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Club La Vela was ground zero. The biggest club in the U.S., a damn super-club with pools inside, balconies stacked three high, and enough strobes to give a priest a seizure. MTV set up camp and dragged down the kind of talent you only saw on TRL. We’re talking Jay-Z, LL Cool J, Collective Soul, Bush, Naughty by Nature tearing it up. That O.P.P. anthem? It hit different when you were half-drunk, packed shoulder to shoulder with college kids screaming “yeah you know me!”

And just when you thought the night couldn’t crank any higher, Pauly Shore would bounce onto the stage, mic in hand, doing the Weasel — “buuuuuddy!” — like it was the secret password to keep the beer flowing. Corny as hell, but part of the soundtrack whether you wanted it or not.

Then came the contests. Wet-n-wild t-shirts, poolside stages, lights bouncing off every balcony — that’s when Party Shark Steve Joyner went to work. He wasn’t MTV, he was La Vela’s man, the club’s hype machine. Steve had the lungs of a drill sergeant and the timing of a comedian. He could take a lukewarm crowd and have them roaring like a stadium in sixty seconds flat. He didn’t make you watch — he made you lose your damn mind.

Meanwhile, MTV kept its own circus spinning. Cameras on tripods, big acts on stage, Pauly babbling into the mic, national broadcast chaos. MTV gave you the polished angles, but Steve gave you the raw sweat. Together it felt less like a spring break and more like a riot disguised as a vacation.

When the sun went down, the real show started — and it wasn’t just on MTV’s stage. It was on Front Beach Road. Cruising the strip was the heartbeat of spring break. Every night turned into a rolling car show — Jeeps stacked with frat boys, box Chevys on 24s, Mustangs and Camaros flexing, and the parking lot at the old pier packed tighter than a sardine can.

That’s where the car clubs staked their claim — Vital Signs, Endless Dreams, and a dozen more — all flexing to see who had the hardest system in town. It wasn’t about horsepower, it was about bass. You didn’t just hear the music, you felt it rattle your chest. And nobody, nobody, could touch Freddy’s Nightmare. That truck’s system hit so hard it damn near blew a sorority chick’s top clean off one night.

We’d sit out there for hours, hanging by the pier like it was our living room. I was lucky — I worked across the street at Wendy’s, which meant I had a front-row seat to the madness. That’s where the game really got played. Corny pickup lines flying through the salty night air: “Hey girl, got any fries with that shake?” Sometimes it got a smile, sometimes it got you a beer in the face. Nobody cared either way — it was the Wild West. Ruthless, reckless, and all wrapped in the cool Gulf breeze.

From there the night would spill into the hotels. Balconies stacked with bodies, funnels dangling over the rails, music blasting loud enough to shake the sand out of your ears. Every floor was its own party, and half the time you didn’t even know whose room you were in — but if there was Natty Light in the cooler, you stayed. Somebody was always hanging off a railing they shouldn’t, somebody else was in the bathroom trying to puke quietly, and down in the parking lot the chant never stopped: “Put ’em on the glass!” Beads flying, girls laughing, dudes screaming like cavemen discovering fire.

By four or five in the morning, the hotel crowds thinned into the same pilgrimage: Waffle House. Didn’t matter which one — they were all open, all glowing under those tired yellow signs. You’d stumble in with sand still stuck to your ankles and beer still sloshing in your gut, and the waitresses didn’t need menus. They knew what a spring breaker needed: black coffee strong enough to melt steel, hashbrowns fried until they snapped like chips, bacon greasy enough to bring you back from the dead. It wasn’t breakfast — it was resurrection.

And when the sun cracked the horizon, that was the reset button. Sitting in the sand with whoever was left from the night, wrapped in hoodies or still half in swim trunks, watching the Gulf turn pink and gold. Everyone talked like philosophers — about love, about life, about the dumb promises we swore we’d keep this time. It was regret and glory all tangled up, and it felt like forever.

And after sobering up, we’d go home, sneak into whoever’s house we said we were staying at, and crash. Dreaming of the amazing time we had, laughing about the insane things we’d seen — all just to get up and do it again the next night. When spring break finally died down, life snapped back to normal. Getting up, steaming your silk shirt, sliding into your favorite Structure jeans, lacing up your Nike Airs, and sprinting out the door to get to school.

Do I miss those days? Sometimes. Life felt simpler — which it was, of course. Back then it was different. MTV lights, Pauly doing the Weasel, Party Shark screaming into the mic, Freddy’s Nightmare truck shaking the pier, Natty Light coolers, hashbrowns at dawn, and sunrises that felt like salvation. It was garbage, sure — but it was our garbage. Sour, reckless, unforgettable. Just like expired milk.

But life moves on. It was another generation’s turn to take the reins. Adulthood approached fast. No regrets — well, except for that one night in White’s Motel. Oof. Any port in a storm, that night. Still, I’ll always cherish the friends I made and the chaos we survived.