The William Banks Party — Photos, Noise, Report
A Look At The 'Jail Saga' Hoaxster's NYC 'Welcome Home' Party
PHOTOS by JACK LUDKEY, ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED 4.6.25
There’s a spot between William Banks' eyebrows that, if laminated, slips, squeaks (just barely), then catches, like running your finger down a cardboard cutout. There’s a spot there between his eyebrows that catches. Your finger rumbles. There’s a bubble in the surface right after—an inconsistency. You’re running your index finger across the “Free William Banks Poster” with his mugshot on it, outside of his welcome home party. That squeak that you feel—it mimics how his head feels in real life.
I’m serious. I’ve touched it.
He came out on the dance floor, letting people touch his head to cleanse their souls of Atheism. The walls of Mi Sabor Cafe in Bushwick were similarly caked in a glossy, sometimes sticky lacquer. “Mi Sabor Cafe” it reads in faux-wood letters on the wall. TVs above the buffet sneeze-guards cast William Banks on stage. He’s jumping, celebrating, stomping like a dimwit. His girlfriend, and friends, and more of his posse are grabbing the mic. “Shouts out to William!” Metal spoons are clanging. Stacked, empty, metal containers are being muscled through the crowd by apron boys a part of the restaurant. “Shouts out to William!” More bodies in the crowd don’t know where to stand. More bodies in the crowd don’t know if they should dance. Technical difficulties in the DJ booth cause ear-raping blares to sound off every few minutes.
“We’re working on it!” shouts someone in Banks’ entourage. Their oversized, ill-fitting suits contain arms that command the room they’re in—the room that they filled.
A quick recap: back in November, I began following a white, bald guy in jail who I later discovered was a Brooklyn, alt-comedy hipster who was unfairly prosecuted for uprooting Zionist signs in a Connecticut neighborhood.
His name was William Banks. His mugshot was taken. He was run through the books. And a few months later, he announced that he was going to jail for an eight-month stint. His socials went ghost for two weeks until a photo from inside the prison walls leaked. “Got a phone,” the caption read.
One would be hard-pressed to find any real evidence of his incarceration, but the bit went on, as videos from inside the prison walls made their way onto Twitter, TikTok and Instagram. The whole thing was highly orchestrated and confusing because, if it was a hoax, how’d they get a prison set that was so convincing?
He eventually escaped jail and ran a series of meme coin rug pulls that stripped $50,000 from gullible crypto bros. The sum was divided between five Palestinian charities to aid the people suffering in the ongoing genocide.
On a Friday night in March, people gathered to witness the mythos in real life, but what did they want to see?
“Free William!” shouted Will Duncan, who had the biggest suit in Banks’ crew. It was tan and oversized—paired with a Bushwick mullet, small hoop earrings, and some laceless, suede, Oakley shoes (the ones that aging DJs wear because they look sci-fi).
He met Banks after applying for Car World and now the two are roommates. They’re both donning the same formal attire on this night, likely from the same Goodwill bin marked, “Big and tall.” The frumpy aesthetics of Car World are still there for them, ignoring the look’s cultural saturation accelerated by Andrew Callaghan and every other I Think You Should Leave sketch.
“We’re trying to build a community here,” Duncan said into the mic. “Let’s all start a WhatsApp groupchat together, tonight!”
I heard someone in a Patagonia hat whisper, “I think we’re all just in media here.”
Approaching the venue, a camera crew was outside filming a man in a baseball cap with a comically long brim. It went out over a foot. I was standing with Jack in the background of the shot. He was the bouncer. We scoffed. “They’re giving me a bad vibe,” he said.
“They’re zooming in on us right now,” I told him. “They’re isolating our subtitles, putting up codes and numbers zipping by our heads, like a futuristic Frank Hassle scene.”
I met the director, Adam, later in the night. He was an independent filmmaker. “It’s not a film about William,” he said. “He’s the beginning of a movie on extremist, internet symbolism and how it’s used for political movements, from both the left and right.” He was interested in how Banks “shocked the system,” using the viral optics of jail, escape, and romance to amass Palestinian aid and support. In his opinion, these viral optics stemmed from the playbook of 4channers and groypers, which have been legitimized at the highest political levels by way of J.D. Vance.
Piercing through the crowd—purple lights and shoulders—I found a mix of pro-Palestinian activists and disaffected Dimes Square orbiters. In jail, Banks’ nerdy whiteness contrasted his Black peers. As the story developed, it played on that old saying, “He’s invited to the cookout,” as the white boy filled the role of the Black Meme, subverting and mimicking Blackness for a hipster white audience.
One could say it’s touchy, but the Gaza support and chants of “Free all incarcerated peoples” at the show allowed Banks to change whatever problematic role he filled into something tangibly progressive and anti-genocide. The provocateur was vindicated.
“It was based,” said a woman named Jane in the crowd. She called things retarded and got off track as we spoke, talking about seals and how the new X actually recommends better “seal content” than “whatever Jack Dorsey was doing.” Her pigtails bobbed when she swung around to greet her bald boyfriend. He was in a wool quarter-zip vest, as if he walked out of the Fulton St. station to clock in on the NYSE floor.
Read the rest of this piece and see the full photo gallery on the 65,000 website.