Posted on 04/07/2006 11:09:09 AM PDT by JZelle
DAYTONA BEACH, Fla. (AP) -- Dana Wassum and Mary Jane Jackson brought their bikinis all the way from Maryland's Towson University to party and soak up spring break sun.
So far, they've been disappointed.
"I kind of thought it would be more crazy," the 21-year-old Wassum said. "Like wet T-shirt contests. We wanted to enter one but couldn't find any."
Three years after Daytona Beach stopped advertising aimed at pulling in the lucrative but sometimes rowdy spring break crowd, the number of students coming here has dropped from 400,000 to a trickle. MTV is no longer welcome to film its spring break shows in town and most of the parties that made the city one of the top national destinations are gone.
(Excerpt) Read more at ap.washingtontimes.com ...
Poor babies.
It's cyclical. A friend and I went to Daytona in 1989, a couple years after we graduated from college, and let me tell you, it was off the hook. We got there the weekend where the end of Bike Week and the biggest Spring Break week overlapped, and the town was wall-to-wall people, half college kids and half bikers. And the funny part was, everybody got along great. There wasn't a huge police presence. And yeah, everybody (pretty much) was wasted all the time, but overall, things weren't totally out of control.
We stopped off in Vero Beach to catch a Dodger game at Dodgertown, and ended up in Fort Lauderdale for a few days. It was weird. The town actively discouraged Spring Breakers. There were cops EVERYWHERE, and the beachfront strip was actually very quiet. (And we got cussed out in French by some frumpy housecoat-wearing Quebecois snowbird as we walked to the beach one day.) Some of the bars were pretty wild, and in fact wilder then Daytona, but the police were really cracking down on things out in the street.
All in all, a decent moderately-debauched time was had by all. And it was certainly a lot more fun to do it a couple of years after college when I had a real job and thus some money to throw around!
I wonder what the Spring Break hotspots are now? Cancun, Tijuana, South Padre Island, Panama City Beach?
}:-)4
Well, without pictures it isn't clear whether they couldn't find one or the one they found wouldn't have them. ;)
As Daytona closes its doors to college students, they remain wide open for the increasingly gentrified crowds that attend NASCAR races and historically rowdy events like the motorcycle rally Bike Week. Both generate far more in local tourism dollars than spring break.
That's what I figured it was--the locals were tired of the mayhem.
The locals could make a heck of a lot of money pulling students' cars out of the muck with their 4X4 pickups. I bet they miss Spring Break in Daytona.
Downy oshun, hun!
"Dana Wassum and Mary Jane Jackson brought their bikinis all the way from Maryland's Towson University to party and soak up spring break sun. "
Without pictures, I refuse to accept this liberal claptrap article!!
O.C. Maryland was rowdy enough for us kids.
get a T-shirt and some water. I can't believe college students couldn't put two and two together.
You beat me to it! LOL!
When we called around for reservations (two weeks before we went...yeah, we were stupid) we finally got the last room at this little ten-room dump. When we got there, it was nine rooms of bikers...and us, two just-out-of-college guys. Amazingly enough, we didn't get beaten to a pulp. :)
The next morning, the bikers were gone and some serious cuties from Maryland had moved in next door. Didn't have any success, but man, did I have fun trying.
The parties in Lauderdale were actually wilder than the ones in Daytona. Everything in Daytona was pretty much open to public view, so while things got rowdy, they didn't get out of control. We went to one bar in Lauderdale that had its own little walled compound in the back with a swimming pool, a good-sized one at that. Back there, shielded from the street, the wet T-shirt contests always turned into *no* T-shirt contests pretty quick.
The other reason I liked Lauderdale was that in March, you could actually go into the ocean down there. At Daytona when we went, the water temperature was 58 degrees. I have a great long-range picture of two girls walking along the beach getting hammered by a three-foot, 58-degree breaker that neither one saw coming. Didn't think backs could arch quite that far. :)
}:-)4
"Like wet T-shirt contests. We wanted to enter one but couldn't find any."
If they are that desperate to share their bodies with drunken strangers, they could always just strip in front of some.
Or just pull up their t shirts, i'm sure they'd draw a crowd quickly, some men don't have any upper brain or good taste.
"If they are that desperate to share their bodies with drunken strangers, they could always just strip in front of some.
Or just pull up their t shirts, i'm sure they'd draw a crowd quickly, some men don't have any upper brain or good taste."
It's EXTREMELY offensive to women for us guys to NOT look. We're just trying to not hurt any feelings when we ogle!
I'm sure their fathers are so proud of them.
I always get a kick out of it when somone asks me where I'm going on vacation. I'll say "to the beach", get a blank stare, and then they say "Oh you mean downy oshun". I just say yes and chuckle to myself. Priceless.
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