also don't want to flaunt that whenever you're in an encounter with the authorities basically what you want to do is be sweet to them and ask them what they want from you is that right because the same thing happens in San Diego they have a new rebooted super ownerís vehicular habitation thing down in the city of San Diego prohibition I ran into some a bridge dude who lives in Canmore Alberta Canuck that lives in Kenmore and they're both friends and they were travelling in separate vehicles and I ran into them a couple weeks ago and they got a warning in sand in the city of San Diego and the cop told them to come here and so the cop was trying to help them out because they know that here the enforcement is more relaxed even other laws are the same the last thing to do the last-ditch effort is being in tact antagonistic with the authorities you want to be sweet to the authorities even if they come at you with like bile and hatred you just like kill them with kindness because are the people who stand in a position to write you a citation or tow your vehicle or whatever it is depending on the jurisdiction and the best way to interact with them is just to be sweet to it and we're on that topic now so it's like even if it is a I guess a rent-a-cop like still treat them like it's an assault or a figure you might as well like what are you gonna gain out of it being a combative yeah it's not gonna it really isn't so I know that you have have you had run-in with police yourself I just told my story have you we've been knocked on in town here only once [ __ ] up the cops are cool to us yeah they were like are you planning on sleeping here that's cool and they're like well it's not I was like okay we'll move the van but like whatever and they were like are you familiar with Encinitas and you know I'm on a public commit I'm gonna I'm a public figure in town and I didn't tell them that but I was like oh kinda a little bit you know like I don't want to show my hand and be and be combated with these people because I just want them to be there doing their job at the end of the day what they're trying to do is placate some meddlesome busybody landowner yeah it's in the neighborhood that's who called on you almost definitely in Portland we've been knocked on in Chicago that's definitely who called on us there we've been knocked on in Toronto yeah certainly who called on us there the one time that it was dumb us that we got knocked on we were in Yosemite we pulled up the Glacier Point which is like a place that you clearly can't sleep overnight but there were a whole bunch of vans there like let's try it and we hadn't been drinking or anything and that's that's another thing about Stealth parking that that no nobody talks about yeah is that like if the cops knock on your van and you're sober you can move the van yep if the cops knock on your van and you're in a place that you don't know and the cops knock on your van and you're not in a state to move your van don't move your van and personally my attitude towards that is tell them you can't move your van because that's a respectful thing to do is be like hey I'm sorry I'm in a place that I shouldn't be but I'm gonna state that I shouldn't move my van anyway when we were not does that happen to you no okay no are you worried if that did happen that they could actually cite you from being a DUI because they technically if they up if you have your keys on you so this is a place where I wouldn't challenge the police in the moment yeah but I would certainly challenge them after the fact now if you do have an RV if you registered as a motor vehicle a registered vehicle if you registered as a motor vehicle or whatever a motor home then technically I am allowed to have open container in the back of my van right nicly right so if you keep it as a commercial vehicle then you're enter gray area between law enforcement and it's not really a great black-and-white you know challenging the authorities but you're not really challenging them but like they quit right you want the police are not gonna give me a deer I know they I don't think they well they can't in here's why okay is because I am never above the legal limit in my van when the tires are worn or the hood is warm see that's what that they can test that I'm in oh yeah okay oh yeah any probable all the tires any cop worth his salt will touch the hood oh the van hasn't been on for a while touch the tires tires haven't been used in a while right I could get popped for an open container but that's a risk that I'm also open container is different than DUI certainly okay open container is a ticket okay DUI is you maybe lose your license you gotta hire an attorney you're in for $10,000 Mike it's a big deal okay so there is a DUI is a terrible thing for a lot of reasons like you don't want to be driving around drunk it's a it's an awful it's like I've been if I drunk driver forget forget the implications for you financially you could kill another person yeah I don't care about you like if you want to endanger your life that's fine I never mess around right drinking and driving I am regularly drinking in my van but I'm in the back of the van van hasn't been on for a long time and I am risking an open container ticket no judge is ever gonna like allow me to be convicted of a DUI in that situation because I'm sitting in my van I'm my keys in the back of the van I put it on the counter right like I'm it's in my wingspan but the van clearly hasn't been driven in a long time oh that's really we've strained way a far from that's the parking let's go back to the very beginning the most whom I learned the most important thing I think about the very beginning there's parking and they're stealth parking and there's Pinterest and there's Instagram I want to live I want to live the hashtag van life lifestyle right and so I see all these people who are like it's their first foray into the whole van life thing and they want to wake up right next to like beautiful scenery right or whether it's a beach or a valley lettuce or hand up very respectful open container should take it in California is 250 dollars $50 open container if you have if they define for loose marijuana in a vehicle is maximum of $100 which is yeah you who are fantasizing about van line or people who have just started van lined up one apart next to rollicking waves or like a beautiful sunset or something and wake up to that that's not real life everybody is not a real life at all I would go to those places though we are technically parked in front of an ocean right now which you might even hear waves crash again so yes and it's nighttime so yes we do Park at those places sometimes but we can never sleep at them we have to be out of this parking lot by 10:00 p.m. p.m. so there's a no parking limit at 10:00 p.m. in the specific parking lot we're in I find people who have just gotten into the van life thing trying to park on somebody was asking us the other day on this live thing yeah what about one through Malibu and right there because people are hauling ass moving super fast it's gonna shake your van and the most important thing that I learned about parking forget self parking throw in it let's get to that later yeah but like when you park your van at night you want to be perfect if you're parking in a parallel spot yeah you want somebody behind you right 100% I'm with you on this holy cries if a drunk driver comes to God for a bit and wax your van you know you want them to graze you or glance you as opposed to full-on rear-ending it because number one most of us sleep in the rear of our vehicles yeah we will be dead yes Mac super hard yeah yeah that's where you start and then park on streets that don't have a lot of traffic yep or high-speed traffic right I'm also an advocate of eye I actually don't park around other van lifers so this is an interesting thing that's come up with us in town here that we have our little this is more of a stealth yeah this is more of a star in the in the surfing world there's localism like don't surf my wave bro and before we get into hold that thought because I parked on that Street that I got a door knock on for three months mmm before I got a doorknob handle one time I get a door knock my friend is parked behind me son oh I'm sorry go ahead so the thing is like there's there's localism and there's territorialism and those two things are very separate from what we're talking about okay there's don't Park in my neighborhood which I don't believe it it's like oh I live in Encinitas and I know the nooks and crannies where vans can park and if I come over there and there's a van there I'm not upset that there's a van there cuz I'm happy that you're doing what you're doing we're having a good time but I might not park there tonight yeah because unlike everything else it's like not safety in numbers it's obvious like we're conspicuous when we aggregate or or or get around each other well let me ask you this is stealth parking stole a thing then now that van life has boomed into a market to where it's kind of like almost everybody's living event especially in Encinitas or other beach cities or Southern California especially in the winter time which is when we're recording this right move I know we're gonna get a lot of people out there they're gonna be like is stealth parking even a thing anymore we drive these big white vans or in your case a small silver one yeah we drive these large white vans with a roof vent on it and obvious solar panels I don't have an obvious solar panel you know you have solar panels you can actually even see so under the rails it is roof rack rails we're pretty similar to you in terms of like the obviousness but I think us because we're bad life I think that your van and my van have the same downfall in terms of lack of self yeah and that is that you can see the roof am well everybody here has a roof and the the vent fan is the thing right and it's so funny because this ownerís law that passed last May in San Diego talks about it enumerates all of these things that are evidence of a habitable vehicle right and it doesn't hit on the roof fan and for me in terms of people who are electively living in vehicles the roof fan is be one touchstone right like that's the obvious that gives you away but stealth parking is a thing I almost feel like rhythm matters more rhythm explore than what your van looks like ok I could go tonight it's 7:40 p.m. right now and if at 10:30 tonight I went into the richest neighborhood forget even Encinitas there's a place inland from here called Rancho Santa Fe where everybody is super duper wealthy ok and they're scared of everything that they don't understand ok like it's probably the most xenophobic local community that we possibly have access to what I'm saying is I can go take my van into one of those neighborhoods not a gated community on 3rd o'clock 10:30 11 o'clock at night I could drive in there tonight park there get up at 6 o'clock in the morning leave 99.9% chance I'm not gonna get a door knock if I stay in that neighborhood three nights in a row and so the deal is rhythm matters more than what your van looks like at a certain at a certain point like if you're in an 80s conversion van you're gonna have trouble if you're in a class b RV you're gonna have trouble if you're in a camper shell that goes in the back of a pickup truck yeah you're you're gonna have trouble but for the the less obvious selfish camper vans you could park anywhere for a night and so even here I've got my knucks where I know that I'm safe and I don't even Park in them more than two or three nights a week right and I I'm a big advocate of never Park in the same place two nights in a row right now can park there like I parked on the same spot here and it Sanitas I've been here almost three weeks now I've parked in that spot probably ten times but it's never on like a Monday to Tuesday second and it'll be like a Monday to Thursday yeah and it's because you change it up and I'm also a big advocate of blending in mm-hmm so I'm all about my blending of my surroundings am I gonna park on a street that has a bunch of sedans in front of a bunch of you know homes mm-hmm I know I will never park in front of somebody's house I will try if I am in a residential area I will try and park on a side street or not directly in front of some of these house where they can actually look out a window and see me right so if if I ever have to park into a residential neighborhood last night was pretty easy to get around for us uh our rule our rule is that like Park in a place where because you know and I've heard that people and this is a this is probably a great practice probably best practice for van lifers is always get out in and out of the front doors right guy sees you guys now you should get out of the front doors we don't do that all the time because we feel pretty comfortable in our little like borderline invisible van and so for us our rule is Park in a place where if you open the slider nobody can see into the slider out of their window or their front door okay so we've stayed in residential neighborhoods a whole bunch if you're not the only car on the street or the only van on the street we're generally pretty good we just try to like we park in front of the group of hedges or that if somebody's got a tall wall in front of their house or something like that we park in front of that and then we're able to get in and out of our slider and we just turn the lights way down before we get out and that's been that's been really easy the other thing that's crazy that that I realized because we spent nine nights in New York City yeah probably five of them in Manhattan Wow a few in Brooklyn and then one or two in Queens yeah and we never got messed with yeah and one of the beautiful things about cities is especially densely populated cities is it there's so much going on there that unless you're being really obvious nobody cares in Manhattan we would find a place that was legal for us to park and they were just in and out of the van a bunch of times at night but we weren't like hanging with the doors up yeah right and that's I mean that's a dead giveaway it's almost goes without saying but like if you're trying to be stealth and you're in a quasi residential neighborhood and you've got like your back doors and your slider open you're like hanging out yeah you're trying to sleep there if you are trying to stealth out yes maybe cook with only your roof vent open hmm or something along those lines don't be obvious like you would think that that is obvious but there's a lot of people out there that probably don't know why can't I have my door open well I but cooking there's gonna be smoke everywhere like well get you know a thing that sucks out like I don't know what to say I've been really on the fence about what to do about these people so my able so I'm sort of alluding to this earlier with a localism thing but like versus localism versus congregation right it's like we shouldn't Park next to each other on my little there's a nuke in Encinitas what's your sort of told me where that's a shorty it's perfect there's an apartment complex on one side of the street on the opposite side of the street and on the side of the street where we park it's just the back of a like estate okay so I know where you are it's hedges but one of the wonderful things about this place is that my sister's house where my van is registered right and where I'm registered to vote and I get all my mail he's 200 yards away okay and so if the if the police did pull my plates they'd be like oh this van belongs right there nothing's going on but there's been this van it's a super cool like probably Chevrolet or Ford 150 or something like a 150 or something like that from the early 2000s with a yellow stripe on the side of it it's really pretty and it's a camper van um but these people have been like hanging out broad daylight in that spot and I'm like guys this is the nighttime spot go hang out down at the beach when you're trying to cook because I'm not trying to blow this spot up you know and I'm not a confrontational person and I'm not trying to kick them out of the spot or not have them there because I want I want to welcome them to George's yeah yeah but at the same time I don't want it to be eliminated as an option for people who want to go and like be quiet and sleep there you know so that's actually that's a good point like I've actually left my van first like a days on end in one spot but I was in Hollywood mostly uh-huh so I now I'm getting it more you know and I move my van daily you know and why not go to certain spaces or places during the daytime and then go to sleep somewhere at night that is that is a big that's probably again obvious to you and I but maybe not obvious to everybody here because you can be notorious know what I mean if you go to a park even if you're not in a coastal community or whatever if you go to a park you can open your van up like cook outside be you know even if you're even it's raining or whatever you gotta like awning you can put an awning out if you find a decent spot for that and you don't have to worry about getting tagged and like stressing the natives out you know and so yeah I mean I think that's a really good practice of like get out of the spot that you're staying in don't stay in a place two nights in a row but almost more importantly don't live in the place where you sleep and since I've been here like we hang out at the beach I'm not here every day but I've hang out at the beach with these guys and then we like it's not just me and you it's like seven a great lucky man yeah a bunch of them it's a whole community in town here yeah it's great but at the end of 10 p.m. or 9 p.m. they mice can disperse yeah and we we all don't even know where each other part right just we're like we're going here we're going there we're all park it all throughout the city yeah which in San Diego is technically illegal it's illegal here and Encinitas I can San Diego County the rules here are very different from the ones in the city also it's even worse in San Diego uh the enforcement is more consistent you were talking about running plates earlier I know San Francisco's a big city that runs plates they literally drive by shrieking the run plates and if you have an RV plate I've heard this in San Francisco they'll tag you you've been talking about this and like the the benefit of having a plate being a motorhome or whatever an RV is that you can drink in it but they run your plates in in one of those jurisdictions where they actually do that yeah I've heard about that happening in in town here in San Diego yeah well in Encinitas specifically okay oh that is a downfall for people that are like well I'm gonna switch it over to RV mm I have to be even more careful and ID out-of-state plates right so that's a red flag all around right do you know any ways around that I sort of know some and not taking your plates off your vehicle is there a way to get around them running here you can't you can't do it not that I know let me ask you this what is the difference like what if I owned a home and I parked my RV in front of my house so this is just to get into the weeds for a minute because I'm super interested in this okay in San Diego the rule put plainly in common speak is basically that you can't habitate in a vehicle between I think it's 9:00 p.m. and 6:00 a.m. okay anywhere in the city of San Diego okay but if you're within I believe 500 feet of certain things like a school yeah you can't do it any of the day okay which makes sense the policies there the way that they're shaming homeless people with this law okay really upsets my political sensibility okay um because you have people who have kids yeah and aren't choosing to live in a vehicle but they need to get their kids to school yeah and now the only vehicle they have which they live in they can't drive within 500 feet of a school this is messed up right like there are some serious like classist implications in that that really upset me but we don't need to get into that what I was gonna say is that so in San Diego you have a you can't habitate in your vehicle between these hours Encinitas the law is totally different and it Sanitas you can't sleep in a vehicle on public or private property or live day to day at a vehicle anywhere okay on public or private property so if you owned a house and you invited me to come sleep in your driveway yeah and somebody one of your neighbors or something like that but it's complained to code enforcement that I was sleeping in your driveway in my van yeah code enforcement would be obligated to come and either shoot me off or give me a ticket or something like that so the laws here are SuperDuper onerous but there's no enforcement look well there's inconsistent enforcement yeah there's I mean they're they're try enforcement is trying to work with us yeah they are definitely trying their best set helpful how to work with us um but they're also trying to do their job right so if they do get a call they have to abide by the law they have to respond to it yes they're not necessarily gonna write you a ticket they might run you off they might give you a verbal warning hey can you please vacate the area so but to your previous question which is if I own a piece of property and I have a camper van or an RV or Westphalia or whatever and I want to park it out in the street in front of my house overnight right yeah Encinitas it doesn't even matter if a house RV RV plates on it any recreational vehicle which they define to include any vehicle that's been up fit for habitation yeah so your van my van any Westphalia any class BRV anything all of those things are illegal to park on public streets from 10:00 p.m. to 6:00 a.m. whether anybody's habit a ting in them or not which is to say and the crazy thing in Encinitas and this is another like malfunction of the classist situation is is that in its anita's there are a bunch of super wealthy people living in multi-million dollar houses who have a sprinter that's outfitted as a weekender but they can take their family camping dinner that parked their vans on public streets overnight like I said we have inconsistent enforcement over Memorial Day in May the slash at the very end of May this last year this year 2019 a whole bunch of vans were parking on the same street every night like we said we should you should not do right because there was no enforcement happening and then on the night of Memorial Day everybody parked on that Street got an 84 dollar ticket for violating the rule oh all the rich people who had their weekenders cool so everybody who was sleeping on the street got an 84 dollar ticket that night yeah all the rich people who were parking their weekenders that were uninhabited on the street overnight they were breaking the exact same law and then ever gotten they didn't get any tickets and so what we're looking at is disparate enforcement right you have this classist enforcement and so we're enforcing against the people who are living in their vans but we're not enforcing for people who are breaking the exact same you can't park an RV overnight on a public street law we're not enforcing it against the super well-to-do people in the neighborhood and then in Solana Beach the rules are totally different Wow can park an RV but only in the same place for 24 hours unless you get a variance from the city for anybody who's looking to park in these areas Solana Beach is actually the place it's easiest to get away with it because the there two laws are you can't sleep in public right but you can park an RV as long as you only leave it in that space for 24 hours oh so if the cops come knocking on your van what you do is you tell them that you weren't sleeping you were just hanging out yeah I can't write you a ticket because you weren't breaking any law you weren't sleeping in public as far as they know I saw my question too now for everybody here is how do you know the laws from city to city because or even state to state there's so you travel through 11 states yeah I know 22 22 states and the laws change from freaking San Diego to LA which is like two hours apart Oh 30 times between San Diego and like how do you know like when you enter when you traveled hmm how do you know what to do jurisdiction wise well we were talking about this earlier like the malleability and the the adaptability of the human is is super intense when I first got my van and I was sleeping on a blow-up mattress and I was in a place where I had permission to stay up in San Clemente I was sleeping in the company that I worked for I was sleeping in their corporate headquarters parking lot and I heard this ticking on the side of the van and I was like no I'm gonna get meth-head murdered right now and it was the dog he was dreaming and like his fingernail was like banging on the side of the man and you just you work your way through that and then you're sleeping in Manhattan and trash trucks are going it's 4:00 in the morning and you just don't even care anymore and so I mean the answer the answer to your question how do you know what's happening in it in a municipality is if you really care yeah you look it up how do you look it up it's all on the Internet everything's Google go yeah dude go on Google go if you're in the city of Corvallis Oregon search the search terms are like vehicular habitation ok RV parking ok overnight camping ok sleeping in public you just look up all of these things yeah to use apps no no no no you want to go because you want to read the actual Municipal Code yeah for the town that you're in ok if you're really trying to get that particular what you want to do is you want to read the actual Municipal Code for the town that you're gonna be staying in figure out what their laws are so much of it is about feel and I don't a lot of times I don't do this when I go into a place because I'm not worried anymore like I know the best practice is to know that I'm not gonna get messed with and it was interesting like one of the benefits of having two people in the front seat in the on the road trip whichever of us was driving the other one was on like yeah rule Patrol right I'm looking there's a wonderful skill that you really sort of have to learn by trial and error I can't I don't think I can explain how to do it but I can look at just the normal view on google map and tell which are the communities that I want to stay ok because still yeah it's a street structure thing but it also is a mixed-use thing you don't want to go into a neighborhood in Los Angeles where the average lot size is half an acre right because those people are super [ __ ] and they're they're paying the police they're playing paying private security you want to go into a neighborhood we're in Seattle yeah I didn't even know anything about Seattle but I picked out the perfect neighborhood for us to stay in because it's a kind of hipsterish neighborhood with breweries in it that's adjacent I can't remember what the neighborhood is I apologize but come on I'm kind of hipsterish neighborhood that's adjacent to like a bunch of old shipyards okay and so what you have is this confluence of sort of urbanism that's right next to blue-collar jobs and so nobody cares right it's basically what I'm trying to say and so we would when we would roll into cities you start looking first at street signs where would it be legal for us to park theoretically and then we're low traffic and then where are we not gonna set off any alarms right right and typically when you do Park especially when you're on the road especially if you're traveling typically you are only there for the night to sleep yeah you're only in that section for which is a blessing eight hours max because you can do that pretty much anywhere you can do that over and over again as long as you're not like super clumsy about you know um pouring my pee bottle out above the height of my eyes yeah front yard or whatever it is you know like as long as you're not super obvious you can get away with staying anywhere if you roll in 11 o'clock at night and go straight like you were saying earlier you literally could yeah you just leave in the morning like yeah I mean I've had no problems in Southern California whatsoever and it's technically illegal here Los Angeles is another city I have zero problems in right Portland I typically had zero problems and I was there for three months mm-hmm it I get questions a lot is it possible to stealth parkour to live in a city an event 100% absolutely you said that you just did it for whatever was a week we can have around the New York a new you're the men in the city yeah you were in Manhattan for X amount of days you in the boroughs of New York for a little bit so yes a 100% it's possible and I think with multiple times a week or we're out of time in San Francisco too and in Los Angeles this was another tough city to really to live out unless you work for Google or Facebook or I think there's something that we haven't talked about which is that like you're in a white Mercedes Sprinter yeah that's not screaming I have an awning I have an outdoor shower okay yeah we're gonna talk about the outside aesthetics of the band we're both in very stealth vehicle we're both in Mercedes which is like a luxury Blunt brand or quote-unquote luxury brand or whatever my van is silver no windows your van is white no windows well I do have two massive windows but their cover they look stop - yeah yeah which is also important but they're blacked out when you when you've got these things another block off with those so I guess what I'm saying is both of our fans are sort of like by design very stealth on the exterior right oh yeah and so when we talk about self parking you have to take into account that people are driving very different homes around if you're in a like obvious camper all of the things that we're saying are sort of out the window yeah if you have custom bumpers on and awning on their roof racks if you have bicycles coming off the back right I mean the list goes on and I mean if you I mean I guess stealth parking 101 is keep your outside is stock as possible I've talked about that many times on my page I'm hoping that you guys know that that like I just feel like like that's kind of obvious you look at both of our vans and we can I can show you out so output pictures of both of ours and they look they look pretty freakin stock yeah it takes exception of that stupid roof vent I would think that that's pretty obvious but you know I guess it's not obvious to everybody you just sort of have to work with whatever you whatever you've got and if you're if you're you know this is I guess we're doing a self-parking video yeah but we're really not you can't you can't do stealth parking unless you already did stealth design oh great you know what I mean agree so like if you don't have a stealth fan then ever things totally different and I would imagine I don't have experience in this because I've only been in a van that doesn't look like anything the way that I would start to modify if I were in a more obvious camper van is that I would park later and get up earlier yeah for what right if you're a camper Yeah right and then or I mean their conversion vans from the early 2000s and the 90s and the 80s if you're a millennial 2016 to 2020 a camper van aficionado and you see a max fan you're like oh there's the touchstone that's like somebody's in there or either they're doing Pet Grooming or something like that so I know I mean they dropped you right now how do you feel about fake signage it's a great idea I mean I I don't I didn't do fake signage on my van yet okay but but I do have a canine sticker on this I knew a canister cuz you were dog right and if you leave your dog in there you don't want people to actually think to call animal control which has happened to him yeah on couple your vehicle because you have a dog barking right and he's totally totally fine yeah first thing that I did for the van was make sure that the dog was gonna be safe between a certain his daughter range is like his child yeah as like every dog owner out there that I love he treats his dog better than he treats himself as [ __ ] the only one of us has been to the doctor in the last day so I had signage of my first van but again it was like it was a big white van with no windows so I could almost get away with I like to tell you guys all now what I had I had pest control signs mm-hmm I actually called it ghost pest control just because you can't see the bugs we can that was like my mother and I'm petrified of spiders so I didn't have a big spider on there but I I had another insect that was like when I got really sketchy situations and I was like all right I want to put this in there and I picked a I picked a pest control sign because I didn't want people breaking into the van because if I had you know cherries and apples like people would be like dude bunch of Apple computers I'm gonna break into this place yeah now because I have the windows and a roof vent now I'll just tell you guys I have a dog grooming mm-hmm because this van looks like a dog grooming man if you really want to go down that route you could you could get them custom-made for yourself I won't say what company I have on the side and I would actually get even I've even taken one step further and get a Google Voice number and put that number on there mm-hmm and have that as your google your google voice or whatever record an audio for and as I have that as your thing how do you feel at all that well I mean is it going with is it going too far it's super rad it's gonna allow you to park more places for longer but then keep this in mind all of the sort of rules of the road that we were talking about earlier if you start to break them your signs aren't gonna work anymore like if you park in a residential neighborhood overnight in your dog grooming van and you're getting out of your slider in front of a rich person's house the signs don't work anymore right and so you even if you have the signs you still have to abide by these practices that we're talking about in terms of keeping your head low well they're low profile that's a good tip so like if you're trying to park in a city in an industrial neighborhood night overnight overnight those signs are probably gonna be super awesome for you because people become acclimated to that they're like this sign belongs here this van belongs here nothing weird is happening with this van because it pulls in after a long day's work and it's there from 8:00 p.m. and nobody's going in and out of it nobody's gonna think anything about it but as soon as you start violating these these rules of the road that we're talking about in terms of finding the right kind of place to park and not being in and out of your van in front of somebody's house as soon as you start violating those your signs are useless pretty much if you're trying to be in a city then they're gonna give you a little bit of an extra element of discretion we had a lot of the other day and somebody suggested cadaver yeah that's funny cadaver cadaver transportation yeah or a cadaver removal Marty's mortuary services probably better call Saul or something like that you have enough money for a coffin will hack it to bits alright let's wrap this up obviously Marty could literally Herrmann I could probably talk about stuff parking and parking in general yeah probably all night so we're not gonna do that but definitely apologize for the length of the video but I felt like we kind of need to get as much information as we know maybe we'll do a part two of Marty and I stealth parking if you do want that comment below but we could keep going on that let's talk about this real quick sure while you're on the road I think it's important to realize that you always have at your disposal and this isn't stuff at all rest areas Cracker Barrell Flying J truck stops you know sort of places pilots yep you can park in all of these places when I actually go when I did dude I park this is sketch I parked in stock Geno Stockton California it's like murder capital of the country I stopped at a gas State any like a Flying J I don't know which one it was but it was right off the five and everybody i tailed that I stopped and stocked in there like not only stopped there I stayed a night with another person there and we were both fine so I don't know how much that is how like how good I played the numbers I guess I just got lucky I guess I don't know I would never tell everybody to go stop and Stockton for the night because it's a pretty rough neighborhood my attitude man is that like people are generally good most of the people who get killed get killed by people they know that actually probably it's totally true like I grew up in South Carolina in a small town in the swamp it's in South Carolina and we as a culture had this huge bias that gets big cities especially New York you know and Kalla everything in California was just like the land of fruits and nuts New York is people get killed there every day and they do people would get murdered every week in in in New York City but that's because they have so many people and the murder rate when I looked at them when I got into college and I looked at the murder rate in the county that I grew up in per capita and per capita and New York City you are so much more likely to get murdered where I grew up and you are in New York City population of to 3,000 we our County was like probably 200,000 people it's a huge County yeah people get shot people shoot their husbands and wives there you know and like that that happens all the time I really don't buy into all that fear-mongering like I think people are good when I go into weird communities I look people in the eye and I'm not scared of them and when they tell them I'm not scared of them they're not worried about me I would sleep in a gas station in Stockton yeah like without hesitating I mean that's scary I did it it wasn't so far I would drive there tonight to prove it is always when I travel if I I'm the type of person there's so many different types of van lifers out there I'm the type of van lifer that when I need to get to a destination if it is let's say 24 hours away I think we'll just throw out it I were in San Diego area right now Denver Colorado I think is like 17 hours from us I would do that in two days yeah yeah yeah I would do I would do I'd split 17 right in half I would do as much time as that is so eight and a half hours so I'll do eight hour drive I'd find a rest area sleep get up eight hours again and I'd get to Denver a lot of van lifers don't do that a lot of and lifers will drive for two or three hours per day and get the luxury you might as well go slow right yeah I just I'm more of a kind of person that like you want to get thing I want to get there I want to get it done so I Drive long distances quite easily though furthest I've done I've done a 24-hour drive one so I'm going to do it again the groceries and I did 18 hours straight and so I could do it from here to Denver in one day mm-hmm but rest areas are super important because I believed even during my trip from Boston to Portland I would stop at a rest area take a look a two-hour nap and then I get up and just go mm-hmm you know so here's yeah cool here's cool here's how that I have slept in a few rest stops and I came up with a rest stop - okay when you go into a rest stop if you have options in terms of your parking spaces pork right in the middle of the rest stop okay because there's a bunch of tumult going on people go to the rest stop because they have to pee truckers go to the rest stop because they're doing long haul across the country the places where there's the most wind and the most speed and the most noise are at the entrance and the exit so if you can park in the middle of the rest stop you're gonna have a way better sleep yeah because people are decelerating or beginning to accelerate there okay and nobody is like whipping through I remember my first trip across the country in the van I pulled into a New Mexico rest stop or Arizona rest stop or something I just took the first spot that I saw and I had like one of the worst sleeps of my life just because everybody was like whipping into the rest stop going to the bathroom or whatever the whole time and so yeah that's a big deal and just to go back I apologize for beleaguering the whole thing but the interesting thing for me about and I'm doing it in a city of 60,000 people the interesting thing for me about self parking and I would love if anybody wants to comment and like follow up on this and maybe we can address it if we do another revisit long-term habitation in a large city we did nine nights in Manhattan we did five nights in Manhattan four nights in other boroughs of New York City and we were able to do that without much trouble because we were on vacation right we were on a road trip we're gonna have them like be places and make money and stuff we were just doing what we wanted to do during the day and so we were able to New York City if you're going to New York City they have a parking app where you can tell when the hours change when the street-sweeping happens yeah you can find wind streets of evenings that happen and if you have a totally open schedule you can show up right before street-sweeping happens and then the whole block is vacated and you hang out until street-sweeping is done on your van and then you can park there for four days or whatever what's interesting to me is the idea of long-term habitation in a large city going to need to find either a place where you can park an industrial area where you can park night after night after night and break all the rules that we're talking about be in and out of your van leave it for 10 hours and stay there for seven days at a time you're thinking they need to find that sort of like cushy zone or you're gonna have to have seven to ten spots that you can rotate between Colette has taken a job up in LA I'm super interested to see how much we need to move around I know that we can do it because we've had so much experience self-parking in a bunch of cities and I know I lived in LA for four and a half years so I know LA really well but I'm super interesting to see how much we feel like we need to move around to not get messed with it's in Glendale which is like kind of a city but also suburban it's its own city which is where her theater that she's gonna be work I'm interested to see if we're driving to Burbank we're driving to Hollywood just to like make that rotation I've got some spots for where if we see we can like like just sort of stay local it'll be fun to fun to see I would love to hear from anybody we definitely went off on a tangent on a couple different things but I'm really glad that we got some of the information out there to everybody trying to figure if there's anything we missed don't do that I'm guarantee we missed a lot oh the other thing about trying to park in a super beautiful place oh yeah we're talking about this 15 minutes yeah but like when you shutter your van down yeah and light tight yeah and you're actually going stealth and you're gonna hang out and watch a movie or hang out with your friends or your girlfriend or whatever yeah it doesn't matter where you're sleeping man so if you can find a place that's secure that you're not gonna get knocked on it's in close proximity to wherever you look wherever what you want to do the next is just park there yeah don't do it for the gram oh we never did talk about that place in the morning to take the picture yeah make it if you have to if they try and rain don't stress yourself out by trying to sleep on the peninsula yeah there's an industrial zone right around the corner from the peninsula where you can like chill out and watch your movie like just go there yeah guys if you guys are new to my page you understand that I try and show as much real van life as possible I'm telling you this right now from two very experienced van lifers you do not wake up with your doors already open with coffee already made open and not even open up just walking out and standing on a guardrail looking out into a valley yes I just described one of the most viral videos right now in Bama can you agree with me that those things don't happen we do wake up in really cool places we do wake up with sunrises that are gorgeous and we watched beautiful sunsets but we don't wake up with our doors already open well I guess I guess the point for me is that not only is that not realistic to do that on a daily basis but it's also not worth your effort no it's not what I mean to try to do that yes when I've been on BLM land somewhere I have woken up to like some of the most beautiful sunsets of my life but those are unusual circumstances right when I'm living my real life making a living and living in a van what we do is we Park in the place where we feel secure we feel like we're not bothering anybody and then we go where we want to go during the day which is this a gorgeous place right next to the beach we will sleep in a place even if you if your schedule isn't go to bed at 10:00 p.m. and get up at 6:00 a.m. you can find a place to park your van and we did this on our whole road trip like because Colette and I love drinking beer we would find a place that was a little bit off of the zone where we wanted to go to breweries and we'd go and drink too many beers and let me go back and get in a van shut up go to sleep and then might have a little hangover in the morning and you don't want to get up at six o'clock in the morning and move the van but you do yeah and you just move it to another place and go back to sleep yeah like it's 15 minutes of really gnarly this sucks it enables you to stay in your zone and then go be where you want to be during the day we regularly do that and Encinitas at this Park Place we're parked right now you guys have any questions for Marty you can find him it from the van on Instagram also check out his podcast from the van comm or all those other you know site so you can go check yeah hope you enjoyed this hour in 25 minutes I'm quite a bit I hope do apologize for the length but I wanted to make sure that I got as much information out there to everybody as possible I'm gonna bring Marty back before I leave town I think yeah I think we should do another video he's also gonna be we're gonna be hitting the stages together comedy was in 2020 and will be a tiny fest together and will be a tiny fest ago there so I can't get rid of this guy you know he's my he's my buddy Collette thank you for being the peanut gallery and we will see you guys next time [Music]

Channel: Jarrod Tocci

Views: 97,829

Rating: 4.8794947 out of 5

Keywords: digital nomad, how to live in a van, nomad, vanlife, jarrod tocci, ghost van, how to stealth park, how to work in vanlife, vanlife vlog, van life, van life janelle, how to work on the road, day to day van life, stealth parking, stealth van living, daily van life, work and living in a van, where to park for vanlife, home on wheels, van life parking, van life cops, van life police, van life city parking, van life parking tips

Id: x69m-zd3yjY

Length: 59min 33sec (3573 seconds)

Published: Mon Jan 13 2020