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Special | 6m | Video has closed captioning.
Living in a van is a tricky feat on its own; throw in attending college full time, in a sometimes-unforgiving city, and things get even more complicated. Young African American couple Lovell and Paris, both veterans going to school in pricey San Francisco, are doing their best to balance the two while navigating the many challenges like break-ins and restrictive parking regulations.
Aired: 01/07/20
Expires: 01/14/25
(upbeat music) - Hey!
- Hey, y'all wanna see Paris and Lovell cook their dinner for tonight?
Alright, stick along 'cause we about to cook some black beans.
(energetic music) My name is Paris Lee.
I'm currently a film student at the Academy of Art University here in California.
- My name is Lovell Lee.
I'm a marketing student here in the same school and we've been living in the van for about two years.
- [Paris] We met in the military.
- [Lovell] We started to mingle, we became official 2014 and then we got married nine months later.
(calm music) - [Paris] So school back in Los Angeles wasn't going so well for us so we decided to move up to San Francisco and attend college here.
- [Lovell] When we first came down here, we considered getting an apartment and we'd look around and we'd see that if it's San Francisco it's very expensive.
For an apartment, like the one we had in LA, here (laughs) it'd be about $4000.
- [Paris] We came up with the idea of why don't we live in our van?
We've traveled in our van, we took a couple road trips.
- We looked into it a little bit more and then we thought we can do it, you know.
And this is our home for now.
Yeah, we've got our iron, our speaker, our clothes are here.
- This is the living room basically mixed with the kitchen.
This is our food storage container.
This is our bed that we're sleeping on which also can be converted into a couch like it is now.
A couch slash bed.
- Good morning, my name is Lovell.
- And my name is Paris.
- And we are Novel Kulture.
- Novel Kulture.
Novel Kulture is a YouTube channel about alternative living while being Black.
- [Lovell] It's like a video diary, you know.
- [Paris] You're gonna see videos with us being happy, cooking dinners, showing our van off, you're gonna see the cops harassing us couple times, you're gonna see stuff like us just having fun and loving each other.
Traveling, exploring is so important to us.
We learn so much that way.
We see things, we do things, and if you're not able to get out of your neighborhood, you're stuck where you are, and you don't know the possibilities out there in life.
Oh my goodness!
You like me.
If you don't know that you can see the world.
It's crazy.
We're in New York, we're in New York!
(slow music) Stealth camping is what we do.
Don't be seen because you're not suppose to live in your vehicle.
- Technically in San Francisco between the times of 10 PM and 6 AM it's illegal to inhabit a vehicle.
It can be uncomfortable, prohibitively uncomfortable for some people.
Finding places to park every night, being really close to night crawlers who are looking for a come up in peoples vehicles, smash and grabs, people looking for opportunities, not knowing if I'm gonna have to defend my life or my wife's life at any moment.
Somebody decided that they were gonna try to get in here.
What time is it?
- [Paris] It's 5:23, 5:23 October 21st.
- [Lovell] They didn't wanna wake somebody up in the morning?
Ay.
- Look, I think that's probably one of them too.
Look, see I told you they was... See I told Lovell, let's just sit still because I know whoever just tried to break in this car, they are going to be back.
They are going to be back because they know that it's early in the morning, they think nobody's here.
Look at that.
Look at that.
And now we gotta pay another deductible, again, another deductible.
Which I'm glad we gotta pay a deductible instead of paying our lives.
Just be careful out here as van life people because there are people that are breaking in your car and not knowing that you live in it, they're gonna break in it still.
- It's gonna consume our entire day.
We're gonna lose our van for however long they need to keep it to fix it, we're gonna need to order the glass, and now it's gonna consume our entire day tomorrow.
(glass falls) Van life is cool, but it does take a toll.
But you do really get to know the person.
- [Paris] Yeah, you do.
- [Lovell] You know.
- [Paris] I love the experience that I get to experience with Lovell.
It's one life that we have to live with each other so I would say that's amazing.
- [Lovell] Living in the van has really enabled us to prepare for the future and it's really much more efficient to remove all of our expenses and then invest in anything we wanna invest in.
- [Paris] Well I want us to have our production company.
We're gonna be doing narrative films, documentaries, we want to step into commercial.
Our future looks very bright.
- [Lovell] Super bright.
- [Paris] Super excited.
I don't care if someone says I'm homeless.
A cardboard box can be a home.
Living in a vehicle can be your home.
Home is whatever you make it.
