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Last Saturday, a smattering of people gathered in front of controversial figure Peter Thiel’s Billionaire’s Row mansion to protest his company, Palantir Technologies, an outfit that produces software that could help Immigration and Customs Enforcement (I.C.E.) roundup undocumented immigrants.
Thiel has been public about his involvement with the Trump administration, hence the protest by a group that, according to Anna Wiener’s article in The New Yorker, included tech workers, attorneys, and anti-surveillance activists.
Wiener’s piece on the rally also features the following tidbit about Thiel’s home and, more importantly, his home’s decor.
Thiel’s address is not publicly listed, but Sonja Trauss, a Bay Area housing activist who, together with her colleague Laura Foote Clark, had organized the protest, was fairly certain that she had it right. “He lived there as of September 26th,” she said. Last fall, Thiel invited Trauss for breakfast to discuss local housing policy. Trauss recalled that she ate oatmeal, that Thiel had “some little quiches with a salad,” and that she had been struck by the house’s interior décor; the walls were gray with white molding, and pictures—“cityscapes, countryscapes, inoffensive stuff”—were hung in odd locations. “Places where you don’t put a picture, like too close to a ceiling or poking onto the window,” she said. “I just imagined the interior decorator being, like, ‘Peter, I have a vision.’ ”
Pictures poking onto the window? That’s enough to fray the nerves of any decor-savvy soul. (And, Peter, if you’re reading this, your neighbor Ann Getty is an interior designer who knows her way around a bolt of fabric. If you’ve ever wanted to live inside a Fabergé egg, she’s your woman.)
Also of note in the article:
“Do you think [Thiel] has fun in this house?” one software engineer asked, peering up at the mansion, which another of the protesters described as “neo-Bavarian.”
From the looks of the home, it appears to be a riff on Tudor, perhaps? Behold:
protest at Peter Thiel's house really popping off pic.twitter.com/cIythRIPbJ
— Ben Tarnoff (@bentarnoff) March 12, 2017
In May of 2015, Thiel put his gargantuan Cow Hollow home on the market for a cool $9,250,000, cutting its price by $1.2 million in September. It too featured gray walls and white molding.
- Peter Thiel's Marina Mansion Lands on Market at $9.2 Million [Curbed SF]
- Peter Thiel's Marina mansion chops $1.2 million off asking [Curbed SF]
- Why protesters gathered outside Peter Thiel’s mansion this weekend [New Yorker]
- Why tech billionaire Peter Thiel just endorsed Donald Trump [Vox]
- Here are all the things Peter Thiel said about Donald Trump and Gawker on Monday [Recode]
- The CIA-Backed Start-Up That's Taking Over Palo Alto [Recode]
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