Short Stuff: History of Spring Break

Summary

Stuff You Should Know Short Stuff: History of Spring Break

Episode Overview

In this “Short Stuff” episode, Josh and Chuck explore the history of spring break—how it transformed from a minor college tradition to a cultural phenomenon associated with sun, parties, and controversy. They trace the roots of spring break, its explosion in American pop culture, the problematic aspects that emerged over time, and the rise and fall of iconic spring break gatherings, including the alternative traditions that have sprung up.

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Key Discussion Points and Insights

Early Origins and Precedents

• 19th Century Beginnings
  • American college students as early as the 1800s would "take little weekend breaks during the spring to like hot springs and maybe even to the coast" for rest and rejuvenation. (03:31, Chuck)
• Road Trips and Women's Colleges
  • "In the 20th century, early in the 20th century, the road trip was born and woman colleges, you know, woman only colleges were born... all of a sudden, members of the opposite sex were really hanging out with each other a lot more." (03:45, Chuck)
• Public Drinking Culture
  • "Starting around the early 1920s or so, college kids started drinking." (04:35, Josh)
  • Tied to the Jazz Age, the emergence of public drinking among college students became normalized.

Fort Lauderdale: The Birthplace of the Modern Spring Break

• The Miami Hurricane of 1926
  • "The great Miami Hurricane of 1926...wiped Miami clean...Fort Lauderdale was like, we need to get people back here." (04:39, Josh)
  • The city built Florida's first Olympic-sized pool in 1928 as an attraction.
• Swim Teams Lead the Way (1930s)
  • Colgate University coach led athletes to train in Fort Lauderdale’s new pool, starting a trend. By 1938, the "college coaches Swim Forum" became a highlight, bringing more teams and students south. (05:13, Chuck)
  • The rise of hangout spots: “a younger person's bar called the Elbow Room” and the “Seabreeze Hotel” became spring break institutions. (05:58, Josh)
• Expansion Beyond Athletes
  • Soon, non-athletes “started to come down to Fort Lauderdale in droves.” (06:37, Josh)

Pop Culture Explosion: “Where the Boys Are”

• The Book and Movie
  • Inspired by a 1958 trip, English professor Glendon Swarthout wrote a book based on college kids' exploits, titled "Unholy Spring," later renamed "Where the Boys Are." (08:46-09:38, Josh & Chuck)
  • MGM’s film adaptation propelled spring break into American pop culture, making Florida “where the boys are and where the girls are and what you need to be doing every spring.” (09:38, Chuck)
  • Quote: "By the mid-1980s, close to 400,000 students were going just to Fort Lauderdale." (10:23, Chuck)

The Dark Side of Spring Break

• Unintended Consequences
  • "Fun, fun, fun, fun. Oh, it's awful now and then. Murders and rapes. Fun, fun, fun, fun." (10:37, Josh)
  • Problems often arose when “middle-aged dudes showed up” or underage students participated. (10:47, Josh; 11:05, Chuck)
• Personal Anecdotes
  • Chuck recalls his own high school trip to Panama City, “and it was dark and bad with high school kids.” (11:12, Chuck)
  • Josh pretended to be a good kid with apple juice at parties: “I was pretending like I was drinking beer.” (11:24, Chuck)

The Spread and Peak of Spring Break Destinations

• Fort Lauderdale Pushback
  • With spring break overwhelming the city, authorities began cracking down: “start curbing some drinking laws. The mayor goes on Good Morning America and says, you need to start going to other places.” (11:43, Chuck)
• Daytona Beach and MTV
  • Daytona grew thanks to MTV’s live “Spring Break” broadcasts, starting in 1986 with acts like the Beastie Boys and Starship. (12:16, Josh)
  • Cultural impact: “We built. The city, though, is what also appears in one of the better Simpsons episodes where the family goes on spring break and keeps singing that song the whole time.” (12:39, Josh)

Freaknik: Atlanta’s Unique Spring Break Celebration

• Origins and Growth
  • In 1983, black college students in Atlanta organized a picnic during spring break, naming it "Freaknik" after songs like "La Freak" and "Super Freak." "Freaknik became a humongous deal in Atlanta…hundreds of thousands of people…just came to Atlanta and shut the town down." (13:18, Chuck; 14:08, Josh)
• Cultural Touchstone and Criticism
  • “Incidents of crime were here and there, but nothing like it was being portrayed in the news…” (14:45, Chuck)
  • Recommendation: Watch Hulu’s Freaknik documentary, “Freaknik: The Wildest Party Never Told.” (14:45, Chuck)

The End of the Old Spring Break Era

• Legal Pushbacks
  • "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..." (15:18, Josh)
  • Examples:
    • Freaknik: “passed a law about cruising and...that basically broke it up.” (15:18, Josh)
    • Panama City Beach: After high-profile assaults, “they said, you can't drink on the beach anymore. And that took care of it from that point on.” (16:26, Josh; 16:26, Chuck)
• Declining Party Culture
  • Many students shift to alternative activities like Habitat for Humanity’s Collegiate Challenge. "There are definitely a lot of universities now that do alternative things." (16:59, Chuck)

The Enduring Spirit of Spring Break

• No matter what you do, “every 10-12 minutes, you have to shout, 'spring break!'" (17:13, Josh)

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Notable Quotes and Memorable Moments

• “All right, so we're Talking spring break...the American institution of going to warm places in the spring, usually from northern universities and getting plastered for a week...” (02:30, Josh)
• “Fun, fun, fun, fun. Oh, it's awful now and then. Murders and rapes. Fun, fun, fun, fun.” (10:37, Josh)
• “When the older dudes show up, that's when things get dark and bad.” (10:47, Josh)
• “It was dark and bad with high school kids. I can assure you of that.” (11:12, Chuck)
• “I was pretending like I was drinking beer.” (11:24, Chuck)
• “Freaknik became a humongous deal in Atlanta and with people coming from all over the country and world even.” (14:08, Chuck)
• “If you want to crack down on spring break, make one or two new laws and it'll completely choke the life out of it.” (15:18, Josh)

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Timestamps for Key Segments

• History and Precedents: 03:29–04:39
• Fort Lauderdale’s Transformation: 04:39–06:37
• Cultural Explosion via "Where the Boys Are": 08:46–10:23
• Problems and Pushback: 10:37–12:16
• MTV and Daytona Era: 12:16–13:18
• Freaknik in Atlanta: 13:18–15:18
• Legal Crackdowns and The End of the Spring Break Boom: 15:18–16:59
• Alternative Spring Break Options: 16:59–17:15
• Signature Sign-off: 17:13

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Episode Tone and Style

Josh and Chuck keep their trademark playful and lightly irreverent tone, mixing in personal anecdotes, jokes, music references, and social commentary with the historical facts. The conversation moves briskly, blending humor with occasional serious observation (especially about the darker turns of spring break history).

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Summary Takeaways

• Spring break evolved from modest 19th-century student getaways to massive party events put on the cultural map by a novel, a movie, and later by MTV.
• The tradition reached its peak (and nadir) in the 1980s and ’90s, sometimes marred by criminal incidents and excessive behavior, triggering community pushback and new regulations.
• Alternative spring break programs have gained popularity, offering students more meaningful ways to use their time off.
• Despite changes, the spirit of spring break—and the impulse to belt out “spring break!”—endures.

Transcript

[Michael Easter]

This is an iHeart podcast.

[Chuck]

Guaranteed Human.

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[Michael Easter]

2%. That's the number of people who take the stairs when there is also an escalator available. I'm Michael Easter and On my podcast 2%, I break down the science of mental toughness, fitness and building resilience in our strange modern world. Put yourself through some hardships and you will come out on the other side a happier, more fulfilled, healthier person. Listen to 2%. That's 2% on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

[Josh]

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. Where the boys are. Is that the song?

[Chuck]

I think so.

[Josh]

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

[Chuck]

Wait, you say yours, I want to hear it.

[Josh]

Oh, I want to be where the boys are. But I'm not allowed. You've not heard that song.

[Chuck]

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

[Josh]

Do I sound like Lou Reed?

[Chuck]

I'll do that kind of speak singing, which is Lou Reed's deal.

[Josh]

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

[Chuck]

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

[Josh]

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

[Chuck]

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

[Josh]

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 the talking to.

[Chuck]

I've done that accidentally.

[Josh]

Oh, I have too. Well, Yumi did it accidentally to me, but I'm talking intentional.

[Michael Easter]

Okay.

[Chuck]

Yeah.

[Josh]

All right, so we're Talking spring break. That's why you sang. Can you sing it again, please? Where the Boys Are. 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?

[Chuck]

Where the Boys Are.

[Josh]

Not bad, but okay. Now speak singing, you gotta say where the boys are.

[Chuck]

Okay. I just want to be in your group.

[Josh]

Oh, yeah, we could do that. We could do a speak singing barbershop duo. Not even a quartet.

[Chuck]

Yeah, that's such a great bad idea.

[Josh]

Oh, we can also add the slide whistle. You got me too. As like an extra thing.

[Chuck]

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

[Josh]

Yeah. So where the Boys Are.

[Chuck]

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. Until all of a sudden, members of the opposite sex were really hanging out with each other a lot more.

[Josh]

Yeah, this is when Biff met Muffy.

[Chuck]

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 around the early 1920s or so, college kids started drinking.

[Josh]

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

[Chuck]

Probably.

[Josh]

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 part of this, the nearby city of Fort Lauderdale was like, 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 and that is build an Olympic sized swimming pool.

[Chuck]

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.

[Josh]

Yeah. And the Seabreeze Hotel. It sounds like my kind of place, man. A hotel bar. Love those same. I don't even drink anymore, and I still love a good hotel bar. They're great. So, yeah, these college athletes, these swim teams now had a place to be, Florida, and a place to party, the Elbow Room. And it's just starting 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. Yeah.

[Chuck]

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

[Josh]

I like a farmer's tan. That's right.

[Chuck]

So maybe that's a great place to take a break. And we'll be right back with where the Boys Are.

[Josh]

Where the Boys Are.

[Narrator]

Well, now, when you're on the road

[Chuck]

driving in your truck, why not learn

[Narrator]

a thing or two from Josh and Chuck? It's stuff you should know.

[Chuck]

All right,

[Michael Easter]

2%. That is the number of people who take the stairs when there is also an escalator available. I'm Michael Easter, and on my podcast, 2%, I break down the science of mental toughness, fitness, and building resilience in our strange modern world. I'll be speaking with writers, researchers, and other health and fitness experts and more to look past the impractical and way too complex pseudoscience that dominates the wellness industry. We really believed that seed oils were inherently inflammatory.

[Chuck]

We got it wrong.

[Josh]

Many of the problems that we are

[Chuck]

freaked out about in the world are

[Josh]

the result of stress.

[Michael Easter]

Put yourself through some hardships and you will come out on the other side a happier, more fulfilled, healthier person. Listen to 2%. That's 2% on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

[Narrator]

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[Michael Easter]

Was this before he wrote his stories? It must have been.

[Josh]

What? Okay, I don't think that's true.

[Narrator]

I'm telling you, I was a spy. Binge all 10 episodes of the Secret World of Roald Dahl now on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

[Chuck]

We're learning things with Shock and Josh.

[Josh]

Stop getting shut now. 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.

[Chuck]

Unholy Spring.

[Josh]

Unholy Spring.

[Chuck]

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 basically tens of thousands of students started coming after that movie came out. And by the mid-1980s, close to 400,000 students were going just to Fort Lauderdale, Man.

[Josh]

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

[Chuck]

The marriage and a bad impact at times.

[Josh]

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.

[Michael Easter]

Awful.

[Josh]

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. Cause they should not be there. They have no business being there. Spring break is for college kids. When the older dudes show up, that's when things get dark and bad.

[Chuck]

Yeah. Although 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.

[Josh]

Okay. I did too, because I was a

[Chuck]

good kid at the time.

[Josh]

I was not a good kid at the time.

[Chuck]

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

[Josh]

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

[Chuck]

I was very cringy to look back

[Josh]

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

[Chuck]

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

[Josh]

I know. How do you feel?

[Chuck]

I feel like I'm 53.

[Josh]

You should have said spring break.

[Chuck]

So spring break is going bad in Florida, in Fort Lauderdale. 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. The mayor goes on Good Morning America and says, you need to start going to other places. And they did. So all of Florida became destinations. Panama City, where I went, like I said, senior year. And then Daytona beach was another big one. And Daytona really grew after MTV in 1986 started broadcasting live for their MTV spring break party stuff.

[Josh]

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

[Chuck]

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

[Josh]

And I bet we can guess what song Starship performed. Stero.

[Chuck]

Yeah, yeah. And We Built the City. Those were the two that.

[Josh]

We built. The city, though, is what also appears in one of the better Simpsons episodes where the family goes on spring break and keeps singing that song the whole time.

[Chuck]

That's really funny.

[Josh]

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.

[Chuck]

That's fun.

[Josh]

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

[Chuck]

So spring break's going big in Florida. MTV is there in the 80s and 86, like I said. But before that, in 1983, a very key thing happened right here in the Atlantic 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. Let's have a big picnic and a big party. This is coming off of the song La Freak by Chic 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 and. 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.

[Josh]

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.

[Chuck]

Yeah, I mean, people started staying home 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 great. I highly recommend watching it.

[Josh]

Yeah, I think it actually did start to get pretty dark in the. In the final years. It did, but. And again because middle aged dudes showed up. 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 a. 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. 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 took care of it from that point on.

[Chuck]

Yeah, there's still a ban. It's only in March, which is generally when spring break is. Ours is in April, but 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 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 their Collegiate Challenge, or, you know, go work for HIV advocacy. So plenty of other options besides the traditional spring break. For sure.

[Josh]

For sure. But yes, no matter what you're doing, whether it's working for Habitat for Humanity or you're, you know, staggering around Fort Lauderdale every 1012 minutes, you have to shout, spring break.

[Chuck]

That's right.

[Josh]

Short stuff is out.

[Michael Easter]

Stuff youf Should Know is a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts, my heart radio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite show.