The New Yorker:

Nick Allen’s venue in Dimes Square was a popular gathering spot for right-wing Zoomers. Now he’s opening a new club called Reign, an attempt to build a lasting cultural institution.

By Emma Green

In late February, not long after President Donald Trump took office again, around six hundred people gathered in Washington, D.C., for a “doge appreciation party.” The event was at the penthouse of the Pierce School, a historic building named after President Franklin Pierce. (These days, the person presiding over the penthouse is Brock Pierce, no relation, a crypto tycoon and a former child actor who starred in the 1992 film “The Mighty Ducks.”) The room was full of “big boobs and big ideas,” Kelly Chapman, a contributing writer for the conservative magazine The Spectator, later wrote on Substack. Damir Marusic, a Washington Post editor, recalled overhearing “a group of young men eagerly talking about the Roman Empire.” Before the party, the invitation had made its way to Reddit, and protesters appeared at the event. Outside, they chanted, “Fascists out of D.C.!”

The party was organized by Nick Allen, a thirty-two-year-old co-founder of a fintech company. For the past few years, Allen has become influential by creating new social spaces, especially for young people on the right. His most well-known venture is Sovereign House, an event venue in Lower Manhattan, where he and his friends hosted magazine-issue launches, film screenings, debates, and plays, as well as good old-fashioned parties. The space, which Allen founded in 2023, became a gathering spot for a cross-section of Gen Z-ers: crypto bros, young religious people, internet posters, literary types. Allen’s friends describe him as a Gatsby-esque figure. “Everyone says they know Nick,” one young high-level Trump Administration official told me. “But only a few people really know Nick.”

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