When I hear a local make a face of disgust and say “I wouldn’t care if all of these spring breakers left and never came back” it pricks my heart. As part of delivering pizza, my main clientele is young, hungry, groups of people. These young, hungry, groups of people go to many other places while they are here on spring break.

It warms my heart that directly around me are business’s that are welcoming spring breakers because I think they know just as well as you and I do, winter on the beach is long and cold in North West Florida and there are few tourist to be found.

I understand many problems exist for Spring Break in Panama City Beach, FL. I think that progress has been made by many different areas to tone things down. Toned down so far that, I’m curious to see the economic reports of local business’s when this month is over. I have no data to back this claim up at this time, just hearing observations from friends and business people. I don’t think the beach had the tourist capacity this year for spring break that it has had in previous years.

I live on South Thomas Drive and I can see around me that things just aren’t as congested. Basing this on my experiences of delivering pizza through traffic from 6pm-4am, and just regular coming and going. I also can tell that some of the condo’s and hotel’s I am delivering to aren’t sold out even during the busiest weeks. I hope this isn’t true but only time will tell.

Very few college kids I have encountered have acted badly. Most are even quite polite considering their drunken state. A condo neighbor of mine reported to me, while I was on a pug walk about a Spring Breaker who did mouth off, but she laughed at the circumstances. She was attempting to walk out of the elevator that morning and there was a spring breaker that came barging in disregarding there was people getting out of the elevator. The resident told the young lady she would need to wait for others to get off, to which the party girl replied in a snarky tone “OK MOM”. This made me burst into laughter thinking, “Rude, yes but that could have been so much worse.”

I agree with the other news reports, the real problem is the “100 milers”. Guests to the beach that come from out of town to prey on the tourists on the weekends. They usually don’t rent rooms and hang out in parking lots. During the weekends, that’s when we really need to beef up on police and EMS services. Just on the basic principal of crowd control. The weekends are when people have said they actually feel unsafe. I would say last weekend was twice as bad as what we experienced last night and today.

As you pour over these images, if you are a spring break Debbie downer, please hesitate just a little the next time someone asks you about it. Think about these signs and how you are also putting down not only me but those who work in some of these local establishments.

Let me give credit where I believe its due, this picture above shows where the Mobile command center was set up in the Pompano’s parking lot (still closed from winter) They had some portable lights to help illuminate an other wise dark walking area. There were a few officers here through the night with at least one helping to assist in directing traffic to help keep things flowing at the intersection. They also had fliers available and a sign helping people understand some of the new ordinances the beach has put into place. Just having the police visible here helps things move along and discourages loitering. There were officers at various times of day at the Circle K on Front Beach and S. Thomas across from the Pompanos, they parked their vehicles in such a way that blocked people from illegally turning out of the Circle K parking lot and thus resulted in better traffic flow. Better traffic flow = Happy Pizza Customers.

For Spring Break to happen it takes a lot of energy and effort by many different people to keep things going. I applaud the Police an EMS teams for doing what they do and the many retail, service industry, and security guards for what they do. We are the driving force behind keeping our otherwise small town a popular tourist destination.

…. or at least in my case, the driving force behind the pizza.

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