Innovation: Who Made Spring Break?

Photographs by Patrick Ward/Corbis (top); Annie Griffiths Belt/Corbis (right); Claudio Vargas/AFP/Getty Images (bottom)

In 1958, Glendon Swarthout, an English professor at Michigan State University, overheard his students buzzing about their Easter-break trip to Fort Lauderdale. In that more-ecumenical era, students typically shuttled home to attend church services with their parents, but now word was spreading of another kind of spring break. Swarthout decided to tag along so that he could observe the rituals (pool-hopping, pith helmets, beatnik jazz) and capture the lingo ("beaucoup beers," "schizoid," "babyroo"). Upon his return, he dashed off a novel about coeds who cruise the beach and "play house" with boys from other colleges — a 1950s version of "Girls Gone Wild." In a nod to the Easter season, he called his book "Unholy Spring," but Hollywood executives persuaded him to change the title to "Where the Boys Are." The result was a blockbuster book that was spun off into a movie — marketed with the phrase "spring vacation" — as well as a Connie Francis song.

"That was where life imitated art," says John Laurie, a business consultant at the Kauffman Foundation, who wrote his dissertation on the history and economics of spring break. According to Laurie, after the movie came out in 1960, there were suddenly 50,000 (instead of 20,000) students going to Florida to experience the spring break they'd seen on-screen. By the mid-1980s, it was hundreds of thousands. MTV hosted its first concert at Daytona Beach in 1986, televising an orgy of beachside bikini contests, hair gel and smooth pecs. "MTV brought in major advertisers," Laurie says. The network also created the idea that the party could happen in any location with bodacious tanning opportunities.

As a college student in the 1990s, Laurie became something of a connoisseur of the Easter blowouts: "My first spring break was at Daytona Beach," he says. "My last one was Panama City Beach, Fla., which was then the spring-break capital of the world." Even as he marveled at the town gone wild, he was gripped by its bittersweetness. "After college, you can't go to spring break anymore. It's no longer socially acceptable. When it's done, it's done, and — at least for you — it's not coming back."

BEACH BARS

Sheriff Frank McKeithen of Bay County, Fla., has created a spring-break jail.

Why bring the jail down to the beach? Our regular jail is about 25 miles from Panama City Beach. We had vans that would haul people off. Unfortunately, the folks were passing out, throwing up and secreting other bodily fluids. Here, they can have fresh air, and if they're throwing up, we can wash it out.

Has anyone else set up a beach jail since you did this last year? Not that I know of. What we've built looks like two dog kennels with rubber flooring. You're talking about two million people coming through our area in a 47-day period. And they did not come to go to church.

What happens to the kids after they're booked? Well, we've started a spring-break court this year. If they're charged with misdemeanors, then the judge will assign them some hours of community service. It's humiliating for the kids when all their friends are at the bar and they're beside the road picking up trash.