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