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Short Stuff: History of Spring Break · Stuff You Should Know

• 0:04
  Speaker 1: Hey, and welcome to the short stuff. I'm Josh, and
• 0:06
  Speaker 1: there's Chuck and everybody else's present in spirit, and this
• 0:09
  Speaker 1: is stuff you should know, short stuff. Where the boys are?
• 0:15
  Speaker 1: Is that the song? I think?
• 0:17
  Speaker 2: So?
• 0:18
  Speaker 1: Huh? I always think of that Book of Love song.
• 0:21
  Speaker 1: I want to be THEO.
• 0:24
  Speaker 3: What wait you say yours? I want to hear it.
• 0:27
  Speaker 1: Oh, I want to be where the boys are? But
• 0:30
  Speaker 1: I'm not loud. You've not heard that song.
• 0:34
  Speaker 3: I didn't know lou Reid sang a song like that.
• 0:37
  Speaker 1: Do I sound like lou Reid? I'll talk about you.
• 0:40
  Speaker 3: Kind of speak singing, which is lou Reid's deal.
• 0:43
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I do speak sing I can't put my all
• 0:45
  Speaker 1: into it.
• 0:46
  Speaker 3: Like, hey, man, like a lot of people have made
• 0:47
  Speaker 3: great careers out of speak singing.
• 0:49
  Speaker 1: No shame, that's right, all right. I might tick you
• 0:52
  Speaker 1: up on that and become a speak singer, that's right.
• 0:55
  Speaker 3: I mean that's the gateway to being a white male rapper.
• 0:59
  Speaker 1: So just be careful, okay, I will be careful. If
• 1:02
  Speaker 1: you see me with like three lines cut into my side,
• 1:06
  Speaker 1: the side of my head, maybe take me out for
• 1:10
  Speaker 1: some drinks and give me some the talking to.
• 1:12
  Speaker 3: I've done that accidentally.
• 1:15
  Speaker 1: Oh I have too, Well, you me did it accidentally
• 1:17
  Speaker 1: to me, But I'm talking intentional.
• 1:20
  Speaker 3: Okay, Yeah, all.
• 1:22
  Speaker 1: Right, so we're talking spring break. That's why you're saying,
• 1:24
  Speaker 1: can you sing it again? Please? Where the boys are lovely?
• 1:29
  Speaker 1: That is actually they think where spring break. The American
• 1:34
  Speaker 1: institution of going to warm places in the spring, usually
• 1:39
  Speaker 1: from northern universities and getting plastered for a week, came
• 1:42
  Speaker 1: from a book called what's it called Chuck?
• 1:47
  Speaker 3: Where the Boys are not bad?
• 1:50
  Speaker 1: But okay, we'll speak singing. Uh, you gotta say where
• 1:53
  Speaker 1: the boys.
• 1:54
  Speaker 3: Are Okay, I just want to be in your group.
• 1:57
  Speaker 1: Oh yeah, we could do that. We could do speak
• 2:00
  Speaker 1: singing barbershop duo, not even a quartet.
• 2:04
  Speaker 3: Yeah, that's a such a great bad idea.
• 2:08
  Speaker 1: Oh we can also add the slide whistle you got
• 2:10
  Speaker 1: me too? Is like an extrast thing.
• 2:12
  Speaker 3: Yeah yeah, I mean that's our only instrument as far
• 2:14
  Speaker 3: as I'm concerned.
• 2:14
  Speaker 1: Yeah, so where the boys are?
• 2:21
  Speaker 3: All right? So you mentioned where the boys are a
• 2:23
  Speaker 3: bunch and that that was sort of the big launching
• 2:25
  Speaker 3: point for spring Break. But we got to back up
• 2:27
  Speaker 3: a little bit to some sort of ground laying. I
• 2:30
  Speaker 3: guess people since the nineteenth century. Apparently, American college students
• 2:35
  Speaker 3: even way back in the eighteen hundreds would take little
• 2:38
  Speaker 3: weekend breaks during the spring to like hot springs and
• 2:42
  Speaker 3: maybe even to the coast to kind of you know,
• 2:44
  Speaker 3: get themselves right. And in the twentieth century, early in
• 2:48
  Speaker 3: the twentieth century, the road trip was born, and women colleges,
• 2:54
  Speaker 3: you know, women only colleges were born, and you pair
• 2:57
  Speaker 3: those things together, and you're gonna get girls going to boys.
• 3:01
  Speaker 3: And so all of a sudden, members of the opposite
• 3:03
  Speaker 3: sex were really hanging out with each other a lot more.
• 3:05
  Speaker 1: Yeah, this is when the fifth met Muffy.
• 3:08
  Speaker 3: That's right. And then people started drinking a lot more,
• 3:12
  Speaker 3: like kind of out in public, Like if you went
• 3:14
  Speaker 3: to the military at eighteen, like it was okay to
• 3:17
  Speaker 3: you know, go to a dive bar and get drunk,
• 3:18
  Speaker 3: but that was kind of frowned upon in college. But
• 3:22
  Speaker 3: starting you know, around the early nineteen twenties or so,
• 3:25
  Speaker 3: college kids started drinking.
• 3:27
  Speaker 1: Yeah, that whole jazz age, I'm guessing right. Probably, So
• 3:31
  Speaker 1: there was an act of nature, a force of nature
• 3:34
  Speaker 1: that also plays into this pretty prominently, the Great Miami
• 3:37
  Speaker 1: Hurricane of nineteen twenty six that said try again Miami
• 3:42
  Speaker 1: and wipe Miami clean, and so the city had to
• 3:45
  Speaker 1: rebuild into the version we know today. But as a
• 3:49
  Speaker 1: part of this, the nearby city of Fort Lauderdale was like,
• 3:53
  Speaker 1: we need to get people back here, so we're going
• 3:55
  Speaker 1: to do the thing that cities have always done and
• 3:58
  Speaker 1: still continue to do to attract tourists, and that is
• 4:01
  Speaker 1: build an Olympic sized swimming pool.
• 4:04
  Speaker 3: Yeah, I think it was more of a novelty at
• 4:08
  Speaker 3: the time because that was certainly the first one in
• 4:10
  Speaker 3: Florida in nineteen twenty eight, and not too long after,
• 4:14
  Speaker 3: like five or six years later, there was a swimming
• 4:17
  Speaker 3: coach from Colgate University in upstate New York, where it's
• 4:20
  Speaker 3: very cold, who said, hey, guys, it's very cold and
• 4:24
  Speaker 3: there aren't a lot of indoor training pools here, so
• 4:28
  Speaker 3: let's go down to a Florida. They built this wizbang
• 4:30
  Speaker 3: new pool in Fort Lauderdale. They went down there, they
• 4:32
  Speaker 3: trained in the spring, and by nineteen thirty eight, the
• 4:35
  Speaker 3: College Coaches Swim Forum was formed and word had gotten
• 4:39
  Speaker 3: around that it was like a good place to go train,
• 4:43
  Speaker 3: which accidentally coincided with an opening of sort of a
• 4:47
  Speaker 3: younger person's bar called the elbow room.
• 4:50
  Speaker 1: Yeah, in the Sea Breeze Hotel. It sounds like my
• 4:52
  Speaker 1: kind of place, man, a hotel bar. Love those same.
• 4:56
  Speaker 1: I don't even drink anymore, and I still love a
• 4:58
  Speaker 1: good hotel bar.
• 4:59
  Speaker 3: They're great.
• 5:00
  Speaker 1: So yeah, these college athletes, these swimming, these swim teams
• 5:04
  Speaker 1: now had a place to be Florida and a place
• 5:07
  Speaker 1: to party, the elbow Room, And it's just started to
• 5:11
  Speaker 1: kind of get back that, like, hey, there's this really
• 5:14
  Speaker 1: fun thing that the swim teams are doing. Other swim
• 5:17
  Speaker 1: teams kind of took part in this too, and this
• 5:19
  Speaker 1: idea kind of spread beyond swim teams, college swim teams
• 5:23
  Speaker 1: to just college students who started to come down to
• 5:26
  Speaker 1: Fort Lauderdale and droves.
• 5:28
  Speaker 3: Yeah, like I like to drink, I like to to flirt.
• 5:31
  Speaker 3: I like to be in the sun.
• 5:34
  Speaker 1: I like a farmer's hand.
• 5:36
  Speaker 3: That's right. So maybe that's a great place to take
• 5:38
  Speaker 3: a break. And we'll be right back with where.
• 5:42
  Speaker 1: The boys are. Where the boys are.
• 5:46
  Speaker 2: Well, now we're on the road, driving in your truck.
• 5:50
  Speaker 2: Want to learn a thing or two from Josh cam Chuck.
• 5:54
  Speaker 2: It's stuff you should know, all right, shot.
• 6:09
  Speaker 3: Stop?
• 6:10
  Speaker 1: Yes, uh so, yeah, I guess we're finally at where
• 6:19
  Speaker 1: the boys are, right, because things have been kind of
• 6:21
  Speaker 1: picking up steam through the forties and the fifties. But
• 6:24
  Speaker 1: then in nineteen fifty eight there was an English teacher
• 6:27
  Speaker 1: from Michigan State University. His name was Glendon Swarthout, and
• 6:32
  Speaker 1: he said, hey, kids, I want to hang with you.
• 6:35
  Speaker 1: Let's go down to spring Break. I'm going to follow
• 6:38
  Speaker 1: you around and I'm just going to write about your escapades.
• 6:42
  Speaker 1: And apparently it was debaucherous enough and just crazy enough
• 6:46
  Speaker 1: that he managed to write a book out of like this,
• 6:48
  Speaker 1: essentially this week in Fort Lauderdale with some of his students,
• 6:51
  Speaker 1: and the name of that book was Unholy Spring, Unholy Spring,
• 6:59
  Speaker 1: Unholy Spring.
• 7:01
  Speaker 3: That's right, he changed the name to Where the Boys Are.
• 7:03
  Speaker 3: Of course, the book was a pretty big hit, but
• 7:07
  Speaker 3: the movie really put it on the map when MGM
• 7:09
  Speaker 3: put that out not too long after, and that's what
• 7:13
  Speaker 3: really changed things. All of a sudden, Florida was on
• 7:16
  Speaker 3: display as like where, well, where the boys are and
• 7:19
  Speaker 3: where the girls are and what you need to be
• 7:21
  Speaker 3: doing every spring. And you know, we got some loose
• 7:25
  Speaker 3: numbers here. I'm sure it's kind of hard to put
• 7:28
  Speaker 3: great numbers on the nineteen sixty spring Break growth, but
• 7:32
  Speaker 3: they said that you know, basically tens of thousands of
• 7:35
  Speaker 3: students started coming after that movie came out, and by
• 7:39
  Speaker 3: the mid nineteen eighties, like close to four hundred thousand
• 7:43
  Speaker 3: students were going just to Fort Lauderdale.
• 7:45
  Speaker 1: Man, in Fort Lauderdale, I mean, it's a city in Florida,
• 7:49
  Speaker 1: but you had three hundred and fifty thousand extra people
• 7:52
  Speaker 1: for over the course of like a month. Probably, Like
• 7:55
  Speaker 1: that's that's an impact.
• 7:57
  Speaker 3: For sure, a bad impact at times.
• 8:00
  Speaker 1: Yeah, Like that's the thing. If you trace the history
• 8:03
  Speaker 1: of spring Break, it's like fun, fun, fun, fun, it's
• 8:05
  Speaker 1: awful now and then murders and rapes, fun, fun, fun,
• 8:09
  Speaker 1: fun awful, fun fun fun awful, And from what I
• 8:12
  Speaker 1: can gather, Chuck, it turns awful when the middle aged
• 8:15
  Speaker 1: dudes show up. That's when it turns awful because they
• 8:19
  Speaker 1: should not be there. They have no business being there.
• 8:22
  Speaker 1: Spring Break is for college kids. When the older dudes
• 8:25
  Speaker 1: show up, that's when things get dark and bad.
• 8:28
  Speaker 3: Yeah, although high school kids, I went in too Panama
• 8:31
  Speaker 3: City in high school, and it was dark and bad
• 8:33
  Speaker 3: with high school kids. I can assure you of that.
• 8:35
  Speaker 3: I did too, because I was a good kid at
• 8:37
  Speaker 3: the time.
• 8:38
  Speaker 1: I was not a good kid at the time.
• 8:41
  Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean I was there. I was at those parties,
• 8:43
  Speaker 3: but uh, you know, I was drinking my apple juice.
• 8:45
  Speaker 3: I was pretending like I was drinking beer.
• 8:47
  Speaker 1: Oh really, were you really? That's awesome.
• 8:49
  Speaker 3: I was very cringey to look back upon that, but.
• 8:51
  Speaker 1: I think it's sweet and really charming.
• 8:53
  Speaker 3: Actually, yeah, I commit that. Now. I'm going to be
• 8:56
  Speaker 3: fifty five this weekend. All bets are off.
• 8:59
  Speaker 1: I know, how do you feel? Well?
• 9:01
  Speaker 3: I feel like I'm fifty three.
• 9:02
  Speaker 1: You should have said spring break.
• 9:05
  Speaker 3: So spring break is going bad in Florida. In Fort Lauderdale,
• 9:10
  Speaker 3: the town obviously gets together and this seems to be
• 9:12
  Speaker 3: sort of the rule and say, all right, we got
• 9:14
  Speaker 3: to start curbing some drinking laws. The mayor goes on
• 9:17
  Speaker 3: Good Morning American says you need to start going to
• 9:20
  Speaker 3: other places, and they did so all of Florida became destinations.
• 9:24
  Speaker 3: Panama City where I went, like I said, senior year
• 9:27
  Speaker 3: eighty nine, and then Daytona Beach was another big one,
• 9:30
  Speaker 3: and Daytona really grew after MTV in nineteen eighty six
• 9:34
  Speaker 3: started broadcasting live for their MTV spring break party stuff.
• 9:39
  Speaker 1: Yes. The first year in nineteen eighty six they had
• 9:42
  Speaker 1: live musical performances that was just a part of everyone.
• 9:45
  Speaker 1: But in that year they had performances by the Beastie
• 9:48
  Speaker 1: Boys and Starship.
• 9:51
  Speaker 3: Yeah. I mean who else would you get? What else
• 9:54
  Speaker 3: goes together better?
• 9:55
  Speaker 1: And I bet we can guess what song Starship performed
• 9:58
  Speaker 1: stare up.
• 9:59
  Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, and we built the city.
• 10:01
  Speaker 1: Those are the two that we built the city though,
• 10:03
  Speaker 1: is what also appears in one of the better Simpsons
• 10:06
  Speaker 1: episodes where the family goes on spring break and I
• 10:09
  Speaker 1: really keep singing that song the whole time. That's really
• 10:13
  Speaker 1: funny and what's cool. I just can't not mention it.
• 10:16
  Speaker 1: That's the second spring break episode the Simpsons did. The
• 10:19
  Speaker 1: first one was where Bart and Milhouse and Nelson and
• 10:24
  Speaker 1: at least one or two other kids like just ran
• 10:26
  Speaker 1: away and went on spring break and ended up wearing
• 10:30
  Speaker 1: wigs that they got out of the top of the
• 10:31
  Speaker 1: sunsphere in Knoxville. And it's a good one.
• 10:35
  Speaker 3: That's fun.
• 10:35
  Speaker 1: Okay, So go watch those two, I think is the
• 10:38
  Speaker 1: point of this episode.
• 10:39
  Speaker 3: That's a takeaway. So spring break's going big in Florida, MTV.
• 10:43
  Speaker 3: Is there in the eighties and eighty six, like I said,
• 10:46
  Speaker 3: but before that, in nineteen eighty three, a very key
• 10:49
  Speaker 3: thing happened right here in the atl when some black
• 10:52
  Speaker 3: college students got together. And we have some great historical
• 10:56
  Speaker 3: black colleges and universities here in Atlanta, and not all
• 10:59
  Speaker 3: of them went somewhere else for spring break. So one
• 11:01
  Speaker 3: year and eighty three they got together and said, hey,
• 11:04
  Speaker 3: we're stuck here on campus. Let's have a big picnic
• 11:06
  Speaker 3: and a big party. This is coming off of you know,
• 11:10
  Speaker 3: the song La Freak by Chic a few years earlier,
• 11:13
  Speaker 3: and of course the song super freakd from Rick James
• 11:15
  Speaker 3: was big and it was a picnic, so they called
• 11:17
  Speaker 3: it Freaknick. And Freaknick became a huge mangus deal in
• 11:23
  Speaker 3: Atlanta and with people coming from all over the country
• 11:27
  Speaker 3: and world even but it blew up Atlanta for about
• 11:30
  Speaker 3: a decade or so.
• 11:31
  Speaker 1: Yeah, like hundreds of thousands of people, ostensibly black college
• 11:38
  Speaker 1: students mostly just came to Atlanta and shut the town
• 11:42
  Speaker 1: down because the main thing of Freaknick was cruising right,
• 11:47
  Speaker 1: and you just all of a sudden had an extra
• 11:50
  Speaker 1: few hundred thousand cars on the main drags throughout Atlanta,
• 11:54
  Speaker 1: and like it would take you hours to get places
• 11:58
  Speaker 1: that it should take you ten fifteen minutes because there
• 12:02
  Speaker 1: were so many cars just stopped in the middle of
• 12:05
  Speaker 1: the road. That was Freaknick. It was nuts.
• 12:08
  Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean people started saying home and you know,
• 12:11
  Speaker 3: white people were terrified because there were black young black
• 12:14
  Speaker 3: people having a lot of fun out in the streets,
• 12:17
  Speaker 3: and the incidents of crime were here and there, but
• 12:20
  Speaker 3: nothing like it was being portrayed in the news as
• 12:22
  Speaker 3: like this sort of you know, lawless situation happening. There's
• 12:27
  Speaker 3: a great documentary that I can't recommend enough that was
• 12:29
  Speaker 3: out a couple of years ago on Hulu called Freaknick
• 12:32
  Speaker 3: The Wildest Party. Never told that Atlanta's own germane to
• 12:37
  Speaker 3: pre produce. But it's it's great. How they recommend watching it.
• 12:40
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I think it actually did start to get pretty
• 12:43
  Speaker 1: dark in the in the final years. It did, but
• 12:47
  Speaker 1: and again because middle aged dude showed up. But one
• 12:51
  Speaker 1: thing you can do if you want to crack down
• 12:52
  Speaker 1: on spring break is make one or two new laws
• 12:55
  Speaker 1: and it'll completely choke the life out of it. For Freaknick,
• 12:59
  Speaker 1: they passed a lot about cruising and like that basically
• 13:02
  Speaker 1: broke it up because that was the point of freaknik.
• 13:04
  Speaker 1: Panama City Beach where we both went for spring break.
• 13:08
  Speaker 1: That was for a very long time that accepted the
• 13:11
  Speaker 1: spillover from Fort Lauderdale and became a spring break mecca
• 13:15
  Speaker 1: in and of itself. And in twenty fifteen it got
• 13:19
  Speaker 1: really bad. There was like a it was just I
• 13:22
  Speaker 1: think it was like how it normally was, but just
• 13:25
  Speaker 1: some really ugly stuff got out on social media. There
• 13:29
  Speaker 1: was a girl who was unconscious and sexually assaulted and
• 13:32
  Speaker 1: there was a video of that that made its round.
• 13:34
  Speaker 1: Eight people were shot in one house at one point.
• 13:37
  Speaker 1: So Panama City got some really bad rep right then,
• 13:41
  Speaker 1: and they did something about it. They said you can't
• 13:43
  Speaker 1: drink on the beach anymore, and that was that took
• 13:46
  Speaker 1: care of it from that point on.
• 13:49
  Speaker 3: Yeah, there's still a band, it's only in March, which
• 13:52
  Speaker 3: is generally when spring break is ours is in April,
• 13:55
  Speaker 3: but there it usually is in March. So yeah, that
• 13:57
  Speaker 3: kind of did away with it, and you know, that's
• 13:59
  Speaker 3: kind of deal with spring break. There are definitely a
• 14:03
  Speaker 3: lot of universities now that do alternative things, like programs
• 14:07
  Speaker 3: where you can say, like hey, don't go out and
• 14:09
  Speaker 3: just get drunk on the beach, Like, go volunteer for
• 14:10
  Speaker 3: Habitat for Humanity and they're a collegiate challenge, or you know,
• 14:15
  Speaker 3: go work for HIV advocacy. So plenty of other options
• 14:19
  Speaker 3: besides the traditional spring break for sure.
• 14:22
  Speaker 1: For sure. But yes, no matter what you're doing, whether
• 14:25
  Speaker 1: it's working for Habitat for Humanity or you're you know,
• 14:30
  Speaker 1: staggering around Fort Lauderdale every ten twelve minutes, you have
• 14:34
  Speaker 1: to shout spring break. That's right. Short stuff? Is that.
• 14:42
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• 14:45
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