Image via Complex Original
No trip to Los Angeles is complete without some beach time. The cities of Venice and Santa Monica have beautiful coastline to enjoy, but they also contain important sporting landmarks. The original Muscle Beach, located in Santa Monica, carries a name that invokes images of massively built men flexing in tiny bathing suits while the California sun bronzes their well-oiled muscles. That may be what goes down at the newer Muscle Beach, located in Venice, but the original was home to gymnastics, aerobics, and overall fitness. It’s a historic site for athletes and fans alike, but with two nearby workout pens carrying the name “Muscle Beach,” sorting out the beach exercise scene can be tricky.
Sift through the confusion in 10 Things You Didn’t Know About the Famous Muscle Beach.
It was built out of the government’s “New Deal” during the Great Depression.
Without the Great Depression, there might not be a Muscle Beach. With unemployment hovering around 25 percent during the early 1930s, President Franklin Roosevelt enacted a series of government reforms known as the “New Deal.” (Remember learning about all this in high-school history?)
President Roosevelt used the might of the federal government to put Americans back to work, and part of that program was the construction of exercise and aerobics equipment south of Santa Monica Pier. The government’s Works Progress Administration (WPA) undertook the installation task, quickly assembling eager locals to work construction jobs. Although the pit of bars and metal columns erected south of the pier wasn’t known as Muscle Beach then, it became a huge attraction for beachgoers seeking exercise and entertainment.
At first, Muscle Beach was used mostly as a site for people to play volleyball, ping pong, and even chess.
Even with the jungle of rings and parallel bars set up, initial visitors and passersby on Santa Monica Pier used nets and tables (also built by the WPA) for more leisurely games. Basically, Muscle Beach, in its pre-muscle days, was a place for nerds to play table games and hit around volleyballs—there were no jacked guys and swol’ ladies walking around doing hundreds of pull-ups. In fact, fitness experts at the time warned against bulking up, saying that people could become “muscle-bound” and become physically trapped by the sheer size of their own muscles.
The 1933 Long Beach earthquake served as the catalyst for gymnasts flocking to Muscle Beach.
Although chess and volleyball were initially popular, actual athletes and gymnasts quickly discovered the spot out of necessity. An earthquake in 1933 destroyed many gymnasium facilities in the area, stranding athletes without a place to properly train. But once the WPA-built gymnastics bars and rings caught their attention, Muscle Beach finally began to come into its own. The area south of Santa Monica Pier was no longer a chill place to play games; it became a place of strenuous exercise and athletic entertainment.
In the 1950s, crowds of over 10,000 would gather on weekends to see athletes put on exhibitions at Muscle Beach.
The athletes and gymnasts who gathered at Muscle Beach were serious about their craft. Toward the end of the Great Depression, enthusiasts of physical culture (these people would be known as sports fans today) hit up Muscle Beach to admire its stars.
WWII served as a period of transition for Muscle Beach. Pudgy and Les Stockton, two of Muscle Beach’s original stars, took up jobs working for the government, along with everyone else in the scene. WWII was a time for work, not exercise.
The equipment didn’t go to rust, though. Servicemen stationed in Los Angeles began training at Muscle Beach, and once WWII ended, the workout scene had become even more hardcore.
At its height, Muscle Beach not only evolved into a place for dedicated gymnasts and bodybuilders to workout, but also into a source of local entertainment. Before professional sports existed out in Los Angeles (the Dodgers didn’t move to California until 1958), Muscle Beach was the place to see freakish feats of athletic achievement. Like this dude doing a crazy bar-handstand in 1955:
Fitness pioneers Jack LaLanne, Steve “Hercules” Reeves, Armand Tanny, and Joe Gold all got their starts in the spotlight at Muscle Beach.
Before bodybuilders like Arnold Schwarzenegger and Larry Scott gave Muscle Beach Venice a star identity, fitness experts like Jack LaLanne and Joe Gold earned some of their first nuggets of fame at the original Muscle Beach. LaLanne would go on to perform daredevil-esque physical feats in the 1950s (he did crazy things like swim from Alcatraz to shore while handcuffed, or 1,033 push-ups in 23 minutes on live television), and Gold went on to start Gold’s Gym. Yet, it was at Muscle Beach where each honed his showmanship and athletic abilities.
During the peak of Muscle Beach, Muscle House was opened to house and feed bodybuilders for only $100 a month.
Imagine this life: You wake up every day across the street from Santa Monica Pier. The sun shines right through your window, because the weather is always amazing. Your landlord cooks you a square meal three times a day—you don’t even have to worry about grocery shopping. (A life without deciding between paper or plastic is what’s truly envious here.) You can workout at Muscle Beach all you want, and strangers will probably root and cheer you on during your workouts. Oh, and your only expense is the $100 that you owe to your landlord every month for room and board.
Fleurette “Joy” Crettaz founded Muscle House because she was a fan of bodybuilding. Through her passion for it, hundreds of up-and-coming bodybuilders could fully engross themselves in the seriously disciplined lifestyle necessary to become great. Muscle House operated from the 1950s to the 1970s, hatching championship bodybuilders such as Dave Draper, Steve Reeves, and Jack Delinger.
Muscle Beach was shut down in the middle of the night in 1959 without any warning.
Similar to how the Baltimore Colts picked up and left town in the middle of the night without really telling anybody, the City of Santa Monica tore down all of Muscle Beach’s equipment overnight. The following morning, bodybuilders and gymnasts woke up to an empty spot on the beach (although the volleyball nets remained). The once-quiet conservative city had become upset by the raucous nature of Muscle Beach. To them, having an athletic landmark wasn’t worth the cost of maintenance and supervision required to keep Muscle Beach moving.
Santa Monica’s refurbishment of Muscle Beach in 1989 made it a fitness destination for toddlers.
When the city overhauled areas around Santa Monica Pier in 1989, the place where Muscle Beach was first built was refurbished—sort of. Parallel bars and rings were put back up, but as a way of making the area more family-friendly (Santa Monica didn’t want the bodybuilding culture, which had since moved up the block to Venice, back in their neck of the beach), a fitness area for young children was also built right alongside the bars and rings.
When Muscle Beach reopened in 1999, it was constructed to exactly replicate the original.
Ten years after that first refurbishment, and forty years after the teardown, Santa Monica fully committed to restoring Muscle Beach. As part of a $10 million restoration project in the area, $200,000 worth of new equipment was ordered. The city didn’t half-ass its plans either—Muscle Beach was rebuilt to the exact specifications of what the WPA had constructed in 1934. “Inch by inch, bar by bar,” Muscle Beach was finally restored by the city that had destroyed it decades earlier.
“Muscle Beach Venice” wasn’t named until the City of Los Angeles got the blessing to do so from Armand Tanny.
After Muscle Beach was torn down in 1959, its bodybuilders took up residence at the Weight Pit, just a few clicks away at Venice Beach. People started calling the new spot “Muscle Beach,” but by 1986, the Pit’s bodybuilders wanted to put a stop to that. A new generation of bodybuilders realized that the Venice Weight Pit wasn’t actually the real Muscle Beach. To end the confusion, and to honor the original Muscle Beach, Los Angeles’ recreation department sought approval to rename the Pit as “Muscle Beach Venice.”
They contacted Armand Tanny, a former Muscle Beach regular and bodybuilding national champion. He gave the city his blessing, and Muscle Beach Venice was officially established.
Don’t forget about the OG spot, though. While Muscle Beach Venice has had its share of stars, the area with parallel bars and rings just south of Santa Monica Pier will always be the Muscle Beach.
