DC ExtraTime: A Team MTV Spring Break

BY DC CUEVA                     

■ @DC408Dxtr  @ TW / IG / YT

This month of March sees two rites of the year's second season take place for college kids across the country: one takes place in 13 arenas and a football stadium where 68 teams will be whittled down in stages to just one, and that team hoists the National Championship trophy at the end of March Madness and the NCAA Division I Men's Basketball Championship Tournament. The other takes place on beaches in the sunbelt in places which are definitely warmer than New York, Chicago and other cities located up north, and where a tough time of studying and doing homework is set aside for them to lose their minds. It is the grand spectacle that is Spring Break, and this week DCBLOG will again join with those from the MTV Trifecta community to experience this annual tradition that MTV first featured over thirty years ago, and something college students look forward to every year.




🌞 March 2016 - From Real World Go Big

SPRING BREAK: TEAM MTV STYLE

Now for many of you who are checking out this site and catching up on RW matters, chances are you are reading this post while you're enjoying time in the comfort of your own home with no homework or anything to worry about for at least one week or so. That's because you are on your Spring Break and you've got this whole week to relax, unwind and let loose. Well for this piece of ExtraTime, you're not alone.

Credit: IG @CohuttaLee

   If you're an MTV fan, then you know that for many years the channel devoted an entire weekend of programming in March, from Friday afternoon until the wee hours of early Monday morning, to covering the great tradition of college students heading to one city in the Sunbelt and partying all day and night, with music and madness aplenty. MTV has since shifted its springtime signature event to another big event taking place during this month in the Woodies Awards that took place last week at the South by Southwest Festival in Austin, TX to honor independent artists, but it didn't deter Team MTV from taking part in Spring Break activities.
   South of Austin near the Mexican border is South Padre Island, and since laws were passed in the traditional SB hotbeds of Fort Lauderdale and Panama City, Florida, this vacation town south of Corpus Christi has become the epicenter of Spring Break for most college students. Like Seaside Heights, NJ whose small population balloons to over 65,000 on a summer weekend, South Padre Island goes from 2,000 residents 10 months out of a year to as many as 120,000 in March and April, enough for a top 30 spot in Texas' largest populated cities list. Not surprisingly, tourism is the top industry in this part of the Lone Star State, as it is also a popular family resort destination as well.

Credit IG @jessandreatta

   Spring Break in South Padre this year is no different, and it has seen some familiar faces from the MTV Trifecta descend on the border city for the biggest bash of the springtime. Abram from Bloodlines, fellow Challenge veteran Cohutta and RW Ex-Plosion & Exes 2's Jay have been joined the whole month by Are You The One? alums Jessica from Season 2 and Stacey from Season 3, as well as Nick from RW Hollywood. And we can't forget that Challenge OG, Eric "Big Easy" who is also there in South Padre and who operates a Spring Break travel company, Big Easy Travel Agency, to cater to all the students going to all the madness, the parties and all the sights on the beaches of SPTX.
   And as Episode 2 airs tonight, there is also Trifecta activity taking place in the same city that was once the Spring Break stomping grounds of the kids of Laguna Beach: Cabo, San Lucas, Mexico. That's where Sabrina and Kailah have also been doing some spring break stuff down there in the southern tip of Baja California as the episode that features them as part of the story airs later on this evening.

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🌞 May 2016 - From Real World Go Big

AYTO's MEXICAN TAKEOVER

This week in ExtraTime, though this post is now taking in the month of May and close to graduation time, we are headed to Spring Break as the countdown to Season 4 of Are You The One? is now in full force. And while some of the 61 alumni of the romantic social experiment were busy welcoming 20 new members into their fraternity/sorority - something we'll now share with you when we preview Season 4 here in a couple weeks, six of them were busy doing other things.

First, four alums from the first three seasons of the Trifecta newcomer recently went down to Cancun to do their part to help cater to those having a relatively late Spring Break. Season 1 Originals (and Exes 2 competitors) Adam and Brittany, Shelby from Season 2 (who was in a middle of a love triangle with Rivals 3 competitors Dario and Nate), and the most popular girl from last season, Kiki of Season 3, flew down to the Spring Break hotbed to work with one of the tourism companies helping students get out and about. As we told you here back in March, it's common for the Trifecta family to take time out to take part in Spring Break activities as part of the entourages that help out the same college-aged audience who watches MTV and the RW/Challenge franchise & AYTO, and these people always relish the chance to meet these same people, just as it was for the Real World Cancun and Back to Vegas casts.

And second, while Amber & Ethan remain the only AYTO perfect match that's still together (no less be the only married couple & the first to become parents), there's not one but two unmatched couples who are still together from Season 3: Chuck & Britni, and Zak & Hannah. While Devin & Kiki was the biggest story of last season, it's the ladder who have developed the biggest social following of their castmates as they're approaching 300,000 total followers on Instagram. And that has to do with the Italian-Canadian's always hilarious comedy videos that he produces himself and also features Hannah as well. Their videos have become a must-watch for those who want to have a dose of laughter to their day, and given how the last time a person whose name pronounced the same way as him wasn't well liked, Zak and Hannah have become the digital darlings of the Trifecta.
   We told you here back in January of Team Ohana's takeover that saw the comeback kids go to New York City for New Year's, to Montreal for snowboarding, and to Mexico to bask in the sun. And just recently with the words, "This is how we blew our @mtv @AREUTHE1 money," Zannah released their most elaborate web video which he posted on his Facebook page at Facebook.com/ZakLongo. It was of that trip to Cancun a few months ago, and he utilized every possible camera he can get his hands on to put on a great two-minute video set to "Rozes" by The Chainsmokers which you can check out here. Hope all is well with the both of you...you are each other's perfect match regardless of what the science told you both in Hawaii. Keep bringing us the humor.

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🌞 March 2017 - From The Challenge Invasion

Postcards from

SPRING BREAK '17

As we speak to you this last weekend of March, it's a busy weekend from those of you college students who, chances are, might be reading this post in the comforts of a hotel room with shorts on in a tropical paradise getting ready to go out tonight. For one this is, as we mentioned earlier, Elite Eight weekend of NCAA March Madness as tickets will be punched by Sunday's end for next week's Final Four in Arizona. But for many others, this is a very fun time to say the least.

Once again, South Padre Island, TX is the hub of most of this year's Spring Break activities on the home front. For at least part of nine months each year, it's a fairly calm and quaint little resort town with over 3,000 residents and a perfect retreat for those looking for somewhere to relax. But in those three months in late February, March and early April...it's anything but when the madding throng arrives in. Over 120,000 college students flock each year to the southernmost point of the state that knows how to do it big, with all the madness Spring Break is known for.

   For the past decade, members of Team MTV have traveled down here to take part in the Spring Break festivities, these days serving as both ambassadors of the Trifecta to those they meet on the beach, and working day and night for the various companies who do business with students who have a reason to party down in the middle of a grueling school year. Thanks to social media, those who follow the cast get to see the wild activities that take place both at night and during the day, in much the same manner as MTV did for 20+ years as one of its signature events along with the VMA's.
   Last year here, we told you about Challenge vets Abram and Cohutta joining some of the newbies down there in SP TX, as well as AYTO lovebirds Zak and Hannah's rendezvous in Mexico (more on him coming in an ExtraTime later this cycle)... and last Thanksgiving weekend, we retold the story of the guys of LMFAO hanging out with The Real World Cancun cast. And this time, we'd like to share with you some postcards of Team MTV's Spring Break, courtesy of the folks at Instagram.

IG @JayGMTV

Since he made his MTV debut on Real World Ex-Plosion three years ago, it's become an annual ritual for Jay for venture out of the streets of New York City and to roam the beaches and clubs of South Texas. For his first go-around in 2014, he partied up with Ryan Knight just months before they competed on Exes 2 and his untimely death during in what was a painful year for Jay is losing friend Diem Brown and his mom (as seen on his RW season).  Jay has spent the past month in South Padre and has been documenting his every day at Spring Break for those who follow his social media platforms on Periscope (where I have been tuning in at every chance), Instagram and SnapChat...and yes, it even includes naughty stuff we won't even think about telling you on here. One proof of his adventures that is appropriate for us to post here has been of one of the many new friends he's made down there in SPTX... it's no doubt the most adorable: One night as he was doing his usual thing of being an emcee to the nightly parties in town, he found a parrot lucky enough to be his sidekick one night. And Rave Parrot, as he is affectionately known in the land of EDM, was for this night the most well-known bird in the house. He even has both his own Instagram (@RaveParrot) and SnapChat (also @RaveParrot).

IG @MTVMikeCrescenzo

For this year's adventures in South Padre, Jay has been joined for this ride by two guys from Team Are You The One? - one who we last saw leaving the Real World Bad Blood house in Seattle last fall and the other who we just saw on Wednesday on the premiere of AYTO Second Chances - for which we'll be covering that tomorrow. Of course, we're talking those two guys who also happen to be roommates: Mike from AYTO Season 3 and that most recent Real World season, and Morgan from AYTO Season 4 and Tori's perfect match, for which he helped introduced her to the two-time Trifecta alum and began that brief relationship between those two. Obviously, this love triangle has been well-documented since the very beginning of this cycle last fall and before it when Mike came home from Seattle, which then went to Splitsville after word of his relationship in Seattle with Jordan got out to the blonde. And they've also been joined by two of the most recent losers in the Trifecta: Joey, Kari and Kam from AYTO Season 5.

IG @NickBrownOnline

From newbies to an alum: Real World Hollywood in 2008 saw Season 20 document those with eyes on showbiz, just as Season 2 did in L.A. in 1993. That season saw Joey Kovar struggle to handle both the Hollywood limelight and the temptation of alcohol, which would later cost him his life. When he and internet winner/drama starter Greg left the drama-filled house (which included Briana, Dave, Kim, Sarah & Will), the two who took their place were model Brittini and New Yorker Nick Brown. There, Nick found himself at home with the same two girls who had hung out with the two departed guys, but also was at the heart of the season's most poignant moment. A producer he, Sarah & Kim worked with on a project there, Brandon Schantz, had been diagnosed with cancer after they had met, and eventually he would pass away before they left SoCal... Nick was the first to find out about that news and teared up the moment he found out Brandon died. Now, he's pursuing music - the latest being a collaboration with Voice alum Bryan Bautista, and had pictured above is him and independent artist Russ - one of the many shows Nick has been to in South Padre.

IG @SyrusMTV

And lastly, one more original... A few weeks ago, we caught up with Real World original and several times Challenger Syrus, who has been to so many of these over the past twenty years. This year: no exception, but as he also owns & operates a companies who work with students for this annual ritual - Spring Break All Access, he's Sy has been focusing most of his energies to servicing those who are traveling not to South Padre like those featured above, but to another Spring Break tourist hotspot: Cancun, Mexico. Of course, a Real World season took place there in paradise some eight years ago, and a number of MTV Spring Break weekends have been based there over the years. For the veteran, he got to see a Spider-Man go airborne in one of the clubs, and got to experience a show by the man who is best known as the "King of Crunk."
   Though he first made it on the Atlanta club scene and then with a regional label, it was twelve years ago that the word "Crunk" became part of the mainstream musical lexicon when Lil' Jon became a household name. Him collaborating with the Ying Yang Twins on "Get Low" brought them into the top 10 as his breakthrough hit, and through collaborations both behind the scenes and on the mic with Usher and Ludacris on "Yeah!", E-40, Sean Paul, Ice Cube, LMFAO, Soulja Boy and R. Kelly, among others, made his brand of hip-hop well known beyond the South. And one of the big hits of recent years saw him hook up with DJ Snake for "Turn Down for What!", which brought them into the top 5. And for reality TV fans, Lil' Jon also appeared on two seasons of Celebrity Apprentice.
   Below is a video Syrus took from the Crunk King performing in Cancun, but the veteran isn't the only Challenge competitor from before this latest generation to do business at Spring Break... coming next week we'll catch up with one Challenger whose battle against his personal demons and temptations has not only changed himself but also how people train for these Challenges.

#SpringBreak2017 #Cancun #Mexico #LilJon on #Stage killing it at the #Oasis #Crunk #DJ #Rapper #Rap #EDM #SpringBreakAllAccess has #Access to #Events all over the #World #SyLifeStyle #SySavage #SyRoc #SyThePartyGuy #WorkaTion

A post shared by SyrusMTV (@syrusmtv) on Mar 20, 2017 at 1:46pm PDT

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What does Spring Break 2018 has in store? Find out here when we'll have our ExtraTime look at how alumni from The Challenge, Are You The One and Real World get a chance to party down south this time around when we'll have this year's installment of Postcards from Spring Break later this week, along with our look at where Vendettas stands before the game shifts to the Czech Republic on Tuesday, and the latest episode of Winter Break Hunter Mountain after that. Join us for that then.

- I AM DC