The Rise and Decline of the Redneck Riviera: An Insider's History of the Florida-Alabama Coast

13. Selling the Redneck Riviera

212 anaa city beach may have wanted to refine its image— “there is a difference between ‘having’ spring break and ‘being’ spring break” Mayor Sullivan pointed out—but local businesses did not want to refine away any of the $300 million that Spring Break brought in. “To walk away from that level of revenue,” the president and ceo of the city’s Convention and Visitors Bureau noted, “is not a prudent decision.” And if nothing else, those folks were “prudent.” So they cheered and patted themselves on their collective backs when Joe Francis was run out of town, and then they returned to the business of hosing down T-shirt clad women, holding bikini contests, and, with the help of tv, spreading the word that there was still a party going on. As a result, little really changed. The kids kept coming, they kept spending, and “raffish Rotarians” kept loving it. One example can serve for all. According to “Spring Break lawyer” Jim Appleman (and he should know), despite the city’s promises to curb student excesses, the “Wal-Mart on the beach sells more beer than any other establishment in the U.S. during the months of April, May, and June.” He had been there and seen “four guys with four shopping carts [in which] they have got ten to twelve cases of beer wheeling them out the door.” To keep up with demand the store had “a truck that is coming there constantly” and P thirteen Selling the Redneck Riviera selling the redneck riviera 213 there were “refrigerated semis in the back that sit full of beer.” From the trucks to the students was a short trip. Business as usual. However, there was concern in some quarters, not about what the students were doing but about changes on the beach that might prevent them from doing it. In addition to being drawn to Panama City Beach by its “good party reputation,” in years past students liked the town because of cheap accommodations such as the Majestic Motel and Resort, which for years was “symbolic of the laid-back, no frills style” those early Spring Breakers sought. Advertising the “cheapest rooms” on the beach, the Majestic, with its onsite bar, its clutter, its noise and lack of rules and regulations, was firmly fixed in the memories of many—if they could remember anything at all. But in 2002, it was announced that the Majestic was coming down and a “pricy condo” was going up. City officials, who were striving to “undo their town’s honky-tonk image through ordinances limiting garish signs, adult businesses and tattoo parlors,” applauded the decision, but some business owners expressed concern that this would reduce the ranks of Spring Breakers. If, as expected, the number of hotel and motel rooms declined from about nine thousand in 2003 to around forty-four hundred in 2007, where would the students stay? In condos! One of the old Panama City Beach motels still in operation. Photograph by the author. 214 chapter thirteen There were, and always would be, students who came to Spring Break on the cheap, who sought out places like the Majestic for thirty-five dollars a night, or who just slept in their cars or on the beach. But by the 1990s a new breedofSpringBreakerswerecomingtothecoast.Liketheirparents,whose credit card they carried, they came looking for something more upscale and sophisticated than the Majestic or a backseat or a tent. Driving down in “personality” cars—suvs that had never been off-road, cute convertibles bought for Daddy’s little princess, cars that made a statement about attitude and affluence—they arrived with more money and high expectations and were willing to spend the former to achieve the latter. So they rented a condo. It was what they wanted and, more importantly, what they were used to. As any campus housing director would have told you, the days of two-to-a-room-gang-shower-down-the-halldormitorieswereover.Modern students wanted their space and amenities, and they (or their parents) were willing to pay a bit more for these luxuries. Renting a two-to-three bedroom condo with a small group was more like the life they lived in their dorm suite or apartment back at college. They came to the beach to party, not to slum. And if they happened to meet that “special someone” they would surely...