Muscle Beach

Muscle Beach

Hard by the Santa Monica Pier, on an otherwise empty section of beach, there is a plaque which reads, "The Original Location of Muscle Beach. The Birthplace of the Physical Fitness Boom of the Twentieth Century." Although somewhat hyperbolic, the statement is not far wrong. What began as a sort of playground for acrobatic adults in the years before World War II became, after the war was over and people were looking for a little overdue "R & R," a magnet for men and women who were captivated by the sun, the sand, the skin, and the sense of endless summer that resides in the mythology of Southern California. The original Muscle Beach drew, and helped to shape, the careers of many cultural icons, including Steve Reeves, Jack LaLanne, Mae West, Pudgy Stockton, Vic Tanny, Joe Weider, and, of course, Arnold Schwarzenegger.

There were, to be sure, other—and earlier—locations where, for a time, physical fitness boomed, albeit under the more precise label of physical culture. Battle Creek, Michigan's Sanitarium, under the energetic, eccentric direction of Dr. John Harvey Kellogg; Bernarr Macfadden's Physical Culture Hotel in Florida; and Robert (Bob) Hoffman's York Barbell Club in York (often called "Muscletown"), Pennsylvania, were among the spots where people came in hopes of improving their strength, their health, their appearance or, more usually, all three.

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