They’re the Urban Campers. We’re knocking on their doors and having a look inside.
(Photo: Lauren Carol Smith)
Walking down Wythe Avenue in Greenpoint, it’s hard to miss Beth O’Brien’s baby-blue Ford Econoline, haphazardly decorated by orange foot and paw prints. “When I first bought it I was like, ‘Yeah, I’m gonna repaint this because it’s kind of embarrassing,’” O’Brien said. “But, to be honest, I’m a little bit charmed by it.”
After a two-and-a-half-month surfing trip to New Zealand in 2009, the 36-year-old film technician, artist and surfer returned to her Williamsburg apartment (she now lives in Greenpoint) inspired to buy one of the camper vans that are ubiquitous there. “When I got back here I was like, ‘That’s a good way to be able to go to beach towns in Long Island that are too expensive for me to rent a hotel room in,’” she said. So she typed “camper van” into Craigslist and only one thing came up. It was her van.
Beth O’Brien (Photo: Lauren Carol Smith)
The story of the camper van’s original owners is a little bit The Golden Girls and a little bit Thelma & Louise. “It was a couple of middle-aged women who had driven it from Portland. They had outfitted it inside to travel and sleep in – that’s how they got across the country,” said O’Brien. The ladies (the ones who decorated it the way it is) were asking for $1,500, but since they were moving to England the day O’Brien went to see it, she was able to bargain them down to $500 cash.
The first couple of summers she had the van, O’Brien traveled to places like Montauk and Long Beach – usually for four or five nights at a time, though sometimes as many as nine or ten or as little as one. “I would park in friends’ driveways or in front of their houses . . . I felt safest that way,” O’Brien said. She would crash on the van’s “sleeper sofa,” essentially a mound of cushions that fold and unfold from couch to bed.
(Photo: Lauren Carol Smith)
It was that first summer that the van got its nickname, bestowed on it by a group of Montauk teenagers who were riding by on bikes. “One night the windows were open, and I heard one of them shout, ‘It’s the Creeper!’ like pointing at the van, and I was like, ‘That’s such a great name for the van!’ So, I’ve called it the Creeper ever since,” O’Brien said in between laughter.
The Creeper was originally intended to be a “one-summer deal,” and indeed O’Brien uses it less frequently now that she’s gotten busier with work; but she’s still putting up with the hassle of parking it around the city. “I do like having it to be able to stay in,” she said. “As long as it doesn’t become incredibly expensive or a real pain, I’ll probably hold onto it.” And with a name like the Creeper, who could give it up?
(Photo: Lauren Carol Smith)
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