Tybee Island turned Friday into a rolling water fight as it staged the Tybee Beach Bum Parade, with thousands of locals lining 3 miles of streets and firing squirt guns at float riders in the annual spectacle. The island's last locals weekend before Memorial Day ended the way many residents prefer it: soaked, loud and outside.
Frank Cunnane stood in front of Doc’s Bar, drawing water for his super soaker pistol from three large trash cans, and summed up the mood in a line that fit the island as neatly as the parade route. “This is a town that loves a parade, and this is the best one,” he said. “It’s all about the locals. And I love giving it to my neighbors.”
The Beach Bum Parade has been part of Tybee life since 1987, when it began as a homecoming march for a local softball team called the Beach Bums. Jack Boylston formed that team and has carried the title of HBIC, or Head Bum in Charge, throughout the parade’s history. He still speaks about the event with the confidence of someone who knows exactly why it survived. “We want to play real bad … and we will,” he said. “The best parties are those where you don’t send out invitations.” “That’s what this has been.”
What began as a softball team send-off became something bigger the next year, when bar regulars along the route started answering with water balloons and parade riders sent the soggy fire back with recycled balloons. That back-and-forth became the parade’s defining rhythm, and it is still what sets the event apart from the island’s other celebrations, from Mardi Gras in the spring and Pirate Fest in the fall to marches for Martin Luther King Jr. Day, St. Patrick’s Day and Independence Day, plus the lighted bicycle parade that kicks off Christmas. For a place with a population of 3,200, Tybee has turned public celebration into part of its identity.
The parade also carries the weight of age. Only six of the original Beach Bums softball players are still alive, and 64 original team members are honored on a plaque at Tybee City Hall. Beach Bum Friday is treated by residents like a holiday, and for one more weekend before Memorial Day, the island belongs to them. After that, the tourists arrive, beach season opens and the restaurants, parking spots and prime sand fill up fast. That is why Friday mattered: it was the last loud local gathering before Tybee Island shifts from island time to tourist time.
The answer to what happens next is already written into the calendar. Memorial Day begins next weekend, and with it comes the start of the beach season rush. The water guns get put away, the crowds change, and Tybee Island moves from the parade it throws for itself to the season it hosts for everyone else.
