Living in a van down by the river is hardly a new phenomenon. But social media has popularized this dirtbag lifestyle into something modern and mainstream. Even the New Yorker is covering #vanlife (a story by Rachel Monroe that's well worth reading, by the way).

I wrote a short piece for Outside Online on the best places to set up camp if you're living out of your van, more obvious spots like Crested Butte and Bend but also places like Brooklyn and Stanley, Idaho. To find those spots, I hit up some prominent van dwellers, including a photographer who lives with her rescue dog, two newlyweds in a Sprinter van named Shaq, and a guy who started a pop-up coffee company out of his VW.