Orange Crush has a bad rap. Here’s how two promoters plan to change it.

TYBEE ISLAND ― Promoters don’t expect juicy profits from Orange Crush, an HBCU spring break beach bash planned for April 19 along the Georgia coast. They’re prohibited from selling anything other than water and event merchandise. The music and dancing must wrap before dark. Attendee parking is limited. And they can’t fence off a section of the beach and charge admission.

Yet for Steven Smalls and George Ransom Turner, reestablishing Orange Crush as a legitimate festival after its 34-year run as an unsanctioned party that residents considered a nuisance but attendees loved is worth the squeeze.

“This is a ‘prove it’ year,” Smalls said. “We want to prove that Orange Crush can be a valuable event for the city of Tybee and the residents. We want to prove to ourselves that we can do it. And we want to prove to attendees that this is the way Orange Crush ought to be.”

Credit: Natrice Miller/AJC

Credit: Natrice Miller/AJC

Orange Crush is an annual tradition at Tybee Island, albeit frequently an unwelcome one.

The beach bash was first organized in the late 1980s by students at Savannah State, a historically Black college and university located 15 minutes west of the beach. The HBCU withdrew as organizer in 1991 and the party evolved into a rowdy free-for-all held each April. It has been promoted through word-of-mouth and social media, often drawing tens of thousands of students and young adults from across the Southeast.

Public outcry peaked in 2023 when an estimated 111,000 visitors flocked to the 3-square-mile island. A Tybee police officer was assaulted and two attendees were beaten and robbed on the beach. Several young women sought protection, fearing sexual assaults. Stalled traffic contributed to a road-rage shooting.

Tybee officials responded last year by closing public parking lots, barricading streets leading into residential neighborhoods and operating a roadblock on the causeway connecting Tybee to the mainland.

The crackdown, modeled after Miami Beach’s “break up with spring break” campaign, cut the number of visitors to about 55,000 and limited misconduct. But the unwelcoming environment troubled some locals.

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Behind the scenes, Smalls and Turner approached the city about staging a professionally run beach festival. Turner, an Atlanta resident and Savannah native, owns the Orange Crush trademark and has partnered with Smalls to host Orange Crush-branded events in several Florida locales, such as Jacksonville Beach and Panama City Beach, since 2021.

Turner also went to high school with the son of Tybee Mayor Brian West. Smalls, who lives in Jacksonville, has worked as an entertainment promoter since 2011. Leveraging all of that, the pair put together the first comprehensive Orange Crush proposal Tybee officials had seen since the Savannah State days.

Submitted in December, the plan for the festival was scaled back from three days to one day ahead of conditional approval from the city in January. A special event permit was formally issued last month.

“There was all this talk about how the community is against Orange Crush and doesn’t want to give us a chance, but that wasn’t true,” Smalls said. “No one had put in a proper permit before. It wasn’t Tybee’s fault at all. That’s when I knew we could change a lot of minds.”

Credit: Justin Taylor for The Atlanta Journal Constitution

Invest for success?

Smalls and Turner said they will spend big to sell their Orange Crush vision in the debut year.

Their budget exceeds $200,000, according to Smalls. They hope to recoup that outlay through sales of sponsorships and VIP experiences to the beach party, headlined by performances by musicians Juiicy 2xs, Tana 9.13 and Mel, formerly of Fresh X Reckless. As a condition of their permit, Orange Crush cannot rent venue space to vendors or sell food and beverages.

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Smalls and Turner are also promoting a series of ticketed events at venues elsewhere around the Savannah area. These functions include after-parties and a daylong gathering on Easter Sunday featuring a brunch, fashion show and car and bike show.

To ensure Smalls and Turner can focus on the Saturday beach festival, they are partnering with other party promoters to operate the ancillary events, including some who organized unsanctioned Orange Crush events in the past.

“The only way to make something with this many moving parts work is to partner with other promoters,” Smalls said. “The key is trust, and as the point man, I’m all about accountability.”

Partnering to launch a new era

Smalls is the operations leader of the Orange Crush organization. His family business specializes in home renovations and lawn care, and he started a Jacksonville-based music label, Dubbshakaz Entertainment, in 2015 after years of promoting artists and organizing shows.

He met Turner in 2021 when the Savannahian registered the Orange Crush trademark and went looking for a fresh start for the beach party in Jacksonville. Turner, now age 32, had been organizing parties on Orange Crush weekend since his teenage years, including one at a Tybee rental house in 2019 that led to his arrest on a felony charge.

That case remains open — Turner enrolled in a pretrial diversion program and has a court date of Aug. 4 — and was one of several run-ins he had with law enforcement during his 20s. He also filed for bankruptcy in 2018.

Partnering with Smalls gave Turner the operational expertise and organizational credibility necessary to make Orange Crush legit.

“Sometimes things happen not to hurt us but to propel us to greater things,” said Turner, who heads Orange Crush’s all-important social media marketing efforts. “Why dwell on the past when you can build a future?”

Credit: SAVANNAHNOW.COM FILE PHOTO

Tybee officials remain cautious about Orange Crush’s new era. They maintain that the island lacks the infrastructure — parking and roadways in particular — to accommodate what Smalls projects could be 30,000 attendees and intend to implement the same traffic and public safety plan they did a year ago.

But they acknowledge the spring breakers will converge on the island for the party — sanctioned or not. And the festival, with its entertainment acts, will give visitors something to do.

“Last year, we created a safe environment for those who came to Orange Crush, but they were idle,” said West, Tybee’s mayor. “They were on the island all day with no activities and that makes you nervous. This is an opportunity to do something to provide activities.”