MrNoodly
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Title: Vanlife Can Be Cheaper, Weirder and More Accessible Than Instagram Would Have You Believe
It starts with the writer, Anna Merlan, waking up roasting to death in a Walmart parking lot. This leads to:
You won’t find these realities on Instagram, of course. In the past few years 'vanlife' has become a bona fide social media phenomenon, a way for beautiful, mostly white, mostly heterosexual couples in Sprinters and Volkswagens to #partner with #brands to make a living selling a pristine, minimalist, aspirational lifestyle of sunrise beach yoga, morning acai bowls and romantic nights with two pairs of feet on the mattress facing towards some beautiful sunset mountain view or a lightly photoshopped sky full of stars...
This is, of course, leaving aside that the beautiful heterosexual whites in their expensively-converted Sprinters did not invent 'vanlife' or, more broadly, life in a van. Traveling by RV or van is a fact of life for a lot of people who earn their living through seasonal, migrant labor, as Jess Bruder’s exquisite bookNomadland chronicles. Living in a car is a reality for many, many homeless adults and children throughout the U.S., a reality often complicated by laws that deliberately make it hard for them to park anywhere for too long. And even that leaves aside that self-expressed Vanlifers who aren’t white face a particular host of challenges, hostility and harassment on the road.
While the writer is in a van only for a trip from Los Angeles to Sante Fe and back, she seems to get it.
Here's the link: https://jalopnik.com/vanlife-can-be-cheaper-weirder-and-more-accessible-th-1836822787
It starts with the writer, Anna Merlan, waking up roasting to death in a Walmart parking lot. This leads to:
You won’t find these realities on Instagram, of course. In the past few years 'vanlife' has become a bona fide social media phenomenon, a way for beautiful, mostly white, mostly heterosexual couples in Sprinters and Volkswagens to #partner with #brands to make a living selling a pristine, minimalist, aspirational lifestyle of sunrise beach yoga, morning acai bowls and romantic nights with two pairs of feet on the mattress facing towards some beautiful sunset mountain view or a lightly photoshopped sky full of stars...
This is, of course, leaving aside that the beautiful heterosexual whites in their expensively-converted Sprinters did not invent 'vanlife' or, more broadly, life in a van. Traveling by RV or van is a fact of life for a lot of people who earn their living through seasonal, migrant labor, as Jess Bruder’s exquisite bookNomadland chronicles. Living in a car is a reality for many, many homeless adults and children throughout the U.S., a reality often complicated by laws that deliberately make it hard for them to park anywhere for too long. And even that leaves aside that self-expressed Vanlifers who aren’t white face a particular host of challenges, hostility and harassment on the road.
While the writer is in a van only for a trip from Los Angeles to Sante Fe and back, she seems to get it.
Here's the link: https://jalopnik.com/vanlife-can-be-cheaper-weirder-and-more-accessible-th-1836822787
