Yeah, I’ve got to agree that it doesn’t make much sense for someone living in a van (down by the river or not) and buying organic, vegan food. It’s just not very smart. Although the brain power of this particular poster is noticably low, you’d think even someone of his intelligence could see that. I don’t even buy organic because I can’t afford the shit because much of my food is more expensive than “regular” food, I’ve got to make some compromises.
There’s actually a lot of cheap vegan food out there, a lot of things you wouldn’t even think are vegan, are.
Then again, if your priorities are that you spend your money on organic food rather than rent and end up living in a van by the river, then hey, I gotta respect your committment to the cause. We could argue about whether organic standards necessarily improve animal well-being (There may well be cases where the two goals conflict), but that’s not the point here.
Also, and I’m not saying that this is the case here, but are there not places where well-paid professionals live in vans by the river not because they have no money, but because there simply are no apartments to be had for love or money?
Not that I want to defend this dude after he called me his bitch, but let’s be fair even if it is the pit…
[angrily chews dragonfly’s slippers into a fluffy mess. that’ll show him]
Well, maybe this is based on half-remembered news reports from the height of the dot-com boom when everyone and their dog was a highly paid professional in silicon valley and the house-building just wasn’t keeping up…
But if you drop the well-paid professionals bit, then certainly resort towns like Whistler have chronic shortages of housing for employees of the resorts, so you do have ``working homeless’’ and have reasonably well-off ski bums living in the VW van. Again, I don’t have a specific reference, but it does come up in the news from time to time… And of course resort employees are not exactly highly-paid, but if there are more employees than housing, you could have homeless (or seriously overcrowded) situations yet have enough income to buy organic food and pay for a domain, etc.
I was living in the Silicon Valley during the dot.com boom and there were no well paid executives living in vans, I can say that much. Hotels, maybe, while thier houses were being built, but not vans.
As for resort employees, are you talking about seasonal employees? If so, I can see that because it’s short term. But to live in a van as your permanent residence for any significant amount of time voluntarily seems a bit odd to me.
Depends on the van, I guess. I’ve seen a few that were pretty pimped out. Enough so that the distinction between “van” and “mobile home” was more than a little blurry.
Dude, how pimped out can a van possibly be? I don’t mean to come off as discriminating or anything (step back Offenderati, BACK!) but it’s a van. A tour of the place would take about 10 seconds, tops. I mean, I guess there could be a hot plate. I’d be very curious about the bathroom facilities…
Hey, I feel the same way about trailer homes. I can’t understand why anyone would choose to live in one if they weren’t in the direst of financial straits. A van does not sound like a considerable step down to me. However, I figure this is a result not of some sort of defect in the other person, but my own inability to comprehend the beautiful mosaic that is all the manifold expressions of human exsistence.
Incidentally, the great thing about the internet is you don’t need to have a good poker face.
Yeah, I’m pretty sure the granola pot-head hemp-wearing material-posessions-renouncing seasonal-working organic-vegan-eating ski-bum earth-mother drifter lifestyle is not for me, but hey, if someone else wants to add van-living to the list, then more power to them
(not that I’m saying any or all of those apply to our dear little friend (well, except organic-vegan-eating), but at least it is, to me, a plausible list to add van-living to that does not necessarily imply total destitution…)
HIJACK Miller: A van doesn’t sound like a step down from a trailer home?
Have you ever been inside a trailer home?
I grew up in a double-wide, full-length trailer that was twice the size of my best friend’s house. We both found it incredibly amusing that I was looked down on and she was not, simply because her house had concrete under it.
Well, I wouldn’t think twice about it if there was some sort of bathroom facilities and maybe a sink or something. But it’s a van. Any “home” that has an empty Big Gulp as the bathroom aint a home damn nabbit!
Yes, I have. Double-wide, even. Dammit, a house isn’t supposed to have wheels on it! That’s just fundamentally wrong. Vehicles have wheels, houses don’t, and never the twain shall meet.
Mind you, I spent the first ten years of my life growing up in a warehouse. My fundamental concept of “home” includes twelve-inch think concrete walls and a steel door. This may have somewhat skewed my perceptions on housing.
We took the wheels off ours, put nice skirting on it, and used the crawl space as storage. Plus to try to hook it to a truck and move it would’ve required uprooting several trees and pulling out our landscaping and cutting off the decks, so I never really considered the house mobile…
