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El Tunco

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El Tunco

Article

El Tunco is a recurring place in the Collected Agenda archive, appearing 2 times across 2 issues between March 31, 2025 and April 04, 2025. The archive places it in contexts such as “Boca Olas in El Tunco. El Tunco being, where you party”; “one black tennis dress from El Tunco”; “Driving down the coast, there is El Tunco, with a boardwalk and a duel hippy and nightlife vibe, lots of surfers”. It most often appears alongside David, El Salvador, New York.

Metadata

  • Category: Places
  • Mention count: 2
  • Issue count: 2
  • First seen: March 31, 2025
  • Last seen: April 04, 2025

Appears In

Source Context

Recovered passages from the original issue text. When the raw archive preserved outbound links inside the source passage, they are listed directly under the quote.

El Salvador
March 31, 2025 · Original source
WHAT I DID Thursday, March 26 El Salvador has taken me out of myself, and I'm glad for that. It's been a different type of writing, too. Exacerbated proximity, and my notes have nothing to do with Me. I’m going to tell you something about Network States. Not here, though. Different forms. I don't want to write too much, now because I am writing something different about all of this. I am doing some reporting, for once. In San Salvador, there is the hacker house - it was other things before, but this is what it is now. Orange art deco, white car at night streaking down the highway, coconut stands and pupuseria and low visibility closer to the airport. “The fast foods signs here remind me of idiocracy (2006),” David is saying, as we near Zona Rosa, a reference to the cartoonish nature of this one low strip, though we pass through the land of the Big Food Boom quickly, then it’s moss and hills and dewy air, quiet night. Then, there's the turn through San Benito, the roads up through El Escalón, the guards at the gate but there's not much need for that anymore, and you could blow right through those flimsy gates anyways, on foot or, with a car if that is what you really set your mind to. It's mossy roads up Calle Norte, plants on the side of the road that are pink and vibrant green. Like animations, almost, I tell David. It's like a compound when we get to the house. Smooth high walls mountainside compound or, it could be like a compound if it wasn't all so opened up. An open air compound and it's all built into the hills. The living room opens up onto the terrace. Stone fountain wall beneath the arched stairway, stone stairway into the hill. I can drift into the pool that extends out over all of it, over the edge of the garden, yes, but it feels like it extends over the whole of San Salvador too. Drift into the pool and you can think about spilling over the edge. You can think about what would happen if the tile walls levitated away and water merged with air; you were taken out too far. Logical conclusion in these moments over ridden by a very strong feeling of; there would be no splattering on those rocks below. The strong feeling suggesting: you could just float away. "There was heat lightning last summer over the volcano," I tell David's friend. "Heat lightning isn't real," David's friend says. "Distant lightning from storms over the volcano that you could see in the dry heat," I corrected myself. No heat lightning now, but you can see the population density of San Salvador, even the areas beyond San Salvador, quite clearly from here. It's mapped out in clusters of light, they become more sparse and shimmery the further away you look. They disappear entirely by the mountain's eventualities and then, it's a big moon hovering above all the rest of it. You can still see the outline of the mountains cast in the glow of the moon. And then the rest is my journalism. I’m sorry. The rest is still secret, the rest until we’re on the coast. On the coast - and I am on the coast now, it's diet coke and coconut water and ceviche at Le Garten. We go to the Bitcoin Farmers Market first. They're keeping all Quiet Tension contained in Tecoluca now. El Zonte is coming to life. Hippy Dippy Crypto Optimism. Even Bitcoin Berlin is evangelizing here. There are kittens up for adoption, and a small dutch woman selling lemonade except it's just butterfly flower and water and lime. No seed oils here. No network spirituality once we sneak past the restaurant and down to the black sand beach. The currents here are crazy. The undertow could sweep you up and spit you right back out somewhere in the Pacific, somewhere down the coast, it could turn in a U-shaped formation and it could grind you into pulp on the rocks. From the black sand shore, the rocks are shrouded in mist. It's like a fairytale, really. David marched right into a pack of wild dogs last night and they all lunged viciously. Stem Cell therapy at Mizata down the coast, and we just might go. They had their first conference here, also, I am told. There will be people to talk to. There will be people who can tell me how to make things last forever. How to become a genius. I don't want to be immortal but if I did, it wouldn't be so I could act in opposition to all the forces of bodily and neurological degradation and come out unscathed. In my immortality purgatory, things just stagnant, then. Complete harmony with the powers that be and in the place of time you find: stasis. I missed the book club in New York. The book club on the seven volume Danish series wherein, time freezes but our lady continues on. The same day over and over and over but our protagonist's hair and nails grow and, presumably, she could even get wrinkles. Aspirations towards a journey towards immortality feel very combative, to me. Test fate when you can and emerge victorious. This feels like an urge I can understand, one I would understand better if I were a boy but I still get it now. You won't win, though, and in the meantime, my hedonism, hedonism for me, makes me feel very very sad. After they told me at Garten Hotel that the cabana was not for me, we moved to Boca Olas. Boca Olas in El Tunco. El Tunco being, where you party. I ordered a blue margarita at the swim up bar. I am on vacation now. My notes are good. The sculptor liked the concepts of Palestra last summer, because when weird people seek exile together, then special things happen. He liked these concepts too, because he is a futurist, and because he says he was cancelled on the premise of prejudice against force and form. David's friend says that the second anyone starts showing delusional and insane tendencies you need to cut them loose along with anyone who doesn't see things clearly. He speaks in language that is intentionally obfuscated sometimes. I am unsure what clarity means to him. On vacation, after I order a blue margarita, David says, "that's a real drunk bitch drink to get.” I say, “it’s just that I like anything that’s blue. This is a weird entry. I am omitting too many details and then randomly inserting others and I’m sorry if this all seems crass. I was not writing in this way this week. I was writing something else. Bitcoin missionaries. I was writing about The Network State. It’s the end of the high season. Plane back to New York. WHAT YOU SHOULD DO In El Salvador In San Salvador, I stayed at a hacker house in the hills, except for one night, where we stayed at Il Buongustaio. Il Buongustaio is where we stayed the whole time in August - Roman looking white marble arches in a sweet garden, and a formal-ish dining room that bleeds into the open air, humid breeze. The rooms are very nice, each one quite spacious and sparse in a chic way, and each one opening up to a private garden. I saw a jaguarundi here. Nature is healing, they told me back at the airbnb, when I first relayed this jaguarundi story.
Inline links: https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!X6Vn!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fa62329cf-e1a7-472f-a34e-611826574e2e_1600x1200.jpeg, Il Buongustaio
Driving down the coast, there is El Tunco, with a boardwalk and a duel hippy and nightlife vibe, lots of surfers, smoothies, oysters the size of your arm, casual beach clubs that stay open late enough and a rock formation resembling an upside-down pig (“el tunco”). Further down the coast, there’s El Zonte which is quieter, black sand beaches and strong currents, Bitcoin beach and the Bitcoin farmers market on Sunday, the only place to eat in a sit down capacity is Garten Zonte, but lunch here provides beach access, too. The sunsets are quite magical, and I like it here best to stay. There are further places down the coast, and there is Costa Del Sol, too, but I didn’t venture this far.
Inline links: El Tunco, El Zonte, Garten Zonte
Live Diary.
April 04, 2025 · Original source
WHAT I DID Thursday, March 27 Midnight in New York, I'm taking stock of my glass apartment in the sky. I brought back nine dresses from El Salvador - eight old ones, one black tennis dress from El Tunco. All to be washed. Open the window. There is spring breeze now, all of a sudden, really, but I've been growing accustomed to real heat. These things I used to hate - dense hot air, beating sun, a day that stretches on under direct natural light, no end, no plans.... I would suddenly like to return to this, actually, over frigid and clipped stories about foggy northern coastlines and other things in that vein. Over stories about New York, and other things in that vein. David has stayed in San Salvador, and then, Santa Teresa, Costa Rica. It would have been basically free for me to come and yes I have commitments here but not too many if we're being really honest. I would have become kind of a freak after three whole weeks in airbnbs that are calling themselves "hacker houses," though, is the main issue. And, I wanted to do laundry and stretch in the spring breeze, open the window, set an alarm. It would be so easy for me to untether the physical circumstances of my whole life, these days. It would be easy to have distance from New York, as the main thing, but distance from physicality more generally, too. I've done it before. Honestly, I'm not eighteen anymore, I don't think it makes sense for me to do it again. I will probably stop being so strange and vague once I have even one conversation with my friends back in New York. For now, it is very strange to be alone. Very strange to walk around even a small space, that even only temporarily, is belonging just to me. The past few weeks have been about eclipsing interiority with observation. Floating in realms that are foreign. Not El Salvador, even. The hacker house stuff more. The dialogue of it all, more. The other reason I am here, home, abandoned visions of a hologram of Santa Teresa and also I already really miss my boyfriend - well there was responsibility and laundry and the reading and the stories to finish but also, the lunar eclipse played a role for sure. Something about the Earthquakes and Volcanoes. The floods and the fights. Seek less direct attention from that vivid piercing beaming beating sky. Seek solid ground, I saw someone say online. So, I did. I'm back in stupid dumb New York. Window open. You can barely feel all that fresh air. Friday, March 28 I do go for a walk in the morning, and I do still love New York, I decide. I want to have very delicate arms and boundless energy. I want to have tremendous discipline in a way so as to elicit joie de vivre, and also paths of clarity. The brain fog is so bad today. In the middle of the night, the jet lag woke me up, and I hate sleeping alone in this apartment. I'm sorry, I know I’m being a child but I hate it, the emptiness, when I wake up from paralysis, there are often moments of brief delusion. Alone, glass house, I have to talk myself down. I’ve tried to bring myself to life, today - long walk, two protein bars, slice of papaya, sushi roll for dinner, diet coke and cigarette, make a Vlog, make a Call. David had sleep paralysis, too, last night, he tells me on the phone. This is weird, because usually, this is a plight that is just for me. In real life, there was a creepy elderly woman occupying the hacker house in El Salvador, too. “I started a magazine last year,” she told me, when I told her I was a writer. “Oh, cool, about what?,” I asked her. “I don’t remember,” she told me. Blank gaze. Empty eyes. She would sometimes walk through our room while I slept, and one time I woke up to her passing by, vacant glance, I was obviously shocked, she looked obviously pleased. “How are ya, Love?” she said. The word “love” here, carrying a lot of the weight in making the indecent violation of space a lot creepier. “It’s fun, isn’t it?,” she told David’s friend, while he was doing the dishes. “Turning the water on and off is fun, it’s all fun, isn’t it?” She had referred to herself as a refugee, in El Salvador. From where, I had asked her. From Canada, she had said. A real eccentric freak, and in David’s dream, he wakes up to her sneaking up behind him, looming over him, it’s all fun isn’t it. She says sinisterly: “do you know what I think?” Then, in his dream, he felt her weight bend the bed springs and begin to smother him. Lunar eclipse. New moon. I find this dream ominous enough that I begin to become very concerned. You have to get out of there, I tell David. I'm leaving tomorrow anyways, he reminds me. Saturday, March 29 I spent the night last night reading at Tense and it was really lovely. Kansas Bowling reading and Valley Latini doing a hip hop show and Beckett Rosset on the Providence Hotel and me on half formed thoughts on the half complete piece I am writing on Techno Spirituality and El Salvador. I’m back in Real Life, and I don't regret it. I spent the morning by myself working on my edits. David is still traveling, and I am being more normal about it this time. In jet lagged fugue state, I burned the kettle down to a lump of molten plastic, not on purpose, obviously. I called my dad who's moral judgment I trust in full, so this clarifies a lot of things. I forgot how much I like running really really really fast. Whenever I am craving the extremes, I should access them through lots of sprints. The wind is crazy today. The wind has everyone whooping and hollering through the streets. I'm making TikToks again. I don't care. There are worse evils or, rather, you can leverage anything for evil if you really want and honestly, I am just trying to have lots of fun. Some of you are awfully pretentious for being addicted to things like Ketamine and Feeld. Not me. I don’t like drugs, and I have a soulmate. It is just as bad if not worse to be addicted to your phone as it is to anything else, but I’m regulating my time, and I’m microdosing my slop - or so I tell myself. Sunday, March 30 I order uber eats groceries at midnight, and then it's like celsius and chicken just washes up at my door. I don't like this. Chemicals, aspartame, the dissolution of the social fabric, really. How these things just materialize when you want to actualize some gross borderline animalistic whim. Craving. Diet Blackberry Pepsi. I would not like to live anywhere but New York City, or really anytime but now when I think it through on a very personal and very literal level. But there is something here that I increasingly am wary of as mere hallucination. There is much to consider. I am trying to be very energetic which, really, is the feeling that I increasingly cast as synonymous with Health. We went to Bacaro for dinner last night, then to Clockwork, later. “Do you know about how to get dinner for free,” some girl sitting next to my friend and me said. Then, she explained the concept of Club Promoters. Yeah I know, I said. I didn’t say it in a rude way. I just told her that I already knew, which I already did. My energy feels back in a way that feels very True today. Before I left for El Salvador, I was getting in the habit of killing time. Looking at an hour and wishing it over. I don’t want to quantify anything. What would happen if I never rushed a second again? This is what I’m trying to figure out. What would happen if I never rushed a second again? This is what I’m trying to figure out. Monday, April 1 My mind was reeling so fast in my Irish Literature class this evening. I started flicking through Internet Web Applications at warpspeed. I made some calls. I didn’t go crazy. “Saying no is a far more reliable path to avoiding sin than saying yes”, I heard someone say, through my fog, through the haze - that snapped me out of it quite quickly. “What if you literalize that, and just say no to everything?” a quiet girl across from me asked. I wrote this part down - “JUST SAY NO TO EVERYTHING!!!!” It was humid, heavy, soon-to-be-hot spring, today, in New York. I lost my head. Truly. I became very braindead very quickly, today. I recovered as best I could. It’s the way these things always go. Unmoored from the interactions you’ve been taking for granted, you’ve been alone with your thoughts and suddenly, you’ve found yourself thinking Nothing At All, and Saying A Lot Out Loud And Saying A Lot Online. You realize, suddenly, how wrong this all is, and then you become briefly concerned that maybe, suddenly, it is already too late for you. Or maybe it isn’t too late after all.. Water on the windowsill. I remember spring two years ago, a taxi cab from Chelsea down to where the East River runs near the Lower East Side. I wore a yellow dress and I ran like the wind from the river to the hotel bar. The fires. The maggots. It was that day in New York when it felt like cosmically, biblically, something bad was probably about to happen. The Seven Plagues. The air was thicker and hotter, then. I am thinking about that day because I was braindead on the Internet then, too. Celsius, protein bar, things had begun all thick and ugly and then I’d been whisked away into a big black car, shuttled to the bar at Nine Orchard, my friends convincing me to stick around and then I did, I stuck around for a while, I never really left after that, come to think of it. “It’s Deep Tech Week in New York,” Shannon tells me, today - whatever that means. She sends me an event as such, and I investigate the schedule for the rest of this week from there. Deep Tech Week is a week of events about Tech, and they added the word Deep in front of it to make it seem more cool, I realize quickly. “Turning Science Fiction into Reality,” the text on the website says, and I don’t really like the sound of that. I find that premise, as strictly a premise, material reality aside, even, to be nearly cartoonishly evil. But, I suppose I’ll try to be less pedantic. I eat a sugar cookie (gluten free). Two protein bars from that new brand DAVID. A brand activation crispy sandwich from Joe And The Juice. The packaging is orange instead of that usual nice pastel pink. KEVIN DURANT, the packing says. It is nine pm, and I am suddenly ravenous. Good. Looks like I got my corporeality back. I really was planning to go to the Deep Tech Party tonight, but the rain started in an instant, in the exact instant I was set to leave, really. Like it’s trying to communicate some form of serendipity, reason, warning, whatever. Monday is the day where I let myself get every last thing done on my phone. My eyes burn. It rots the soul. My week continues and I become much more particular with myself. Tuesday, April 2 It’s not that I mind being kind of exhibitionist, even, but I can’t control the feedback loop and I start to drive myself mad. Taking stock of the state of the union like THINGS THAT ARE "IN": Swimming
Inline links: https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!d8Mb!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F7e326f20-1685-4e59-8b0e-e29ce386a22e_950x406.png, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!Yntp!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F160f61ba-48c8-4c23-92f8-600a970e8eb0_708x484.png

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