Ocean City Strives For Safer Beach Week

Kayaking, Karaoke Urged as Alternatives to Kegs

OCEAN CITY -- The sun slipped behind the hotels that line the boardwalk here. Sad-eyed Russian shopgirls beckoned from doorways of henna tattoo parlors and piercing booths, tempting newly emancipated teenagers with some of the bad choices their parents had warned them about. Across from them lay the alternative: a gaggle of matronly volunteers at folding tables in the sand with a karaoke machine, free pizza and T-shirts that read "Play it Safe."

A new batch of high school graduates had arrived last week for the annual rite of unchaperoned decadence known as Beach Week.

Tradition has it that teenagers descend on this town before the ink has dried on their diplomas, drink heavily -- and sloppily -- before turning the family-friendly resort into something akin to a bad episode of MTV's "Laguna Beach."

But 17 years ago, civic leaders resolved to curb the more dangerous excesses of Beach Week, which draws 100,000 recent graduates from dozens of states each June to celebrate the end of high school. From sparse beginnings, the city's Play it Safe program has expanded to a roster of 60 wholesome, risk-free events. It has even gained social acceptance among the grads; participation has doubled since 2002 to about 12,500, or one grad in eight, an increase organizers attribute to just getting the word out.

"We were looking through that little green Play it Safe book, and it said, 'free bowling,' so I said, 'Let's go bowling,' " said Josh Dyer, 18, who was with a group from Westlake High School in Waldorf.

The program appeals to the child within the budding adult. Participants line up by the hundreds for free pizza and soda and for yellow wristbands that allow them free passage on Ocean City buses, which function as rolling singles clubs during Beach Week -- and keep teenagers from driving .

Many teenagers pick up their wristbands and leave. Some remain to try their hand at kayaking or windsurfing or to see how quickly they can eat a plate of pancakes.

"We can't honestly take care of all the kids that are down here. But we try," said Bev Townsend, secretary of the town's Drug and Alcohol Abuse Prevention Committee, which runs Play it Safe in partnership with the county health department.

The wary locals who administer this three-week program know their competition: the 10,000-gallon foam parties at H2O and H2O2, a pair of well-run but steamy under-21 clubs just off the boardwalk; word-of-mouth keggers staged surreptitiously on hotel patios; and the nightly insurance nightmare that is Coastal Highway, the main drag on this splinter of land. It transforms during Beach Week into a growling procession of teenage boys in souped-up Acura coupes.

Inside H2O2, the salutatorian of a Catholic school in Scranton, Pa., danced to a skull-rattling beat with some friends inside a wrought-iron cage. Outside, police huddled around a boy of 17 crumpled in the gravel. Denied entry for his obvious drunkenness, he had pushed one officer, sprinted up Worcester Street and then bitten a second officer in the thigh. He was now bound, hands and feet, awaiting booking for assault.

"Everyone we lock up is, in one form or another, under the influence of alcohol. Everyone," said Cpl. James "Art" Grady, a 12-year veteran who stood nearby.

The 'Safe' Bug

As fresh graduates arrived on the boardwalk for the second and busiest leg of Beach Week, 957 teenagers signed in at Play it Safe tables to collect their bracelets and pizza. A small crowd formed around the karaoke speakers. Some graduates leafed through a 36-page booklet called Passport to Fun, a deceptively named document that, by Page 3, is cautioning students that their seven-day bacchanal is fraught with perils ranging from date rape to drug dependency to death.