News & Blogs Life on the Road as a Millennial - The Vagabus Disaster?

[Hillbilly Castro]

I'm not trying to sound condescending

Nearly Orwellian doublespeak here.. if you cannot see your condescension in almost every post in here, you're tripping. It is frightening that you have positioned yourself to be a major press spokesperson for traveling folk and are as unstable and self aggrandizing as you are being both here and on reddit. When it starts to look like literally everyone is an idiot, as you imply with nearly everything you say, it may be time to reassess yourself.

 

[roguetrader]

only one way to settle this - a goddamn DANCE OFF just like the gangs of early '80's New York - don't want no bloodbath down in Austin do we ? who got da moves ?

 

[Dmac]

@Buffalo You describe him perfectly!

 

[Desperado Deluxe]

I take it they never made it its been like a freaking year.
And why in the fuck did they call it the vagabus couldn't think of anything better?

 

[MolotovMocktail]

I take it they never made it its been like a freaking year.

Huck posted this update at the beginning of the year. The seem to have abandoned the Argentina plan when they hit Humboldt and spent a couple months there before deciding to restructure.

 

[Desperado Deluxe]

Huck posted this update at the beginning of the year. The seem to have abandoned the Argentina plan when they hit Humboldt and spent a couple months there before deciding to restructure.

You mean they hit Humboldt smoked a bunch of weed and got lazy. ::wacky::

 

[roguetrader]

sure I read on r / vagabond that the vagabus project is totally dead

 

[Matt Derrick]

You'll be eating your words in a few months from now, but hey, just google our name and follow us if you want further proof of that. When we near Austin, or wherever you are, Ill personally steer the bus your way so that you can stand with us and apologize for the things you say today. Deal?

ha, well, i guess i should have taken them up on that bet then? ^^^^

 

[roguetrader]

Huck seems like a cool dude in a lot of ways - if you believe the interviews he has lived the genuine hobo / travelling worker lifestyle for many years - but boy does he fly into some spectacular rages online, a real David Banner..... he definitely needs to learn a bit of that staff member detachment referred to earlier.....

 

[Beegod Santana]

Traveling buses are always awesome till they suck. I gotta commend huck for trying to start a traveling group out to help to communities they go through and spread a more positive image of travelers. He's far from the first but as far as the interweb goes I'd say he's breaking new ground. I heard about the Vagabus early on and hadn't heard anything about it since till today (I take extended trips to the woods) and sadly, it sounds like it went the way of most projects like it. Lots of initial energy brought by a group of dreamers with some elbow grease to an anti-climatic end brought on by the hypocrisy of those who claimed to be there to support it. It's easy to throw stones and criticize them for their failures but at the end of the day I think what they attempted was inspiring and since they documented it online, it can now serve as a case study on what not to do for other people with similar goals. Anyone who's rode in some rainbow buses knows that this is how things like this normally work out, the general reddit using population though, not so much. Huck seems to admit that relying on bum tricks for funding was one of their downfalls and appears to be attempting to correct that in some way. Personally I think he needs to loose the dirty kid romanticize if he ever wants this to work, but hey, it's his project not mine, and isn't it ultimately supposed to be about the journey and not the destination?

 

[roguetrader]

@Beegod Santana why do you think communal buses don't work in the States ? - over here in Europe we do this plenty and things usually work out - you just gotta cull the idiots periodically and put travelling ahead of getting fucked up

 

[Beegod Santana]

Well, first let me say not ALL are victims of their own hypocrisy. Sometimes they get impounded or burnt to the ground. The fat kids kitchen is still going as far as I know and they've been kicking it for at least 10 ys now. In the states I think it's because our traveling community is full of awesome people but its also full of vampires who ultimately want to get something for nothing and gravitate towards projects like the vagabus for a free meal and a beer. When they get called out for their freeloading, rather than go on their way, they instead attack the project leaders for "being capitalists" or "not real street kids" or some other poor excuse for never achieving anything but another space bag in an attempt to cause chaos and extended their free trip. These are the same people who've given rainbow a bad name to the point that kids now think anyone associated with the rainbow family is a rapist thief. I don't know if it's true, but years ago I was hearing rumors that the cops where encouraging people who'd just served a long bid for murder or something to go join the rainbow family cause it's "like the salvation army with drugs." It may just be a rumor but I personally think there's some truth in it.

 

[Hillbilly Castro]

Huck posted this update at the beginning of the year. The seem to have abandoned the Argentina plan when they hit Humboldt and spent a couple months there before deciding to restructure.

Classic.
1. Go to Humboldt
2. Abandon plans.

 

[roguetrader]

I get the impression that the train hoppin / traveller scene is super popular at the moment in the US (?) less underground - fashionable even.... which is why so many people are getting in on the 'free ride' and so many psychic vampires are feasting on the energy of 'real' alternative types.... same shit happened in England in the late 80's / early 90's - vehicle travelling took off exponentially - every fucker every where wanted in on the gold rush because conditions were so good - huge parties / massive drug dealing profits / piss easy welfare money every other week / aggressive begging in between BUT this created a generation of bad attitude face tattooed fighting stealing raping a-holes who did a great job of destroying their own scene - sound familiar ? is the American scene becoming a victim of its own success ?

 

[Beegod Santana]

I don't know if it's particularly more popular now than it was say in the 90's or 2000's but I can definitely say the conditions are worse, not better than they were just a few years ago. Most popular traveler towns have long been blown up to fuck and now have ordinances against basically being alive if you don't have a roof over your head. To compound on that, there's more and more people in america who don't really have wanderlust so to say, but just don't know what the fuck to do with themselves and have developed themselves chemical dependencies in the mean time. Food stamps are really the only easy welfare left in the states available to travelers and even then you gotta be strategic about where you get em. As far as I understand it the 80's and 90's were the glory days of hobo welfare fraud. So I would say it's more a victim of a generally shitty trend in this country economically and the effects of widespread meth and heroin abuse. It's all nothing new in a sense and these things tend to come in waves, but now does not seem like the easiest time to be a traveler in the states. This why I gotta give Huck credit for at least attempting what he did in a country where the deck is more and more stacked in the yuppies' favor. I wouldn't of gone about it the same way but kudos to him for attempting it.

 

[roguetrader]

I suppose the exposure is much greater on the internet these days which is what's making me think the US scene is peaking......

 

[Beegod Santana]

Maybe in spots like Norcal, Oregon and Colorado but over all I'd say it's pretty hard to say one way or another. I wasn't there for it but many an old timer has told me the 90's had way more people riding trains. Articles about the young traveling homeless come out every summer and normally the kids getting interviewed are in their first year of traveling. California especially has been doing everything it can to make the traveling lifestyle harder for years now. No more camping by the highway, sit/lie ordinances all over the place, campgrounds that used to be free to anyone now requiring $25/night and a reservation, panhandling ordinances, no vehicle camping or even overnight parking... the list goes on and on.

 

[roguetrader]

that's how the authorities have fucked us up over here - lots of small changes in the law leading to a big pain in the ass

 

[roguetrader]

mutate and survive, it's the only way