Playboy's Guide to the Rites of Spring

West Coast

Spring Break. The time when students get away from the wall-to-wall books and escape into the totally other. For East Coast students and humanoids from the Midwest, Fort Lauderdale and Daytona Beach offer a change of weather, a weird extravagant, uninhibited blowout. Students from the West Coast and the Southwest face a different problem; they live in the totally other every day. The weather is always good, the behavior always weird, extravagant and uninhibited--and who in California reads? So, come spring break, they just cross the border into Mexico or sit in their room with their favorite Mexican import and relax.

And, being mavericks, they are not inclined to converge on one area. Rumor has it that Where the Boys Are was made by West Coast movie producers just to fake out the rest of America, a conspiracy designed to keep their favorite watering holes free of Ivy Leaguers and fraternity assholes. More likely, Westerners will toss a sleeping bag into a van and just take to the highway. Some head for Big Sur, some down the (continued on page 166)West Coast(continued from page 90) Baja Peninsula, perhaps hitting Ensenada. Still, there are one or two places that seem to attract more than their share of collegiates. From recent reports, the West Coast equivalent of Fort Lauderdale has to be Mazatlán.

By accident or design, approximately 20,000 students from Arizona State, the Universtiy of Arizona, the University of Northern Colorado, Brigham Young, the University of Utah hit the beaches of Mazatlán in the third week of March, followed shortly by a second assault wave of students from schools in California, Washington, Oregon and Nevada. Last year, there were even a few busloads of Canadian collegiates. It may sound like a crowd, but it isn't. Said one UCLA senior: "The only people who come down here looking for group activity are jocks: They're pretty hopeless, anyway. Most of them need night lights to sleep. Mazatlán is not Fort Lauderdale. For one thing, there's nobody trying to organize volleyball games."

Accommodations: Mazatlán is a fairly large, civilized town of about 160,000 residents. What isn't town is beach. The best beaches are to the north and, not surprisingly, that's where the hotels are located, either on Playa Norte or farther north on Playa Las Gaviotas and Playa Sabalo. Prices range from moderate to expensive: A double at the very chic Balboa Club de Mazatlán (M-1) runs about $36. The Camino Real (M-2), situated on a rocky point, runs $36 per night. The Agua Marina (M-3) and the Hacienda Mazatlán (M-4) are somewhat cheaper, costing $12 to $18 per night and $24 per night, respectively. You should make a reservation in advance, although several of our correspondents reported having no trouble finding rooms. There are cheaper rooms inland. Camping on the beach in town is discouraged by the federales, but, fortunately, there are several excellent campgrounds and trailer parks within easy reach. The Camaron (M-5) is most popular, featuring some 66 sites, followed by La Posta (100 sites). If they are filled, check the three campsites located on the Sabalo beach between the San Luis Motel and Camino Real (Coco, Las Palmas and Ole). You can hook up your Winnebago or Volkswagen van or pitch your L. L. Bean--catalog two-man tent for two to three dollars a night.

It doesn't really matter where you stay, though. Most of the action is on the beaches and in the pools of the hotels located on the beaches. Managers are very liberal about nonguests--as long as there is no damage, everyone is invited to party. So when word goes out in the afternoon that there will be a come-one, come-all get-together in room 220, no one gets hassled when half of the Northern Hemisphere shows up. Some students last year adopted a policy of putting up one of their group in a luxury hotel--similar to conventiongoers who rent a suite for meetings and parties, while the rest of the crew stays at the local Holiday Inn.

Where the Girls Are and What to Do with Them When You Find Them: Hotel managers report that the ratio of women to men is about 60--40. Not bad for the man on the prowl. However, firsthand reports are not completely enthusiastic: A Texan claimed, "Women? I saw lots of them. I talked to quite a few: beautiful ones. But I didn't get anywhere." A University of California at San Diego botanist moaned, "If you're not here with someone worth being here with, all you can do is shop, drink and swim." What about local girls? "Well, the local girls are not impossible to impress. They usually warm up to you if you know some Spanish and show some manners. They are approachable but very Catholic."

Still, this is the season of the thong bikini; there's nothing like a few million square inches of flesh to get the juices running after a long winter. The scenery on the beach is worth the trip. And it is possible to get it on. There is an almost conscious effort on the part of girls to meet guys from schools other than their own. If they aren't fixed up by spring break, they are hungry new faces and the partying can get serious.

Night life in Mazatlán is excellent--there are restaurants, night clubs, unassuming sidewalk cafés. (One dispirited rogue remarked that the reason everyone eats at such ridiculous hours in Mexico is that the country is sexually repressed, and since no one is at home in bed, doing what comes naturally, they're out at restaurants instead.) Most of the hotels have bars and bands. Barbecued shrimp rolled in onions and bacon costs about 15 pesos (a little over a dollar) at Mamucas (M-6). Most students seem to end up drinking at local taverns, before breaking at ten o'clock for beach parties and hotel-room orgies. Dancing in the streets is frequent, even when there is no music. The Shrimp Bucket and Señor Frog's are both popular with Americans. Most students follow the adage "Don't drink the water," which is why so much time is devoted to drinking cervezas. (If you should wake up in the middle of the night with a terrific hangover, totally dehydrated, and quaff an entire bathtub of water before you realize where you are, the hospital [M-7] is just two steps away.)

And, of course, if you're lonesome for some American food, there's a Kentucky Fried Chicken downtown.

Side Trips: Mazatlán has more outdoors than you see in one place: There is surfing, skiing (motorboats can be rented for five dollars an hour) and paraskiing (in which you hook onto a parachute towed behind a boat, for eight dollars). You can also rent motorcycles, bicycles or "pulmonias," motorized tricycles. (Every now and then, you find yourself in a bar in Mexico staring at a picture of a white-haired fat man who looks like Ernest Hemingway, surrounded by what looks like a collegiate swim team--athletic young men in briefs. Then you realize it is Papa. And that The Old Man and the Sea could have been written about the Gulf of California.) And if you can figure out how to convert your M-16 to a hunting rifle, there are trips into the mountains for the big cats.

Or you can take a three-hour jungle cruise into the mangrove swamps inland from Mazatlán. Last year, one enterprising tourist was offering jungle cruises of his hotel room.

Hassles: Some vacationers go to Mazatlán seeking the proverbial pot at the end of the rainbow. Forget it. The evil weed is scorned by the good Catholic people of Mazatlán and Guadalajara. There is not much grown in the area and the demand for it during spring break drives the prices higher than you'll get smoking the local weed--and there are the ever-present federales.

The federales are easy to spot--they look like leftovers from Viva Zapata!, replete with crossed bandoleers, machine guns. etc. You may think that the armament is more than is called for by the situation (something we wouldn't advise debating with the policia), but one official explained it as follows: "We do not have the money for police cars: if your police force is not mobile, it must be powerful and well distributed." Consequently, there are very few high-speed chases in Mexico, only well-ventilated getaway cars coasting to a dead halt.

The hassles begin at the border: You can count on a visa check and possibly an under-the-counter fee to cross over. A short time later, there's a chance the police will stop you for a routine check. Sometimes they will hold you until you make them an offer of a few dollars. Sometimes they want a little more: For instance, a vanload of college students was stopped last year just south of Nogales. The police discovered a lid of marijuana under the seat and dangled it in front of the students without saying a word. Then an officer put the dope back into the car where they had found it, walked over to the bewildered students, slapped them on the backs and held out his hands. Money was refused but packed away in the trunk were two cases of Coors. The police helped themselves and sent the students on their way.

Once you get to Mazatlán, the federales are a bit more friendly. They will supervise beach parties and hotel parties and even join in the fun on occasion. Mind your manners, don't smoke in public, keep the noise down and you should be able to avoid a bust. The local police frown on two things--dope smoking and public nudity. They have a rather novel way of handling skinny-dippers: One warm evening last spring, a student from Brigham Young decided to take a swim in the buff. Just as the 200 people he was partying with were about to join him, the beach patrol came by, spotted the youth and made their move. Instead of arresting him for indecent exposure, they marched him through the crowd, into his hotel, up and down the hallways of each floor, visiting every party they could find, then allowed him to get dressed. He spent the rest of the night washing dishes in the hotel's kitchen. Recovering from his tequila hangover the next day, he commented, "I really can't remember much of what happened, but it must have been nice. I've found about 20 notes in my mailbox inviting me to visit hotel rooms."

If you do get in trouble, there is a U. S. consulate conveniently located in downtown Mazatlán. But even if the charge is serious, don't expect them to hire Charles Bronson to fly in with a helicopter.

East Coast

Once upon a time, it was just another sleepy little Florida town with a long strip of beach running parallel to its main drag. But in 1961, a beach-blanket soap opera called Where the Boys Are changed all that forever. In the spring of 1961, carloads of college students from almost every niche in the nation invaded Fort Lauderdale en masse, causing enough mayhem to inspire the governor to proclaim it a disaster area and bring in the National Guard. But a myth had been created overnight and for years the students have flocked into the town by the thousands.

The legend caused a spill-over: For those who didn't make it as far as Lauderdale (or who found it too crowded and turned around and drove north), Daytona Beach became almost as popular over the years. But more on Daytona later.

Only 1972--1974 were slow years, and nobody seems to know why--chalk it up to the counterculture, general apathy or better riots back home. But in the spring of 1975, they returned--the rowdies, the frat boys, the sorority girls--all in search of fun, sun, booze and sex, as if nothing had changed since 1961. Puzzled natives allowed that this new batch was less rowdy, perhaps even more mature than the first, but the old values were back and, on the face of it, nothing much had changed. Chalk it up to nostalgia.

The motivation to go there is perhaps more existential now. "A bunch of us were just sitting around in the dorm one night," said one coed, "trying to figure out where to go for spring break. Somebody said Fort Lauderdale. And that was that." Many even return for seconds or thirds, in spite of the cops, the crowds and the scarcity of hotel rooms. An estimated 25,000--35,000 per day were there in the spring of 1975 and, if word-of-mouth advertising lives up to its traditional effectiveness, 1976 ought to break all records.

In anticipation of this, Playboy has assembled the following guide to how not to get busted, trampled, disillusioned or disgraced in Fort Lauderdale this spring, should you decide to join the barbarian hordes. Following that is a shorter guide to Daytona Beach, which has its own mystique and attractions.

The information was culled from various campus stringers throughout the country who interviewed those who had gone there last year, those who had fun and those who wouldn't send their worst enemies there.

Accommodations: Most hotel rooms on the strip and slightly beyond will run you about $20 a night and up and up and up. The strip is called North Atlantic Boulevard (L-1) and this is where most of the action is. Most hotels on the strip include private beach property and if you decide to settle beyond the main drag, the beaches are less crowded and the rooms are cheaper. Hotels on Route One (L-2) are probably the cheapest, but you'll have to drive to the beach and put up with more traffic noise. In either case, you have two choices--to make reservations or not to make reservations. The advantage of having a reservation (and make it six weeks to two months ahead of time) is that you are guaranteed a decent place to sleep. The disadvantage is that you more or less forfeit the opportunity to hustle for a room, which is fairly easy to do in Lauderdale and simply involves approaching someone interesting on the strip and asking for a place to crash. Innkeepers are used to taking in anywhere from four to twelve boarders to a room, as long as they get their money and no significant damage is done.

Some hotels, however, are strict. One Rider College student, after spending a night at the Sheraton Yankee Clipper, nicknamed it the Sheraton Yankee Prison because of its identification-card policy. Not only are boarders required to carry a hotel I.D. to get back into their rooms but the Yankee Clipper charges a five-dollar guest fee for room visitors. "If you took up a girl," said the student, "and she turned out to be a dog, you were stuck for five bucks." The average price of a room is $56 per night for four people. One benefit of the I.D. setup, however, is that if you move out of the hotel, the I.D. still entitles you to hotel benefits such as parking privileges and the pool, if you can get away with it.

On the other hand, the Holiday Inn Oceanside (L-3) is highly recommended largely because of its informal atmosphere. Parties of 10--15 people are common and the girls are more relaxed and agreeable than those found on the strip. Dates are made at poolside, in the restaurant and frequently in the elevators, reports one student. Prices for rooms vary, but shared rooms are not scarce. Most students who stay at the Holiday Inn agree that the girls there are "spectacular."

Without a reservation, the best tactic is simply to play it by ear and try to hustle your way into someone's hotel room for a small price. There are a few campsites in Lauderdale, but most of them are about 30 miles from town. The Holiday Inn Trav-l-Park (L-4) rents spaces to trailers. It's only five miles from the beach off Route 84 and very convenient by car. Since most trailer camps are small communities in and of themselves, they're ideal places to meet girls. Also, they have a pool and grassy knolls for sun bathers.

Camping on the beaches is, of course, strictly illegal and the police patrol them regularly, flash floodlights over the shore and evict trespassers. With a little stealth and caution, however, you might find an available place to stretch out your sleeping bag at one of the colleges in the area--notably, Broward County Community College (L-5) or the University of Miami (L-6).

Where the Girls Are: Aside from the hotels and motels, the girls can be found almost anywhere in Lauderdale and, according to most reports, they're lovely--tanned, blonde and willing. They probably wouldn't be there if they weren't willing. Estimates of the boy-girl ratio vary, but most students find that the girls outnumber the boys by as much as two to one. Just because they're willing, however, doesn't mean they're easy, and many girls have gone home with the feeling that the men are obnoxious and rude. So, no matter where you are--the beach, the strip or in a bar--remember: Couth counts. One incident reported last year may serve to illustrate this: An eager male student, known to his fellows as the "mad grabber," would run up to girls from behind and pinch their asses while cupping a hand over their bosom. One feisty coed, who had just completed a quarter of karate at school, put a quick end to his escapades with a fast knee to the groin.

At any given time during spring break, there are more people per square foot on the strip than anywhere else in Lauderdale. The strip includes the public beach property that runs parallel to it, but the street itself is usually jammed with wanderers of both sexes looking for parties and pickups. Generally speaking, the beaches are mobbed by 11 o'clock in the morning and it's basically a free-for-all. Activities on the beaches include organized volleyball, football and Frisbee matches, but most students claim that things don't really start moving until around five o'clock, when the lifeguards leave.

As for pickup bars, Lauderdale is crowded with them. Some, of course, are looser than others, and the clientele differs accordingly. The Button (L-3) is one of the best. Not only does it sponsor different university nights but it has live bands and is located right on the strip, at the bottom of the Holiday Inn. One of the most popular hangouts in Lauderdale, it usually has lines of people waiting to get in. It's informal during the day but employs a strict dress code for guys at night (no T-shirts or cutoffs). Women contend that men who frequent The Button are friendlier and have more "tact and experience when talking to women."

Another popular hangout is Pete & Lenny's (L-7), known by some as the classiest disco in Lauderdale. There's a weekend cover charge of two dollars for guys and one dollar for girls, but most students contend that it's well worth it. According to a group of Rutgers students, it's better than Miami's Castaways and features reasonable prices and wall-to-wall beautiful, sophisticated-looking women.

Other bars where the elite meet to get it on are Bachelors III (high-class), Big Daddy's (there are 17 in the Lauderdale area--dress codes and cover charges vary). Ocean Mist (weekend cover charge for guys but lots of women). Keyboard Cabaret (expensive), Rum Bottoms, The Playpen and the Tropic Cay (a good place for a cheap date--women get drinks at half price).

Dress: Aside from the dress codes of several bars, the general mood is informal. Girls can be seen in anything from string bikinis to cutoffs and halter tops, and bras seem to be taboo. In Lauderdale, you can go almost anywhere barefoot.

Sweat shirts, T-shirts and fraternity shirts abound. Referring to the vast proliferation of frat shirts on the strip, one disgruntled coed remarked. "If a foreigner were to wash up on this beach in the middle of spring break, chances are he'd think he was somewhere in Greece."

How to Stay Out of Trouble: By all reports, the Lauderdale police have become somewhat more placid since the early days, but then, so have the vacationers. Nonetheless, it's best to keep (concluded on page 166)East Coast(continued from page 92) out of their way whenever possible. Although sleeping on the beaches is illegal, some cops, depending on how overcrowded the hotels and motels are, will allow it as a necessary alternative, but don't count on it. Clad in white riot helmets and knee-high boots, the cops position themselves at every corner of the strip and in every hotel doorway. Their orders are to break up any disturbances and protect community property, and they are not to be debated under any circumstances. One unlucky student spent an evening in jail for possession of a beer can that wasn't empty. Unable to find a wastebasket, he ventured outside to dispose of the can but was stopped by a cop. Although the student protested that the can was empty, the policeman seized it and inverted it, causing two drops of beer to drip out. The student was hauled off to the hoosegow. He would have been better off littering.

Public drinking, swearing and skinny-dipping are illegal and the cops will arrest you for any such offense. Liquor wrapped in a paper bag and carried on the strip is an invitation to a night in jail. Moreover, do not litter or loiter and do not--repeat, do not--make fun of the police. They are very, very sensitive.

One last warning: Don't think for a moment that you can get away with parking illegally in hotel lots or in nonparking zones. Lauderdale is chock-full of towing entrepreneurs who are just looking for offenders. The charge: $50.

Final Word: God forbid it should happen to you, but just in case you get a severe sunburn or run out of money in Lauderdale, there are places to go for relief. Both Plantation General Hospital and the North Beach Medical Center get thousands of cases of severe sun poisoning every spring. Fees for sunburn treatment vary from $25 to $33. The best medicine, however, is preventive, which means do not underestimate the power of the tropical sun. Use protective ointments and lotions at all times unless you are tanned already and do not at first expose yourself to the sun for long periods of time.

As for money, Florida blood banks pay $11 a pint, and for a number of students who went broke last year, they provided a way to get back to school--paler but wiser.

Daytona Beach

Although nearly as crowded as Fort Lauderdale, Daytona Beach is considered more relaxed, less rowdy and not so over-populated with frat types. The center of town (D-1) is a carbon copy of Lauderdale's strip, but if you travel up or down the beach a way, you can have some of the privacy that is virtually impossible to find in Lauderdale. Ormond Beach (D-2), for example, is down the road from the center of town but not too crowded and Daytona cops are reputedly more lenient about things like drinking in the open, although it's illegal. Also, rumor has it that the women are looser.

Since Daytona is considerably more spread out than Lauderdale, it's advisable to travel by car. Accommodations at the major hotels run about the same prices as in Lauderdale, but reservations are advised, since Daytona is still a family-vacation area in some respects. The best pickup bar is The Beachcomber Club (D-3).

This spring, the Daytona Beach Area Chamber of Commerce is sponsoring over a seven-week period--March 7 through April 25--a College Week, featuring a wide variety of activities for vacationing students. Students will be able to purchase a ten-dollar Student Activities Card through travel agents or after arriving in Daytona, which entitles them to discounts and/or free entrance to events and programs every day during their vacation. Among the highlights of College Week will be Sand Seminars (on meditation, numerology, graphology, massage, astrology, I Ching, tarot, yoga and chanting), open-air rap groups, dancing and weekly beach concerts. The Daytona 500 at the Daytona International Speedway (D-4) and a world-championship motorcycle race will be held prior to College Week this season.

So take your pick: Daytona looks as if it's going to be better organized and is going out of its way for students. Lauderdale still has the pulling power but is likely to be more chaotic and reluctant about the hordes. Either way, enjoy your spring break. You've probably earned it.