Jesse Bull moved to South Beach for the surfing.
He called the water between between 4th Street and the jetty forming the northern barrier of Government Cut "prime surf area. It doesn't break all the time, but when it does, it's really good."
That may sound strange, especially for someone like Bull who grew up in central Illinois – not exactly a mecca for surfing. He picked it up when was studying for his PhD in economics in San Diego. Then he moved to South Beach. He lived in a small apartment and could just walk out onto the sand when the waves were rolling.
"I have friends who tell me they'd come over to surf. They would drive around for an hour and they couldn't find parking. They would go home," he recalled.
But not for him. The waves were just right outside his back door.
Bull is an economist. So he sees these kinds of situations as trade-offs. He lived in a small apartment, no yard, but he could hoist his surfboard on his shoulder and walk to the waves. His surfing buddies had to find parking.
It’s the kind of trade-off the city of Miami Beach is forcing upon Spring Breakers.
It's you, not the beach
Miami Beach wants to break up with spring break. By the way, if you’re a college or young adult Spring Breakers – it’s you, not Miami Beach. The city has been waging a battle against big crowds, rowdy behavior, violence and traffic. So much traffic.
The city will close nine of its parking garages and all of the city’s parking lots beginning Thursday morning through Monday morning for the next two weekends.
"It's an extreme example of trying to price people out of a market — what behavioral economists might call friction," said David Neal, founder of Catalyst Behavioral Sciences in Miami.
There are exemptions. According to the City of Miami Beach, residents and employees of nearby businesses will still be able to use the closed parking garages using 'proper identification.' The garages and lots will be open for the last two weekends in March but charge a flat $30. It's usually $2 an hour. And getting towed in South Beach for nonresidents will cost more than $500.
"As long as the costs are high enough and people know about it sufficiently in advance to change their plans, then it's probably going to be effective," Neal said.
READ MORE: Everything you need to know about spring break restrictions in South Florida
These types of financial disincentives usually work to change behaviors in the short term, he said, but this effort aims to inflict a lot of financial pain toward its goal of reducing violence.
"Psychologists, policy people, behavioral economists typically try to find ways that subtly nudge people to do the right thing without causing huge amounts of pain," Neal said.
But there’s nothing subtle about Miami Beach’s efforts. The city isn’t nudging spring breakers — it’s shoving them.
"I think that'd be a fair description," said Bull, the surfer and economist from FIU.
"They're saying let's disincentivize people who we don't want to come here. If we make it harder to park, it's less likely that somebody's going to show up with a gun or other things we don't want people to bring."
"This is not a nudge. I wouldn't even call it a shove," said Sara Isaac, chief strategist at Marketing for Change in Orlando where she works on behavior change marketing.
"It might fall into what behavioral scientists call sludge, which is usually a bad thing."
'Sludge' makes something more difficult on purpose. But Isaac said it's not always a bad thing.
"If the locals feel really strongly that they are tired of the chaos and mess and expense of spring break, this is actually a good way of making it harder for all those behaviors to occur," Isaac said.
Salty armpit
South Florida beach towns are no stranger to trying to chill spring breakers.
Forty years ago, A1A in Fort Lauderdale was the epicenter of the spring break crowds. It was the early and mid 1980s. Fort Lauderdale was wrestling with its own spring break reputation. It had become known as Fort Liquordale. In 1985, People Magazine called the area on A1A "a sleazy mile-and-a-half long stretch of shops, bars and hotels dead center in the salty armpit of Fort Lauderdale."
The area was busy on a recent weekend afternoon. The sand was filled and crowds were beginning to form at the bars and restaurants.
Fort Lauderdale also tackled traffic in its fight against spring break. Four decades ago, the city brought in concrete jersey barriers to build what was derisively called a wall. It kept people from crossing across A1A between the bars and the beach anywhere they wanted to.
The city built the barrier for a few years during spring break and it did help reduce traffic problems as Fort Lauderdale staged its own efforts to break up with spring break. Four decades later, plastic jersey barriers on one side of A1A and crowd control fencing on the other are doing the same now.
Fort Lauderdale may also use parking, hoping to force behavior changes during this spring break season. The city commission okayed a change two weeks ago that will allow the city manager to hike parking fees at city lots near the beach to $100 a day.
Supply and demand
Back in Miami Beach, the lack of supply of parking is likely to drive up the cost at private parking lots that remain open. This is Economics 101 — with no city parking garages open in South Beach over the next two weekends, and demand probably still high, prices should go up.
"I would sure expect the private suppliers to really increase their prices," said Bull of FIU. "
[It] may be unfortunate from consumers’ viewpoint, but it's interesting because probably those businesses will do very well on those weekends at the expense of some people who choose not to go [while] the people who choose to go [will] pay higher rates."
There is no city regulation in Miami Beach limiting how much a private parking lot operator can charge.
Fort Lauderdale and Miami Beach are anchoring expectations for visitors by talking about these higher costs and bigger hassles to get to the beach. Kind of like Bull’s old surfer buddies when the wind blew in the right direction to stir up the waves on South Beach.
"The good days — it's a barreling, fast, hollow wave. It's super crowded, and it's really hard to find parking in that area," Bull remembered.
It will be even harder the next two weekends.
