Escape to Feÿtopia: Community & Magic in a French Château
Discovering new subcultures, and learning how they built such a special place
EDIT 1/18/24: I added some context from the the founder Jess on how they built such a great culture
I’ve spent the last two weeks at a wonderful community called Feÿtopia after discovering it on the Supernuclear newsletter. It’s a ~30 person community in a French Château that’s infused with a bit of magic. It’s filled with academics, technologists and artists, and many are only there for a week or two as they unplug, connect, and recharge.
I didn’t know a soul before coming, but I left with a full heart, a dozen new friends, and some new inspiration to create beauty and build even stronger community in my life.
From its inception, Feÿtopia was intended to be a place to experiment with new ways of organizing and being in the world. We’re handed the default world and, most of the time, unquestioningly live within. It’s like water. It’s a gift to step outside of it and be reminded that life is a blank canvas, and a lot of what’s around us is there because of accident rather than engineering. Capitalism is a great driver of innovation, but doesn’t provide compelling answers for how we should exist as humans. How can we build deep relationships as adults? Who am I? What kind of world we want to create? It’s so refreshing to spend time with folks grappling with these questions.
It’s easy to divide the world along nationalistic, religious, or class lines, but this is too coarse to really capture the vibe of a community. When I left my job at a tech startup to start Eureka, I went from a world of certainty in quarterly goals, OKRs and mission to a world of uncertain exploration. Some were hacking on things in the wilderness for years, still waiting for their big break. It sounds obvious, but I had no idea there were so many people people that opted out of the default of trying to move up the ladder and make their manager happy. Discovering that community gave me permission to explore.
My next step, post-Eureka, is involving an even broader exploration. Others here made a similar transition years before and stayed in this new world full of art, possibility, flexibility and life. Feÿtopia is part of an archipelago of immersive art collectives, festivals, and coliving communities, held together by brilliant, loving, beautiful people who want to cut their own path through the world. Burning man was my first experience with society-level experiments, and this is another variation on this theme, where the experiment is less of a vacation and more interwoven in daily life. Some are working hard on their day jobs, but a typical day for others is to sleep in, working out, work on cool art projects, party in the evening, and then do it all over again. It’s a life focused on pleasure, people, and self-expression. It feels a bit like an idealized form of early retirement, a world free of pressure and profit-oriented constraint. The money will work itself out one way or another.
I consider myself lucky that I genuinely enjoy science, engineering, and creating new products and technologies that help people, and I wouldn’t be happy without that in my life. Capitalism and I get along. But I’m grateful to know that this world exists, and have much more conviction that a post-scarcity world can be filled with meaning and joy. I’d like to bring back some of this into my daily life in San Francisco, so I did some reflecting on some of the things that I think help make the community here sing. Here are some raw thoughts.
The space. Of course it’s awesome to spend time in a gorgeous, historic French chateau, but there’s more to it than that. It houses roughly 20-30 people, and it’s remote (a 10 minute drive away from the city). This means that there are enough people that you’re likely to find a few you really click with, and it’s hard to leave, so you end up spending a lot of time hanging out with folks. Dinner turns to drinks by the fire turns to a late night sauna session, and before you know it you’ve been talking for 6 hours and it’s time to go to bed. Someone even commented that it wouldn’t be the same in Paris and they would prefer to have a community house that’s more detached from the city. I think I still prefer to live in the density of San Francisco, but want to find rituals and structures to recreate some of this dynamic.
There also are many specifics that make the space a joy. There’s there’s often people playing beautiful music on the piano and guitars. I’ve really enjoyed playing piano more often and even had my first (attempt at) jamming! They have a hot tub and sauna, both wood-fired, and paired with the well-equipped gym it leaves your body feeling great and healthy, and gives many opportunities for bonding. They have a bunch of Soundboks speakers, which are battery and bluetooth powered and really get the party started. There’s 24/7 bread, butter, coffee, and tea available, delicious food (dinners are partially prepared by the community), and plenty of wine for the evenings. There are many cozy common spaces to lounge and relax and fireplaces that naturally attract people to hang out together. The raw ingredients are there for people to connect, have fun and feel great.
The people and culture. At Euca (my community house), after some bad experiences we’re all very cautious about adding new people. They can be very hard to remove, and cause chaos and breakdown for the whole community. Here, new people arrive and leave every week, but somehow everyone stays close, the chores get done, and harmony is maintained.
I asked Jess, the founder of Feÿtopia, about how she established such a good culture. She said that things weren’t always ideal, and there were periods where they had high turnover with people who were mostly there to party. It was tiring and not what they were looking for. They then connected with some folks from the Embassy who were great community builders, having a similar effect as “10x engineers” have on leveling up a whole engineering org. They joined the Fey family just as another wave of lockdowns happened, so they had a lot of quality bonding time together while they prototyped what they wanted their community to be.
Now they have strong relationships, an established culture, and have systems in place around applications, interviews, and a structured onboarding. They try to ensure at least half of the people in the house are already part of the family to set the right tone for the newcomers. From that base they’ve deliberately grown the family, and word is getting out. People keep telling me they’ve heard about Fey and they’re excited to come. So, in summary: have some experts at building community, invest deeply in your initial core, prototype your culture, then set up systems and scale deliberately.
Have some experts at building community, invest deeply in your initial core, prototype your culture, then set up systems and scale deliberately.
You see certain behaviors being modeled strongly when you arrive. It’s a strong “do-ocracy”. There are many well-attended talks, events, and workshops happening every day, which makes you naturally want to attend and create something yourself. Ed leads a daily workout called “GGGG” (Greek Gods and Goddesses Gym), and he does a great job of hyping everyone up, leading the workout, and making it fun for everyone. Again, it makes you want to participate and add your own thing. The overall branding and vibe also helps - this is a place to create and connect, so people bring that intention when they arrive. And again, the repeat Feÿtopians help keep the culture alive and strong.
It was also really fun to be really open and friendly with strangers. Simply by being there you know that they’re probably cool people and down to chat, so I’d just go up to anyone and say hi. This happens at Burning Man, too, and it’s one of the things I miss most in the “real world”. I should probably just discard this dichotomy and assume that everyone is friendly and down to chat, even if it’s wrong some of the time, as it makes the world feel like a village and can sometimes go so well.
Shared purpose. I think two other ingredients they nail here are having a why, and building things together. It’s not enough to just hang out and chat with nice people. My second time at Burning Man I was much more involved in the planning, prep, and work, and I felt much more connected to the camp, especially the people I was working alongside. I’ve heard other say their favorite part is actually build week, which is hard labor in the scorching desert! Feÿtopia has a clear why, “prototyping the world of tomorrow,” and plenty of opportunities to create things together, from talks and art projects to music and food. This also helps select for a certain kind of hippie countercultural optimist builder, which then reinforces the cycle.
My intention coming here was to write more, and to inject some randomness in my life to learn what else is outside of the bubble I’ve been in while being heads down and working on Eureka. It was a bummer getting covid in the middle, with 5 days isolating and additional time being masked and eating alone, but I was touched by the care from people that I had just met, bringing me food and medicine and checking in on me. We avoided an outbreak, and fortunately only one other was impacted; my case was mild and I’m now back to feeling pretty much normal. I’m still always nervous about Long Covid, which can happen to otherwise healthy people after a mild case, so I’ll hold off on strenuous activity for another week just to be safe.
In the end, I made a bunch of new, wonderful friends. I got some momentum with writing on my newsletter, something I was feeling a bit blocked on over the previous month. I gave a talk on AI safety and have found some real passion diving into that literature. I’ve been leaning into photography a bit more, too, and have been learning how to better edit in Lightroom (some samples are sprinkled in this post). I’m even collaborating with a very cool artist, lending my technical skills as part of a performance piece.
I’m so grateful for my time here and creating the space in my life to unplug and enjoy. I’m excited to bring some of this magic back to my communities in San Francisco, and I can’t wait to come back next season. Thank you Feÿtopia and see you soon!