The revelers quickly made their way back to Club Q.
Just days after a brawl inside the bar that left a British teenager dead, girls danced on the bar and drunken boys wobbled below. At nearby pubs, ample cocktails were served in "fishbowls" with straws or in shot glasses passed out for free.
The wild and wicked summer rages on in Faliraki, a former stretch of serene coastline on the island of Rhodes that has become a beach-and-booze citadel. Young tourists, mostly from Britain, often arrive ready for nonstop parties with their inhibitions left at home.
The no-limits atmosphere, however, may have finally crossed the line.
Greek police have expanded patrols at many of the freewheeling resorts around Greece, led by Faliraki's neon strip of pubs, amusement parks and tattoo parlors that draws up to 500,000 people a year, or nearly 4 percent of Greece's 14 million tourists.
They also agreed to accept help from a team of British police who specialize in dealing with drunken behavior back home. "Three officers will come from Scotland Yard so that they can bring us the know-how and experience they have from similar situations with English troublemakers," government spokesman Christos Protopapas said Wednesday.
The crackdown -- for the moment at least -- changes the traditional pact between Greek authorities and those making money off the youthful passions: keep the hard-drinking intensity to isolated areas and the law will generally look the other way.
But this summer, the outcry in Greece has been too loud as the list of disturbing events has piled up at the resorts: beatings, sexual assaults, burning Greek flags, trafficking of the club drug ecstasy and public outdoor sex.
On Aug. 12, a 17-year-old Briton died after being stabbed in the neck with a broken beer bottle during a melee at Club Q in Faliraki. Police said the brawl started when two men bumped each other on the dance floor.
A 20-year-old British man has been jailed pending trial for murder and seven others, ages 19 to 34, face charges of complicity and have been released on bail.
Earlier this month, a 30-year-old British man died after being run over by a garbage truck following an apparent bet with friends to crawl under the vehicle.
A number of Britons have been convicted of indecent exposure, including an 18-year-old woman for an impromptu barroom striptease during a bikini contest.
"It's been a good time ... but the atmosphere is so aggressive. You constantly have to be on guard," said Scott Burns, a 19-year-old from Edinburgh, Scotland.
Faliraki, about 400km southeast of Athens, is just the latest point of friction between authorities and rowdy foreigners in the sun-drenched Mediterranean.
At least four stabbings have been reported this summer in the Cypriot resort of Agia Napa between British tourists apparently quarreling over favorite bands.
Portuguese and British police already are working together to combat British soccer hooligans at the Euro 2004 soccer tournament next June and July in Portugal.
In 1998, the British vice consul on the Spanish island of Ibiza -- a favorite of British and German youth -- resigned over the "degenerate" behavior of the holidaymakers.
"The English start drinking very early and by midnight many people cannot control themselves," said police chief Themos Kalamatas, whose thinly manned precinct covers Faliraki. "They are generally not bad people who come here or criminal types, but they believe they can have fun without limits."
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