If you’re over a certain age, you remember that in the ‘60s (and ‘70s and ‘80s), Fort Lauderdale was Where the Boys Are. And the girls, too. There was Frankie (Avalon). James (Darren). Fabian (Forte). And guys with names like “Moondoggie” and “Gopher” and “Chug-a-lug.” Annette (Funicello). Gidget. And Connie (Francis), the popular singer who sang the title song of the movie, which became sort of a badge for Fort Lauderdale.
These kids—seemingly without a care in the world—danced on the beach in the daytime and threw lavish luaus, with lobster bakes and guitars, at night. They surfed, they tossed footballs, had volleyball games, switched boyfriends/girlfriends with regularity, and generally drove the few adults in the film—often parents but sometimes local officials or hotel owners—crazy.
For an entire generation, the “beach movies” of the early 1960s—and Fort Lauderdale’s center-stage role in a few of them—forever defined this provincial (at the time) small town (at the time) to the north of Miami. And that generation isn’t limited to people now over 60. In fact, in large measure because of the beach movies, thousands—and then hundreds of thousands—of college students began making their way to Fort Lauderdale for what became the annual ritual called Spring Break. The phenomenon lasted nearly 30 years. In fact, to most of the country’s college students during those decades, Spring Break meant only one thing—Fort Lauderdale.
For what was then a somewhat sleepy, low-rise town, those were halcyon days. Local radio hosts, eager to promote the business that Spring Break brought, began unabashedly referring to the town as “Fort Liquordale.” There were all sorts of contests, from wet T-shirt to hot-dog-eating to craziest dives to limbo dancing to—of course—drinking. And no one here complained. These kids filled the hotels during the normally slower “Shoulder Season” just before or after High Season (even if they often tried to cram 10 or 12 people into a room). And they filled the restaurants, bars, nightclubs, strip joints, T-shirt shops, ice-cream shops, and surf shops as well.
Eventually, like all good things, it had to end, though. More about that later.