A letter to Miami spring breakers

From beautiful beaches to sunny skies, I understand why Miami, my hometown, is the ideal chosen spot for your spring break. Warm weather? Check. Dynamic nightlife? Check. Opportunities to tan? Check.

We have all you want in your tropical week away from winter; we just wish you understood our yearly frustration and annoyance caused by your irresponsibility.

Every year when March rolls around, my city anticipates the trespassing of the college spring breakers from the North. The number of officers on Miami Beach increases and the clubs take stronger measures in refusing service to problematic customers.

The added population around spring break causes delays on our already crowded highways. Typical five o’clock hour-long traffic jams turn into two, and tourists who actually drive the speed limit exasperate the annoyance we normally just receive from the extreme heat and humidity.

As the unofficial capital of Latin America, many of our service workers are recently arrived immigrants seeking opportunities for a better life. Disrespecting workers attempting to speak in English is outright despicable in a city as diverse as Miami.

For me, a few insults or an added hour on the I-95 may grind my gears, but nothing compares to the state spring breakers leave our beaches in. On the mornings after parties, the sand on South Beach is littered with beer bottles and cigarette butts. My city is in risk of being swallowed by the ocean because of climate change, and spring breakers can’t even pick up their own garbage? We should not have to pay the price for your want to “live it up” or what not.

Now, locals are organizing regular beach clean-ups, picking up after spring breakers who should be picking up for themselves. We love our city too much to let it become trashed.

And we get it. We’re from Miami. Of course we love a good party, but we understand the implications carelessness could cause in our city.

As a common courtesy, you should go to any place with aims of leaving it better than how it was found. Like any national park, Miami’s natural resources are fragile and cannot handle so much exploitation from outsiders who do not take these issues personally.

The next time you decide to come to Miami for spring break, take a step back and realize that this is someone else’s home and not your place to go crazy.

#Dale

Photo by Hailey Eisenrich