The Real World: Medellin
In the first ten days of our grand South American journey, we have stayed in a tent, a hostel, a BnB, and a boutique hotel. When we got to Medellin we were ready for our next adventure in sleeping arrangements: the co-living space.
I’m sure you’re asking, what in the world is a co-living space? I didn’t know either when we booked it so I had to look it up. According to Coliving.org coliving is “shared housing designed to support a purpose driven life.”
If this sounds like something that would only fly in like Sweden or in the rarified air of San Francisco, you’d be correct.
The place we’re staying at is called 20Mission and according to their website it is “a 41 room community in San Francisco for art and technology creators in the heart of the Mission District.” (picture the Doejo on Silicon Valley).
If this is not cliche enough already, it was started by a guy who made his fortune in Bitcoin. (Seriously you can’t get more San Francisco than this place).
But in all honesty, I got to give him credit. Mr. Bitcoin guy was smart enough not just to capitalize on the SF tech and real estate goldrush but to also build an escape plan: 20Mission #2, a Marslike colony in Medellin for when all the hot air in SF inevitably causes the entire city to physically uproot from planet earth and float away into the atmosphere.
So that’s where we are staying — at the Mars Colony in Medellin.
In reality for all the lofty talk with on the website about collaborative working, yada yada, it turns out it’s really just an apartment that you share it with a handful of random people, more like the Real World, Medellin.
And just like in the TV show, it appears that no one here actually has jobs either.
When we first got in we were greeted by our housemate and resident house elder Jeff who has been living (co-living?) here now for three months.
After giving us a tour of the shared kitchen amd communal area, I was curious about this whole community of technology and artistic co-livers working from their laptops while trotting around the globe.
So I asked him if he was working while down here. “Oh me? No. he replied emphatically. “Actively not working atually.”**
Got it. Cool. Well, do any of the other people living here work? I asked him.
“Uh…I don’t think so. I think one guy might have a blog.”
In his head, he started rifling off all the people that lived in the buiilding.
“There’s Ana, our other housemate who is studying Spanish. She doesn’t work. There’s a Canadian couple studying Spanish. They don’t work. There’s Tim downstairs. He doesn’t work. Michelle. I don’t think she works. Yeah, I don’t think anyone works.”
So there you have it. If you are currently living in SF and you’re not too keen on the idea of floating off into space and leaving all your earthly possessions and family behind, you might consider checking out co-living Medellin. It seems to be a pretty sweet gig. You don’t have to work. The whole community has an attitude of co-live and let live. And best of all, when the apocalypse hits and US cash ain’t worth nothing to nonboday, according to 20Mission website, you can easily make payments in Bitcoin.
