May 16

Free RV Parking Websites

Here Are Some Links to Websites that Offer Information on Free or Low-Cost Overnight Parking and Camping

Boondockers Welcome is a group that spans the Country and sets up a trade of Free Parking.  So if you have a space in your driveway, you can join up and then use someone else’s space while you are on vacation.  For those of you living in your vehicles, you can still use this, you might have to pay a small fee, but possibilities are there for some imaginative trade-offs.  CLICK HERE

Wheelingit This website is for RVs, but lists some great places for overnight parking.  Aside from Walmart, there’s the Casinos, some big box stores like Camping World, Flying J Truck Stops, and much more.  CLICK HERE to access their article on Free Parking at various places.

OvernightParking  Overnight RV  Parking is a website that sells an app that tells you spots around the Country to park for free.  If you are on the road, this would be helpful in locating spots for safe parking.  CLICK HERE

San Diego Safe Parking Program for Homeless  If you are living in a vehicle, this group offers free, safe overnight parking in the San Diego area.  You have to register, and they do not tolerate bad behavior or drugs.  They will also help you with some social service benefits and housing.  Parking starts at 6pm.  CLICK HERE to go to the website and apply.  This is a program that should be in every major city, and volunteers at gypsycool have talked about, but it is very difficult to find a church or business to participate, much less the Los Angeles area cities.

May 16

Overnight Parking at Walmart

Website Provides Latest Information

For those of you who are “on the road” and want to park at a Walmart, here’s a link to a website that provides a list of Walmart stores and whether or not overnight parking is allowed.  CLICK HERE

The website, Allstays.com, also has an inexpensive app that you can download for your iphone or ipad with the latest Walmart information.

May 12

Camping at the North Fresno Walmart

 

Camping at the North Fresno Walmart Parking Lot

by Skip Rorshach Freedman

 

Camping at Walmart

Camping at Walmart

You can smell the desperation in this place, like the heat that wafts off one of those old-time steam radiators. Tweekers, rednecks and illegal aliens make for an interesting melting pot in this central valley hellhole called Fresno. Even in mid-April, the afternoon sizzles at around 90 degrees – even with partly cloudy skies. There are at least a dozen people that call this parking lot and its environs home on a regular basis. There are probably at least another dozen that I never even saw. Maybe more.

Sunrise finds the lot moderately crowded with empty employee cars, except for five vans and one RV. People that were sleeping in the bushes are stirring and slowly milling around into groups on the grassy perimeter. The tweekers huddle together nervously in their own clic. Their eyes darting around like lizards, they contemplate what they’re going to do to survive another day in this dusty blast furnace. Some will start scrounging the local dumpsters, others will try to hustle people down on Shaw Avenue. This heavily-traveled artery cuts through extreme north Fresno from the 99 freeway all the way east to Clovis, where the locally-famous rodeo will get underway in a week and a half. An old-timer comes out from behind the building pushing his overfilled shopping cart/storage unit. He’s nicely grizzled and has obviously been doing this for awhile. He looks around 50, but is probably younger. This seems to be over twice the average age around here, most residents seem to be early- to mid-20’s. Several illegals have already headed over to the Home Depot down the street to find some manual labor for the day. The van people sleep in until around 8 or so, then slowly head over to one of the three nearby fast-food joints for a cup of coffee. The RV folks leave before 9. You see vacant stares as the tweekers walk by you; these are young lives completely devoid of hope before they even hit 30. You wonder if these people will even be alive in five years. The white security van starts making rounds up and down the parking lot aisles. They’re actually pretty cool here, for cops (which doesn’t happen very often). As long as you move your vehicle every couple of days or so they won’t hassle you. No idea what the record duration for staying here is. It might be surprising.

Once the sun is fully up and blazing, the groups begin to dissolve into the surrounding area for the day’s hunter-gathering. People move their vans into the shade to try to minimize baking, and a few kids mill around under trees to keep cool. The only folks coming here in the afternoon are customers: overweight suburban housewives, retirees, Armenians in scarves, and people just passing through the area.

It starts getting dark around 8, and a few guys straggle back to the lot with things like hoses, pieces of wood, and other objects they’ve scrounged from dumpsters or behind buildings. Groups reassemble and discuss the day’s catch or swap amusing anecdotes about people they met. The spring night winds kick up about an hour later, and the van people roll down their windows and crack their side doors to bleed out the day’s heat accumulation. Inside it’s usually around 100 degrees, even when they’ve been in the shade all day, so it takes a little while to make them habitable for the night. The customers all left by 10, but there seem to be employees there all night – probably restocking shelves and sweeping up the place. Just after 11 a lonely train whistle wails about a mile to the west, alongside Golden State Boulevard, signaling the end of another day of survival. Maybe tomorrow will be better.