Thousands of Black college students expected this weekend for an annual spring bash at Georgia’s largest public beach will be greeted by dozens of extra police officers and barricades closing off neighborhood streets. While the beach will remain open, officials are blocking access to nearby parking.
Tybee Island, east of Savannah, has grappled with the April beach party known as Orange Crush since students at Savannah State University, a historically Black school, started it more than 30 years ago. Residents regularly groused about loud music, trash littering the sand and revelers urinating in yards.
Those complaints boiled over into fear and outrage a year ago when record crowds estimated at more than 100,000 people overwhelmed the 3-mile island. That left a small police force scrambling to handle a flood of emergency calls reporting gunfire, drug overdoses, traffic jams and fist fights.
Having been there, yeah it’s most likely almost 100% about the massive population increase during party season.
However, having met a lot of those redneck Tybeeians, I bet there’s at least some racism happening in response for sure.
I’m sure there are plenty of racists there who will be happy if the party is banned, but I don’t think that’s why the town is trying to stop it.
Completely agree, the island is just too small for that many people. When I first saw the headline I thought for sure that they had added an extra zero. 100,000 people in that town/on that beach would be insane.
Yeah the island is just not that big lol. I love Tybee but it can’t handle no 100k people
Yeah exactly, I do wonder how many are just coming from Savannah for the weekend/day, or if tens of thousands of people are actually staying in Tybee at the same time.