It’s late January, and all across the fruited plain oldsters are busily making plans for their annual invasion of the beaches and bars of sunny Fort Lauderdale, Daytona Beach and Panama City for the riotous extravaganza the media has dubbed “Spring Break.” For Sunshine State motels and beer distributors, this is their Super Bowl; for local police, a headache of unmitigated proportions as they try to keep drunken senior citizens from toppling off hotel balconies, drowning in swimming pools or crashing their Cadillacs into Indian River fruit stands.
Oh, I hear what you’re saying. “Bill, those were the good old days, the province of our youth. All that has been taken over by the youngsters, the college kids. Now, we just hang out in Boca and play bocce ball or shuffleboard.” Well, whose fault is that? When did they hold the meeting where we decided to curtail our activities? After all, we’re the ones who STARTED Spring Break. I have evidence.
Where The Boys Are
In 1960, a fellow with the curious name of Glendon Swarthout decided to devise a novel recording the hijinks of a group of Michigan college girls, led by Merrit (“of the U”), who barnstorm down to Florida during their Spring break from college on a mission to find sun, surf and, hopefully, a little romance among the thousands who gather there each March. But how and when did all these pilgrimages get started? Well, seems Fort Lauderdale had been a mecca for competitive swimming as far back as the 1930s, possessing a mammoth pool, one of the largest extant, and by the late thirties more than 1500 student athletes were gallivanting on down to the city’s College Coaches’ Swim Forum, which was held during Spring break. The first of these was hosted in 1938 and word of Florida’s Spring charms (during often-severe northern winters) soon wafted up north, inspiring a few non-swimmers to make the trip. The phenomenon slowly grew and by 1959, Time magazine mentioned it in an article entitled “Beer & the Beach.” Swarthout’s novel precipitated a movie of the same name, though far from the book’s quality, which emphasized the raucous, booze-and-sex-filled proceedings. The movie appeared in 1961 and contained a song also called Where The Boys Are (Someone Waits For Me), sung by Connie Francis, which became wildly popular and further romanticized Spring Break.
Before long, a relatively small gettogether which had previously extended less than a week had exploded into a monster of over triple the original length owing to the different break dates of various colleges. Dustups with the police became common as officers of the law grew a little testy chasing college kids out for a night of neighborhood pool-hopping, naked beach romping or assorted traffic-blocking pranks. As Lauderdale got meaner, other Florida beach hotspots, primarily Daytona, conveniently located much further north, gladly opened their doors to the pocketbooks of thousands of guests who were willing to show up during the slow season. 50,000 college students visited Daytona during Spring Break 1961. The President couldn’t get a room.
Where The Bills Are
In 1963, Marilyn Todd and I arrived in Gainesville, conveyed by the famous Iron Maiden, my 1950 Cadillac Superior Model hearse. We got there just in time to haul about 10,000 copies of an off-campus humor magazine called The Old Orange Peel to Daytona for its publisher, Jack Horan, who had somehow been able to finagle a couple of beachside rooms. Horan foresaw exceptional sales and had his publication distributed all over town, even sponsoring expensive contests in local bars and coughing up extravagant fees for jacked-up radio ads. When the hearse, heavy with magazine, crossed a little bridge into Daytona, the brakes promptly went out, necessitating a circle of several revolutions around the nearest used car lot before settling to a stop. We fed and watered the old girl and she settled down, allowing us to proceed to our motel through massive throngs of near-naked celebrants, most carrying paper cups not filled with orange juice. We visited the bars at night with Jack, who didn’t sell a third of the magazines transported even though we tried real hard, not wanting to re-haul them back to Gainesville. Nonetheless, a good time was had by all. People-watching opportunities abounded. It was better than Times Square. The cops, ubiquitous to the max, were nonetheless massively outnumbered by troublemakers and pranksters. While most of the frenetic activity centered around the numberless hotels, groups of students were occasionally able to rent houses from poor fools who foresaw dollar signs instead of the potential wreckage of their domiciles. One such place was the site of a riotous party of 80 celebrants, many of them underage imbibers. When the gestapo arrived at the behest of terrified neighbors, the party animals began fleeing out the lone back door until several became stuck and were immobilized, making themselves and those blocked in behind them putty in the hands of police. One inebriated celebrant, laughing on his way to jail, was asked by Officer Krupke if he thought it was funny to be arrested. “It’s a lot funnier than March in East Lansing!” the kid replied.
If the property tax appraiser is coming in a couple months and you’re looking for a quick way to devalue your property, you might want to consider renting the place to Spring breakers. The tax guys almost always deduct for properties smelling of alcohol, vomit and urine, especially when there is pizza left under the beds and cigarette butts in the flower vases. In the cases of a few leased Daytona edifices, the owners might be getting a rebate.
The Senior Break
“Inside every Senior Citizen is a kid wondering what the hell happened.”
Okay, so we all know Daytona Beach is a glutton for punishment. Not only does the city host the annual shenanigans of tens of thousands of lunatic collegians, it adds to the gore with the nefarious Bike Week, during which the town is inundated with thousands of motorcycle mamas and papas racing through the streets, smashing into one another and busting up the bars. Why does any municipality do this? Well, the bikers have more money than the college kids. And then, of course, there are the twice-a-year NASCAR extravaganzas at the famous Speedway, the iconic Daytona 500 in February and the Fourth of July weekend ex-Firecracker 400, now named for Coke Zero, whatever the hell that is. Truly massive crowds attend the proceedings, to the extent that rental car companies in the area surrounding Orlando actually run out of vehicles. If records were kept for beer-drinking—and we don’t know that they aren’t--it would be hard to beat the weekend consumption by all the bubbas and bubbaettes who show up for these things.
In light of all this mayhem, it seems to me Daytona Beach should be enormously receptive to a late February/early March Senior Break. The time is right, placed directly after The 500 and just before the invasions of the cyclists and students. Senior citizens are mostly polite and, except for the Rolling Stones, almost never trash hotel rooms or time-shares. Moreover, while we still have some drinkers in the crowd, very few of us will be found lurching through the streets at two a.m. looking for our lost vehicles, let alone engaging in trashy bar activities like dwarf tossing or wet t-shirt contests. The women might insist on better wine menus, of course, and there would be a definite need for mobile smoothie carts and yogurt vendors. The larger hotels would be expected to provide free Yoga classes and water aerobics in the pools, and hey, don’t forget the Bingo.
We’d need entertainment, of course. And please, no music recorded after 1980. Arlo Guthrie is still rambling around singing Alice’s Restaurant fifty years from the date it was originally recorded. The Righteous Brothers’ Bill Medley yet tours and he still hasn’t Lost That Lovin’ Feelin’. Gary Lewis & The Playboys are running loose out there and The Stylistics still promise to Make You Feel Brand New, although that will be a significant challenge in some cases. If you can’t get anybody else, there’s always the rechristened Motels, although Marty Jourard is the only Original and God only knows what they play these days. If we play our cards right, maybe we can even get the city to put on a modern Rock Festival featuring a bunch of those imitation bands that still play the old stuff. We’d probably need more medical tents but they wouldn’t be for drug overdoses any more. More like catheter problems, heart palpitations and granny’s trick knee going out during The Peppermint Twist. Medical marijuana would be available, of course, for the serious problems which almost everyone would have. And there would be no shortage of merchant tents surrounding the facility, what with the the urgent need for arthritis products, incontinence devices and condoms.
Oh yes, condoms. And lest you smirk, we’d like to report that right down the road here at that mecca for Tea Party Republicans, The Villages, serious social disease problems arose just last year. If you think these senior citizens aren’t grousing in the goodie, you’ve got another think coming. It’s the new Free Love Era, accompanied, of course, by a batch of jellies and creams, all available at the Astroglide booth. Easy to find, it’s right next door to the Big Blue tent offering Viagra and right across the aisle from Vibrators ‘r’ Us.
Frankly, we can’t understand how any Florida city eager for winter tourists can turn this inspiration down. It’s an idea whose time has come. Maybe it will all happen. Maybe someone will write a book about it. Maybe even a movie….and, ultimately, a song. I can hear it now. “Where The Septuagenarians Are.” It will have a good beat. You can dance to it.
Photo Of The Week (contributed by Harry Edwards)
Big Hair Days In Texas
That’s all, folks
