Spring Break 2009 - Best Destinations For College Students

Spring break 2009 will most likely be another week of insane partying if the pattern holds true. The question is where.

A spring break destination can be popular one year and dry the next. Sometimes it's hard to tell where everyone is going. You don't want to spend your hard earned money on a spring break trip that will consist of mostly families. So how do we predict the future?

First, we take some advice from the stock market and look at the trend. Panama City and Daytona was the destination of choice fifteen years ago. It was a cheap spring break package. You could jump in your car and drive down. All you had to worry about was finding a hotel room that wasn't sold out for your week in March. My how things have changed. 1997 saw a shift from Florida spring break destinations to Cancun, Mexico. The hotels in Panama City and Daytona were increasing their prices dramatically in March. It was almost more cost effective to book a trip to Cancun. Also, Panama City Beach and Daytona Beach had become a very dirty and dangerous place. Violent crimes during spring break had escalated to the point where most hotels no longer allowed anyone under 21 to check into the hotels during the month of March. Parents didn't want their children to fall victim to the dangers of those destinations and their children felt the same way.

March of 1997 saw a full shift to Cancun, Mexico. It was ten times prettier than Florida destinations and the hotel owners let the college spring break students pretty much get away with murder unlike hotels in the states. Mtv helped fuel the fire by shooting on location. They were responsible for bringing thousands of college students to Cancun each year. A bidding war occurred (much like the Olympics) between the hotels. They all wanted Mtv to set up their music events on their beach and advertise their hotel during spring break. Unfortunately, it all came to an end in 2006. The record number of robberies and vandalism that existed in Panama City and Daytona turned into kidnappings and rape for spring break in Mexico. Hotels were being sued right and left. The police had to more than double their staff during spring break to handle all of the late night calls. It became worse than spring break in Florida and Mtv decided to stop setting up shop in Cancun soon after. Just when everyone thought it couldn't get any worse, the eye of a massive hurricane moved directly over Cancun and hotel owners were left with five feet of standing water in the hotel lobby areas. Major water and wind damage was present at every hotel. This was the first time a hurricane had hit them in many years. Most hurricanes take a caribbean path, this one did not. Almost two years have gone by and Cancun is still cleaning up from the devastation left from that hurricane.

March 2007 saw a near 100% shift to the Bahamas. Hotels in Florida and Mexico saw plenty of empty rooms during March, but hotels in the Bahamas were sold out before November 1, 2006. The same situation occurred in March 2008. Every hotel on the island was sold out prior to November 1, 2007. The Bahamas became the first choice for many college spring breakers because of two things. First, the price was right. They could cruise to the Bahamas, spend a week partying it up in paradise, and cruise back for around $350 per person total. They had been paying near or over $1000 for a 5 to 7 day spring break package to Cancun. Most spring break students ask the question "why didn't we do this last year?" They found a safe, cheap, gorgeous destination. The parents liked it because it was a few miles off the coast of Florida.

Based on historical data, the Bahamas will be the destination of choice for spring break 2009. If last year holds true again, most of the popular hotels will be sold out before November 1, 2008. Research early, book early, and make this spring break the best ever.

UNCle Tarheel?

Wilner: North Carolina the absolute favorite maybe

By Jon Wilner
Mercury News
Posted: 03/29/2009 09:25:58 PM PDT


It doesn't have four No. 1 seeds, but the 2009 Final Four has something that last year's event didn't: four schools that have won the national championship.
Clearly, the favorite is North Carolina, the unanimous preseason No. 1 and the pre-tournament betting favorite.
Loaded with future NBA draft picks and fresh off a dominating performance against Oklahoma in the South Regional final, the top-seeded Tar Heels are seeking their fifth national title and second in the past four years under Coach Roy Williams.
When their starting five has been intact, which it should be next weekend at Detroit's Ford Field, the Heels have lost only once in the past 21/2 months. Yep, they're the team to beat, unless it's ...
Connecticut, the preseason No. 2 and possessor of the best front line in all the land.
With 7-foot-3 game-changer Hasheem Thabeet in the middle and Hall of Famer Jim Calhoun in charge, the top-seeded Huskies are seeking their third national title in 11 years and have followed the same path (through the West Regional) that they used to win in 1999 and 2004.
If anything, the controversy surrounding alleged NCAA recruiting violations has unified them for a title run. So count the Huskies as the co-favorite, unless it's ...
Michigan State, the home team.
The second-seeded Spartans played one of the finest second halves of the tournament Sunday in the Midwest Regional, dominating No. 1 Louisville to earntheir fifth trip to the Final Four under Coach Tom Izzo.
And this is the shortest of the five trips, by far: Michigan State's campus is a mere 75 miles from Ford Field, which makes the Spartans the first team since Duke in '94 (in Charlotte) to play for the title in its home state. That could be decisive, unless you prefer ...
Villanova, the underdog.
The No. 3 Wildcats are the lowest seed left, which suits them just fine. They have won more games as a lower seed than any program in tournament history (think: 1985, Georgetown, 22 of 28 shooting).
And nobody — not even the homeward-bound Spartans — has more good karma than 'Nova. After thumping UCLA and Duke by a combined 43 points, the Wildcats toppled No. 1 seed Pittsburgh on a mad-dash buzzer-beater in the game of the tournament.
So pick a winner and cross your fingers. The call here is North Carolina ... until it isn't.
More winners (and some losers) from Week 2 of the tournament:
Winner: The Big East. The 24-year-old conference laid claim to having the best season of any league in college basketball history. After a regular season in which it dominated the top-25 polls, the Big East set tournament records with five teams in the Sweet 16 and four in the Elite Eight.
Loser: Arizona. The Wildcats' season began in chaos (Lute Olson's abrupt retirement) and ended in humiliation. Their 103-64 loss to Louisville was the worst by a non-16 seed in the tournament and the worst ever by a Pacific-10 Conference team in March Madness.
Winner: Scottie Reynolds. The Villanova guard made the shot of the tournament in a game for the ages, a leaning layup with 0.5 seconds left that pushed 'Nova past Pittsburgh. While it might not top the Duke-Kentucky '92 classic, Saturday's thriller is on the short list of the best non-Final Four games.
Loser: Pac-10. The conference followed an unimpressive regular season with an unimpressive NCAA tournament. After tying its record with six teams in the tournament and five in the second round, it advanced only one to the Sweet 16 (Arizona). Even more telling, the league went 1-6 against the Atlantic Coast, Big East, Big Ten and Big 12.
Winner: The mid-majors. Despite getting little respect from the NCAA selection committee, they more than held their own: eight wins, a bevy of upsets (i.e.: Cleveland State over Wake Forest) and tournament-worthy performances in all but two games.
Loser: Duke. The Blue Devils moved closer to total March irrelevance when they were blown out by Villanova in the Sweet 16.
Coach Mike Krzyzewski's team hasn't reached the Elite Eight since 2004, and four of its five losses in that span have come as a No. 1 or 2 seed.
The Devils simply aren't tough enough; they aren't good enough defensively; and they don't have enough players who can score off the dribble — three ingredients that are essential to March success.
Until or unless Krzyzewski changes the makeup of his roster, the Devils will keep rolling in December and faltering in March.

The DREAM: Step Ya Beat Makin Game Up Lil G's!

SHAM WOW!

Lately there has been a lot of talk about domestic violence. There is never a time or place for anyone to be abused. However in this case their pain is our humor. Vince Shlomi, better known as the ShamWow guy, took a hooker to his room after meeting in a night club. While in the room Shlomi offered the hooker $1000 after she propositioned him. After payment arrangements were made the pair kissed. At which point the hooker bit Shlomi's tounge and refused to let go. Shlomi then began to punch the hooker until she let go. Why she bit him is still not clear but Shlomi having to beat her off his tounge is all the information I need for my daily celebrity chuckle.

COMPLEX Magazine: Kanye West Cover Shoot

I think this shit is DOPE and should be considered............ Illegal.... ILLEGAL...... ILLEGALLLL!!!

Clothing Pic of the Week: The New Air Yeezy

IJust Incase You're Going Out Tonite

How to Make an Apple Martini Cocktail

APPLE MARTINI!!!!!!!

Is This Hotter Than The HP Commercial?!??

Forum nucléaire from étapes: on Vimeo.



YOU DECIDE!

VERY HOT! KING Magazine article on Kanye West

Can’t Tell Him Nothin’
Kanye West is a risk taker, rule breaker, trailblazer and the only rapper who is bigger than hip-hop

“But he’s a rapper.” Do you know how many people have been dismissed with that one sentence? No matter how much wealth Jay-Z accrues, how many Richard Princes he buys, how many Beyoncés he marries, those words will almost certainly precede him for the rest of his life. Even Diddy, who has come closest to penetrating other spaces—fashion, Hamptons society, Broadway, Hollywood—is still, in the eyes of many, a hip-hop interloper. It’s taken Kanye West to break the cycle.

Of hip-hop but not defined by it, Kanye is the exception to every one of the genre’s rules. He challenges its expectations from within and recalibrates how outsiders view it. He is both local and foreign. He exerts his own gravitational pull. Even though last year’s 808s & Heartbreak, his fourth album, will likely be the lowest selling of his career, it will mark something far more important: the moment that hip-hop began to mint stars bigger than itself.

For any other artist, the album would have been a failure, with its uncomfortably blunt lyrics, which are mostly sung (and poorly at that), and its often inarticulate production. It’s sometimes hard to remember that just five years ago, Kanye was a rap formalist, a producer known best for chopping and speeding up soul samples and, sometimes, awkwardly rapping over them. And yet, despite that, this new move didn’t seem so odd. In a world where egotism is the prime currency, Kanye has been a special case from the start, and releasing 808s felt like just another act of emotional and creative hubris.

Really, though, it was something more. First there were the circumstances: Both the death of his mother and the split from his fiancée left Kanye untethered. And so instead of planning for Good-Ass Job, the album that was to continue the life arc he’d set out on his first three albums, he knocked off to Hawaii for a few weeks with Kid Cudi, Mr. Hudson, Plain Pat, Don C and a couple of friends to put together 808s, a minor opus of depression and petulance.

And once it was done, he kept fighting the grain. Process? What process? He leaked some songs himself. (Some others snuck out too.) He tweaked the font. He changed the release date. And then, into the teeth of a recession, he just dropped the damn thing. No proclamations as to its greatness or its inevitability. Just a guy with an itch to scratch.

For an artist of his stature, this is a new model, one that prioritizes smallness, instinct, portability, urgency. All Def Jam could rightly do was get on board and get out of the way. Kanye used the label much as an independent artist uses a distributor: as a hired hand. The major-label system is increasingly unreliable, as is the major-label way of doing business. And so, instead of shooting for the blockbuster—Lil Wayne’s Tha Carter III may well be the last rap blockbuster for some time—he went with the diary entry. The same week, Guns N’ Roses released its decade-plus-in-the-making comeback, Chinese Democracy, which sold half as much as Kanye, then promptly evaporated.

Kanye knows what their long-cocooned lead singer, W. Axl Rose, couldn’t possibly understand: There is only the now. So he didn’t release a rap album—big deal. He’ll go back to it when he feels like it. Choosing to forgo rap was but one of several idiosyncratic choices Kanye made last year. He blogged about his obsessions—Japanese streetwear, barely clothed models, mid-century furniture, big boats—and about how he was portrayed in the media. He expressed interest in interning with a fashion company so he could learn that business from the inside out. He tussled with paparazzi. He wore suspenders.

Kanye’s freedom is predicated upon the fact that he’s less established in, and therefore less beholden to, hip-hop and its mores. Still, people, even those with less complicated loyalties, follow his lead. Lil Wayne wearing tight jeans? That’s a Kanye move. Hipster rap? Blame ’Ye. Flagging sales for 50 Cent? Absolutely, in part, attributable to West and his influence.

Kanye gives people permission to be something other than what they’re generally asked to be. It’s not because he makes it seem easy but because he makes it seem inevitable. And because of him, the list KING comes up with when we’re looking forward from our 100th issue will be nothing like this one.

— Jon Caramanica

Old School Video of the Week: AND 1, VOLUME 1!!!

Bring the Classics BAAAACCCCCKKKKKK!!!