Conferences are on the wane today. CES? Scaled again. Davos? Deferred. Where’s a moneyed skilled in want of camaraderie to go? Filippo Brignone, a member of the founding household of Costa Careyes, a gated neighborhood in the Mexican state of Jalisco, thinks that “the network of Careyes” might be able to serve in its place. Every yr, Careyes hosts Ondalinda, a five-day pageant. The theme of the most up-to-date version was mycelium, the fuzz of fungal threads by which crops purportedly talk. “Nature’s Internet,” a pre-festival advertising and marketing e-mail known as it, linking to a dress-code temper board.
“We get compared to Burning Man, but we didn’t want Ondalinda to be that,” Brignone mentioned, seated in the palapa of his Pacific-front dwelling. He wore flip-flops, a Schaffhausen watch, and several other beaded chakra bracelets; his graying hair was slicked again. “We have incredible houses,” he went on. When the pageant was new, in 2016, “we were getting calls, like, ‘Can I see a photo of the bathroom?’ ‘Can I see a photo of the toilet?’ Now it’s ‘Please, can I have a house, any house—whatever you have?’ ”
In 1968, Brignone’s father, Gian Franco, an Italian real-estate developer, purchased the twenty thousand acres after seeing them from a aircraft. “It was quite deserted,” Brignone mentioned. “Not good for agriculture.” But good for cliff-top villas with screening rooms and infinity swimming pools. Gian Franco, when establishing his neighborhood, which he envisioned as “a little Positano,” offered solely to consumers who met his twenty-seven standards. (“24. To have faced serious financial problems. 25. To have a sense of humor.”) Heidi Klum and Seal used to personal a home there; Cindy Crawford, Mick Jagger, and Uma Thurman have handed by.
“At one time, my father didn’t want any Americans,” Brignone mentioned. “You want people who have a certain level of consciousness.” He has described the proper sort of individuals as “not interested in watches and cars” however looking for “something that helps them.” In 2011, Lulu Luchaire, a Parisian in search of respite from her job serving to lead Apple’s international retail technique, heard about the place. Five years later, she and Brignone began Ondalinda, which interprets to “beautiful wave,” and whose proceeds partially go to profit native Indigenous communities. (Luchaire didn’t make it to the mycelium pageant due to a green-card snafu.)
Seven hundred and fifty individuals convened at Ondalinda in November; destructive COVID exams had been required. “There was a big debate about if we were going to test everybody again,” Brignone mentioned. “It’s expensive.” (They did.) Among the choices was a chocolate-fungi workshop with Parker Roe, who describes himself as a “mushroom-and-plant-medicine product designer.” Roe stood underneath a ceiba tree in entrance of an array of Bunsen burners and blenders, and addressed the class: “Now start weighing out the ingredients with a scale.”
“Parker!” a scholar known as. “If we were going to add psilocybin, how much per bar should we do?”
“Have you experimented with the medicine before?” Roe requested. He nodded. “O.K. I’ll let you be the judge.” Magic mushrooms weren’t included in the workshop, to the dismay of some attendees. “I didn’t pay eighty dollars to make a mushroom-flavored chocolate bar,” a person in a white fedora mentioned.
Other substances had been plentiful. Erika Valero Tlazohtiani, a shaman in a white robe, informed attendees, “Tobacco is a way to talk with God.” She led a cacao ceremony that concerned ingesting ritualistically ready scorching chocolate and taking a puff from a communal pipe. (Possible unwanted effects: happiness, contentment.) “With this smoke, say thank you to your mothers,” Tlazohtiani mentioned.
Less prescriptive: pop-up retailers, disco naps, pool events at personal villas. “I’ve been to Ibiza, Mykonos, Vegas,” a person with salt-and-pepper hair and John Lennon sun shades mentioned, half submerged in the pool at Casa Selva (six bedrooms, live-in workers, thirty-one hundred {dollars} an evening). “Nothing compares to this.”
“It feels safe,” a girl subsequent to him mentioned. “You know there’s no riffraff.”
Ticket costs, which don’t embrace lodging, begin at eighteen hundred and fifty {dollars}. “We avoid the generation of twentysomethings who come with the idea of a rave in their heads,” Brignone mentioned. “It’s rich people with an intellectual level. Artists, successful businessmen—you know, opinion leaders.” At one mycelium social gathering, bass thumped throughout a polo discipline illuminated by ten thousand candles and towering neon mushroom puppets with red-rimmed eyes. L.E.D. lassos swirled.
“That’s a crazy-awesome outfit, even if you’re not on a lot of drugs,” a man in a glow-in-the-dark T-shirt mentioned, watching a pair in matching sequinned tie-dyed jumpsuits.
“It’s like adult recess on crack, but all the kids on the playground want to play with you,” a philanthropist named Gillian Wynn—the daughter of Steve Wynn—mentioned. “It’s not an unsavory thing like Las Vegas. There’s a wholesome component.” She added, “Everything is tasteful.”
Connections had been made. A shirtless L.A. real-estate developer in latex pants gestured at a person close to the ice-cream buffet. “I used to work with that guy at Morgan Stanley,” he mentioned. “He didn’t recognize me without my tie on.” ♦
