Miami Is Ghosting Spring Breakers

Photo: Jeffrey Greenberg/Getty Images

Looks like someone has been reading self-help books about enacting boundaries again! The city of Miami — once known for its Technicolor beachgoing crowds, excessive fraternization, and the drunken debauchery that spawned the problematic masterpiece Spring Breakers — has announced that the party is over. In fact, the Sunshine State has a rather lucid argument for shutting down spring break in Miami Beach: “It’s not us. It’s you.”

Earlier this month, the city of Miami Beach announced that it was so over spring break. In a new PSA (and in textbook breakup speak), the city employed a few actors to break it to the youths that “This isn’t working anymore” and “We just want different things.” What spring breakers want, probably: fun, booze, a booty call or two, and disorderly conduct. What Miami wants: orderly conduct, like “spa days,” “trying new restaurants,” and “relaxing on the beach.” In a pound-that-gavel conclusion that had me reliving my own traumatizing breakups, the PSA finishes by noting, “Don’t try to apologize and come crawling back.”

“We’re breaking up with spring break,” the Miami Beach website states. “Expect curfews, security searches, and bag checks at beach access points, early beach entrance closures, DUI checkpoints, bumper-to-bumper traffic, road closures, and arrests for drug possession and violence.”

In all seriousness, and according to USA Today, the city’s PSA comes in response to increasing violence in the land of spring breakers. The outlet reports that Miami Beach made over 1,000 arrests in 2021 that resulted in an emergency curfew. In 2022, five people were injured in two separate shootings. And in 2023, the Miami Beach Police Department said it arrested 488 spring breakers, seized 105 firearms, and issued 7,190 traffic citations between February 27 and March 27. So, while the hordes that descend upon South Beach get their act together, anyone still planning on hitting up Miami can expect a cop-addled vacation. Fun!

In the meantime, if spring breakers need to nurse their wounds, Fort Lauderdale offers an affordable, albeit unsexy alternative: “We understand that spring break often brings young people who are looking to have a good time,” Fort Lauderdale mayor Dean Trantalis told USA Today. “As long as, you know, they maintain a conduct that, you know, doesn’t destroy property … we feel that spring break is a welcome opportunity for Fort Lauderdale to host.”