Spring Fever : Police, Merchants, Students Braced as the Easter Break Gets Under Way

They’ll be waiting in the Balboa Fun Zone for the onslaught, 25 of them--triple the usual contingent. And the odds against these Newport Beach police officers look overwhelming, especially if the sun shines.

For the next two weeks, Newport Beach--along with Laguna Beach and Huntington Beach--is where the boys are, with bikinis sure to be reflected in their Ray-Bans.

Yes, it is spring break, when more than 400,000 Orange County students say goodby to books and teachers’ dirty looks and say hello to Animal House by the sea.

Party Time

“Easter is the kickoff when people are getting into the beach mode,” said Lt. Steve Davidson, head of the Huntington Beach lifeguards. “There seems to be a party attitude, spring fever--whatever it is.”

Weather forecasters were calling for continued high temperatures into next week, leading city officials to predict large beach turnouts. “This year, it’ll probably be a lot more crowded,” said John Blauer, chief Newport Beach lifeguard. “We’re having better weather than most summers.”

The balmy skies already have wooed many young people already on spring break to the shores. But traditionally, the revelry has started on the Friday before Easter Week itself. And just in case all the fun times turn from rowdy to riot, police in the beach towns say they will be ready.

Last year, when high winds and goose bump weather kept the usual crowds away, about the only trouble in Orange County came when a young woman in a convertible bared her chest to a crowd in Balboa’s Fun Zone.

That provoked a wild crush of about 700 chanting, taunting youths and led to eight arrests when police broke up the ensuing melee.

This year, “we’ll be beefing up all of our patrols,” Newport Beach police spokesman Robert Oakley said.

In Huntington Beach and Laguna Beach, extra officers will be added in the downtown area, as well as on the sand. But officials in both cities said they are expecting little trouble.

“The track record so far in Laguna Beach hasn’t indicated we need any special attention during spring break,” Deputy Police Chief Jim Spreine said. “We used to really have some parties. I guess most of the students now go to Palm Springs and the (Colorado) River.”

Indeed, for the most part, Orange County has been spared the drunken violence associated with Palm Springs, Florida and the Gulf Coast. Last weekend, police with helicopters and tear gas broke up a revelers’ riot in Port Aransas, Tex., where an estimated 30,000 students were on spring break.

Still, Newport Beach has long been a mecca for hormone-driven hordes escaping colleges and high schools for sun-soaked beaches. In the 1960s, it was called “Bal Week,” for Balboa Week, lifeguard Blauer recalled.

“We had everything from 20 to 30 people in one-bedroom apartments, riots on the beach and lifeguard towers being tipped over,” he said. Then, police cracked down, and the city got tough on zoning.

“Now it’s mostly kids piling in the car and driving in for the day,” Blauer said.

Babes in the Sands

Still, the students come, the age-old issues on their minds: sun, booze, libido and--well, that’s about it. Their numbers make the scene wild. More than 100,000 beach-goers hit Newport Beach’s sands Sunday.

“The more crowds, the more babes,” said Ken Oddson, 19, a sophomore at UC Irvine getting an early start in Balboa on Monday. “The more babes, the more parties. And there is nothing wrong with that.”

Fueling parties is a top priority, and underage drinkers use “almost every trick in the book,” said a tanned clerk at Balboa Liquor near the Fun Zone.

The clerk, who gave his name only as John, said someone in Newport Beach is making first-rate imitations of California driver licenses--missing only the state seal. “They are pretty easy to catch if you know what you are doing,” he said.

Business should double over the next week, he predicted. The students’ favorite beer? “Any kind,” he said. “Why do you think they call it Zooport?”

The first wave of youthful buyers last weekend brought so much business to P.J. Surfrider that “you couldn’t even move in here,” said Gary Farmer, manager of the Ocean Front clothing shop. “They basically come out here to do one thing: party.”

Top Sellers

Hot sellers in his shop are bikinis and T-shirts, he said, looking spiffy in Hawaiian shorts and tennis shoes. The only drawback, he said, are the few obnoxious drunks who wander the streets after filling up at beachfront bars.

“Sometimes you’ll get these guys coming out here, drinking, screaming and hollering,” Farmer said. “You’d think they had never seen a woman before.”

Riverside City College students Jeff Wooters, 22, and his 19-year-old brother, Rick, were catching some rays Monday afternoon near the Newport Beach Pier with friends Thomas Finch and Tamara Robbins, both 19.

Wooters said the huge crowds draw him back to Newport Beach every spring. “The more crowds, the more girls,” he said, peering over his sunglasses and smiling.

But along with the crush of bodies comes the police, complained Finch. “There are just too many cops who want to get kids who are just out here to have a good time and party,” he said.

Except for the loud bass “thump, thump, thumps,” booming from car stereos, Cleo McEwen, a self-described 60ish, said she had little complaint with the flood of college students into Balboa. “The police can handle it,” she said.

Anymore, said McEwen, who is called “Mom” by some local young people, she even enjoys the spring crowds. “I kind of like it,” she said from the patio of her Ocean Avenue apartment, gazing at the sunburned flesh parading on the boardwalk.

“I sometimes feel like going out there and joining in on the fun,” McEwen said. “You have everything here. You have the beach, you have the bars.”