TYBEE ISLAND ― Orange Crush, a rogue HBCU spring break beach party on Georgia’s coast, is going legit.
Tybee Island officials expect to issue a special event permit later this month to formalize a 2025 festival scheduled for April 19. Orange Crush has existed as an unsanctioned beach bash for students from historically Black colleges and universities since the early 1990s, promoted through word-of-mouth and, in recent years, through social media.
Often compared to FreakNik, Orange Crush typically attracts thousands of teenagers and young adults, the majority of them Black, to the 3-square-mile island. The influx creates public safety concerns, both on the roads and at the beach, and Orange Crushers have a reputation with island residents for disruptive behavior, violent incidents and destruction of property.
The Tybee city government budgets $250,000 annually for increased security measures for Orange Crush weekend. Tactics include hiring off-island law enforcement officers to supplement Tybee’s police force.
Officials expanded the clampdown last year, after a particularly challenging 2023 event marked by an assault on the beach and the clubbing of a police officer with a bottle. Tybee officials erected miles of steel barricades along the island’s main road, Butler Avenue, to limit parking in residential neighborhoods and keep traffic moving.
The approach thinned out the raucous beach crowds and reduced the frequency of on-island traffic logjams that in the past brought the revelry from the sand to the streets. Officials intend to use the same approach this year, even with the sanctioned event to be held at South Beach next to the Tybee Pier.
“What we did last year worked really well. The people who came to the event were safe and felt safe and residents were very pleased,” Tybee Mayor Brian West said. “If we can keep the same program and the festival gives the students something to do, I think we can have a successful event.”
An Orange Crush permit application filed in December details an ambitious festival program. Music acts and DJs headline the event, but other activities listed in the 44-page document include a talent show, a cooking class and morning yoga on the beach.
Orange Crush organizer has a personal connection to Tybee
Savannah native George Ransom Turner III is the lead organizer. He owns the trademark to the Orange Crush name and has previously approached the city about an official event.
But his earlier attempts were rejected because his plans lacked several elements, such as security, traffic and environmental protection strategies and proof of insurance.
“We have checked every box and feel as if we’ve mastered the art of organized festivals like the one we want to do on Tybee,” said Turner, who has put on beach festivals in Florida with co-promoter Steven Smalls. “We’re working with Tybee directly and talking not just to government leaders but residents and business leaders.”
A public-relations campaign is important for Turner given his history with organizing unsanctioned Orange Crush events. He first organized parties as a high school student, using birthday gift money to book entertainment and venues. More recently, a 2019 house party at a rental unit in a Tybee residential neighborhood resulted in his arrest.
He relocated the event to his adopted hometown Jacksonville in 2020 and has held Orange Crush-branded summer festivals in Jacksonville, Miami and Panama City Beach in the years since.
Yet Turner always intended to return Orange Crush to Tybee, its original locale. The spring break beach bash dates to 1989, when student government leaders from a nearby HBCU, Savannah State University, hosted an organized event and named it using a play on one of the school’s colors, orange.
SSU withdrew its support in 1991, but the annual party continued on, growing in profile and numbers in the decades that followed.
Turner’s connection to Tybee and Orange Crush is similarly deep-rooted. He has extended family members who live on the island, and he has a personal relationship with Tybee’s mayor. He went to high school at Calvary Day, a private school in Savannah, with West’s youngest son.
“It’s important to me to exceed expectations in every category and to make sure it is safe, fun and organized,” Turner said. “It’s about building on what’s been here but in the right way.”
A chance to prove themselves
Much of Tybee is quietly rooting for Turner to succeed. Since the Orange Crush 2025 application became public in December, chronicled in local Savannah media and on social channels, there’s been none of the outcry that typically follows mention of the event and no public calls to reject the permit.
Even vocal critics from past years are silent about the plans for April.
Credit: NATRICE MILLER
Credit: NATRICE MILLER
Shirley Wright, chairwoman of the community activism group Forever Tybee, said local opinion is “split down the middle.” But she added that there’s an acknowledgment that after years of unsanctioned festivals — and Tybee City Council rejections of incomplete applications — these organizers deserve a chance to prove themselves.
“There’s a small number of people who just aren’t willing to deal with it anymore,” Wright said. “The rest agree that we need a win-win to make Orange Crush weekend another welcoming weekend on Tybee.”
Wright is among the faction that would prefer Tybee show a friendlier face this year by rolling back some of the safety measures enacted last year. Tybee public safety leaders borrowed an anti-spring break approach used by Miami Beach police, closing two large beach parking lots, barricading entrances to residential areas, installing license plate readers on the road leading to the island, narrowing the main thoroughfare, and increasing police presence by temporarily employing officers from state and other Savannah-area departments.
The tactic turned Tybee into what Wright called a “militarized zone.”
Yet island leaders aren’t eager to scale back the safety measures until they experience how the permitted festival affects the tone of the weekend. City Manager Bret Bell, who became Tybee’s chief executive last summer, is well-versed in managing large special events from his 17 years with the Savannah city government, such as the St. Patrick’s Day celebration.
“I think they mean well and are sincere in wanting a positive event. But do they have the resources to pull it off?” Bell said.
West, the mayor, shares those concerns and has pressed Turner to be transparent about sponsorship agreements and other potential revenue streams. He wants assurances that Turner’s organization can help cover the costs of security, traffic control and sanitation.
West classified approving the Orange Crush permit as “rolling the dice on an experiment.”
“I’ve always said Orange Crush doesn’t fit here,” West said. “There are too many factors that make this a difficult place for spring break. I don’t know how to make people understand that, but in the meantime we’ll do the best that we can.”
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