YouTubeLand: You Will Get Towed!
Oddly mesmerizing video slices from a private Dallas parking lot.
Text: Laurie Blanchard
Video | One night, while recuperating from a cold, I was sitting on the couch going down a rabbit hole on YouTube. I have no idea how I landed there but somehow I ended up on a channel, of a series of videos that were filmed outside a business, that were people being towed from the company parking lot, or of people just in general, behaving badly in public. Right under the signs that say, “We have cameras filming.”
The videos were oddly mesmerizing. Short little filmed and hilariously edited video slices of life. A beginning, middle and end, set to a soundtrack. With sound effects, and odd and yet somehow relevant, little tidbits of knowledge sliced into the videos. I couldn’t stop watching. And laughing. Then I felt like a terrible person for watching these. People are having a bad night. I shouldn’t be so amused by their situation.
But when I learned more about the lot and the situation, my sympathy quickly dried up. There are 10 or 12 signs posted outside the building warning people not to park there or they’ll be towed. There are signs warning them of the cameras. Literally telling them, “If you do stuff in our parking lot, it will be on YouTube.” People just look at the signs, do scandalous stuff and walk away and then are shocked their car is gone when they get back and they are online the next weekend.
The channel has over 200K subscribers. One of the videos has had over 20 million views. I’m obviously not alone in my voyeurism/schadenfreude. I had to reach out to the man who is making these little cinema verite movies and find out more.
Can you tell me your title and the name of your company? How long have you worked there?
Chris Gebhardt: Sure. I'm Chris Gebhardt, the chief engineer for VIRTBIZ Internet Services. We're an enterprise cloud hosting facility for mission-critical data services. We're a family owned and operated company and I've been on staff since 1996.
At what point did you get the idea of making the videos?
Gebhardt: The company had just moved into its new digs in Deep Ellum. It's an artsy area of Dallas and has always been known for the live music scene.
I was working a lot of nights back then, and having come from the suburbs, I saw some stuff that just struck me as funny or weird, and sometimes the security cameras would capture it. It was just random stuff that struck me as interesting. Overly-affectionate couples, hordes of runners passing by for the local marathon, car crashes and stuff like that. When we had a Prius towed from the parking lot and the tow truck lifted the entire thing in the air like a forklift, I had to share it with my friends.
At the core, though, I'm making the videos because they're fun for me to make. Most of them revolve around a common formula: car gets parked, the car gets towed, the owner returns to find a car is gone. There are different variations, and some reactions are more animated than others. But I try and find a story with each one. Kind of like people-watching at the airport or something like that.
"Who is this guy, why is he dressed like that, and where's he going? What's the motivation? Is it an epic battle between our hero in the tow truck and the parking scofflaw?"
It's gone from just posting up some security cam video to making little mini-movies. All the drama in 4 to 7 minutes.
Do you think the slowdown in people parking there is an outreach of your success on your channel, and the press you have gotten? As people are hearing about it, the word is spreading not to park there?
Gebhardt: That's tough to say. We once went for something like four or five weeks without tows. At that point, I wasn't sure if everyone had finally wised up, or if the venues were doing a better job of instructing their patrons where not to park or if it was just a matter of the space after Christmas and New Year’s is pretty slow. Then the drought broke and we had something like four cars towed in a single night. Since then we've had at least one tow per week.
In a very real sense, the YouTube channel is a victim of its success. The more publicity it gets, the more people will be pre-programmed not to park in the lot. On the other hand, no matter how many people see the videos, there are always going to be far more people who haven't.
Why do you think so many people park when it clearly says no parking?
Gebhardt: No idea. They ignore the signs and I guess think the rules don’t apply to them, or they are just so focused on what they are doing, that they don’t see the signs. The signs are everywhere, though.
Why do trucks show up so fast?
Gebhardt: The impound yard is just blocks away, and the driver only gets paid by the tow so they are motivated.
Are most of the towees at a bar? Why are there so many people doing this? When did this problem first arrive?
Gebhardt: The company I work for has been there for 13 years, and it has been a problem since day one. Parking is scarce. When we were first moving in, we literally had the moving truck and driver sitting waiting to unload because we had people parking in our loading bay area. When you are paying movers by hours and renting the truck, that costs money. For our clients, it’s even worse. If they are in a hurry, have a maintenance window and need something done in a hurry, that’s a huge problem if they show up and there is nowhere to park.
What is the average number of cars towed per week?
Gebhardt: We’ve had weeks with 10 cars towed and, like I was telling you about, four weeks with none. It depends on the season and what is going on for the neighborhood. It’s a very good thing for the business to not have people parking in our lot that doesn’t belong there. So a slow week for towing is a good week for our business.
Why do people take pictures of the sign that says no towing? So many do this.
Gebhardt: I’m guessing they do this because they want to have the number to call the tow truck, but why they don’t just call the company from the sign ... I don’t know. Maybe it’s easier to take a picture than write it down.
Do your employees call the tow company or are they just circling around like that knowing so many illegally park there?
Gebhardt: It can work both ways. The techs who work here, have multiple jobs while on shift, one of which is making sure the generator is running right, backups, bandwidth, and site security. Also, they make sure the parking lot is clear for our customers. If techs see someone park there that doesn’t belong there, it is also part of their job to notify the tow company. The tow company has a contract to tow cars that are illegally parked. If the tow company has a question over which car to tow (does it belong in our lot or not) they call our team.
Do you get a commission from the tow company?
Gebhardt: No, we don’t get any money. The tow company doesn’t get any money from us. The fee to the owners of the cars is $150. The tow operator has to pay driver, fuel, mileage, office, overhead, etc. That wouldn’t leave a whole lot over to pay a kickback. No money changes hands; that’s how it works here anyway.
Has anyone ever called you and said, “I saw myself on camera and being towed on YouTube”?
Gebhardt: Yes, a couple of times. They were, for the most part, good sports.
Have you ever had someone get dangerous about being towed?
Gebhardt: We had someone who was really drunk show up and threaten to shoot us through the intercom. We are safe inside the building. We just called the cops to deal with him.
Has anyone ever tried to get even with you or the staff?
Gebhardt: A guy parked his giant, jacked-up Ford F-150; he was really intoxicated. He took payback, by taking the key to his truck and keyed all four sides of one of our employee’s vehicles. This was not a smart move. We have videos, we have his license plate on file, and the tow company has his license on file. So it’s no secret who that person was; he got a visit from the police, lost job opportunity and had to pay to have our employee’s car completely repainted.
What gave you the idea to share the videos publicly? What has the response been from co-workers/friends initially?
Gebhardt: When I first started sharing these videos, it was really just to show my friends some of the goofy stuff that goes on in our environment. I've been in the suburbs all my life. Some of the stuff that happens in an urban environment can seem so wild. That's what caused me to start with
the videos in the first place. I didn't really intend to make them for mass consumption. Back in the day when I started posting the videos, YouTube wasn't the massive force it is now. Today you've got people who are making really good livings producing all sorts of random content and monetizing it on YouTube.
Back when I got started, it was just the easiest way to put a video on the internet and send your buddies a link. Or at least that's what it was to me. It was sort of happenstance that the videos could also be seen by other random people. I guess I knew that was part of the deal, but it never occurred to me that others would start watching and commenting. I'm like an accidental YouTuber. One day I looked and there were a couple of hundred subscribers to my channel. So I kept making videos, and I guess those people shared them around. Things sort of snowballed.
Most of the staff around the shop tend to be mildly amused by the shenanigans. We sort of live with it every day. I've got family who lives in Brooklyn, New York, and they're really nonchalant about the videos. It's like: "Oh, you only had two con-artists, three tow trucks and someone defecating on your fence? We call that 2 in the afternoon." Then I have other family members who live out in the middle of nowhere and they think some of what we show is like the wildest thing in the world. So I think the reaction to what gets posted is all over the map. Everyone seems universally surprised that it has generated so much interest.
And I'll keep telling them, nobody is more surprised than I am.