These photos documenting Florida spring break in the 1980s belong in a museum

Before there were red Solo cups, spring breakers poured into Florida from colleges across the continent, and whether they make you sweetly nostalgic or make you howl with laughter, these shots from the 1980s capture a very specific era of debauchery.

The staff photographers of South Florida’s Sun-Sentinel newspaper have documented the Fort Lauderdale madness for years. And photographer Keith McManus followed his fascination with the keggers and Best Buns contests of the Daytona Beach scene for more than a decade, shooting partiers from 1982-1993 and collecting the work in his book Rite of Passage. He was kind enough to grant us permission to use these photos.