Bikes

One of the bad things about living in your RV near the beach is losing your parking spot when you want to go to the store or check out the beach. Fortunately, Venice is very flat and you can get everywhere by bike! Just make sure to lock it up real good on your RV or a nearby light post or it will certainly get stolen.

Santa Barbara

This is the kind of thing the California Coastal Comission shot down when Venice tried to put up signs for a similar ordinance. Santa Barbara outlaws overnight camping on their streets.

Fortunately, SB has something almost as good as unrestricted parking - they have free camp grounds for us "motor homeless". I'd still rather be on the street and not have to follow so many rules, but no reason you can't do both in Venice since we don't have overnight restrictions here. Check out this ABC piece on the Santa Barbara program here:

http://homepage.ntu.edu.tw/~karchung/ABC_homeless.htm

Now I hear Councilman Rosendahl is trying to get the same thing for Venice. Way to go Bill!

Family Vacation

Not all of our friends on 3rd Street plan to stay long term. The Millsaps Family: Doris, Red and son Dustin (not pictured) traveled all the way from Ocala Florida with their dog Bosco and are only staying awhile before turning north to visit the free RV community in Springfield, Oregon. What a great adventure!

3rd Street South of Rose Ave.

This site wouldn't be complete with out mentioning 3rd Street between Rose Ave. and Sunset Ave. On a warm summer evening it can become like one big block party with all of the RVs and music and partying. One free spirit you'll find here in her travel van, pictured above, is Serena Peters, or "Sunshine Blue" to her friends. Sunshine loves the sunshine here, what more could you want?

Rose Ave.

Rose Ave is another good place to park. Eveline Popp, shown above, is retired and likes to spend her time mingling with the beach crowds whom she entertains with her creative puppets. These pictures also show a good tip for free RV living. If you're worried about getting a ticket, put your hood up and you can claim mechanical failure. Police don't enforce the 2hr limit on Rose often anyway.

Beach Lots

Technically you can't camp overnight in the beach lots, but you can certainly park there until 10pm for only $3 a day and that's a lot less than the almost $50 per day they want at the Dockweiler beach RV Park. I love Venice!

My buddy Ibrahim Butler (shown here) demonstrates that you can park every day in the lot at Rose Ave and the police can't do a thing about it. Dockweiler only allows you to stay 60 days a year total, not so in Venice.

FREE Food!

You can get some free food on the boardwalk from the sweet and lovely Peggy Lee Kennedy on Thursdays. Why cook when you can get some free grub, sit on the sand and watch the waves? PLK has also been a huge advocate for us RV dwellers, way to go Peg!

got too much stuff?

If you don't have room in your RV for all of your stuff, just get an old car and you can use it for storage. For the same reasons you don't have to worry about your RV being towed, you can be sure your stuff will be there when you need it. Just be sure to move across the street once a week to avoid a street cleaning ticket.

Towed

Don't let this happen to you! Even in Oakwood sometimes neighbors turn you in for things like an expired license plate. Fortunately that's about all they can get us on.

7th Street / Oakwood

First tip of the blog - 7th street in the Oakwood neighborhood. Next to Oakwood park. It's a good place to park your RV and you can use the facilities at the nearby park. It's a largely poor area and so the residents don't like to call the police, which makes it easier to park here. The area is known for drug dealing also...

CCC gives us Venice!

Venice just became an EVEN BETTER place to live in your RV and that's why I am establishing this blog to help others learn about the joys of living for free in Venice Beach. Why pay a sky high rent or mortgage when you can park your RV and live by the world famous Venice Beach for free?

Thanks to everyone who turned out at the CCC meeting to support RV living in Venice. We were handed a decisive victory over the residents who wanted us out. Now thanks to the CCC we don't have to worry about overnight parking restrictions that would make us have to move our rigs every night.

Send me your tips and tricks, photos and stories.

Sandy