“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.”

"she's probably dehydrated"

Fire truck on the boardwalk. Everyone’s attending to a woman on a bench. She’s breathing from an oxygen mask. Someone says “I.V.” The woman is calm—in her 40’s maybe, a bit heavy set, with a warm face and dyed-red hair. She takes the mask off for a second to ask someone to hand her her purse. Beside her, several others are sitting on the bench, also very calm, paying only intermittent attention to the commotion right next to them.

“It’s Jan,” Tommy says. “She’s probably dehydrated.”

“What’s Jan do down here?”

“Not a lot. Just lives out here. Trolls for young guys, sometimes.”

For the tourists, this is a landmark moment—something exciting they will remember from their trips to California, along with the guy on rollerblades playing electric guitar, and the well-oiled man in the Speedo. They form a ring around the truck on the east side of the boardwalk, snapping pictures and pointing, keeping a safe distance.

For the regulars, the ones that live and work here, the trucks are hardly worth note There are fire trucks on the boardwalk every week, at least. They're just part of the basic health care system here--the ones who respond when someone's deydrated, or gets tired of sitting outside in the sun. The musicians don’t even stop playing for the sirens.

At the pagoda beside the trucks, a young man is playing a keyboard on his lap. His fingers whip about the keys, playing frantic snippets of melody. An upturned top hat sits on the sidewalk a few feet in front of him, a blond young woman on the step behind him.

“His girlfriend needs a shaker,” Tommy says. “His rhythm’s all over the place.”

Tommy grabs an empty juice bottle from off the bamboo mat in his stand and starts picking around the edge of the sand, looking for pebbles. He stuffs a handful of them inside the bottle, using the handle of his pocketknife to push through one that gets stuck at the mouth of the bottle. He caps it, and shakes it a couple times. The rocks make dull thudding sounds against the

The next break in the music, Tommy approaches the keyboardist.

“Here,” he says. “For your girlfriend. So she can play with you.” He shakes the bottle again, to make sure the guy gets the idea.

The firemen have Jan on a gurney now. A couple of them wheel her towards the ambulance, while the others chat with Jan’s friends, or pose for tourists’ pictures. Jan sits upright on the bed, looking comfortable, no oxygen mask now.

“Oooh, you look good, Jan,” Tommy says.

She smiles at him. She’s fine.

“Take good care of our girl,” Tommy says to the paramedics.

The firemen shut the doors, and the ambulance pulls away, no sirens, with the truck close behind. The tourists snapped their final pictures. The keyboardist picks up his top hat and flipa it onto his head before he and his girlfriend moved on.

The plastic bottle full of rocks remains on the steps of the pagoda.

“Oh well,” Tommy says. “Guess she didn’t wanna play.”

"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.

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."