Vanlife: Build your own van to live on the road

Re:Vanlife: Build your own van to live on the road by rrdharan on Wednesday February 06, 2019 @09:53AM (#19095461)

Also a shame it only works if you’re white.

(Based on my thankfully limited experience plus https://www.reddit.com/r/hitchhiking/comments/41bbde/hitchhi...)

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Re:Vanlife: Build your own van to live on the road by vanderZwan on Wednesday February 06, 2019 @10:44AM (#19095978)

Well, "only" is an exaggeration but yeah, racist stereotypes do work against you.

I'm half-Asian, which I guess is "white enough" to fly under most of the (conscious and subconscious) racist radars out there. OTOH I can get quite a tan and I used to grow a beard years before it was trendy to do so. Pretty much right after 9/11 actually. The Islamophobic associations were definitely real.

I figured out a cheat mode though: wear thick rimmed glasses[0]. I used cheap plastic +.25 reading glasses so they didn't look fake but didn't give me a headache either. It's totally stupid but it made a huge difference. And this was years before the famouse Curb Your Enthusiasm bit[1], which clearly is an example of "it's funny (and sad) because it's true".

[0] https://old.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/z8h21/whats_the_...

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=14ECj4OcCC0

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