After being a Bicycle Camper for a year, I moved up in the world; I bought a car with the rent money I saved.

I slept in my $350 1969 Ford LTD for about six months. I did not live in it, I slept in it. There is a big difference. It was neat and clean, uncluttered with junk. It looked good during the day wherever it was parked. I was out and about during the day and only came "home" at night to sleep.


I invited a female homeless friend to share my car and sleep on the back seat while I slept on the front. It was good to have company. But she had a mental thing about collecting newspapers, she had to do it and I had to order her out and she didn't take her damn papers, I had to throw them away for her. Some homeless are mentally ill of some type and degree. Except for me, of course.

The resort city of Key West has or had a law that stated it was illegal to "sleep" in a vehicle outside of a camp ground. That law was illegal because the city had no homeless shelter for the homeless to use to avoid breaking that sleeping law. It was illegal also because it was selectively enforced against a class of people, homeless citizens. The cops did not search cars in driveways for people sleeping in them, only cars and vans parked in public areas. One night a homeowner called the police on my and I was given a ticket for having no place to sleep but my car. I'm a Navy veteran, been to Viet Nam, and I earned the right to sleep where I have to sleep.

I decided not to pay the fine but to make them waste money on me by taking me to trial and by paying my room and board while I was in their stinking jail. They gave me a lawyer, a kid fresh outa law school with no balls and no smarts. They called him a public defender, ha ha, he was just a public negotiator at best. I told the punk I was not asleep when the cops found me, I had heard them drive up, so they cannot charge me with sleeping in the car, how simple can it get? The public defender refused to defend me on the basis of the facts, he was just going to go into court and not say anything about the facts. He worked for and was paid by the Florida court system. He was going to do what they wanted, not defend me. The judicial system in Key West Florida was totally absurd.

We picked a jury. One asked the judge, "Are we to understand this man is going on trial for sleeping in his car?"

"Yes." the judge answered. It sounded silly to waste court time and money for what should be a non-crime. Three jurors didn't bother to show up for the trial the next day. The prosecutors, hating homelessness because the town bigshots think that it hurts tourist profits for them, gave me ANOTHER court date. I didn't care, I was hurting them in the pocket book. A few weeks later they quietly dropped my case all together, nul prossed it, in legalese. I guess the cops and the courts must've wasted a few thousand dollars on my horrible "sleeping crime," for nothing. Too bad. My heart is breaking.

If you're in trouble for sleeping where you have to sleep, take it to trial. Make them pay for their illegal discrimination against who they think are the least powerful class, the homeless. Capitalism is trying to make a persecuted example out of the ones who don't play their stinking money game. Make it expensive for them. Power! Support the RIGHT to outdoor living. Street is neat and could be sweet if we fought back.