“Look At What We’re Doing With Your Money, You Dick”: How Peter Thiel Backed An “Anti-Woke” Film Festival

The party on Eldridge Street could hardly be contained: Bodies spilled out of the front door onto the sidewalk, and joyous screams echoed from the roof. Inside, under the wood beams of the $7.5 million carriage house, a DJ played techno for a young and queer crowd. Amid throngs of twentysomethings who were pierced and shorn in unusual places, a performance artist named Crackhead Barney roamed around in a Trump mask, breasts bared, past a man painted green from head to toe, wearing only a jockstrap and an alligator headpiece, shut inside a dog kennel. Over the sound of a jazz band, the screams were now clearer:

“This is being paid for by Peter Thiel!”

At the center of the pandemonium was a young artist from Miami named Trevor Bazile. Dressed inconspicuously in a baggy hoodie and jeans, he raced from conversation to conversation, stopping along the way to pluck at a stand-up bass and then to bounce around an art installation set inside a children’s blow-up castle.