Culture Editor Kaitlyn McNab and Senior Social Media Manager Jillian Selzer attended New York City bar Blue Haven's The Summer I Turned Pretty watch party, and experienced a thrill tenfold better than the Super Bowl.
A small crowd of young women stand outside of a sports bar, digging in their totes and shoulder bags for their IDs. They're all here, trying to get in before the place hits capacity, for The Summer I Turned Pretty. The din from inside the bar crescendoes as the bouncer opens the door to let us inside Blue Haven, the venue now viral for its The Summer I Turned Pretty season 3 watch parties.
The bar, longer than it is wide, is overflowing with girls — girls on their laptops finishing up work emails for the day, girls putting in orders for the popular menu item “Girl Dinner” (a caesar salad, french fries, and a sparkling bev), girls talking to other girls about the girl of the moment, Belly Conklin.
With each new weekly episode drop of The Summer I Turned Pretty's final season, Blue Haven has repeatedly gone viral for their electric watch parties, powered by sheer fandom. In a video posted by an attendee of the bar's episode 8 party — which, at the time of writing, has nearly six and a half million views — the crowd goes apesh*t as Belly spots Conrad in the airport on her way to Paris after her wedding to Jeremiah falls apart. There's even a throng of people seen standing outside of the bar, watching the episode through the bar windows.
“I was one of the few who hadn't previously seen the viral videos before we went, so I thought we were going to have some cute lil' snacks and drinks downtown and chit chat while the episode casually played on a TV or a screen in the background,” Jillian Selzer, Teen Vogue's senior social media manager says the morning after Blue Haven rocked our world. “I truly could not have been more wrong.”
Blue Haven on West Houston decided to tackle their usually “slow” summer by tapping into the audience of a show that members of their own staff love. “My friends love this show,” says Maeve Duke, the assistant manager. “It was just a way for us to bring people in. I don't think any of us thought that it was going to be this big.”
Duke says that “no one really knew” about the first iterations of the watch parties, but soon enough, the weekly events began to rapidly circulate social media. Blue Haven's general manager, Sarah Lulemski, had never even heard of The Summer I Turned Pretty before other members of her staff brought the idea of the watch party to her — but she was game to go for it.
“She trusted [us] and she gave us the full reins when it started blowing up,” Maddie Hart, Blue Haven's social media manager tells us. "We were like, ‘Should we move the watch party out from the back room to the whole restaurant?’"
For the first two episodes of the season, only three tables in the back room of the bar were occupied for the watch party. By episode 3, the bar's social media flyer for the weekly event was sent via Instagram DM 700 times. Almost every table in the bar was booked. They needed to hire door security. It was time to put the show on the main projector and every screen in the house.
“Every week it gets bigger. Every week there's more people standing,” says Hart, noting that it was around episode 8 when attendees started lining up outside the door. Selzer, TV's own senior social media manager, compared the watch party to an “IRL college football game."
“There were so many people at this sports bar, you would've thought one of the actors or Jenny Han herself was making an appearance,” Selzer says. “I didn't expect that large of a crowd for an hour of TV. The energy was palpable the minute we got there, and if we didn't have a reserved table, I'm not confident they would've been able to let us in.”
Blue Haven's staff points out that even though the watch parties are arguably more “crazy” than when they air football, it is a “totally different dynamic than the football bros and frat boys.”
Firstly, there's more girls, but there's also less touching as servers pass through the crowds. “That's the best part,” says Duke. “The women know how to make space, whereas men don't really care… [the] majority of our staff are women, so it's fun to be like, 'Oh my God, there's so many girlies here. We're having so much fun!'"
“When the show is on, the girlies do not like to be bothered that much… the girls are just silenced and they're dialed in,” adds Maria Stroup, a server at the bar.
Duke remembers the silence being “daunting” at first, which makes sense. A silent wall-to-wall packed sports bar is eerie — while watching episode 10, I noticed that the only audible noises besides on-screen dialogue were the clinking of dishes from the back kitchen and glugs behind the bar as the bartenders prepared drinks. The girls were locked in on all 17 screens in the bar, abruptly screeching in unison whenever Conrad enters a frame.
On a corner of downtown New York City, this pocket of feminine expression and joy is a world of its own, where every punchline lands and every needle drop is treasured.
“We are a neighborhood bar. We are a sports bar. We are very much about community,” Lulemski reflects. “This is the second home for so many people… we've been [calling the watch parties a] phenomenon… I've heard girls be like, 'Oh my gosh, it's the Super Bowl every Wednesday.' And I'm like, 'No, it's beyond that.'"
“It's the last season, it's the end of something, and I think that's part of the reason it's blown up and is so big,” Lulemski says. “This crowd is so different: the excitement and the screams and the camaraderie and all the girls bonding in here, the friendships that have [been created].”
At the bar, we sat next to Maria, 25, and Christine, 26, two Manhattanites who found out about Blue Haven's watch parties on TikTok. “Maria told me about it,” says Christine. “We went to a Love Island watch party and it was so much fun, and then she told me [about this one] and I was like, 'Well, if it's going to be half as fun as that was, we gotta go.' It's so fun to be around people who are enjoying the same thing as you. Like, let's all freak out together at the TV.”
“I just love an event,” Maria agrees. “I love watching things with a community, and I feel like it's all girls in their twenties for the most part, and that's a fun environment to all be in together.”
Chloe, 23, and Moena, 24, are both visiting from California and also found out about the event through TikTok. Ironically, they already watched the new episode that morning, before attending the watch party. “I didn't know if [I was] going to be able to hear,” laughs Moena. "I've been living by myself, so I was like, I have to watch it with people that feel the same way that I do,” says Chloe.
Hart tells me that TSITP fans have direct messaged the Blue Haven Instagram account asking for permission to arrive solo — or sharing that they'll be back the next week because they made new friends at the previous week's watch party. They're arriving earlier and earlier each week, and from farther and farther distances.
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“The first person came today at 1:50 p.m. to get a bar seat,” says Lulemski, adding that the early bird in question was from Paris. “We've had people come from all over. I met two other people from Brazil… The state of our world today is a little crazy, but to see the joy that [the show] brings to so many people and [the way it is] bringing people together, that's pretty awesome.”
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Tonight, Blue Haven plans to go out with a bang for The Summer I Turned Pretty season 3 finale, which is also the series finale. By the time episode 5 aired six weeks ago, every last table in the bar was booked and reserved. They expect the fullest of full houses, with standing room likely starting to fill up as early as lunchtime.
Duke plans to put hydrangeas on every table along with other TSITP-themed decorations to make the vibe as festive as possible. There will be interactive games and small surprises and a curated playlist and batches of their most popular drink, The Belly. (A pomegranate margarita. IYKYK.)
“I'm sad it's going to be over,” Hart says. Lulemski, Stroup, and Duke all groan, preemptively grieving the space they've curated for young women in the city.
But the Blue Haven staff shares that they already have plans to do more watch parties in the future, for shows like Dancing With the Stars and The Secret Lives of Mormon Wives star Taylor Frankie Paul's upcoming season of The Bachelorette. They might even explore listening parties for popular albums like Taylor Swift's The Life of a Showgirl. Now that they've tapped into a whole new clientele, the possibilities are endless. Besides — we'll always have summer.
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Disclaimer: Teen Vogue does not condone underage drinking. You must be of legal drinking age, at least 21 years of age in the U.S., to drink alcoholic beverages — please drink responsibly.
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