How To Live On Venice Beach On $25 A Day
Although there are Los Angelenos that wish I would not tell you this, it is possible to live on Venice Beach for under $25 a day. I know that sounds improbable. A place that has 5 million dollar condo views? A place where real estate starts and ends in the millions, you can crash there for $25 a day? Yeah, comrades. Here, let me show you.
First, you have to be willing to forego some minor comforts like daily showers, and private restrooms, and you have to be willing to sleep in your car. I know, not ideal, but have you ever visited Venice Beach? It’s worth a little discomfort, and if you’re well off with the banks, you can definitely rent a $250 a night hotel room with a good view. But if you don’t have $250 in your entire L.A. budget, follow me.
First thing in the morning you find a gas station. They’re usually about a mile or mile and a half from the beach. You can fill your 40oz coffee thermos for $4. Bam. 15% of your budget gone first thing, but without the coffee, none of the rest is possible. And if you prefer tea, energy drinks, or juice, they got it, and the expenditure is about the same.
Dollars left, $20.25 (after tax)
Next, you drive to the beach. The first day we parked in a pay lot that cost $12 for the day. The second day we paid $8, then farther down the beach a few blocks past the boardwalk, we found free all day parking. If you don’t mind walking 3 blocks to the beach, you can save some of that shoestring to gnaw on later. Drive around a little. We get 22 miles per gallon in the car, and gas is $4.50 a gallon, but spending that gallon of gas saved us from paying for any parking for three days. Saving $20 to $30 will earn you another free beach day.
Once you’re parked, you pack your backpack with books, notebooks, pens, colored pencils, and a blanket, grab your sunglasses, and coffee, then head down the paved walking path that leads to Heaven.
Mid-day, after people watching on a beach where a few dozen Mr. Olympians have trained with weights, where hundreds of surfers gather every morning to greet the waves, where hundreds of thousands of people pass through daily, where there’s hundreds of cafes and vendor booths, and a hundred street artists, performers, and entertainers, where there’s a skate park founded by THE original skaters, where there’s rich, poor, housed and unhoused all sharing the same space, oh, fuck, after a morning of that, when you’re ready for brunch, have two fruit cups from the Dollar Tree. Price $1.25 for 4. There’s two cups left for a snack later, or brunch tomorrow. And sure, canned fruits are sugary and not as good for you as fresh fruit, but it’s still fruit eaten under a beach sun.
Money left: $18.75 (after tax)
After a day on the beach, when it’s early evening, I recommend waiting past sunset, which because of daylight savings time, happens around 4:45pm. Also, sunsets on the edge of the world last about an hour and a half minimum. After sunset the beach will slow down midweek and get chilly at a breezy 60 degrees. Go then and get a basket of fries at a boardwalk cafe. Go to the one that’s in front of the bookstore. They’re in a building that Jack Kerouac used to live in. The fries cost about $5. They’ll give you ketchup and ranch. Sit for 90 minutes filling your belly with delicious potatoes, while watching the mass of humanity stream down the beach boardwalk and bike path, the ocean howling behind them. A street busker with a grand piano on wheels will sit 25 feet away serenading you, and everyone else, beautifully, the entire time.
You may even observe a sex worker that I shared poetry with one of the days we visited the beach, and in an attempt at protecting their story will only refer to by my given nickname, Venice Beach Barbie, you may see them prepare for the evening with a four foot by four foot storage bag full of wigs and outfits, and transform themselves into a stunning, dancing, twirling boardwalk music box girl dancing to the busking piano man’s tunes, then sprayabout half of a bottle of too good smelling dollar store perfume on and dance away down the boardwalk to find company, leaving an aerosol wake behind her.
Money left: $9.00 (ish, after tax and tip)
Later, maybe around 9pm, sit in the car listening to the ocean waves in the dark while watching foot, bicycle and skateboard traffic go by, people walking their dogs. Homeless people heading off for the night to no home. Girlfriends walking in chattering groups. Street performers lugging their carts laden with art and musical instruments, all in front of you on the boardwalk. Have Kroger brand pepperoni at $2.99 a bag and Colby jack cheese that you cut into cubes with your pocket knife. Cheese cost $2.99. Ps. When you travel out west, remember that Ralph’s grocery stores are unionized and owned by Kroger’s. They’ll take your Kroger card there. Albertson’s is also a union grocery store chain. Kroger’s tried to buy them, too, but the Federal Trade Commission got involved with monopoly the accusation, and Kroger’s made a deal to buy the Albertson’s chain and sell most of the stores to the Piggly Wiggly chain just this year. That info brought to you by a union poet that reads too much.
And when you get near the end of the meat and cheese, after you’re full, and there’s not enough leftover to save, take the extras food and five cigarettes, and give it to one of your new friends that’s resting on a lonely beachside bench.
Now you got about $3 left, so you take a buck and put it in a busker’s bin, and you give them a cigarette and a pre-rolled joint, too, because you should give a token of appreciation back to the beach that gives us all so much. Your belly is full. You are nearly broke, but you have lived an entire day on one of the most famous beaches in the world. You’ve bathed all afternoon in the sun, waded shin deep in the Pacific, read poetry and bits of a novel while sitting under a 50 foot palm tree. You’ve written a good poem, and met a dozen other local and now local artists throughout the day, and you’ve watched a sunset so gorgeous that you’re still not sure it was real. You’ve spent the evening dining, and listening to music. You’ve laid around in Heaven getting stoned off your ass all goddamned day. You’ve used the beach showers to wash off your feet and shoes and discreetly and carefully the most filthy public restrooms you’ve ever encountered, and a few wet wipes to clean the sand out of private areas, and now your heart is so full of happy that you don’t even recognize yourself in the rear view mirror when you pull out of the beach parking lot at midnight as it closes.
But you don’t have to drive far. Find a side street a few blocks from the beach, pay attention to the parking signs, and find a private spot to pull your car over on the side of the road, and crawl into the back, and go to bed. There are literally thousands of people all over L.A. doing the exact same thing every single night. Some streets allow vans and campers. Some don’t allow vehicles over 7 foot tall and 22 foot long, which makes it a great spot for an SUV turned home on wheels like ours. Be inconspicuous. Stay quiet. Clean up around you, and you can sleep safe and happy just three blocks from the beach.
When you find that perfect spot, for us it’s a quieter road with less auto and foot traffic, preferably under a tree and not a street light. Somewhere we can chill and smoke a joint, read a little bedtime poetry, and enjoy the $1.25 Hershey bar we bought from the Dollar Tree earlier. My beloved comrades, do you understand what I’m saying? An entire day in the beach sun, filled with beauty, adventure, art, poetry, ocean salt water, sunsets, street performers, music, and laughter, and when its all over you even get to send yourself off to dead-sleep land with some chocolate to end your day. What human lives a better life than the one that ends each day with chocolate treats and poetry sweets? And all of that for just $25 a day.
And sure, you could choose to use the Hipcamp app, where people often rent out their driveway, backyard or property to dispersed, off grid campers, sort of like Air B and B for camping, and you can find a decent safe spot around $30 or less a night. Wait until midnight and drive there when traffic is asleep.
Or you could drive up into the mountains north or east, about 60 or 70 miles away, and crash at a camp friendly truck stop, but those are full on rodeos out here. Lots of commotion all night. But honestly, we found good spots around Venice Beach and in San Pedro, the places we wanted to stay, and in most circumstances, if you drive around the regular working people neighborhoods, don’t car camp in Beverly Hills. Trust me, they don’t like poor people there, let alone anyone that has an air of homelessness bohemian about them, but in most every single working class area of town in Los Angeles, you can find people parked on the side of the street in campers, vans and all manner of homemade shanties on wheels. I saw several campers that even had their slide out open on campers that obviously hadn’t moved in a long while. Trust me, if you don’t mind sleeping in your car, you’ll be just fine on a budget vacation here. But whatever you do, don’t be a nuisance and bring unwanted attention, and don’t fuck it up for the people that live here out of necessity, the way you’re living on a vacation visit.
Follow the golden code of the road. Enjoy. Be good. Give back if you can, and leave it looking better than when you arrived and the road will always be there for you.
But there you go. Get your night of sleep. Get up and find your local gas station to fill your thermos and if you got $25, you got another sunny beach day ahead of you.
It don’t take a lot to live like a rockstar if you’re studying Jim Morrison, if you know what I mean.
Happy trails.
Love,
Dan
