Short Stuff: History of Spring Break

If you think Spring Break started with northern college kids heading to Florida to party, you'd be correct. But there's slightly more to it than that. See omnystudio.com/listener https://omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Speaker 00

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• 0:04Josh Clark?

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• 1:12Josh Clark?

  Hey, and welcome to the short stuff. I'm Josh and there's Chuck and everybody else is present in spirit and this is step you should know, short stuff.

• 1:20Speaker 03

  Where the boys are.

• 1:24Josh Clark?

  Is that the song?

• 1:25Speaker 03

  I think so.

• 1:26Josh Clark?

  Oh, I always think of that Book of Love song. I want to be where the boys are.

• 1:33Speaker 03

  What, wait, you say yours. I want to hear it.

• 1:35Josh Clark?

  Oh, I want to be where the boys are, but I'm not allowed.

• 1:42Josh Clark?

  You've not heard that song?

• 1:43Speaker 03

  I didn't know Lou Reed sang a song like that.

• 1:46Josh Clark?

  Do I sound like Lou Reed? I'll take that.

• 1:48Speaker 03

  You kind of speak singing, which is Lou Reed's deal.

• 1:52Josh Clark?

  Yeah, I do speak sing. I can't put my all into it like.

• 1:55Speaker 03

  Hey, man, a lot of people have made great careers out of speak singing. No shame.

• 1:58Josh Clark?

  That's right. All right, I might take you up on that and become a speak singer.

• 2:03Speaker 03

  That's right. I mean, that's the gateway to being a white male rapper. So just be careful.

• 2:09Josh Clark?

  Okay, I will be careful. If you see me with like three lines cut into my side, the side of my hair, maybe take me out for some drinks and give me some to talking to.

• 2:21Speaker 03

  I've done that accidentally.

• 2:23Josh Clark?

  Oh, I have too. Well, Yumi did it accidentally to me, but not I'm talking intentional.

• 2:28Speaker 03

  Okay, yeah.

• 2:30Josh Clark?

  All right. So we're talking spring break. That's why you sang. Can you sing it again, please?

• 2:34Speaker 03

  Where the boys are.

• 2:37Josh Clark?

  That was lovely. That is actually, they think where spring break, the American institution of going to warm places in the spring, usually from northern universities and getting plastered for a week, came from a book called, what's it called, Chuck?

• 2:55Speaker 03

  Where the boys are.

• 2:57Josh Clark?

  Not bad, but okay.

• 2:59Speaker 03

  Well, speak singing.

• 3:00Josh Clark?

  Uh, you gotta say where the boys are.

• 3:04Speaker 03

  Okay, I just want to be in your group.

• 3:06Josh Clark?

  Oh, yeah, we could do that. We could do a speak singing barber shop duo, not even a quartet.

• 3:12Speaker 03

  Yeah, that's a great, such a great bad idea.

• 3:16Josh Clark?

  Oh, we can also add the slide whistle you got me too. It was like a an extra thing.

• 3:20Speaker 03

  Yeah, yeah. I mean, that's our only instrument as far as I'm concerned.

• 3:23Josh Clark?

  Yeah. So, uh, where the boys are.

• 3:29Speaker 03

  All right. So you mentioned where the boys are a bunch and that that was sort of the big launching point for spring break, but we got to back up a little bit to some sort of ground laying, I guess. People since the 19th century, apparently, American college students, even way back in the 1800s, would take little weekend breaks during the spring to like hot springs and maybe even to the coast to kind of, you know, get themselves right. And in the 20th century, early in the 20th century, the road trip was born and woman colleges, you know, woman only colleges were born and you pair those things together and you're going to get girls going to see boys. And so all of a sudden, members of the opposite sex were really hanging out with each other a lot more.

• 4:13Josh Clark?

  Yeah, this is when Biff met Muffy.

• 4:16Speaker 03

  That's right. And then people started drinking a lot more, like kind of out in public. Like if you went to the military at 18, like it was okay to, you know, go to a dive bar and get drunk, but that was kind of frowned upon in college. But starting, you know, around the early 1920s or so, college kids started drinking.

• 4:35Josh Clark?

  Yeah, that whole jazz age, I'm guessing, right?

• 4:39Speaker 03

  Probably.

• 4:39Josh Clark?

  So there was an act of nature, a force of nature that also plays into this pretty prominently, the Great Miami Hurricane of 1926 that said, try again, Miami and wipe Miami clean. And so the city had to rebuild into the version we know today. But as a part of this, the nearby city of Fort Lauderdale was like, I, we need to get people back here. So we're going to do the thing that cities have always done and still continue to do to attract tourists. And that is build an Olympic sized swimming pool.

• 5:13Speaker 03

  Yeah, I think it was more of a novelty at the time because that was certainly the first one in Florida in 1928. And not too long after, like five or six years later, there was a swimming coach from Colgate University in upstate New York, where it's very cold, who said, hey, guys, it's very cold. And there aren't a lot of indoor training pools here. So let's go down to Florida. They built this whiz bang new pool in Fort Lauderdale. They went down there, they trained in the spring. And by 1938, the College Coaches Swim Forum was formed and word had gotten around that it was like a good place to go train, which accidentally coincided with the opening of sort of a younger person's bar called the Elbow Room.

• 5:58Josh Clark?

  Yeah. And the Seabreeze Hotel. It sounds like my kind of place, man. A hotel bar? Love those.

• 6:04Speaker 03

  Same.

• 6:04Josh Clark?

  I don't even drink anymore and I still love a good hotel bar.

• 6:08Speaker 03

  They're great.

• 6:08Josh Clark?

  So, yeah, these college athletes, these swimming, swim teams now had a place to be, Florida, and a place to party, the Elbow Room. And it's just started to kind of get back that like, hey, there's this really fun thing that the swim teams are doing. Other swim teams kind of took part in this too. And this idea kind of spread beyond swim teams, college swim teams to just college students who started to come down to Fort Lauderdale in droves.

• 6:37Speaker 03

  Yeah. Like, I like to drink. I like to flirt. I like to be in the sun.

• 6:42Josh Clark?

  Mm hmm. I like a farmer's tan.

• 6:44Speaker 03

  That's right. So maybe that's a great place to take a break and we'll be right back with Where the boys are.

• 6:52Josh Clark?

  Where the boys are.

• 7:12Speaker 03

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• 9:26Josh Clark?

  So yeah, I guess we're finally at where the boys are, right? Because things have been kind of picking up steam through the 40s and the 50s. But then in 1958, there was an English teacher from Michigan State University. His name was Glendon Swarthout. And he said, hey, kids, I want to hang with you. Let's go down to spring break. I'm going to follow you around and I'm just going to write about your escapades. And apparently it was debaucherous enough and just crazy enough that he managed to write a book out of like this, essentially this week in Fort Lauderdale with some of his students. And the name of that book was Unholy Spring.

• 10:07Speaker 03

  Unholy Spring.

• 10:09Josh Clark?

  Unholy Spring.

• 10:11Speaker 03

  That's right. He changed the name to Where the Boys Are, of course. The book was a pretty big hit, but the movie really put it on the map when MGM put that out not too long after. And that's what really changed things. All of a sudden, Florida was on display as like where, well, where the boys are and where the girls are and what you need to be doing every spring. And, you know, we got some loose numbers here. I'm sure it's kind of hard to put great numbers on the 1960s spring break growth. But they said that, you know, basically tens of thousands of students started coming after that movie came out. And by the mid 1980s, like close to 400,000 students were going just to Fort Lauderdale.

• 10:55Josh Clark?

  Man, in Fort Lauderdale, I mean, it's a city in Florida, but you had 350,000 extra people for over the course of like a month, probably like that's, that's an impact for sure.

• 11:08Speaker 03

  Yeah, and a bad impact at times.

• 11:10Josh Clark?

  Yeah, like that's the thing. If you trace the history of spring break, it's like fun, fun, fun, fun. Oh, it's awful now and then murders and rapes. Fun, fun, fun, fun, awful, fun, fun, fun, awful. And from what I can gather, Chuck, it turns awful when the middle aged dudes show up. That's when it turns awful because they should not be there. They have no business being there. Uh, spring break is for college kids. When the older dudes show up, that's when things get dark and bad.

• 11:38Speaker 03

  Yeah, although, uh, yeah, high school kids. I went into Panama City in high school and it was dark and bad with high school kids. I can assure you of that.

• 11:44Josh Clark?

  Okay, I did too.

• 11:46Speaker 03

  Because I was a good kid at the time.

• 11:48Josh Clark?

  I was not a good kid at the time.

• 11:51Speaker 03

  Yeah, I mean, I was there. I was at those parties, but, uh, you know, I was drinking my apple juice. I was pretending like I was drinking beer.

• 11:57Josh Clark?

  Oh, really? Were you really? That's awesome.

• 11:59Speaker 03

  I was very cringey to look back upon that, but.

• 12:01Josh Clark?

  I think it's sweet and really charming, actually.

• 12:05Speaker 03

  Yeah, I can admit that now. I'm gonna be 55 this weekend. All bets are off.

• 12:09Josh Clark?

  I know. How do you feel?

• 12:11Speaker 03

  I feel like I'm 53.

• 12:13Josh Clark?

  You should have said, "Spring break."

• 12:15Speaker 03

  So, spring break is going bad in Florida, uh, in Fort Lauderdale. Uh, the town obviously gets together and this seems to be sort of the rule and say, "All right, we gotta start curbing some drinking laws." Uh, the mayor goes on Good Morning America and says, "You need to start going to other places." Uh, and they did. So, all of Florida became destinations. Uh, Panama City, where I went, like I said, senior year, uh, 89. And then Daytona Beach was another big one. Um, and Daytona really grew after MTV in 1986 started broadcasting live for their MTV Spring Break Party stuff.

• 12:49Josh Clark?

  Yes, the first year in 1986, they had live musical performances. That was just a part of everyone. But in that year, they had, um, performances by the Beastie Boys and Starship.

• 13:01Speaker 03

  Yeah, I mean, who else would you get? What else goes together better?

• 13:05Josh Clark?

  And I bet we can guess what song Starship performed. "Stare."

• 13:10Speaker 03

  Yeah, and "We Built the City." Those were the two.

• 13:12Josh Clark?

  That "We Built the City," though, is what also appears in one of the Better Simpsons episodes, uh, where the family goes on spring break.

• 13:19Speaker 03

  Oh, really?

• 13:20Josh Clark?

  And Homer keeps singing that song the whole time.

• 13:23Speaker 03

  That's really funny.

• 13:24Josh Clark?

  And what's cool, I just can't not mention it. That's the second spring break episode The Simpsons did. The first one was where Bart and Milhouse and Nelson and at least one or two other kids like just ran away and went on spring break and ended up wearing wigs that they got out of the top of the sun sphere in Knoxville. And it's a good one.

• 13:45Speaker 03

  That's fun.

• 13:45Josh Clark?

  Okay, so go watch those two, I think is the point of this episode.

• 13:49Speaker 03

  That's the takeaway. So, spring break's going big in Florida. MTV is there in the eighties and 86, like I said, but before that, in 1983, a very key thing happened right here in the ATL when some black college students got together. And we have some great historical black colleges and universities here in Atlanta. And not all of them went somewhere else for spring break. So, one year in 83, they got together and said, hey, we're stuck here on campus. So, let's have a big picnic and a big party. This is coming off of, you know, the song La Freak by Sheik a few years earlier. And of course, the song Super Freak from Rick James was big. And it was a picnic, so they called it Freaknik.

• 14:29Speaker 03

  And Freaknik became a humongous deal in Atlanta and with people coming from all over the country and world even, but it blew up Atlanta for about a decade or so.

• 14:41Josh Clark?

  Yeah, like hundreds of thousands of people, ostensibly black college students mostly, just came to Atlanta and shut the town down because the main thing of Freaknik was cruising, right? And you just, all of a sudden, had an extra few hundred thousand cars on the main drags throughout Atlanta. And like, it would take you hours to get places that it should take you 10, 15 minutes because there were so many cars just stopped in the middle of the road. That was Freaknik. It was nuts.

• 15:18Speaker 03

  Yeah, I mean, people started staying home and, and, you know, white people were terrified because there were black, young black people having a lot of fun out in the streets. And the incidents of crime were here and there, but nothing like it was being portrayed in the news as like this sort of, you know, lawless situation happening. There's a great documentary that I can't recommend enough that was out a couple of years ago on Hulu called Freaknik, The Wildest Party Never Told, that Atlanta's own Jermaine Dupree produced, but it's, it's great. I highly recommend watching it.

• 15:50Josh Clark?

  Yeah, I think it actually did start to get pretty dark in the, in the final years.

• 15:56Speaker 03

  It did.

• 15:56Josh Clark?

  But, and again, because middle-aged dudes showed up.

• 15:59Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 16:00Josh Clark?

  But one thing you can do if you want to crack down on spring break is make one or two new laws and it'll completely choke the life out of it. For Freaknik, they passed a law about cruising and like that basically broke it up because that was the point of Freaknik. Panama City Beach, where we both went for spring break, that was for a very long time that accepted the spillover from Fort Lauderdale and became a spring break mecca in and of itself. And in 2015, it got really bad. There was like, it was just, I think it was like how it normally was, but just some really ugly stuff got out on social media. There was a girl who was unconscious and sexually assaulted, and there was a video of that that made its rounds.

• 16:44Josh Clark?

  Eight people were shot in one house at one point. So Panama City got some really bad rep right then, and they did something about it. They said, you can't drink on the beach anymore. And that was, that took care of it for, from that point on.

• 16:58Speaker 03

  Yeah, there's, there's still a ban. It's only in March, which is generally when spring break is. Ours is in April, but there, it usually is in March. So, yeah, that kind of did away with it. And, you know, that's kind of the deal with spring break. There, there are definitely a lot of universities now that do alternative things, like programs where you can say like, hey, don't go out and just get drunk on the beach. Like go volunteer for Habitat for Humanity, and they're collegiate challenger. You know, go work for HIV advocacy. So plenty of other options besides the traditional spring break, for sure.

• 17:32Josh Clark?

  For sure. But yes, no matter what you're doing, whether it's working for Habitat for Humanity or you're staggering around Fort Lauderdale, every 10, 12 minutes, you have to shout, "Spring break!" That's right. Short Stuff is out.

• 17:52Speaker 00

  Stuff You Should Know is a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts, iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.