It may be hard to picture it now with all the snow and cold and rain everywhere but get out your flip flops because we are strolling into Spring Break!
Florida Spring Break
Most of us have seen the movie "Where the Boys Are" (more about the book that the film was based on later)
and then there's Elvis in "Girl Happy" but just how did it all get started?
College students have almost always had time off from school in the early spring, though for a long time, students just headed home to celebrate Easter with their families and, in many cases, work at family farms and businesses. Some students traveled, but typically they headed somewhere abroad.
But in 1936, the Colgate University swimming team decided to spend their spring break training far away from their near-frozen campus in upstate New York, in the infinitely warmer town of Fort Lauderdale, Florida. The break turned into an annual excursion ... and the swimmers started bringing their non-swimming friends, who were presumably way happier to be spending a week in Florida than heading back home to spend a week operating the thresher.
By 1938, the town had embraced the travelers, hosting an event called the College Coaches' Swim Forum at the Casino Pool, which brought over 300 swimmers and friends to the beachside area.
During World War II, Fort Lauderdale became home to a new crop of partiers — wealthy Ivy Leaguers who traditionally partied in the Caribbean, but who had been scared off by rumors of German submarine activity in the area's bodies of water. So they headed to Florida so that they could enjoy the one body of water that was guaranteed to be free of German war ships — enormous glasses of crappy beer.
And with that, Florida's reputation as a place to spend spring break drinking, dancing, and looking for "love" began to build. I should note here that during this point in American history, drinking ages varied state by state; and while some states, like California and Arkansas, maintained a drinking age of 21 from the end of Prohibition onward, Florida maintained a drinking age of 18 until 1987.
Fort Lauderdale gained so much heat as a spring break party destination during the '50s that the media began to report on it. Most notably, in 1958, a Michigan State University English professor with the extremely un-partyish name of Glendon Swarthout decided to follow some of his students down to Florida, and find out about this new set of teen mating rituals he had heard were taking place at the beach.
Observing the 20,000 college students who had descended upon the area for the vacation, Swarthout dashed off a novel about what he saw down there, sensationally titled Where The Boys Are — a story in which four female college students travel to Florida for spring break, try to meet boys, and are eventually punished severely for it because, despite all its supposedly loose and lascivious morals, spring break culture was still as resolutely sexist as the culture at large.
In the 80's it was still going strong! The first MTV Spring Break aired in 1986, broadcast from Daytona Beach, Florida.
By the end of the '80s, the citizens of Fort Lauderdale were fed up with their annual influx of vomit-prone visitors, and began enacting ordinances against spring breakers, banning open containers of booze and putting up a wall separating the beach from the street.
There may be other places to go but I think going to Fort Lauderdale for Spring Break is still a tradition and yes I was there in the 70's when I was in college and it was crazy times 7! I think it's nostalgic and since it was the original it has one up on all the rest. Even "Gilmore Girls" had an episode where Rory and Paris went there for Spring Break!
Until next time, start packing your sun screen because we are out of here soon!
Strolling Down Memory Lane with Candy ~ Main Page