Night of 1,000 DeVitos

Photos by Lucia Buricelli 
Story by Megan Paetzhold


For full experience please go to the New York Magazine website.

“I think he’s gonna come tonight, I just feel it in the air,” John Beltrano said to a friend while adjusting the tufts of hair protruding from his mesh semi-bald cap. “It’s like Beetlejuice — if you get enough people to shout his name and strip onstage, that is when Danny DeVito comes.” His look, inspired by Frank Reynolds, DeVito’s character on It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia, also included black “glasses” made from pipe-cleaners and a white T-shirt with seven tally marks (another Reynolds reference from the show’s tenth season). But he wasn’t the only DeVito; Beltrano was just one of hundreds of attendees in makeshift black frames who had endured frigid temperatures and an L train shutdown to attend the first “Night of a Thousand DeVitos” at Rubulad, an underground performance space in Bushwick.