It’s a Thursday night, and the tables are packed at Parlay, a sports bar in Lincoln Park. Every screen is lit with the garish, neon palette of a sun-drenched villa in Fiji and flashes the faces of characters from “Love Island USA,” currently rounding the last bend of its record-shattering seventh season.
Tatiana Goodman sat with three friends at a high-top and remarked: “It’s great to know that I’m not alone in this world, and that, as sh-tty as the world is right now, we are all here for ‘Love Island’ in this one place, at this one moment in time.”
“Love Island USA,” the US spinoff of a reality dating show that debuted a decade ago in the U.K., follows a group of single 20-somethings, who are cut off from their phones and the outside world, sequestered for six weeks at a luxury villa in Fiji. Filmed in near-real time for six new episodes a week, this season’s show, according to Hollywood news source Deadline, hit more than 1 billion streaming minutes in less than two weeks after its June 3 premiere; as of June 24, the show has racked up 54 million social media interactions. The show’s finale streams on Peacock Sunday at 8 p.m. central time.
Goodman says this season is fun to watch because it reflects what dating is like in the real world for people her age. “Everyone is, like, super young — Ace being 22, Chelley being 27,” she said. “I’m 27. They’re all like Gen Z people. It is like very much keeping your options open. It’s kind of awful in that way, but I like that I’m seeing it play out in television. You want to wait for the best person? That’s cool. They’re not coming, babe. They are not coming. The person right in front of you — that’s the person you should be dating.”
Following a trend sweeping nightlife across the country, the city’s bars are getting in on the viral fun: The watch party at Parlay started weekly in late June before going biweekly. Others have popped up, including Theory in River North, Bar La Rue in West Loop and Turner Häus Brewery in Bronzeville. (At publication time, seats at Sunday watch parties were still available at Pizza Cantina in Pilsen, Pony Inn in Lake View, Gracie O’Malley’s in Wicker Park and Moe’s Cantina in River North.)
Paul Alqas, a part-owner at Parlay River North and party host at the bar’s two locations, said he got the idea from friends after seeing other “Love Island USA” watch parties go viral on social media. Alqas sent the announcement to a few influencer friends, including Chicago TikToker Megan Schibelka.
“She posted a video [about the watch party] that went viral and we sold out every single date in less than two hours,” Alqas wrote in a text. “Her video was shared over 3k times. The turnout has been great. It’s been fun, I call it ‘the female Super Bowl.’”
“It just brings us all together,” Courtney Bonn said, seated at a high-top with three of her friends. “It’s something for women to gather and do at a sports bar.”
Attendee Patrick Gosney, no stranger to reality TV watch parties, said he has enjoyed this season of “Love Island,” his first.
“I was influenced by friends to watch because they fell in love with last season. It’s really entertaining to me,” Gosney said. “As a gay person, I don’t usually support straight dating shows because I just don’t get it, but this is more like the Stanford Prison Experiment in ways, and that I love,” he added, referring to the controversial 1971 study at Stanford University that used students in a prison simulation to investigate the psychological effects of power.
Before Sunday’s finale, the couples will be whittled down to four, each vying for a chance to be crowned the winning pair and split a $100,000 prize. Attendees of Thursday’s watch party were pulling for Olandria and Nic (pals to lovers), Amaya and Bryan (America’s sweetheart and her finance beau), and Iris and Pepe (the lemons-to-lemonade pair). Parlay, for one, will be open for business and hosting a sold-out crowd, breathlessly awaiting the results along with the rest of America.