Near the end of the buying process for the trailer, they asked me where I wanted it delivered. Suddenly I realized that I had no idea where exactly I would be living.
I had only given a passing thought to the concept of trailer parks, so it was time to research. I scoured Google Maps for every RV park I could find, and gauged their livability based on the Street View. Very few places had an actual website or any method of contact other than a phone number.
After identifying the best choices, I began calling each one, and finding out that they were all full and had a waiting list. This was unexpected, but by the end of a long calling session, I had two parks with open spots.
The first one was nice and clean, with a swimming pool and laundry facility. I instantly liked it, but it was also the most expensive in the entire Bay Area, which is saying a lot.
The next day, I went to the second location, and things went downhill from there.
The manager wasn’t there, so I called him to check, and he had forgotten about it. While I waited outside the central park office, I overheard residents yelling between their trailers. One lady evidently was sick and had diarrhea all night. Later, I see a young girl stick her head through a hole in a trailer door and start speaking to me in Spanish. I shrug and apologize.
When the manager finally arrives, with a bad combover and a track suit, he says, “Let’s talk first.” So he opens the office building and leads me through a dirty office space to a back room. He tells me to sit on an ugly, stained couch and takes a seat across from me.
He starts his interview by asking vague personal questions, and eventually trying to find out how much money I make. I awkwardly avoid answering in too much detail, telling him only the things he needs to know. Eventually, he stands up and says, “Ok, let’s take a drive.”
“Uhh… Drive?”
Leading me back outside, and he tells me that the available spot is in another lot nearby, and we’ll drive over there together in his minivan.
I stop outside and say, “Oh, I can just drive there. Do you have the address?”
“There’s no address, but it’s really close,” he says, as he opens the passenger side door, grabbing handfuls of trash in the seat, and throwing it in the back of the van. Once he’s cleared out enough for me to sit inside, he orders, “Get in.”
Stupidly, I get in the van.
So we start to drive several blocks away, while he’s pointing out the sites nearby, trying to sell me on the neighborhood. Finally, we drive down a street and pull into a small parking lot between a convenience store and a pawn shop. This lot is extremely small, with around 8 RVs parked in it.
To the left is a line of three old cars with their hoods open. It looks like a “chop shop” for stolen vehicles. At the back corner of the lot is an RV straight out of Breaking Bad, with two guys standing outside of it, wearing sleeveless, open biker jackets and no shirts on underneath. They mostly ignore us.
He points at the line of cars, “There’s the space.”
“Where the cars are?”
“Yeah. I let him work on cars there, but don’t worry, he won’t mind moving them somewhere else.”
I don’t remember exactly what I said after that, but we had an awkward drive back, and I escaped as soon as possible.
Once safe at home, I immediately filled out the rest of the paperwork for the first park and my new home was locked in.