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\n Survivor fans watching the premiere of the show\u2019s 50th season last week.
\n Photo: Kimberly Kolbert Photography\n <\/p>\n
It\u2019s 7 p.m. on a Wednesday in February, and the top floors at St. Pat\u2019s Bar & Grill<\/a> on 46th Street are so full that a line of people is snaking down to street level. Small paper flames dangle from the ceiling tiles while larger flame cutouts engulf a portrait of St. Patrick. All over, island grass is zip-tied to columns. \u201cThe leaves aren\u2019t going anywhere,\u201d says Yvonne Lopez, the bar\u2019s general manager. \u201cThose took forever to put up.\u201d<\/p>\n Near the kitchen doors, Alex Forstenhausler, a 36-year-old screenwriter, has made a two-hour trip from New Jersey to be here. When I find him, he\u2019s inflating a seven-foot plastic palm tree. \u201cI only blew up one,\u201d he says, \u201cbecause it was already so packed in here.\u201d<\/p>\n The occasion, of course, is the season-50 premiere of Survivor. For the past several years, fans of the long-running CBS reality show have landed here, in midtown, at what is arguably the most robust viewing party in the country. To get a prime corner table with the best sight line to the projector, Ian, a 30-year-old performer from the Upper West Side, was the first fan to arrive. He got here at 6 p.m. and finished up some work remotely over a St. Patti melt and beer. \u201cI only come for the big episodes \u2014 premieres and finales,\u201d he says. \u201cYes, it\u2019s crowded, but the electricity of watching Coach and Ozzy with 100 other people screaming isn\u2019t something I can replicate with four friends in my living room.\u201d<\/p>\n Lopez, who recently bought matching Survivor shirts for her staff to wear on watch nights, explains that the crowd, especially compared to the sports fans who fill St. Pat\u2019s on other nights, are \u201cnot big drinkers,\u201d but it\u2019s worth turning over the space (and TVs) for the party anyway, because the Survivor fans tend to order a lot. \u201cIt\u2019s like they\u2019re home,\u201d she says. \u201cThey order dinner and sit in front of the TV like they\u2019re on the couch.\u201d Last December, during the season-49 finale, the bar did $15,000 in sales in a single night.\u00a0(A bartender calls all of the Survivor fans \u201cthe nicest people.\u201d)<\/p>\n Kelly Smith is wearing a shirt that looks like Eras Tour merch, with Jeff Probst\u2019s face instead of Taylor Swift\u2019s. The 27-year-old says she moved to New York from Baltimore five years ago and was looking for a place like St. Pat\u2019s. As we\u2019re talking, Smith points out where she once sat beside former contestant Billy Garcia as if pointing out Sinatra\u2019s booth at P.J. Clarke\u2019s. \u201cEvery week after work my friends would be like, \u2018I\u2019m going to Carbone<\/a> with a guy from Hinge,\u2019\u201d she says. \u201cI\u2019d be like, \u2018Cool. I\u2019m going to watch Survivor at a bar by myself.\u2019\u201d Her search for a group of fellow fans led her to midtown, and St. Pat\u2019s, where she eventually found her tribe.<\/p>\n Two tables back sits Jordan Kalish, the PE teacher from Riverdale who started this Survivor party with Innessa Huot, an employment attorney who on this night is nursing her first glass of Sauvignon Blanc in a year after giving birth two months ago. They began watching the show together years ago at Huot\u2019s Financial District one-bedroom, but the Pizza and Beer Alliance, as it was known, outgrew those walls and moved to a bar called Stone Creek. \u201cI vividly remember the last night there was March 11 of 2020 and it was a very small crowd \u2014 much smaller than usual because there was this virus out there,\u201d Kalish recalls. \u201cWe had conversations like, \u2018Should we really be out?\u2019 But then we were like, \u2018It\u2019s \u2018Winners at War.\u2019 And it\u2019s Survivor!\u201d Stone Creek went out of business during the pandemic and for a while, this Alliance had no place to go. Most bars wanted to charge a cover for the party, but St. Pat\u2019s was willing to let them use the bar\u2019s third floor for free. The first night there \u2014 to watch the premiere of season 41 in 2021 \u2014\u00a0drew about 50 people, says Huot. \u201cThey were like, This is great business!\u201d But the following season, two former contestants had posted on Instagram they\u2019d be in attendance. The party spilled down from the third floor to the second. \u201cI\u2019d guess there were 250 people on two floors,\u201d Kalish says. \u201cThe bartenders still talk about it.\u201d He points out that at least two employees have started watching old episodes in their downtime, too: \u201cThey\u2019re part of our cult now.\u201d<\/p>\n Since the pandemic, Survivor has been discovered by Gen Z, meaning that 26 years after its debut, it is still among the most-watched shows on television. And the crowd somehow skews younger than it once did. On the second floor during the season-50 premiere, two women in their 20s tell me they\u2019re recent converts. \u201cI\u2019m slightly embarrassed to say I binged every season in two years after watching it with college roommates,\u201d says Semantika, a product manager and recent transplant from Toronto, who has just met two sisters from Dallas, also new to the city. (One of those sisters, a 27-year-old opera singer and director named Lisl Wangermann, first learned about St. Pat\u2019s through a Google search \u2014 though her sister wasn\u2019t convinced until, a day later, a video on TikTok confirmed it was the place to be.)<\/p>\n Soon, all talking stops as the commercial break ends and Mike White\u2019s face pops onscreen for a confessional. The group is friendly and outgoing but talking during an episode or blocking someone\u2019s view are severe social felonies. Once the show starts, the only sounds you hear are squeals during a challenge win, or a collective gasp during a blindside. Kalish remembers an earlier season when a group of holiday-party stragglers in Patagonia vests wandered up to the third floor and didn\u2019t read the room. \u201cPeople were angry,\u201d Kalish says. \u201cIt\u2019s like, Do you not see what\u2019s going on here?\u201d<\/p>\n EAT LIKE THE EXPERTS.<\/p>\n Sign up for the Grub Street newsletter.<\/p>\n Vox Media, LLC Terms and Privacy Notice<\/p>\n