Spring Break ain’t what it used to be.
The annual festival of debauchery as we North Americans know it began the same way as most of our other great innovations: born out of the simple, beautiful minds of an all-male swim team.
But spring festivals have been happening for thousands of years, starting with cavemen emerging from their winter holes to celebrate the arrival of warm weather.
Bro-Magnon 1: “Bro, it’s spring. I’m going to get hammered and throw Tina in the lake.”
Bro-Magnon 2: “Sick idea bro. Cave chicks love that.”
Bro-Magnon 1: “Yeah bro. Then I’m going to invent barbed wire so I have something to tattoo on my arm.”
Bro-Magnon 2: “A tiger ate Tina.”
Bro-Magnon 1 (sadly): “Bro.”
The centuries-old tradition of dancing around the maypole is also often associated with the arrival of spring. Youth would dance around a pole twisting and twirling ribbons in a celebration of fertility. The ritual often gained scorn from Christians due to its pagan roots and “phallic symbolism” (that’s a technical term that means “penis stuff”). Maypole dancing is a Spring Break tradition that persists to this day, although now it’s indoors, the maypole is just called a “pole,” and if any of the “youth” get too handsy with the dancers, a man named “Tiny” will throw them into a “dumpster.”
Modern day North American Spring Break did, in fact, originate with the male swim team from a small liberal arts college in Hamilton, N.Y., known as Colgate University (school motto: Honour, Knowledge, Toothpaste).
According to beer-hazed legend, a.k.a. Wikipedia, the Colgate Raiders were looking for an Olympic-sized pool to train in during the cold New York winters of the 1930s and settled on the Casino Pool in Fort Lauderdale. After a couple of years, the training camp had grown to a competition featuring 300 athletes. They celebrated swimming fast by drinking beer and doing really dumb things, a routine that later become the source material for an international incident named Ryan Lochte.
The little training sessions started by Colgate University soon became a phenomenon attracting thousands of athletes, partygoers and Baldwin brothers each year. It was a rousing success, making Spring Break the most practical thing to ever come out of a liberal arts college.
A film called Where the Boys Are, starring noted tanned person and future Celebrity Wife Swap participant George Hamilton, was released in 1960 and brought the Fort Lauderdale secret to the world. The year after the film was released, 50,000 students showed up.
By the 1980s the annual tradition had grown to include more than 300,000 students each year. It’s hard to believe, but Fort Lauderdale’s residents grew frustrated with the annual arrival of an army a dumbwads all looking for a bush to puke in. And God only knows the cost of sidewalk repairs rung up by missed balcony dives.
In the late 1980s Fort Lauderdale passed laws and put the word out to let the yahoos know that they were no longer welcome. At about the same time the United States raised the legal drinking age to 21 across the country.
Perhaps the timing was coincidental, or perhaps the United States has the Colgate swim team – and George Hamilton – to thank for the toughest drinking laws this side of Saudi Arabia. Thanks a lot George – wasn’t it enough for you to just shag all of our grandmothers?
The Fort Lauderdale void was soon filled by Panama City Beach, another Florida destination that in the 1990s let it be known that they would love nothing more than to have a bunch of bros walking down the sidewalk pretending to ride motorcycles by saying “Braaaapppp, braaaappp, brap brap brap brap!” That never gets old. Oh wait, it got old really quickly, as Panama City Beach burned their welcome mat in 2015 following several Spring Break shootings.
What’s this world coming to when consenting adults can’t get together and shoot some Jagermeister and then shoot Travis, the bartender.
I was back on Spring Break this week for the first time since my college days and man, things sure have changed. My wife was away for the week – family emergency or healthy snack convention or whatever – leaving me and my two boys, age four and six, alone for an epic Spring Break road trip to the B.C. Interior.
I’m not sure if you’ve ever ventured to South Okanagan wine country for Spring Break, but let’s just say that if there was one specific class best represented, it would be “seniors.” The term “last call” was more of a literal description of reality than a nightly prod out of the bar. There were some late night shenanigans – on the first night my youngest picked a 3 a.m. fight with sleep. Everybody lost.
There was debauchery – my oldest can now proudly claim he owns the title “Fart King.” But nobody got shot, and nobody threw up on a cactus. It wasn’t the good old days, but I guess that’s how life goes as we get older. The party ends for everybody some time. Everyone except for George Hamilton, of course. Grandma says hi.
Andy Prest is the sports editor for the North Shore News and writes a biweekly humour/lifestyle column. aprest@nsnews.com
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