Fast Times at Palm Springs High : Easter Break Brings Out the Teen-age Mutant Ninja Partiers

It’s high noon at a Palm Springs hamburger hangout and the totally excellent seniors from the only high school in town are waiting for The Ritual to begin.

“Food fight!” shouts a 17-year-old clad in neon colors from shoulders to shoelaces. He launches the first Stealth burger into the air, splattering classmates waiting in line for similar culinary ammunition.

“A dude’s gotta do what a dude’s gotta do,” says another senior, ducking behind friends who are about to be bombarded with a strawberry milkshake. Nearby, a student zooms in on the frenetic crowd with a video camera that barely escapes the fury of speeding French fries.

In fewer than 60 seconds, the fast-food free-for-all is over. A woman sitting outside, chomping on an onion ring, freezes in mid-bite as the 100 or so students scamper wildly past her into the parking lot. They pile into trucks and cars and high-tail it back to school, wiping smeared ketchup, mustard, pickles and runny milkshakes off clothes, hair, faces, arms and legs.

Cowabunga, dudes!

The senior class has unofficially kicked off a week of spring break for the 2,800 students of Palm Springs High.

Even though thousands of high school and college students have been converging on Palm Springs since mid-March, the locals, like Robert Eaton, say, “Now it’s our turn to have some R&R.;

“And we just don’t mean rock and roll either--right guys?” the 17-year-old Eaton asks.

Indeed not. For Palm Springs teen-agers, this week of vacation represents more than a chance to abandon textbooks and soak up some sun. It is a change in the routine of a community frequently associated with retirees and visitors from the Midwest and East who come to escape the winter. It is a break in an atmosphere that many young people describe as dull much of the year.

Spring break also seems to be a chance for Palm Springs youth to renew their commitment to hedonism.

“We’ve got till Easter Sunday to party, dudes, a whole week,” says Mike Irby, 17, who is mingling with Eaton and several other students inside “the circle,” an on-campus ring of concrete blocks where seniors gather after school. “And the only place to party is here in Palm Springs.”

During the last month, as various schools nationwide have closed for spring break, more than 60,000 revelers have invaded Palm Springs, which has a population of 40,000. “Why should we leave Palm Springs when everyone’s coming here?” asks Sye Vasquez, 17. “We’re the only party in the whole state, in the whole country.”

Forget Daytona Beach. Forget Ft. Lauderdale. The place to be is Palm Canyon Drive, the main drag in Palm Springs. The boulevard is more commonly known to locals and tourists in-the-know as “the strip” because of bumper-to-bumper cruising that goes on during spring break and the scantily clad sun worshipers who jam the sidewalks.

Palm Springs High School party headquarters is located in the parking lot of Penguin’s, a yogurt shop on--where else?--Palm Canyon Drive.

“If you want to know what’s happening, that’s where you go to see and be seen, to leave messages with friends for other friends,” says Robert Shahnazarian, 17, who plans to study international relations at Pepperdine University this fall. “It’s the place to meet girls, especially on the weekends.”

“And to meet guys,” says Christy Paul, 17, making sure she and her girlfriends have a voice in the matter. “There’s a whole bunch of action for girls, too.”

Says Greg Schmale, 18: “It’s about the only week most kids in Palm Springs look forward to ‘cause it’s pretty boring here the rest of the time.”

Younger students agree. Says Liam Duff, 14: “We’re a small town where everybody knows everybody and that’s dull. So spring break brings a lot of action to us. I’m gonna go out there with four or five friends and look for chicks in bikinis, myself. If I can find one who’s older than I am, I’ll be a happy man.

“But I’m just gonna have fun--no drugs,” Duff says. “The drug thing is not cool here. Even a chick who smokes cigarettes turns me off.”

For some local students, spring break means extra cash. Stephan Lenart, 17, says he is looking forward to working this weekend at the Wyndham Hotel, where he will hand out towels to guests.

“Spring break brings jobs for many of our students,” says Joyce Lessly, of the Palm Springs High School Work Experience program. “So far (during spring break) we have about 115 kids working at restaurants and in retail shops on Palm Canyon Drive, and every day I keep getting requests from businesses for help wanted.”

Other students get work on their own.

By this Sunday, 450 high school and college students working at Domino’s Pizza--which usually has a staff of 20--will have delivered more than 15,000 pizzas to hotel rooms and pools along Palm Canyon Drive, according to Tom Nowlan, president of Domino’s in Coachella Valley.

“They work 10 hours and party for 14,” Nowlan says of the extra help hired for spring break week. Christy Paul and Greg Schmale are part of the pizza crew, taking orders and delivering, respectively. Robert Shahnazarian is parking cars at the Oasis Water Park, a hangout for students from Palm Springs High and the community’s College of the Desert.

But not everyone on spring break is bringing home a pay check. Several Palm Springs high school students, at least those who work part time, estimate they will have spent about $200--on movies, the Oasis Water Park, and ice cream, yogurt, burgers and tacos--by the end of Sunday.

“Because we’re locals we don’t need souvenirs,” says 17-year-old Chris Aurilia as he and his friends congregate in the Penguin’s parking lot. “We just need money for three things: Party! Party! Party! Personally, I’ll be looking for a babe in a G-string for a meaningful relationship.”

So will his buddy, Mirwais Saifi, 17. But Saifi adds that no matter what he does, “I can’t afford to get into trouble. If I get arrested, I have no social life.”

Lt. Lee Weigel, the Palm Springs Police Department’s public information officer, says that at the end of last year’s Easter week vacation, about 1,600 people had been arrested, 800 had been jailed and about 6,000 citations had been issued.

Weigel says most of last year’s citations were given to out-of-towners for offenses ranging from jaywalking to not wearing a seat belt. “I have no idea who was from where on the arrests, but I can say for the most part Palm Springs kids are good kids. They just want to have a good time and they are doing that.”

“It’s been a relatively quiet spring break,” he adds, thanks to a temporary increase in police manpower. The police department started the practice of adding officers during the spring break period after student rioting on Palm Canyon Drive in 1986.

“There are no turf wars between the locals and the visitors,” Weigel says. “The majority of the kids all seem to get along fine. It’s always a minority of the crowd that create the problems anyway.”

Nonetheless, Weigel says the police are prepared to handle any situation that might arise, “especially this weekend when we’re expecting the biggest crowd based on past experience.”

Back on the strip, Saifi and his friends agree to keep their fun clean: no jaywalking, no spitting, no squirting water from bottles, no water-balloon throwing. They agree to keep it simple: spot girls in bikini tops, follow them and make mindless chitchat until another group catches their attention.

Lisa Kossey, 19, who attends the College of the Desert, says she has friends whose parents “decide to take the whole family to Hawaii” to get away from spring break madness.

“A lot of older people are up tight about spring break,” she says. “My parents are. When I was a freshman in high school I was restricted from coming to the strip.” But the house rules didn’t stop Kossey from sneaking out, which she did. She says she also made the 11 o’clock newscast, caught in a crowd scene. “I was so afraid my parents would see me on TV, but they didn’t.”

In her sophomore and junior years of high school, Kossey says her parents “asked me not to go cruising or have anything to do with Palm Canyon Drive.” But she did anyway. “In my senior year they couldn’t stop me. I think they realize now that it’s just fun out there. The local kids thrive on spring break and some of the parents just don’t understand why.”

Rene Rosen, the mother of two teen-agers, says, “Spring break is a little scary for some parents here. I know a couple of families who take vacations away from Palm Springs so their kids won’t be here. I guess they feel there’s more temptation for their kids during spring break to drink and stay out late. But with spring break being staggered for almost six weeks now, you can’t very well lock up your kids. You’ve just got to trust them.”

The Rosens’ children, Christina, 19, a freshman at the local community college, and Alexi, 15, both have curfews.

“My daughter is a little more rebellious than my son, and she really never does honor her curfew,” Rosen says. “But I know she’s just enjoying herself and she’s not out there getting into trouble with drugs or drinking because she has to come home.”

Ginny Barber, president of the Palm Springs High School Improvement Team, a parent-teacher group, says, “You might have a group of kids circulating drugs, but the majority of kids who come here come to get sun and relax, cruise and flirt. I’m just very happy that my kid, a freshman in high school, doesn’t go in for that kind of stuff.”

Palm Springs vice principal Jerry B. Smith says the school doesn’t send out a memo to students about spring break behavior “because on a personal basis we instill in our kids good smarts about not getting into trouble all the time.”

And besides, he adds, because “most of the police department knows a lot of our students, the kids know better than to get into trouble. They know that if you get into trouble in Palm Springs, everybody will know about it.”

Hugo Chavez, 18, says if either he or his friends “see trouble coming--like a fight--we walk away. That’s the smartest thing anyone can do.”

But if a pack of miniskirted girls heads his way, he follows.

Apryl Kidder, 17, who attends Hemet High School--about 40 miles east of Palm Springs--and 14 other skimpily dressed teen-agers walk past Chavez and other Palm Springs high students who immediately shadow the girls.

But Kidder and clan--dressed in revealing outfits that range from miniskirts to rolled-up shorts to bikini tops--are looking for rides.

“We’re into truck hopping,” Kidder says as she and her girlfriends form a circle to primp during a break from walking the strip. Truck hopping, she explains, is “when you walk on Palm Canyon and you cruise for the hunkiest-looking guys driving the best-looking trucks.”

Then, she says, “you jump in and hang for a while until you see another truck with hunky guys and then you jump into that one.”

Her friend, Annette LaRocque, 17, volunteers, “We also like to motorcycle hop, though that’s a little harder to do especially in a mini. But it’s funner because it’s wilder. You really don’t want to be inside a car, you want to be outside on a motorcycle or in a convertible or in a truck.”

Just then the Hemet hoppers, uncontrollable hormones in high gear, spot a shiny blue truck. In a flash they’re out in the street, weaving around three lanes of gridlock, making a mad dash for the truck, which is stopped at a red light.

The light turns green. The truck takes off. Kidder, LaRocque, Yolanda Garcia, 18, and Julie Jackson, 16, manage to hop in, tanned bodies disappearing for a few seconds, Then they emerge with fists in the air.

“We scored! We scored!” Kidder shouts.

Chavez and his group of friends from Palm Springs High shrug their shoulders. They say they don’t feel spurned.

Besides, “It’s spring break, man. It’s crazy out here,” says Chris Aurilia. “It’s Palm Springs and there’s no place like it.”

“Yeah, we’re the teen-age mutant Palm Springers,” a voice shouts from the frenzied gathering.

Party on, dudes.