Decoder Ring | Spring Break Forever

Summary

Podcast Summary: Decoder Ring | Spring Break Forever

Podcast: Slow Burn
Host: Willa Paskin (Slate Podcasts)
Air Date: April 9, 2025

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Episode Overview

This episode of Decoder Ring investigates the origins, evolution, and cultural impact of "spring break" as an enduring American ritual. Host Willa Paskin explores how spring break transformed from a collegiate swimming trip in the 1930s to a nationwide media phenomenon, fueled by films and MTV, and now persists in a digital, decentralized age. Through interviews, archival material, and expert insight, the episode unpacks why spring break became the "party that never ends," how it reflected shifting attitudes about youth, sex, and consumption, and what its lasting – and sometimes problematic – legacy reveals about American culture.

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Key Discussion Points and Insights

1. Spring Break: A Manufactured Tradition

• Origins in Collegiate Athletics

  • Spring break began not in pursuit of freedom, but as a solution to winter swim practice — originating with Colgate University swimmers traveling to Fort Lauderdale in the 1930s (05:51).
  • Early growth was spurred by Fort Lauderdale's embrace of student visitors, keen for Depression-era revenue (06:26).

• Explosion After “Where the Boys Are”

  • The 1960 film "Where the Boys Are" made Fort Lauderdale synonymous with the event, pushing its reputation nationwide (07:34).
  • The film’s sexual frankness established spring break as a time of uncharacteristic, consequence-free behavior for college students, especially women (08:08).
  • “That all these well-behaved co-eds are going to school and they're not thinking about sex or their bodies or boys. And then they get this week where they go insane.” – Sachi Kul [08:17]

• Self-Perpetuating, Gendered Dynamic

  • It became a “self-propagating” phenomenon: “Because then if girls go, then boys go. So they have this thing that's just going to self-propagate forever.” – Sachi Kul [09:09]

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2. Migration and Media Amplification

• The Rise and Fall of Fort Lauderdale

  • Fort Lauderdale welcomed ever-larger crowds (up to 350,000 in 1985) but backlash over rampant rowdiness led to crackdowns and efforts to keep students away (10:52-11:22).
  • “I’ve been here three days and I already got arrested and I don't think I want to come back.” – Unnamed spring breaker [11:37]

• MTV and Daytona Beach: A New Era

  • MTV identified spring break as an audience bonanza, moving their coverage to Daytona Beach after Fort Lauderdale’s crackdown (15:06).
  • MTV’s live programming in Daytona, complete with concerts, VJs, and celebrity appearances (Beastie Boys, Marky Mark, etc.), revolutionized both their network and spring break itself, creating reality TV’s forerunner (16:03–18:13).

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3. The MTV Spring Break Phenomenon

• Broadcasting the Party

  • “We turn the camera on the audience and let them be on camera and be part of the show, they love that more than anything else." – Doug Herzog [18:24]
  • Contests, objectification, and alcohol-fueled antics became central to the TV spectacle, foreshadowing reality TV tropes.
  • "It was Sodom and Gomorrah.” – Doug Herzog [19:35]

• Objectification and Exploitation

  • The show was candid about its use of semi-nudity and sexualized fun:
    • “We were equal opportunity exploiters... we were doing the B abs contest with the guys, too.” – Joe Devola [22:09]
  • Sachi Kul contextualizes this:
    • "This is the era of people jerking off to the Sears catalog. So to see cleavage, to see a woman in her bathing suit was really exciting and lecherous and weird.” [22:55]

• Economic and Social Backlash

  • Both Fort Lauderdale and later Daytona (by the 1990s) questioned the financial benefits, with most revenue going to bars and overall town costs rising due to policing and damage (24:34–26:05).
  • “The family is not going to trash the room.” – John Laurie [26:26]

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4. Spring Break Fragmentation and Enduring Rituals

• Repetition of the Cycle

  • Crackdowns in Daytona (early 1990s) mirrored those in Fort Lauderdale: laws against public drinking, occupancy limits, and increasing local control of MTV content led MTV to move on (27:23–27:41).
  • Next came Panama City Beach and eventually an ever-rotating set of destinations (28:30).
  • “MTV did not need Daytona. … it picked up and just took spring break with it.” – Willa Paskin [27:52]

• Cultural Critique and Decline

  • By the 2010s, no single city or station wanted to play host; economic benefits were overestimated, and the risks and costs had become clear (31:14).

  • Sexual violence and exploitation, once under-acknowledged, became focal points of public debate in connection with both spring break and companies like Girls Gone Wild:

    • “Spring break is promising something. It’s promising sex… Girls Gone Wild took it and said, oh, there's a suggestion of something? We're going to give it to you.” – Sachi Kul [32:33]

  • Simultaneously, the novelty of watching “wild” college fun faded as the internet and reality TV made everything accessible all the time.

    • “If you wanted sex, you could find it on the Internet. If you wanted regular people being their wackiest, messiest selves on camera, you could turn on reality tv.” – Willa Paskin [34:01]

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5. What Does Spring Break Mean Today?

• Changing Expectations and Experiences

  • Kaylee Morris, a college student, describes today’s spring break as decentralized and curated via Instagram rather than dictated by MTV — safer, smaller, and less compulsory, but fundamentally similar (36:00, 37:40):

    • “There’s so many more options nowadays... Everything is kind of spoon-fed to you in a way.” – Kaylee Morris [37:40]

  • Safety and objectification issues are more foregrounded for young women now (36:41, 37:11).

• Still, the Ritual Persists

  • Despite changes, the core spring break rhythm (travel, alcohol, clubs, camaraderie) abides:
    • “Basically every single night that we were there, we went to the club... There were like hundreds and hundreds, probably of thousands, of other students like around our age.” – Kaylee Morris [39:17]

• Enduring Themes

  • The spring break “party” is resilient, evolving to fit the technologies, mores, and anxieties of each generation, even as some trappings (MTV, large central locations) fade.
    • “It’s different, but not that different. …Spring break is entrenched and adaptive.” – Willa Paskin [39:58]

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• "Spring break is a man-made phenomenon. A habit that has somehow survived massive cultural changes pretty much intact, making it a ritual of remarkable persistence." – Willa Paskin [01:10]

• “It was a hit. Three months later, 50,000 kids descended on Fort Lauderdale.” – Willa Paskin [08:30]

• “It was Sodom and Gomorrah.” – Doug Herzog, on MTV's spring break broadcasts [19:35]

• “We were equal opportunity exploiters... we were doing the B abs contest with the guys, too.” – Joe Devola [22:09]

• “The family is not going to trash the room.” – John Laurie [26:26]

• “There’s so many more options nowadays... It’s not just MTV telling you where to go now, it is Instagram as well.” – Kaylee Morris [37:40]

• “It’s different, but not that different.” – Kaylee Morris, on her own experience [39:51]

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Timestamps for Important Segments

• [01:02]: Introduction to spring break’s cultural ubiquity
• [05:51]: Origin of spring break with the Colgate swim team
• [07:34]: “Where the Boys Are” and the popularization of spring break
• [10:52]: Fort Lauderdale’s crackdown and the student exodus
• [13:15]: MTV’s emergence and coverage of spring break
• [18:13]: MTV’s realization about live audience appeal
• [22:55]: Saatchi Kul contextualizes sexualization in media
• [24:34]: Economic impact of spring break on cities
• [27:23]: Daytona attempts to control MTV’s broadcasts
• [31:14]: Miami’s anti-spring break PSA; cities turn away from spring break
• [32:33]: Girls Gone Wild bridges spring break and media exploitation
• [34:01]: Decline of televised spring break; rise of the internet and reality TV
• [35:18]: Contemporary spring breaker perspective
• [39:17]: Modern spring break described by Kaylee Morris
• [39:58]: Reflection on tradition’s persistence and change

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Tone & Language

The episode is conversational, interweaving historical narration with witty, observant commentary and candid, often humorous, personal stories. The mood is self-aware: nostalgic but critical, recognizing both the fun and the problematic elements of spring break through the decades.

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Conclusion

Decoder Ring's "Spring Break Forever" offers a rich, insightful journey through one of American youth culture’s wildest, most persistent rituals. By weaving together personal recollections, historical analysis, and social commentary, the episode reveals spring break as a living, adaptable tradition—one that has outlasted the media forces that once defined it, for better and for worse.

Transcript

[Willa Paskin]

Before we begin. This episode contains adult content and language. I don't know when you're going to be listening to this episode, but as I talk to you right now, it's April. Spring has officially begun, but winter is lingering and it would be nice to take a break. Lots of people do. Millions of Americans travel somewhere warm in March and April. Schools from elementary on up close their doors and people pick up and go somewhere. That means many of these trips, most even are a kind of family vacation happening during spring break. But when I hear the phrase spring break, I'm not picturing a family trip.

[Alan Hunter]

Spring Break.

[Willa Paskin]

Spring break is an infamous annual ritual in which thousands of college students notoriously and stereotypically head to the same location, somewhere cheap and warm and go crazy.

[Alan Hunter]

Spring break. A time, as they say, to get hammered, wasted, ripped or blasted. Translation, roaring drunk.

[Willa Paskin]

Growing up in the 90s and 2000s, spring break felt like it was everywhere. On TV, in the news, in sitcoms, and especially on MTV. Now it's time to shake Spring break until it breaks. Get ready to move in sweat. One academic paper found that 40% of college students at the time participated. I'm sure I would have thought nothing of this back then, but more recently, I've become curious about spring break's ubiquity. We treat college students flying south every year like migrating birds, as if flocking en masse to warm weather locations to engage in various rituals. Mating and otherwise is part of their very nature. But it's not. Spring break is a man made phenomenon. A habit that has somehow survived massive cultural changes pretty much intact, making it a ritual of remarkable persistence. Or to put it another way, spring break.

[Alan Hunter]

Spring break forever.

[Willa Paskin]

When they say nothing lasts forever, they didn't know about spring break. This is Decoder Ring. I'm Willa Paskin. Spring break is so established it can seem like it's always been here, but it hasn't. It's a holdover from mid century teen culture that has endured by changing just enough to be passed from one generation to the next. In this episode, we're going from the beaches of Fort Lauderdale to Daytona, from the movie screen to the TV set, from MTV to Instagram reels from its start to its surprisingly recognizable present as we follow the evolving self reinforcing ritual that is spring break. So today on Decoder Ring, how did spring break become the party that never ends? Hi, we're calling all Decoder Ring fans in the Boston area. We're going to be live at the WBUR Festival in Boston on Saturday, May 31, it's a celebration of WBUR's 75th anniversary and there are going to be a lot of great live shows there. Everything from Slate's Amicus to Wait, Wait, don't tell me. Modern Love and Us, we'd love to see you there, but we would all also love your questions. If you happen to be in the Boston area, are free that Saturday and have a cultural mystery you want us to solve, please send us an email@decoder ringlate.com or call us at 347-460-7281. You can find out more details about the festival and how to get [e-mail] we hope to see you there. So I am very familiar with the concept of spring break with the sun, the sand, the misbehavior, but I've never actually been to spring break myself. It just was not a thing in my school growing up. My colleague Sachi Kul didn't go either. And when she would catch glimpses of the American spring break phenomenon on the Internet or tv, she struggled to see the appeal.

[Sachi Kul]

I watched it and didn't get it. I was like, so it's just hours of white people on the beach. My understanding is you can get that for free almost anywhere there is a coast.

[Willa Paskin]

For her, spring break was literally a foreign concept.

[Sachi Kul]

I'm Canadian, so we didn't have like this as a cultural thing. I didn't know anybody who went.

[Willa Paskin]

But Saatchi has since done a lot of reporting around spring break and adjacent phenomena in and she's seen how large it can loom in its participants memories.

[Sachi Kul]

It's interesting talking to people about their time on spring break because some of them have a lot of fondness for it. Even if they had a bad time. In a weird way, even then, they still are like, it was what a great time. I was so young. I was so free. I'm like, I have no idea what you guys are talking about with this.

[Willa Paskin]

The people who started spring break itself might have been similarly perplexed. Because spring break did not begin with freedom on a beach in April. It began with swim practice in upstate New York during Christmas time.

[Alan Hunter]

Never fear, give a cheer for Colgate. It is a place where men are born.

[Willa Paskin]

Colgate University is located about 40 miles from Syracuse. In the winter, the campus is free. Not an ideal place to train if you're a swimmer. So in 1934, a member of Colgate's swim team convinced his teammates to spend their Christmas break training somewhere warmer. His hometown of Fort Lauderdale, Florida Fort.

[Alan Hunter]

Lauderdale, another fast growing resort town. Many of the so called natives are people who once made a vacation visit to the Sunshine State and just never went back home.

[Willa Paskin]

Fort Lauderdale was very small at the time. Only 8,000 people had lived there in 1930. But the swim team loved it and the nascent city loved having them. It was the middle of the Great Depression and the swimmers brought in revenue. The city began hosting a college swimming competition every winter. And when the swimmers went back to college, they spread the word that if you wanted to have some fun in the sun, Fort Lauderdale was the place to be. Soon hundreds of college kids were heading down. Though more and more during the swing spring vacation, universities were starting to introduce. Instead of Christmas break, that number kept rising in the years after World War II, as young people, some of whom had just been dubbed teenagers, suddenly had more flush allowances and spending power than ever before. By the 1950s, Fort Lauderdale was openly encouraging them and their dollars to come down, mailing invitations to fraternities and sororities. And they wouldn't need the mail to spread the word for much longer.

[Joe Devola]

Where.

[Willa Paskin]

The Boys Are In December of 1960, a movie called where the Boys Are was released in theaters. Based on a novel, it's about the sexual misadventures of four college girls on spring break in Fort Lauderdale. Why don't we all admit it? Admit what? Were going to Lauderdale for one reason, to meet boys. The movie was risque and frank about sex for its time, and it captured an idea about spring break that would persist but had not yet been articulated clearly.

[Sachi Kul]

It was the suggestion that girls would lose their minds because they were on spring break and behave in a way that was otherwise never going to happen.

[Willa Paskin]

Saatchi Kuhl again.

[Sachi Kul]

That all these well behaved co EDS are going to school and they're not thinking about sex or their bodies or boys. And then they get this weak where they go insane.

[Willa Paskin]

What are you talking about? Men, naturally.

[Alan Hunter]

What else is there?

[Willa Paskin]

When the movie was released, it was a hit. Three months later, 50,000 kids descended on Fort Lauderdale.

[Alan Hunter]

Is this the first year that you've come down to Fort Lauderdale?

[Sachi Kul]

Sure is.

[Alan Hunter]

To be honest with you. I came down to meet that girl standing right over there.

[Willa Paskin]

The movie turned spring break into a national phenomenon, one that laid out what to expect and how to behave there, even for students who had never and would never set foot in Florida. It also enshrined Fort Lauderdale as the capital city of spring break and made it a place that was alluring to young men and young women. Spring break's most essential ingredients.

[Sachi Kul]

Because then if girls go, then boys go. And if boys go, then girls go. And if girls go, then boys go. So they have this thing that's just going to self propagate forever.

[Alan Hunter]

What do you find to do down here?

[Willa Paskin]

Oh, lots of good stuff.

[Alan Hunter]

This is where the boys are.

[Willa Paskin]

Throughout the 1960s, spring break's reputation kept expanding through word of mouth and the movies, including one starring Elvis.

[Alan Hunter]

Any male in Fort Lauderdale who is not pursuing cute female will automatically land in jail. That's slowing Fort Lauderdale.

[Willa Paskin]

During the upheavals of the late 1960s and early 70s, spring break receded a bit in the popular imagination. The kids were protesting, not partying. But in Fort Lauderdale, spring break kept on keeping on. And as hedonism roared back into style, so did spring break. By the early 1980s, 250,000 students were attending Fort Lauderdale annually. But as spring break grew, so did its problems. From the moment they had first arrived, college kids had brought all the inevitable headaches with them. Hijinks, rowdiness, public drunkenness, bodily excretions, violence. And now their behavior was getting increasingly hard to ignore. The seasonal phenomenon that began after the 1960 filming of where the Boys Are has turned into a seasonal headache for beach residents.

[Alan Hunter]

I didn't invite 100,000 people to the beach on any given Friday night during spring break. Fill their little bellies with beer.

[Willa Paskin]

Kids urinating on my lawn.

[Alan Hunter]

They're overindulged, over sexed, and over here.

[Willa Paskin]

Residents had complained for years. But it was only in 1985, after Fort Lauderdale saw a record 350,000 spring breakers, more than double its population, that the city finally took action. It banned open alcohol containers and ended beach concerts. Police started cracking down on bar and hotel capacity limits. They arrested 2500 people. The city commissioners even decided to construct a barricade separating the beach from the.

[Alan Hunter]

Bars, voting to put up a six foot high fence right down the middle.

[Willa Paskin]

Of the A1A strip. The mayor went on national TV and explicitly told college students, do not come to Fort Lauderdale. And the students got the message.

[Alan Hunter]

I've been here three days and I.

[Willa Paskin]

Already got arrested and I don't think.

[Alan Hunter]

I want to come back.

[Willa Paskin]

As attendance began to plummet, it looked like the phenomenon had peaked, that a tradition that had started back in the great depression might just fade away. But something was starting to happen that would usher in a new era of spring break. Kids were going to flock to a new epicenter of fun, and and all that fun was going to be Captured on cable TV.

[Alan Hunter]

It's MTV's Spring Break. And this coverage goes on and on and on.

[Willa Paskin]

When we come back, MTV takes spring break to another level. For decades, spring break had been something that happened in person or on the movie screen. But it was about to start getting beamed into people's living rooms. MTV, music television. Video music. 24 hours a day, and it's stereo. MTV launched in August of 1981. It was the dawn of the cable age. And instead of just three networks, viewers were now getting more varied and niche options. In MTV's case, it was nothing but 24. Seven music videos introduced by young video jockeys known as VJs. Coming up, more rock and roll. It swiftly became a youth sensation, the coolest TV station there'd ever been, and the cultural tastemaker of a generation.

[Doug Herzog]

It was like, oh, my God, there was nothing else like it.

[Willa Paskin]

Doug Herzog graduated college the year MTV started, eager to work in television.

[Doug Herzog]

You know, MTV was my dream job. I used to sit up all night and drink beer and smoke pot and watch videos till the wee hours of the morning going, wow, that seems like it'd be a cool place to work.

[Willa Paskin]

When he was 25, Doug landed his dream job. He was hired to start MTV News in an effort to expand what the channel had to offer. Because by 1984, the 24. 7 music video programming that had made MTV hip was already becoming a ratings problem.

[Doug Herzog]

We basically changed our programming every three or four minutes. So if you didn't like the Billy Idol video that came after the ZZ Top video, maybe followed by a Madonna video, you might change the channel.

[Willa Paskin]

They needed to come up with some different, stickier programming.

[Doug Herzog]

And at one point, there was a guy who ran music programming. He was a rock and roll guy. He was the one who said, hey, man, we should go to spring break.

[Willa Paskin]

Spring break was where young people were, and that was MTV's audience.

[Doug Herzog]

We'll bring some bands down, we'll bring some celebrities down, and we'll broadcast live from spring break. That was basically the idea. Bring MTV to the audience, Bring MTV to the streets.

[Willa Paskin]

But with Fort Lauderd in the midst of its campaign to keep college kids away, Doug wasn't sure spring break was still a reality.

[Doug Herzog]

My first reaction was, you know, spring break wasn't a thing anymore. But we were like, well, maybe we could go down there and reinvent it.

[Willa Paskin]

Fortunately for them, there was another Florida town about three hours north of Fort Lauderdale that had been trying to get into the spring break business for years.

[Alan Hunter]

Welcome to Daytona Beach. A geographic phenomenon has resulted in a spectacular beach so smooth and compact that automobiles can safely drive along the surf's edge.

[Willa Paskin]

Daytona beach was shaggier and more down at its heels than Fort Lauderdale. And especially after Disney World started to lure tourists away to Orlando, they were desperate to bring some back. In fact, the spring break committee here has actively begun advertising all over the country. By the early 80s, city officials, hotel and bar owners and a local suntan oil mogul had begun enticing students down with cheap package deals on bus fare and a room, as well as hosting concerts on the beach. The city had even peppered the Fort Lauderdale beach with ping pong balls printed with the message get on the ball and get to daytona. So in 1986, when Daytona beach heard about what MTV wanted to do, the city was eager to get in on it.

[Doug Herzog]

And we decided we were to go down there and sort of create a weekend full of spring break.

[Alan Hunter]

Listen, everybody, listen one and all. We down to Daytona and we having a ball.

[Willa Paskin]

Instead of MTV's usual segments pre taped in a studio In Manhattan, now VJs were throwing to music videos live from the beach. They also staged concerts with Jefferson's Starship, modern English and Mr. Mr. And they enticed celebrities like the Beastie Boys, who you're listening to right now, to come down. I'm down to Daytona to get my kicks.

[Alan Hunter]

We the Beastie Bar, MTV Spring Break 86.

[Willa Paskin]

But the most energizing and surprising thing about that first year had nothing to do with celebrities.

[Doug Herzog]

You know, MTV was completely canned, right? And all of a sudden we're live. We are with the audience.

[Willa Paskin]

Young, single and ready to mingle.

[Doug Herzog]

They are in bathing suits and bikinis. They are drinking their ass off.

[Alan Hunter]

If you want to meet the best girls, this is the spot to be.

[Doug Herzog]

They couldn't be more excited to be on and part of mtv.

[Willa Paskin]

I came here to get. No, I can't say that, can I?

[Alan Hunter]

So they sent yours truly to Daytona to kind of turn the camera around on the audience.

[Willa Paskin]

Alan Hunter was a blond, shaggy VJ who was tapped to be the master of ceremonies. He was happy to get out of the studio and harness the insanity.

[Alan Hunter]

When we did get to Daytona and we did turn the camera around, people went absolutely nuts. Alan Hunter here, party reporter. What do people do in between sunbathing during the day and going out at night? Hi, how are you? Okay, fine, thank you. I would wander the halls and some two co EDS would be trying to jam into a hotel room and I would run to them and say, what are you doing in there? And they Go. You can't come in. You can't come in. And of course, I busted in. Whoa.

[Willa Paskin]

Hi.

[Alan Hunter]

Are you taking a shower?

[Willa Paskin]

Yes, I'm taking a shower.

[Alan Hunter]

Great. Are you getting ready for tonight's activities? It was that kind of sort of, I called it investigative reporting. What kind of soap do you use?

[Kaylee Morris]

What kind of soap do I use?

[Alan Hunter]

Whatever they have. Hotel soap. Well, that's great. That's all we did for a week, starting in the morning, all the way through to the night. And that's what played on MTV all day long. The ratings went nuts.

[Willa Paskin]

MTV's experiment in Daytona had succeeded beyond all expectations. It was a hit with the kids who were there, the ones watching at home and with sponsors and advertisers.

[Doug Herzog]

And the big revelation for us was, oh, my God, when we turn the camera on the audience and let them be on camera and be part of the show, they love that more than anything else.

[Willa Paskin]

They knew they had to do it again, and so they did. We're back live and it's Daytona. It's spring break 87. But this time, something was different.

[Doug Herzog]

Now they're playing to the cameras right.

[Willa Paskin]

At this moment. MTV's the Real World, one of the first reality shows, was still five years away. Survivor, the series that made reality TV a mainstream staple, wouldn't air for another 15. But spring break was already tapping into what would become a reality TV trope after that first season. The participants know exactly what's expected of them.

[Doug Herzog]

They realize the whole world is watching and their friends can see them. And, yeah, it started to, you know, sort of feed on itself. Like I'm supposed to go there, get shit faced, put on a bikini and have a great time.

[Alan Hunter]

So tell me what this game is. This is quarters. What's the ultimate option subject of this game?

[Doug Herzog]

It was Sodom and Gomorrah.

[Joe Devola]

It's the power of the camera. Kids go nuts for cameras, so they'll do anything to be on camera.

[Willa Paskin]

Joe Devola was a segment producer for mtv and one of his jobs was to wrangle spring breakers into on air hijinks.

[Joe Devola]

We did all these stupid contests like best body, best buns, but, you know, buns, girls and guys.

[Willa Paskin]

I'm the best buns winner.

[Alan Hunter]

Best buns winner. Let's take a look at those, can we?

[Willa Paskin]

They greased kids up and saw how many they could cram into a Volkswagen. They hosted kissing contests sponsored by breath mint companies. They had a guy shave MTV into his chest hair.

[Joe Devola]

It wasn't like they were savvy. They were all drunk.

[Sally Frattini]

I was just like, this is fucking crazy. Is this television?

[Willa Paskin]

Sally Frattini started at MTV in 1988 and eventually became the head of Spring Break SP production.

[Sally Frattini]

Everything was on the fly for spring break. Everything was on the fly. And every year we just kept building it and building it and building it.

[Willa Paskin]

As it became an annual MustSee TV tradition, the whole slate got bigger. They started bringing some of their fulllength shows down to Daytona.

[Alan Hunter]

Welcome back to the only game show that gets to go on Spring Break Remote control.

[Willa Paskin]

And flooded the programming with celebrities.

[Alan Hunter]

Hey, yo, what's up? This is Marky Mark, A Marky Mark and a Funky bunch. I'm lounging in Daytona with the rest of the Funky Bun. MTV Spring Break. Hey, you guys, it's me, it's Kie Shore. I'm here in the Boot Hill Saloon in Daytona Beach. Got Christian Slater here. Pretty damn incredible, I must say.

[Willa Paskin]

And it was incredible and over the top and sometimes over the line.

[Sally Frattini]

I remember, like, Rodney Dangerfield, who always wear this bathrobe, and he would walk around flashing everybody, which was so inappropriate. And girls would be like, ronnie Danger Jones just walked right by me and opened up his bathrobe and he had nothing on. I was like, oh, my God.

[Willa Paskin]

Looking back, the people we spoke with said a lot of what they put on air also just would not fly today.

[Doug Herzog]

I mean, there is a lot of, you know, gratuitous, you know, bikini shots and that kind of thing. The kind of thing that you would not do today and probably shouldn't have done that.

[Alan Hunter]

Beautiful, beautiful. Contestant number two. She's five' seven. She weighs 116. Her measurements are 36, 23, 35. Have mercy.

[Joe Devola]

I know it's objectifying. It is. I'm not gonna deny any of that stuff.

[Willa Paskin]

Segment producer Joe Diavola again.

[Joe Devola]

But it wasn't like we were like, oh, let's go get girls in bikinis. No, it was like we were equal opportunity exploiters. You know what I'm saying? It was like, you know, we were doing the B abs contest with the guys, too.

[Alan Hunter]

We have narrowed it down to four contestants in the male beauty contest. Would you like to take off your shirt for us, guys? Please, just go ahead and take them off. Rip them out.

[Willa Paskin]

But still, it was young women, mostly bikini clad and intoxicated, who are at the very center of spring break. And parading them around, whether it be in hot bun contests or concert footage or on the pool deck, was a huge implicit part of the draw.

[Sachi Kul]

It's before we had access to and I think this is important, like images and photos of other people because we.

[Willa Paskin]

Didn'T have the Internet Saatchi cool again.

[Sachi Kul]

Like, this is the era of people jerking off to the Sears catalog. So to see cleavage, to see a woman in her bathing suit was like really exciting and lecherous and weird.

[Alan Hunter]

What made you enter the contest? I have no idea, but you look good. Does she look great?

[Sachi Kul]

I mean, we were rubbernecking.

[Willa Paskin]

In the 1960s, where the Boys Are had cemented Fort Lauderdale's status as the singular spring break destination, the place to find girls running wild. Now, MTV had done the same for Daytona beach and a new generation.

[Doug Herzog]

We became a 24 hour commercial for spring break in Daytona.

[Joe Devola]

We ran that town while we were there and we got to do whatever.

[Alan Hunter]

We wanted to do.

[Willa Paskin]

But within only a couple of years, the same problems that had plagued Fort Lauderdale began to plague Daytona.

[Alan Hunter]

A car spins out after a high speed chase on a crowded beach. Police say the driver was drunk, as was the spring breaker killed yesterday after he fell four stories off a motel balcony.

[Willa Paskin]

As attendance grew to nearly half a million, some residents questioned spring break's benefits. But others didn't want to kick out the golden goose like Fort Lauderdale had. The public urination. The rowdy nights and packed roads were just the price to pay. For all those paying spring breakers, you know, what brings the revenue? What keeps the taxes down for Daytona? The tourists. But is that premise even right? Are spring breakers really an economic boon to a city?

[John Laurie]

As the theory goes, the hypothesis was the bigger the spring break location, the better. Like, the bigger you are, the more that it benefits them.

[Willa Paskin]

John Laurie has a PhD in economic development, and for his dissertation, he studied the economics of spring break.

[John Laurie]

I really do actually want to get the title down because, my God, that was such a long, long name. Yeah. The title of the dissertation is Spring Break the Economic, Social, Cultural and Public Governance Impacts of College Students on Spring Break Host Locations.

[Willa Paskin]

John analyzed as much data as he could, everything from a town's budget and tax code and revenue to hospital admissions and arrest rates. And he found that there is an economic benefit to hosting spring break.

[John Laurie]

There is, at first. When you get tens of thousands of students coming in, sure, they spend money that creates jobs and more money flows into the city. So at first seems like a good deal.

[Willa Paskin]

But John realized that to understand spring break, you can't just look at all the money flowing in, you have to look at where it's flowing to, specifically.

[John Laurie]

When you have tourists like college students, places that end up making all of the money are bars, and everybody else takes the punishment.

[Willa Paskin]

For the rest of the town, it's thousands of puking kids, snarled traffic, and overloaded hospitals. And as for the revenue the city earns, John found much of it got gobbled up by hiring extra law enforcement and paying them overtime.

[John Laurie]

And it's not like they were controlling it. They were just kind of containing it.

[Willa Paskin]

So a lot of money is now being spent just to maintain spring break, even as there are potential visitors who go to bed early and don't drink their dinners, who are staying away because of those very spring breakers.

[John Laurie]

The reality is, families spend way more money than college students do, and the family is not going to trash the room.

[Willa Paskin]

So after crunching all the numbers, John was surprised to find that the residents who were fed up with spring break weren't just right, that it was a hassle. It also just didn't really add up.

[John Laurie]

People are just like, look, man, it's just whatever money I'm making is just not worth it.

[Willa Paskin]

By the early 1990s, more and more residents and lawmakers in Daytona were coming to that conclusion.

[Sally Frattini]

When things started to unravel, I was like, oh, shit.

[Willa Paskin]

As fights became more common and multiple hotels were shuttered with reports of feces and vomit in the halls, Sally Frattini says the town started to demand more influence over MTV's Spring Break.

[Sally Frattini]

Daytona beach wanted to approve our talent and wanted to approve our scripts. And we were like, we're not going to let you do that.

[Willa Paskin]

In 1994, Daytona took matters into their own hands. They passed laws cracking down on underage drinking, hotel occupancy, and open containers. They sent a message that spring break was over in Daytona, and that message was received.

[Sally Frattini]

Daytona was like, we've had enough. So we moved on.

[Alan Hunter]

Welcome back to Spring Break 94. San Diego. What up?

[Willa Paskin]

MTV's Spring Break Sensation had been created at Daytona. The municipality and the programming had gone hand in hand. But now it turned out that MTV did not need Daytona. It was the epicenter of spring break, and it picked up and just took spring break with it. MTV started bopping from location to location, like San Diego and Lake Havasu, Arizona. And then in 1996, it landed in the next spring break mega site. Hi, I'm Victoria from the Spice Girls, and welcome to the spring break grind.

[Alan Hunter]

Coming to you from Panama City Beach, Florida.

[Willa Paskin]

Panama City, a town on the Gulf coast, picked up where Daytona beach left off, becoming the biggest spring break destination yet. But with MTV still jumping from place to place. Cancun, South Padre Island, Texas, Miami, Panama City never got quite the national name recognition as Fort Lauderdale and Daytona did. It just got the kids. It eventually would host half a million of them every spring between Panama City and mtv, spreading the festivities. Spring break stayed at the center of the culture through the 90s and aughts, the kind of thing that was so well known, it would just show. Show up in late night bits and SNL sketches on a random episode of Friends or a movie like the one starring the winners of the first season of American Idol.

[Kaylee Morris]

Look, spring break is a total mob.

[Willa Paskin]

Scene, and all the guys have one.

[Sachi Kul]

Thing on their mind.

[Willa Paskin]

Well, I know. Why do you think I'm going? It seemed like the party might go on forever. But that's not what happened.

[Alan Hunter]

Panama City beach used to have its own version of March Madness spring break.

[Doug Herzog]

But a year later, beaches here look quaintly quiet.

[Willa Paskin]

The exact same cycle that had played out in Fort Lauderdale and Daytona had happened again, only this time it went further. In 2015, not only did Panama City beach crack down on spring break, MTV ended its spring break broadcast altogether. And this time, no one entity or city took up the mantle. When we come back, how spring break is navigating uncharted waters. In 2015, MTV stopped airing spring break after nearly 30 years. That same year, Panama City, like all of the cities before it, cracked down on spring break revelry. Just a decade earlier, spring break had been a cultural juggernaut. Now it was cut loose, undesirable to cable channels and municipalities alike. What had happened? First there was the economics. Other cities saw the data from Fort Lauderdale, Daytona and Panama City, and they did not want to fall into the same trap. We're breaking up with you and don't try to apologize and come crawling back. This is a PSA made by the city of Miami, leading directly with spring breakers not to come this March. You can expect things like curfews, bag.

[Sachi Kul]

Checks and restricted beach access.

[Willa Paskin]

Whatever it takes, because it's time to move on. But there was a cultural component, too. Spring break has always had a debauched, dangerous and seedy side. There's an off camera rape scene in where the Boys Are, but by the 2000 and tens that was less the hidden underbelly of the phenomenon than part of its very premise. You could see it being critiqued in a movie like 2012 Spring breakers, about four girls who go beyond teen hijinks, instead end up in a world of very adult crime and violence.

[Sachi Kul]

Get on your knees.

[Willa Paskin]

You want dynamite?

[John Laurie]

No.

[Willa Paskin]

Don't be scared. Don't kill me. Give it to us. You could also see it in what happened to the pornography company Girls Gone Wild.

[Alan Hunter]

It's the most blazing Girls Gone Wild spring break video yet, as our camera crews catch real college girls going wild at the beach.

[Willa Paskin]

Girls Gone Wild had started in the late 1990s. From the beginning, it had coerced young, sometimes underage spring breakers into appearing in their videos, tapping into the idea, part of spring break since at least the 1960s, that this was where nice girls went sexually buck wild.

[Sachi Kul]

I think Girls Gone Wild is kind of the natural progression of something like spring break.

[Willa Paskin]

Sachi Cool has reported extensively on Girls Gone Wild and produced a documentary about the company in 2024.

[Sachi Kul]

Spring break is promising something. It's promising sex. It's suggesting something in the programming and in the marketing. But Girls Gone Wild took it and said, oh, there's a suggestion of something word. I'm going to give it to you.

[Willa Paskin]

The company had sold itself as a lifestyle brand, and celebrities had even rocked Girls Gone Wild Merchant. But by the 2000 and tens, the extent of its exploitativeness was being exposed.

[Doug Herzog]

A Cartersville woman says her life was.

[Joe Devola]

Ruined when she appeared on the COVID.

[Alan Hunter]

Of Girls Gone Wild.

[Joe Devola]

She was a child, she says.

[Sachi Kul]

What happened when she was 14 years old on a supervised spring break trip in Florida still haunts her.

[Willa Paskin]

The legal scrutiny and collapse of Girls Gone Wild happened alongside increased alarm about sexual violence at spring break. Overall, Panama City's crackdown had followed a sexual assault on the beach that took place in broad daylight. The irony was that even as the sexual danger of spring break was being more openly discussed, it was only becoming easier to see as much sex as you wanted online. And this had consequences for MTV, too. When MTV's Spring Break first started, its appeal was that it was unlike anything else on television. Provocative, titillating, messy, and irresistible to audiences.

[Sachi Kul]

MTV was the beginning of, like, fomo, because that's what they were selling to you. When you watch, like, MTV programming, they're selling to a party that you can't go to. It's a party you can't go to with people you'll never meet who are.

[Willa Paskin]

Better looking than you, guaranteed by the 2010s. All the things that MTV had once been able to exclusively provide with spring break, well, you could get it now so many other places. If you wanted sex, you could find it on the Internet. If you wanted regular people being their wackiest, messiest selves on camera, you could turn on reality tv. And the network no longer had a direct line to young people who would soon be able to see a party just by looking at their phones.

[Sachi Kul]

You can have anything you want, but because you can have anything you want, it. It numbs us, I think, a little bit to the impact. But that's why this stuff was so valuable in the 90s and the early aughts.

[Willa Paskin]

Spring break is much less alluring, unique and potent as a viewing spectacle than it used to be. It's not must see TV anymore. And its place in the cultural conversation has diminished as a result. It's less in the air, particularly for people who have long since aged out of it. But I think it would be a mistake to assume spring break itself. The thing college kids actually do is in the same boat as spring break, the thing we watched. And I know it's a mistake because that's kind of what I assumed before talking to a spring breaker.

[Kaylee Morris]

I do think there is definitely a pressure to live up to this expectation of spring break. Although that definition of what spring break looks like has really changed.

[Willa Paskin]

Kaylee Morris is 22 years old and.

[Kaylee Morris]

I'm a senior at Pitzer College.

[Willa Paskin]

And have you been on spring break?

[Kaylee Morris]

I have been on spring break before.

[Willa Paskin]

Where did you go?

[Kaylee Morris]

I have been to Puerto Vallarta, Mexico, and I'm just about to go to Oahu in Hawaii.

[Willa Paskin]

I reached out to Kaylee because I wanted to know what spring break was like now. And to be clear, I had a hunch, I thought it had changed, that it was not as centralized or compulsory or debauched, just way less of a thing. And Kaley seemed to agree.

[Kaylee Morris]

Yeah, I think definitely like the MTV beach house concept. That's just the term that comes to mind. I think it's a different thing.

[Willa Paskin]

Kaylee was only 12 when MTV stopped airing Spring Break. Even so, it cast a long shadow, one Kaylee grew up in.

[Kaylee Morris]

I feel like it was a little bit before my time, but I just hear that talked about as kind of this time when people would go crazy and hooked up and drank all day and all night. And it's messy. It seemed messy, for sure.

[Willa Paskin]

Did that seem appealing to you personally?

[Kaylee Morris]

No.

[Willa Paskin]

There's one thing in particular about the old image of spring break that concerns Kaylee.

[Kaylee Morris]

It's this scary thing for women, too. With so many inebriated people, I would just feel so anxious.

[Willa Paskin]

Talking to Kaylee, this came up quite a bit. The objectification of women and sexual violence that lurked relatively unacknowledged in the background of spring break for years is front of mind for her. She thinks about it a lot and she also thinks about what it must have been like to deal with when spring break was so big that it could attract half a million kids to one location.

[Kaylee Morris]

I am the person that always needs to, like, have my eyes on everyone in the friend group, like, needs to make sure they're safe. So if there were that many people in a different place that we were not familiar with and everyone was like, really drunk, that would be really my nightmare.

[Willa Paskin]

Honestly, as Kaylee and I spoke, this was a key difference that she drew out for me, that the spring break experience today feels smaller in scale and thus more manageable and safer because it is not defined by a single destination.

[Kaylee Morris]

There's so many more options nowadays. It's not just MTV telling you where to go now, it is Instagram as well that is telling you, oh, this is a fun place for spring break. That's cheap and you can go there with all your friends. And here's an Airbnb, like, everything is kind of spoon fed to you in a way.

[Sachi Kul]

Where is everybody going to spring break this year? Let me know where you guys are going and maybe I'll just have to plan around that.

[Alan Hunter]

Top 10 spring break destinations. 10. Miami. 9. Cancun.

[Doug Herzog]

8.

[Willa Paskin]

Key West.

[Kaylee Morris]

Not only is Jamaica beautiful, but there.

[Willa Paskin]

Is so much to do.

[Kaylee Morris]

So it's not just like random places, but there isn't just one that everyone's kind of flocking to. But I did find it very interesting this year that many separate friend groups that I know ended up just all just choosing New Orleans, which the first person I heard tell me that they were going there. I said, wow, that's such a niche spring break choice. That's awesome. And then I heard like five other friend groups going there. So then I was like, okay, maybe it's not niche.

[Willa Paskin]

Like, how much spring break content do you end up seeing, like, as it's happening, like, from your peers?

[Kaylee Morris]

I do see a decent amount, but it's more just like story posts of the pretty mountains and of the pretty beach.

[Willa Paskin]

Hi, guys.

[Sachi Kul]

Welcome to a little vacation vlog. I went to Punta Cana with my.

[Willa Paskin]

Friends for spring breakfast.

[Sachi Kul]

Not gonna lie, we spent most of our day at the beach tanning, drinking pina coladas.

[Kaylee Morris]

But it's not what I envision of MTV Beach House.

[Willa Paskin]

So here Kaylee and I were chatting, agreeing, jibing on all the ways spring break was altered. And then I asked Kaylee about what her last spring break experience was actually like. Will you tell me about Puerto Vallarta?

[Kaylee Morris]

So Puerto Vallarta. I went with seven friends Some days we would like drink during the day, that that got to be very tiring. And then we would like spend the day on the beach, get ready for the night, go to the bar at the hotel, pre game for the night, and then go to like one of the clubs. Basically every single night that we were there, we went to the club. There were like hundreds and hundreds like probably of thousands of other students like around our age. It was definitely crazy.

[John Laurie]

I don't know.

[Willa Paskin]

That sounds like spring break classic.

[Kaylee Morris]

Yeah, like now that I retell the story, I'm like, I guess that's kind of what I did now that I'm thinking about it.

[Willa Paskin]

So it's different, but not that different. And that's because spring break is entrenched and adaptive. It's been passed down from spring breaker to spring breaker using whatever means are at hand. Word of mouth, analog media, digital media, social media. So certain things about it change even as others stay very much the same. And some balance of this, a little variation on a theme, will probably continue for as long as kids make going bonkers on the beach with friends look and sound like fun. This is Decoder Ring. I'm Willa Paskin. If you're a Slate plus member, we have a bonus episode for you all about one of our colleagues experiences on spring break as a contestant on MTV's say what Karaoke.

[Sachi Kul]

We had this whole plan that we knew the lyrics to the songs that we knew, but then producers like literally on the bus were like okay, you're actually gonna do this song.

[Willa Paskin]

If you wanna hear more, you can sign up for Slate plus as a member. You can also hear a great interview. My colleague Sachi Cool, who you heard in this episode did with my other Slate colleague Anna Sale on the Slate podcast Death, Sex and Money. They spoke more extensively and very insightfully about Girls Gone Wild. If you aren't already a member of Slate plus, you can subscribe now on Apple Podcasts by clicking Try Free at the top of the Decoder Ring she show page or visit slate.comdecoder/ to get access wherever you listen. This episode was written by me and Katie Shepard, who also produced it. It was edited by Evan Chung, Decoder Ring supervising producer. Our show is also produced by Max Friedman. Merritt Jacob is senior Technical director. We'd like to thank Bob Friedman, David Cohn, Derek Johnson, Ivy Simonez and Alan Cohen. If you have any cultural mysteries you want us to decode, please email [e-mail] and you can also call us now on our new Decoder Ring hotline. That number is 347-460-7281. We love to hear any and all of your ideas for the show and any comments you have for us. Like this message we got from listener Chuck Buchanan Shano about our last episode.

[Joe Devola]

Just listened to your episode on books.

[Alan Hunter]

That changed the world and you missed.

[Joe Devola]

I'm so sorry, you missed the most important one of all. It's not a book, it's a television.

[Alan Hunter]

Series and it's called Connections.

[Joe Devola]

And it was the original series that.

[Alan Hunter]

Connected things over time. The things around us, the man made inventions we provide ourselves with, are like a vast network, each part of which is interdependent with all the others. The things we take for granted have multiplied way beyond the ability of any individual to understand in a lifetime. Thank you so much for what is just a delight to listen to every.

[Willa Paskin]

Time new episode drops. Thank you Chuck and to all of the other listeners. There were a few of you who pointed this out. I would also be remiss if I did not give a shout out to our multiple Canadian listeners who wrote in about the same episode to note that beavers are in fact Canada's national animal. I really do regret the oversight. Thanks for listening and we will see you in two weeks.

[Doug Herzog]

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