As mid-March approached, schools and coastal cities were preparing for the inevitable: swarms of students just out of Zoom School wanting to make barrels in a global pandemic.
In Florida, Palm Beach extended the curfew from 1 a.m. to 5 p.m. to deter future Spring Breakers. In Texas, a county judge reminded residents of last year, when children who brewed beer sparked several supercar events. The University of California, Davis, even offered to pay students to stay home, though not much, their “spring break grants,” which students had to apply for. , with a maximum of 75 gift cards to local businesses.
But warnings have not stopped the crowd from spreading from popular spring break destinations, from Miami to South Padre Island to Panama City.
“We’re ready from the time we’re open until we close,” Bacon Bitch’s breakfast manager in Miami Beach told The Daily Beast on Saturday. The Spring Break hotspot is in the state with the highest number of cases in the country of the new UK COVID variant. He estimated that the restaurant, with a capacity of about 175, has been serving “thousands every day” since early March.
Other Miami Beach businesses have also filled up: eight high-traffic Ocean Ave restaurants and clubs were too busy to talk on the phone Saturday. A Yardbird Southern Table and Bar spokesman told The Daily Beast that they had had a “huge influx of business” over the past two weeks due to several spring break. At The Standard, a high-end hotel in the Biscayne Bay area of Miami Beach, a representative said his rooms were fully booked every weekend this month.
One of the maskless crowds in South Beach this week told the Alabama A&M junior Miami Herald: “Grandma shouldn’t be here anyway. It’s too many people. “
The Miami Beach Police Department, which has stepped up its crackdowns in recent years, even with riot police to intimidate partygoers, has handled crowds with an extreme use of force that many claim is historically aimed at. To black tourists.
Friday night, the MBPD he tweeted who dealt with “very large crowds,” noting that they had arrested several people and had been “forced to use pepper balls” on civilians. A video showed partygoers spinning on a police car. Another disturbing video showed a massive crowd scattering as half a dozen police officers descended on a single man, lifting his body into the air and smashing him to the ground.
The Miami Dade chapter of the NAACP, which shared the video on Instagram, called for the resignation of the Miami Beach police chief last year after several incidents of police brutality at Black Spring Breakers. (Miami and Miami Beach police departments did not respond to requests for comment).
On social media, local event organizers have deployed weeks of events to cater to tourists. The @ SpringBreakMiami2021 Instagram page shared a poster for a “Freaknik Pool Party” on Saturday morning at a “Secret Mansion Location” that night. The subsequent party, also hosted at an undisclosed club, had the theme “Hennything Goes”.
Another Instagram page invited guests to a pool party in white dresses called “Cocaine,” promising mermaids, fire dancers, hookah and another mansion. The invitations did not mention masks, COVID-19 or social distancing. (Neither page responded to requests for comment).
Some event pages have been more covert in their ads. The operator of an event page in another Florida city told The Daily Beast that they had been advised not to talk about the venue. “The company is in my ass,” the administrator wrote. “They don’t even want me to publish[s]”.
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis said the rising Spring Breakers welcomed visitors to Florida in early March in hopes of boosting the local economy. DeSantis also made it difficult for municipalities to enforce their own regulations, signing an executive order to cancel all fines for COVID-19 violations.
Vaccinations in the state have steadily increased to about 14 percent of the population since last week. But even after recent updates to its travel guidelines, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention still discourages unnecessary travel.
“We’re very concerned that there’s a convergence of people here,” Miami Beach Mayor Dan Gelber told CNN last week, “and a real problem after that.”
On South Padre Island, off the southeast coast of Texas, a beachside bar called Clayton’s shared a now viral video of maskless attendees crowding in circles and playing beer . The owner, Clayton Brashear, told local station KVEO-TV that he welcomed the crowds. “For Spring Break, we really decided at the last minute that we would open up, we would do DJs, concerts, everything,” he said.
Brashear has encouraged guests to wear masks, he said, but does not apply. Texas Gov. Greg Abbott, who has repeatedly tried to open the state during the pandemic, left the masked state mandate on March 10th. Just a few days earlier, on March 2, the state recorded a test positivity rate of more than 12%, three times the national average.
The bar also operates a beach setting called Clayton’s Spring Break Beach Stage, which joins a Spring Break website to offer deals on events that take place daily. (Neither Clayton nor the website responded to requests for comment).
“With the ban on drinking on the beach in Panama City in March and March for being anti-college, South Padre Island is booming,” says the website, which charges $ 65 for a “Party Package Wristband”.
From Clayton’s, he adds, “There’s no doubt that this is the No. 1 daytime holiday party spot on South Padre Island.”