“Some are in the streets now, some with friends”

The beach lot at Rose Avenue in now all but free of RVs.

Hand-painted with slogans like “The Spirit of Venice” and “Jesus Was Homeless”, Abraham and Diane’s RV has for years been a symbol of the beach parking lot at the end of Rose Avenue where dozens of RVs parked every day.

But now it’s the only RV in the lot (far right in picture). And they’re not just gone from the lot: dozens, maybe hundreds of RVs are gone from Venice.

A little more than a month after signs went up banning large vehicles from the Rose lot, the ranks of Venice’s vehicle-dwellers have thinned dramatically.

Around Sunset Avenue and 4th Avenue, for so long an epicenter of RVs where dozens of vehicles parked each night, there’s hardly an oversized vehicle to be found. The only RVs in the area are behind the Public Storage and Gold’s Gym on 3rd Avenue, the skid row of RVs where many of Venice’s other vehicle-dwellers won’t go. Even there, numbers have dwindled to a dozen or so vehicles.

So, where have they gone?

Some have started spending their days in the beach parking lots in Santa Monica, just a stone’s throw north of the Rose lot, across the city line. The lots are more expensive—and don’t allow vehicles with handicapped placards in for free—but at least they’re still allowed in.

Others have lost their vehicles. Vehicle-dwellers complain of an LAPD crackdown—with vehicles ticketed and towed for minor infractions—and, once the vehicle is impounded, many of them lack the financial resources to get it out.

“Some are in the streets now, some with friends,” Abraham said.

Diane and Abraham on the boardwalk across from Venice Bistro.

“Some in jail,” Diane said. She told the story of a friend, D, whose van was impounded, with her three dogs inside; D was taken to jail. She’s out now, staying in a friend’s van, but the dogs are van and the dogs are gone.

Others have simply moved on from Venice. Antonio and Tina are gone—Tommy said Tina is back in Palmdale where they met; Antonio is in Highland park with the RV, trying to get the money to go back to join her there.

Tommy is trying to leave as well. He had a deal to sell his van lined up, and planned to move to an apartment in Hollywood or $200 a month, but the housing fell through right before the first of November. Now, he’s hoping his family in Rhode Island can find the money to fly back east, where he could stay in a cousin’s basement for a while.

All his friends who used to live here and work on the boardwalk are gone, he said.

“I’m getting air lifted out of here,” Tommy said. “I’m like the last one left.”

A few RVs still line 3rd Ave.

Even those still trying to work on the boardwalk, like Tommy and Abraham and Diane, face a new, longer commute. While Abraham and Diane have an RV small enough that it’s still allowed into the Rose lot, most RVs are too big, which means their owners have to cart all the supplies for their livelihoods to the beach—an arduous process that Tommy was forced to undertake for almost a year, after his van broke down last fall. Some vendors can’t do it themselves, and pay someone else to help them. Some now find it yet another reason to leave Venice.

(Post forthcoming on carting his stand to the beach.)

Abraham and Diane, though, are staying. Abraham said a year from now, he expects to be right where he has been for year, painting on sacks on across from Venice Bistro.

“I think there’ll be an even bigger community of RVs here in a year,” Abraham said. “Because of the economy. There’s two wars going on. That’s the reality.”

“when you stay in the rose lot, you’re part of the tribe, whether you want to be or not.”

Last week, a furor erupted in Venice after RV-dwellers were caught dumping sewage into the street at Pacific and Fleet. A resident who, for fear of reprisal, goes only by “Boston Dawna”, took down the RV’s plate number as it drove away, and called the police, who caught up with the vehicle at Sunset and 3rd. Officers arrested the owner of the vehicle, and also found more evidence of sewage dumping around Sunset and 3rd, the skid row of Venice’s RV community, where many of the Rose lot regulars won’t go. Hazmat teams were brought in, videos of the sewage made it to YouTube, and every news outlet from the LA Times to KTLA ran stories.

Selwyn, the illegal dumper, is a regular at the Rose lot, where he camps out at the north end with his wife, Lindsey, and their 15-year-old daughter. Even before the incident, he cut something of a notorious figure. As Antonio pointed out, his gray water tank leaked constantly, leaving a trail from his van down to the sand as the west side of the lot.

The gray water trickles slowly from the van to the beach.

I took these photos of Selwyn's RV several weeks before the sewage dumping incident, after Antonio pointed out that his gray water tank always leaked. You can actually see the pipe dripping.

After two days in jail, Lindsey, under whose name the vehicle is registered, was released, with no charges yet filed, though City Attorney Carmen Trutanich has said his office still plans to charge her. In the wake of the incident, as other Rose lot regulars have gone into damage-control mode, they’ve warned Selwyn to stay away. They’ve since been parking at the Santa Monica lot, a stone’s throw from the Venice lot, just north of the city line. But RVs can’t park on the street in Santa Monica. So at night, the Rose lot community suspects he has been coming back to Venice.

Selwyn is unrepentant, however. When Antonio called him, several days after the incident, he called Boston Dawna a “jackass”. And this week, he exchanged the following texts with Antonio:
Selwyn: Just to put to rest any misinformation, the city attorney rejected the case and also called it a bullshit charge.

Antonio: Bullshit? Clearly you have no idea will affect the big picture. This will be used as an example against all RV-dwellers for years.

S: Bullshit was the word the supervising city attorney used. Apparently prosecutors don’t take it very seriously. You’ve been reading too much inflammatory shit on the net. We’re good. Lindsay is much better now, love to the gang.

A: What you did was wrong, and you’re not taking responsibility. You made the homeowner look like a big champion to the public and media and she’s the jackaass?

S: what are you, ace? The rose lot moral authority? You going to come over here and kick the shit out of us with your dogs and sticks? You’re some variety of junky, yes? You and your buddies are selling and using drugs 60mph, yes? We don’t have any money. None. You want to lend us money to dump?

A: No, I have never sold drugs. I’ve been holding my sewage for two weeks now because I don’t have the money to dump. You can’t justify what you did. Be a man, admit.

From there, Selwyn began threatening to have Antonio prosecuted if he didn’t stay away, and calling the Rose lot community a “tribe”. Finally, Antonio replied, “You best stay away from Venice. We don’t want shit-dumping trash around here.”

“When you stay in the rose lot, you’re part of the tribe, whether you want to be or not,” said Ian, a 20-something, rainbow-haired local who lives in a house on San Juan.

On Thursday night, a week after the incident, Antonio sat in his RV watching TV with Tina and Tommy. Suddenly, Raven screeches to a halt outside on his bike, shouting, “He’s on Rose! He’s on Rose!” Immediately, ten people are outside.

“We have to do it now,” said Ian. “We have to show him he can’t come here anymore.”

The plan was this: the group would go confront him, demanding that he stay away from Venice. Ian would videotape, so as to have evidence that the RV community doesn’t like illegal dumping any more than the residents do.

Raven biked ahead, while the rest of the group walked up Rose Ave towards 6th, where Raven had seen the RV. “I have a bad feeling about this,” Antonio said. “Everyone is too excited.”

But as soon as Selwyn saw Raven, he bolting, driving south down 6th, and Raven couldn’t keep up. By the time the rest of the group arrived, he was gone. They walked around in circles for the next half-hour, looking for the vehicle on Sunset and on 3rd, but found nothing.

The situation has the Rose lot crew spooked, afraid that any infraction, however small, will be used to drive them out. Antonio said he doesn’t want to dump his gray water down the storm drain like he usually does. He’s even afraid someone might pull the valve and open his black water tank, just to sabotage the RV community. “All it would take would be for someone to pull the lever, and it’d be all over.”

"i don't need that kind of help"

Last week, the Los Angeles City Council approved a plan to establish a "safe overnight parking program" for people living  in RVs in Venice.

City Councilmember Bill Rosendahl secured more than $700,000 from city coffers to fund the "Streets to Homes" program, which will be modeled on similar efforts in Santa Barbara and Eugene, Oregon.

In the new "save overnight parking" program, outdoor cooking would not be allowed

Participants would be offered a safe, legal place to park overnight, along with various other amenities like restrooms, a place to dispose of garbage,  and a drain for septic tanks. These amenities, however, will come with a set of conditions: no drugs or alcohol, no outdoor grilling, and mandatory case management, with the goal of moving RV-dwellers into permanent housing.

Rosendal's office hopes the program will begin by the end of the year, around when the new ordinance against over-sized vehicles would take effect and police will be more easily able to remove RVs that park on residential streets. Participation is voluntary, and open to any Council District 11 residents living in their vehicles.

"Participants will benefit from case management, social services, housing assistants," reads one slide in a PowerPoint presentation Arturo Piña, Rosendahl's deputy for Venice, sent out about the program. "Non-participants will be subject to law enforcement action."

However, many of Venice's RV-dwellers express no interest in participating in the program.

"I don't need that kind of help," Antonio said, while sitting in his RV in the Rose lot. "I really dig this lifestyle. I'd like to be doing it a little better than I'm doing it right now. But the reason why I'm living here is not to be a working stiff. The idea of having to go to case management and try to move into an apartment doesn't sound appealing at all. If I wanted to live in an apartment, I'd be trying to do that already. Right now, Tina and I's goal is to get a converted bus."

Antonio mentioned Peter, who lives with his wife in an RV in the Rose lot, as an example of someone who's doing very well living in an RV. He makes buttons, which he sells on the boardwalk, and makes enough money to hire someone to sell the for him, so he can stay in the van and keep making them.

Tommy wasn't  inclined to participate in the program, either.

"I don't want to have to check in with somebody on how I'm doing," he said. "I'm busy, I work in the henna stand. It's like an outdoor shelter, and I think for a lot of people, it would be a good thing for them, but not for me. If it's an option for people, that's great, but not if it's forced. Then it's more like an internment camp, trying to round us all up in the same place."

One slide on the Council District 11 PowerPoint presentation reads, "Ultimate evaluation criteria will be reduction of vehicle on residential streets." It remains to be seen what will happen to the locals who continue to park their RVs on the streets.

everything you always wanted to know about RV septic systems*

*plus a lot you probably didn't

Before Antonio can dump his septic tank, he has to go to the pawnshop.

Same thing with filling a prescription for his girlfriend, Tina; or getting something to eat; or filling the propane tank so he can take a hot shower. He can’t take a shower until he dumps his tank, anyway, because the RV’s ‘gray water’ tank is full, too, and the shower water will run off into the street.

Unfortunately, he and Tina are almost out of things to pawn. Already, they’ve pawned most of Tina’s jewelry, and even her car—a Lexus SUV they loaned for just $2,500 and weren’t able to get back.

Now, they only have a couple items left—a gold ring and a pair of diamond earrings Tina’s mother gave her. They’re not expecting much. A pawnshop rejected the ring last week—guy at the counter said it wasn’t real gold.

Antonio parks around the corner from a different pawnshop on Lincoln Blvd, where no one in the store can see the RV, and goes inside alone.

Tina stays in the van. She sits on the bed, right across from the door, holding her Chihuahua, Cody, in her lap. She’s quiet, occasionally looking out the front windshield.

“He’s not gonna get anything,” Tina says. “I hope he gets a hundred.”

A few minutes later, Antonio comes running back towards the van, jewelry in hand.

“See,” Tina says. “I told you he wasn’t gonna get anything.”

They offered him $100 for the ring and $250 for the earrings, he says. “You sure you want to sell the earrings? We could just sell the ring.” It’s the only time either of them acknowledges any sentimental values the items might hold.

“Yes, yes, Jesus, just sell it!”

The money changes everything inside the van. When Antonio returns with bills in hand, Tina calls Rite Aid to refill half her prescription. Antonio starts driving north towards Dockweiler State Beach, the only place within 30 miles where RVs can legally dump waste water. He talks almost nonstop, grinning now, looking back into the cabin of the van as he drives, explaining why so few RVs in the Rose lot dump legally. Cody jumps on his lap, sticking his head out the window.



You hardly need to live in an RV to be conscious of water’s value in Southern California, but RV-dwellers experience this fact on a daily, if not hourly, basis. Basic tasks like washing the dishes, taking a shower, and using the toilet require a staggering commitment of time and energy towards acquiring and disposing of water. Doing it all legally adds a serious, potentially prohibitive financial investment to the equation.

Like most RVs, Antonio’s vehicle has three tanks—the freshwater tank, which holds 80 gallons of water; the gray water tank, which traps runoffs from the sink and the shower; and the septic (or ‘black water’) tank, which holds waste from the toilet. The black water tank fills up every two weeks or so, the gray water tank every week. Both are supposed to be dumped only at official RV dumping sites.

The process of dumping the tanks is easy. At Dockweiler RV Park, Antonio drains the two waste tanks from a valve on the side of the van, through a black hose, into a hole in the pavement. Then he uses a white hose to pump fresh water from a faucet into a different valve on the side of the van. The whole process cost $10, and takes just 15 minutes.

There are other costs, however, some of them harder to calculate. Dockweiler RV park is almost 8 miles away from the Rose lot where so many RV-dwellers park. Many of the vehicles in the Rose lot simply can’t make it that far—Tommy and Shawn can’t even start their vehicles, and others, for fear of ending up like Tommy, won’t risk driving their vans farther than a quarter mile—from the lot to wherever they park at night.

In addition, the drive itself costs Antonio about $15 dollars in gas—as much money as he makes most days. So instead of making the drive every week, Antonio, like most others in the Rose lot, dumps his gray water down the storm drain.

“I don’t feel guilty about that at all,” he says. “There’s nothing harmful in there. Worst you’re gonna find is maybe a couple vegetables from the sink.”

It’s not always easy to tell when the gray water tank is full—the gauge on his 1977 Winnebago was defunct long before Antonio bought the van last year. The only way he knows for sure that the tank is full is when it starts leaking onto the street through an overflow valve. The leaking, of course, is also illegal, punishable with a $900 fine. Once, when Tina did a bunch of dishes and the tank overflowed, the cops threatened to call in the hazmat team and shut down the whole Rose lot.

But there’s no question when the black water tank needs dumping: waste backs up into the toilet, and the smell in the bathroom becomes unbearable.

For the last two days, Antonio has shit in plastic bags, which he discretely deposits in dumpsters, and pissed in plastic bottles, which he empties into the storm drain. Tina’s continued to piss in the toilet.

“I had to go to the bathroom this morning and I thought I was gonna puke,” she says.

Many RV-dwellers won’t use the bathrooms in their vehicles. Tommy always uses plastic bags and bottles. Others use the bathrooms next to the Rose lot, a spot many drug addicts use to shoot up. A few keep gym memberships just for access to running water.

The year before Antonio met Tina, when he was living in a van that didn’t have a bathroom, he used to go to McDonald’s to use the bathroom every morning, bringing the cup he already had with him. He called it the ‘Antonio Combo’: a shit and a refill.

Finally, there are those who use the RV bathrooms but don’t go to Dockweiler to dump. Antonio says that last night, he saw three vans pull up behind the dumpsters at the edge of the lot and “do the dirty deed.” While dumping gray water is tacitly accepted in the RV community, dumping black water is not. It’s done in secret, in the dark, anonymously. No one in the Rose lot will admit to it.

One of the main accusations opponents of RVs level is that these kinds of illegal dumping are hazardous to the environment and public health alike. Yet, as Antonio sees it, the problem could be very easily solved. The dumping station at the Dockweiler RV Park is just a line that connects to the sewer system. Wealthier people, who use RVs recreationally, often have similar lines installed at their homes.
“If you just put one of those lines in at every gas station, and you made it free, you wouldn’t get people dumping illegally,” Antonio says. “Or put one in at the Rose lot. Then everyone would use it.”

“Yeah, but they don’t want to encourage RVs to park there,” Tina says.



This is one of the many Catch-22s for the Rose lot community: it is illegal to dump except at official sites, but there are no dumping sites around.

On the way back from Dockweiler, Antonio stops to refill the propane tank. He buys $22 of propane for hot showers, enough for a couple months. $24 for Tina’s pain medication, for a list of maladies that includes a spinal fusion, a removed adrenal gland, and most recently a removed gall bladder. $15 for Chinese food. $20 for weed. In three hours since they pawned Tina’s jewelry, they’ve spent $106—nearly a third of what they made.

And there are more errands, more expenses. Antonio wants to go to the DMV. Last week, he got pulled over in Santa Monica. He doesn’t have a valid registration, because he hasn’t had a smog check, and before he can pass a smog check, he has to weld a new tail pipe onto the roof. The cop said the only reason he didn’t have the vehicle towed was he didn’t want to leave Antonio homeless.

“You can’t just go to the DMV today,” Tina says. “You know how long that’s gonna take to get the smog check and then go?”

“I just don’t wanna go through another weekend stressing out about my home being towed and me sitting on the curb wondering what I’m gonna do. The only thing preventing us from getting a valid registration and being completely legal is the smog certificate. Right now, if I run into a dick cop, he can just tow it away.”

But Tina’s right—he doesn’t have time to make it to the DMV. Instead, they sit in the van, shades drawn, at the corner of Lincoln and Vernon. Tina sits on the bed, eating Chinese food; Antonio leans over the dishes in the drying rack next to the sink, smoking from a water bong.

When they get back to the Rose lot, Tina wants to take a shower.

“Don’t use all the water,” Antonio says. “I have to have the freshwater tank nearly full for her, or she’ll run out.”

“I’m a girl,” she says. “It’s easy for you.”

“Just don’t take half an hour again. Fuck, it’s not a house.”

Antonio steps outside to say hi to Peter, whose RV is parked a couple spots over. Peter’s trying to give away a microwave he and his wife can’t use. Antonio says he can’t use it either.

“It’s such a hassle to do all this stuff,” Tina says. “Such a pain in the ass. That’s why I’m trying to convince him to move into an apartment. He doesn’t want to pay rent, but, I mean, everybody does it. Fuck, what’re you supposed to do? I wanna be able to take a shower whenever I want and not have to worry about running out of water. I can’t live like this forever.”

She’s not used to this—neither of them is. Antonio is happy enough living in the van. He talks about getting another RV, or even a converted bus. But Tina wants out. She wants the kind of life she used to have before her mother died, back when she could afford a Lexus, diamond earrings, Louis Vuitton bags.

But neither of them has a job. Tina’s applying for disability, but has no idea if or when she’ll be approved. Antonio recently lost his most consistent audio editing gig. For the moment, the question is not when they can get an apartment, but how they’ll arrange their next hot shower.

immobile home

In the front seat, Shawn is dozing, his head leaned back, mouth slightly agape. His van got towed two weeks ago. It's ten past 8:00, then minutes past the start of street cleaning, when the parking attendant could have slapped a ticket down under the wiper blade, which, like most other parts of the van, doesn't work.

Tommy steps out of the back, rubbing the beanie on his bald head. As usual, even this early, his look has been carefully assembled--a white, long-sleeved waffle pattern shirt is mostly covered by a fitted black T-shirt with Asian characters; his jeans, a dark blue wash, fit like they were tailored specially for him; the DC shoes look fresh out of the box. Inside, the floor of his van is covered with paper bags, coffee cups, giant bubble markers, henna oils, and empty boxes of insulin syringes. But his dress is a rejection of this chaos.

He says there's a coffee for me, in a carrier on top of his mom's car--a scarlet Toyota rental parked a few spots ahead of him.

Tony parks his van across the street and walks over. Under his cargo shorts, he wears a pair of rainbow pajama pants. With him is someone I haven't met before--biologically male, but with long blond hair and lipstick smeared slightly beyond her lips. She says her name is Robin.

Shawn gets out of the van, rubbing his eyes. "Tommy, I'm sorry, can I take a piss real quick?" He doesn't want to ask, you can tell, and scampers quickly inside.

We stare at the van sitting next to the curb on Sunset Ave, between 3rd and 4th. For the last six months, this is what every Monday morning has entailed for Tommy--scaring up enough people to move his van across the street, or around the corner, or anywhere, and then back. It is an exercise in arch bureaucratic inanity; in community building; in politics, local and localer; and, ultimately, in the application of brute force.

Four months ago, he tried to drive the '85 Winnebago to a festival in New Mexico. In Arizona, it broke down, and hasn't started since. AAA towed it back to Venice, where it's sat ever since, in need of serious work, and, in lieu of that, at least three people to move it. It is a mobile home that's no longer mobile, instead serving as a reminder of the price he's paid for trying to take a week off from the boardwalk and enjoy himself.

The homeless guy who's been setting up his pallet on the sidewlk behind Tommy's van says he'll help. His name's Stan. We shake hands.

"You've helped me out by blocking me," he says. "I can help you push."

"Thanks man," Tommy says, but with a trepidation I've never seen from him. "I'm gonna call Antonio again. I talked to him earlier. I hope he didn't go back to sleep."

Still no answer. With Stan, we have more than enough people.

Tommy gets in the front seat to steer while the rest of us stand at the hood. We learn our weight onto the van, heaving and grunting, my nose so close to the metal I can smell the rust. At first, it doesn't budge. Slowly, though, it starts to move, picking up steam until we're just guiding it more than anything else.

We push it backwards into the intersection, reversing it from Sunset onto 4th, Stan yelling instructions and encouragement, "Come on, keep going, turn the wheel, just a little more, there we go!" Then we move around the other side to push it forward into the open spot.

When it's done, Shawn goes down the line, his dread locks swaying back and forth in front of his eyes, giving everyone high fives. The whole process took just five minutes.



It's not always this easy. Last week was a fiasco. We only had four people, and, again, Antonio was M.I.A. Tommy biked down to the boardwalk to see if he was there, and while he was gone, the parking attendant showed up and started ticketing the cars ahead of us. We tried to start pushing--just Tony, Shawn and I--but Tommy had the keys with him: we couldn't even get it into neutral. For whatever reason, though, the meter maid just left us alone. Tony said "good morning" to her, and she got in her car and drove off.

Maybe that should have been our cue to just leave the van where it was. But when Tommy returned with Antonio, we tired to push. The only available spot was directly across the street, which meant we had to turn the thing around 15 times to get it over there. Tony, Tommy, Shawn, and I pushed, using the curb for leverage when we could, our bodies perpendicular to the ground. We grunted and heaved, leaning our faces right up against the dirt and exhaust that accumulated on the back of the van, trying to get it moving, as Antonio struggled like hell to turn the wheel. As soon as we built up some momentum, and the work became easier, it was time to stop and turn again. With each pass, we blocked traffic--cars lined up four deep on each side, waiting to get by. And after each pass, we sat on the curb, panting and dripping sweat.

By 9:10, after 30 minutes of this, we were almost there--maybe two turns away. Again, we learned our weight against the van and started moving our feet, my flip-flops threatening to slide out from under me. The van inched into the street again, accompanied by a nasty noise--the sound of something metal dragging against the ground, then the sound of air. Forget it, Tommy yelled. Keep pushing.

When we reached the far side, we were a single push away--the van almost parallel to the curb, finally. But we were also stuck. The sound we'd heard was all the air rushing out of the rear driver's side tire, which, once completely flat, had gotten caught underneath the rim. Tommy cursed; he sat on the curb and held his head in his hands; he asked "why?" he called AAA.

"I can't wait til I don't have to fucking do this anymore, man."

While we sat on the curb, waiting, Tommy and Antonio had a fight. Antonio said he'd only been doing this for three months, and he was already fucking sick of it. "I wouldn't say this if I didn't think you were capable, but I know you could scare up $500 to get this thing fixed. This shoulda been your first priority six months ago. I don't wanna spend my Monday morning doing this every fucking week."
 Still, Antonio stayed to help push after AAA repaired the tire. Tommy is out of free tows for this year.



For the moment, though, Tommy is happy. For a week, he won't have to do this again. And for three more days, his mom will still be here, before she goes back to Rhode Island. It's down time now, sitting on the curb shooting the shit, waiting til 10 when street cleaning ends and we can move the van right back where it was.

Tony and Robin come back from his van, their hair wet from the shower. Robin has a guitar hanging from her shoulder. She's new to the area, and says she came here to make it big.

"My place to stay fell through," she says. "Luckily, I found some good people who are helping me out. I'm gonna remember that when I've got royalties comin' in. Give a little here, little there." She mimes passing out cash as if dealing cards to an imaginary circle of people around her.

One of the guys who owns the business across the street pulls his yellow Land Rover into the driveway. Tommy waves to him, and the guy sort of lifts his head ever so slightly.

"I saw that guy when I was out with my mom at dinner the other night," Tommy says. "He looked at me and did a kind of double-take, like he just couldn't believe that I had a mom, or ate dinner, or did the same things that he did. I think it was good he got to see me like that. They give me shit for being out here sometimes. It's good for him to see that I'm a person."