STAY WITH STRANGERS...

Couch-surfing has become really popular among travel enthusiasts, especially young travelers, with the average age of a couch-surfer being twenty-seven. There have been many sites that help travelers find free accommodations while abroad--like the Hospitality Club, but in 2004, the creation of the non-profit website couchsurfing.com put the rest of the networks on the back burner. Started by a web consultant from the US, Casey Fenton, the "Couch Surfing Project" gives people a new way to expereince travel, whether you are currently traveling, have traveled, plan on traveling, or if you just want to show travelers a good time in your city, or any combination of the above.

The idea of relying on the kindness of strangers and sharing a love of travel is what draws a lot of people to sites like this. Ranked as the number one couch-surfing network by the Times Online (UK edition), The Couch Surfing Project now has 1,469,958 couch-surfers in over 230 countries and territories in the world. Word of mouth about positive experiences also help communities like this grow, and there have been 3,801,717 postitive experiences using the Couch Surfing Project’s website (that’s 99.886% positive).

A secondary reason for the growth of couch-surfing is hard economic times, this is especially true in the US, which is the number one country that is surfed.

A significant distinction between the Couch Surfing Project and other hospitality networks are the kinships that form among couchsurfing.com’s users. The website, which initially aimed to connect travelers with locals, now serves as a social networking website where users get more than a free place to stay—they encounter “cultural exchange, friendship, and learning experiences” (Part of the Couch Surfing Project’s Mission Statement).

Many cities, like San Francisco, have developed groups based on interests and hobbies within their locations that join together for social engagements that accommodate both locals and travelers—San Francisco is the tenth most popular city couch-surfed in the world. Every San Francisco couchsurfers is invited to meet up with others on a regular basis—at least once a week— for drinks, coffee, and games, and are also invited to other outings like potluck picnics, attending city parades/events together, etc. The San Francisco branch of couch-surfers are all invited to attend any couch-surfing event in the city, and those who have participated in the gatherings have become a close community.

The SF Underground, the weekly Wednesday night gatherings, change location every week, but often occur in a bar or coffee shop. The events are crowded with both travelers and regulars who live in or around the city. “It’s hard for me to meet people because I’m older than most of the people I go to college with and I feel like they don’t get me sometimes, but when I started going to the Underground I met hella people who were my age, and way more like-minded,” says Brooke Bates, 28, who has been a resident of San Francisco for seven years. Brooke, who got the travel bug after she started working in a downtown hostel, joined couch-surfers to host at first, but now she plans on connecting with people during her upcoming trip to London for Christmas.

The SF Underground is a general couch-surfing group, but there are also many enthusiast groups within the city, like the SF Foodies group, which is one of the largest of these in the city—more than one-hundred and fifty members. Emmanuel Lemor, a thirty-eight year old San Francisco resident, is one of the group’s moderators and says that the group was started for “anyone who loves food!” Lemor, who is originally from France, joined the couch-surfing network in 2007, and started the SF Foodies group in May of 2007. The group is currently doing a San Francisco A-Z restaurant series, and is on N for Nicaraguan.

While many cities have different groups, the San Francisco couch-surfing community has developed a kinship with other locals. While the focus and base of couch-surfing includes foreigners, it has taken a turn in the direction of also deeply connecting these locals. “I’m no athlete, or no freshman, but I don’t have to be to find the real chill people in the city,” says Brooke Bates.

SCOTT--MY FAVORITE NAKED COUCH SURFER

Pouring a glass of Merlot into a stemless wine glass, a tall and burly dark-haired man says to "say when" while looking back at his new houseguest. The man, Scott Porter, wearing no shirt, no pants, and no shoes--is completely nude. He is pouring a second glass of wine for his guest, Alex Lehmann, who is staying on Scott's couch for a few days while traveling through the United States.

Scott, one of the 1,469,958 people who have joined the couchsurfing.com network, started riding the couch-surfing wave in October of 2007. The non-profit website is dedicated to making connections, not just finding a free place to stay. The website, which updates statistics hourly, currently states that there have been 1,704,799 friendships created from using the website. Because Scott is very active in the San Francisco couch-surfing scene, he encounters many foreigners who are eager to have a unique experience (San Francisco is the tenth most popular city to couch-surf in the world).

Walking into Scott’s apartment you can see that he is a born host. With a couple hundred of wine bottles in multiple racks, sake bottles covering his kitchen countertops, and a large photography studio that takes up a large portion of his studio apartment, the forty-six year old man has shared his passions with more than one hundred couch-surfers, and this number continually grows.

Scott, who has recently moved to Oakland from San Francisco, is a nudist photographer, which is quickly evident once you set foot in his roomy and open downtown studio apartment. From the time he opens his door wearing only his very small black shorts, a courtesy he gives to those he has not met before, you can feel the “clothing optional” atmosphere. Many nude photographs matted and framed hang along his living room walls behind his large vinyl blue couch, which has a pull out bed that couch-surfers stay on.

While he is an extremely active member of couch-surfers, he also enjoys wine and sake, which often overlap with couch-surfers and serves as a nice icebreaker. “I’m kind of a shy person until I get some sake or wine into me,” he says. Couch-surfers, as well as nudists, are often stereotyped as very outlandish and open with everyone, and although Scott has such a friendly and open demeanor, his behavior is anything but eccentric. While he does offer guests some of his wine and sake, generally couch-surfers pay their own way when it comes to travel necessities like food, beverages, and toiletries.

Sipping on a glass of red wine, Scott tells the story of one of his favorite couch-surfers, a woman from Spain whose family owns a vineyard. She stayed with him during a Spanish wine exposition in San Francisco, so Scott got into the event for free. “That wasn’t even the best part,” his mouth grins from side to side as he remembers the day. Winemakers don’t like to ship partial cases back home, so he got the “leftovers” of the festival. Seventy bottles of free Spanish wines just for knowing that one couch-surfer.

Just as he enjoys the couch-surfers he hosts, Scott’s home is a popular request for travelers. His home is a “clothing optional” place, and gives travelers who are looking for an extremely unique experience an interesting time. “When I put up that I am a nudist, I thought nobody would want to stay with me, but I started getting like a hundred requests a day,” he says about his relaxed home.

Even though many people stay with Scott for the nudist perspective, some couch-surfers just want to stay with someone who will open up their home and mind to visitors, so that they leave with great memories. Thirty-nine year old Maria Carmela Marino from Italy, who joined couch-surfers in August of 2007, said that one of her favorite parts of couch-surfing with Scott was, “The delicious duck in Korean sauce he cooked for Christmas, which seems to have become a tradition!”

Some couch-surfers, like Chris Cosner, are fairly local and only looking to stay on someone’s couch for one night, and end up having more fun than they originally anticipated. Chris, a twenty-four year old couch-surfer from Stockton, stayed with Scott one night for a naked wine and cheese party, where he unexpectedly “became a naked couch-surfer.”

Scott, who attends many San Francisco Underground (SF Couch-Surfing Group) events, loves that couch-surfers are a unique kind of traveler. “It takes an open mind to be a couch-surfer and to stay on a strangers couch,” he says. Because he is a very active member in the Bay Area couch-surfing scene, he has met all the couch-surfing staff, including the founder, CFO, and Base-Camp members. Scott says that knowing them is helpful in case something happens—you know exactly who to contact to fix the situation.

A folder on Scott's couch-surfing profile shows a folder of pictures labeled naked couch-surfers. A lot of couch-surfers started staying with him because they have always been curious about how a nudist lives, and many started asking Scott if he would take a nude photograph of them. Because he has his own studio in his apartment, he has been able to take nude photographs of any couch-surfer that wants to, some even stay longer than planned just to take the picture. He has taken eighty-two nude couch-surfing photographs so far, all posted on the couch-surfers website, and plans on taking more. “I love when people are excited about what I do and are interesting in participating,” Scott says.

SAFETY AND SECURITY IN THE COUCH-SURFING WORLD

As Elisa Comer looks for a house with no front door, no visible address— just a square kitchen window next to a dive Sushi restaurant that she’s supposed to crawl through— she begins to wonder what exactly she has gotten herself into. Comer wanders around the west Hastings area in Vancouver, British Columbia—the West Hastings area is often referred to as the Tenderloin of Vancouver—until she reaches her kitchen window, where she will be couch-surfing for the first time with a fellow couch-surfer from the Couch Surfing Project’s community. “When [her host] Alex first said go through the kitchen window, I kinda laughed cuz I thought he was joking, and then a few minutes later I knew he was totally serious,” Comer says.

Comer, one of the 644,074 females registered on the Couch Surfing Project’s website, hopes that she experiences a successful surfing, like 1,654,242 couch surfers already have using the website. The idea behind couch-surfing, a wildly growing trend, is generally that one member of the community stays with another member while traveling. While there are many other benefits to couch-surfing besides free lodging, the reliance on trusting strangers is the only way to have success while couch-surfing, which can lead to issues such as safety and security.

A major concern for travelers is safety and security during their trip. People like Comer, who have fewer reservations about security than others, says that safety is one of her top concerns while traveling. “If I don’t feel safe, I’m gone,” Comer says. She felt that although the security was rather lax in her host’s home in Vancouver, seeing as how anyone could open their unlocked kitchen window, she was safe with so many people staying together—there were thirteen people sleeping on the floors of the small one bedroom apartment.

After talking to over forty people— individually, in groups, and through the couch-surfing message system— I found that not many safety and security issues have come up, or at least have not been reported to the Couch Surfing Project. Most of the issues are small, and fairly common sense items; issues that can be expected during couch-surfing are equivalent to those if you were to open your home up for a party.

THE COMMUNITY’S TIPS

To help ensure the safety of both couch-surfers, as well as hosts, the Couch Surfing Project has put together some safety guidelines that specify dos and don’ts for smart surfers. The list, which is a basic bullet point list of tips, gives basic, common sense traveling advice, with few tips specifically for couch-surfing. For example, they suggest filling out your profile completely, and only surfing with those whose profiles are completely filled out, as well as never making couch-surfing arrangements via telephone, email, or in person, but through the messaging system set-up on couch-surfers.

SOLVING A COUCH-SURFING PROBLEM

“Don’t move!” Lan Nguyen shouts to her friend Roxi as she points to the shards of glass that are scattered all over the linoleum floor. Ngyuen starts looking for the broom to clean up what was formerly known as her couch-surfing host’s kitchen window. Nguyen, along with two other friends, are in Canada couch-surfing while on a hiatus from employment. Something going wrong while your host is out of the house is always nerve-racking, but when you met your host only twenty-four hours prior, a body-altering tenseness starts to take over as your mind races in anticipation of their reaction.

The Couch-Surfing safety guidelines say that if you “have an issue with another [couch-surfing] member, the first step is to discuss it with them if you feel comfortable doing so.” So the young women nervously called their hosts to let them know that while dancing around the kitchen, Roxi’s arm hit and broke the window. “They were totally cool about the situation. We paid them for the damages, and then they took us out for drinks,” Nguyen says. The community also has a safety committee that can be contacted if members are unable to solve the problem themselves, or if there are legalities included in the problem.

SECURITY

The wooden front door swings open as a few small kids say “Trick or Treat.” In broken English and at slightly different times, three young men from northern Basque country anxiously respond with an enthusiastic “Happy Halloween.” The three men are staying in San Francisco with a first time couch-surfing host, and longtime San Francisco resident Brooke Bates. “They didn’t know what Halloween was. So I showed them pictures and told them what was up,” Bates says. After Bates explained Halloween, and got them all jazzed up to participate, she had a small dilemma. They were planning on getting back at different times of the night, and Bates was unsure about giving them a key to the house, like a lot of couch-surfers do.

After making other arrangements with her roommates, Bates decided not to give them a key. “They were awesome but I’m just not down to give up my house keys to strangers—no matter how cool they are,” Bates says. Many couch-surfing hosts feel that there is no safety or security threat when giving surfers a key to a home so that they can come and go whenever they please. But others, like Bates, feels more control of the situation when she knows that “nobody else is runnin’ around with my house keys.” Security of your home is a concern for a lot of surfers and host who participate in the Couch-Surfing Project.

While the Couch Surfing Project has a system in place for safety concerns, security matters are mostly left up to the surfer, and to a small degree the host. Being aware of normal couch-surfing procedures is the smartest way to travel safely. For instance, having a complete profile and leaving honest feedback of hosts for future surfers is an easy way of taking precautions, as well as taking advantage of the vouching system set-up on the website.

EYES OF THE COMMUNITY

This community is like every other community— sometimes things can go wrong and sometimes do. The couch-surfing project is run on the basis that members look out for each other, every time that a reference is written or read, every time a member participates in couch-surfing group activities, or contact the safety committee for problems, all of these help the project (community) run smoothly.