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Muscle Beach

Author : Marla Matzer Rose

Publisher : Macmillan + ORM

Page : 159 pages

File Size : 19,78 MB

Release : 2014-06-10

Category : Health & Fitness

ISBN : 1466873493

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Book Description

The Story Behind America's Iconic Patch of Sand--Muscle Beach, California Almost half a century before health clubs, fitness videos and weight training became American obsessions, a pioneering enclave in Santa Monica, California, started the physical culture boom. In the 1940s, Jack LaLanne, Vic Tanny, Joe Gold, Les and Pudgy Stockton and others like them drew thousands of visitors to the beach to watch their feats of strength and acrobatic displays. As more viewers became participants, body building and fitness became a part of the mainstream culture. Muscle Beach by Marla Matzer Rose is full of rich, new material about the original Muscle Beachers, many of whom are still alive and testaments to the benefits of a life devoted to fitness. With its fresh anecdotes and thirty-two rare and wonderful photographs, this history brings a legendary stretch of beach into focus.



LA Sports

Author : Wayne Wilson

Publisher : University of Arkansas Press

Page : 375 pages

File Size : 18,65 MB

Release : 2018-02-15

Category : Sports & Recreation

ISBN : 1682260526

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Book Description

LA Sports brings together sixteen essays covering various aspects of the development and changing nature of sport in one of America’s most fascinating and famous cities. The writers cover a range of topics, including the history of car racing and ice skating, the development of sport venues, the power of the Mexican fan base in American soccer leagues, the intersecting life stories of Jackie and Mack Robinson, the importance of the Showtime Lakers, the origins of Muscle Beach and surfing, sport in Hollywood films, and more.



Muscle Works

Author : Broderick D.V. Chow

Publisher : Northwestern University Press

Page : 235 pages

File Size : 42,86 MB

Release : 2024-07-15

Category : Performing Arts

ISBN : 0810147386

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Book Description

Men’s fitness as a performance—from nineteenth-century theatrical exhibitions to health and wellness practices today This book recounts the story of fitness culture from its beginnings as spectacles of strongmen, weightlifters, acrobats, and wrestlers to its legitimization in the twentieth-century in the form of competitive sports and health and wellness practices. Broderick D. V. Chow shows how these modes of display contribute to the construction and deconstruction of definitions of masculinity. Attending to its theatrical origins, Chow argues for a more nuanced understanding of fitness culture, one informed by the legacies of self-described Strongest Man in the World Eugen Sandow and the history of fakery in strongman performance; the philosophy of weightlifter George Hackenschmidt and the performances of martial artist Bruce Lee; and the intersections of fatigue, resistance training, and whiteness. Muscle Works: Physical Culture and the Performance of Masculinity moves beyond the gym and across the archive, working out techniques, poses, and performances to consider how, as gendered subjects, we inhabit and make worlds through our bodies.



Fodor's California

Author : Fodor's Travel Guides

Publisher : Fodor's Travel

Page : 1407 pages

File Size : 32,39 MB

Release : 2024-03-19

Category : Travel

ISBN : 1640976612

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Book Description

Whether you want to get a glimpse of the Hollywood sign, wander among giant redwood trees at Muir Woods, or camp in a National Park, the local Fodor's travel experts in California are here to help! Fodor's California guidebook is packed with maps, carefully curated recommendations, and everything else you need to simplify your trip-planning process and make the most of your time. This new edition has been fully-redesigned with an easy-to-read layout, fresh information, and beautiful color photos. Fodor's California travel guide includes: AN ILLUSTRATED ULTIMATE EXPERIENCES GUIDE to the top things to see and do MULTIPLE ITINERARIES to effectively organize your days and maximize your time MORE THAN 49 DETAILED MAPS and a FREE PULL-OUT MAP to help you navigate confidently COLOR PHOTOS throughout to spark your wanderlust! HONEST RECOMMENDATIONS FROM LOCALS on the best sights, restaurants, hotels, nightlife, shopping, performing arts, activities, and more PHOTO-FILLED “BEST OF” FEATURES on “What to Eat and Drink,” “Best Wineries in Napa & Sonoma,” “Best Beaches in San Diego,” “Best Celebrity Hangouts in L.A.,” and more TRIP-PLANNING TOOLS AND PRACTICAL TIPS including when to go, getting around, beating the crowds, and saving time and money HISTORICAL AND CULTURAL INSIGHTS providing rich context on the local people, politics, art, architecture, cuisine, music, geography and more SPECIAL FEATURES on the “San Diego Zoo,” “San Francisco's Cable Cars,” and “Wine-Tasting in Napa & Sonoma” LOCAL WRITERS to help you find the under-the-radar gems UP-TO-DATE COVERAGE ON: Los Angeles, San Francisco, San Diego, Joshua Tree National Park, Death Valley National Park, Napa and Sonoma, the Pacific Coast Highway, Monterey, Route 66, Carmel, Big Sur, Santa Barbara, the Mojave Desert, Palm Springs, Sacramento, and more. Planning on visiting other destinations in the west? Check out Fodor's Oregon, Fodor's Pacific Northwest, Fodor's Utah, Fodor's Arizona, and Fodor's Las Vegas. *Important note for digital editions: The digital edition of this guide does not contain all the images or text included in the physical edition. ABOUT FODOR'S AUTHORS: Each Fodor's Travel Guide is researched and written by local experts. Fodor's has been offering expert advice for all tastes and budgets for over 80 years. For more travel inspiration, you can sign up for our travel newsletter at fodors.com/newsletter/signup, or follow us @FodorsTravel on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter. We invite you to join our friendly community of travel experts at fodors.com/community to ask any other questions and share your experience with us!



Muscles in the Movies

Author : John D. Fair

Publisher : University of Missouri Press

Page : 485 pages

File Size : 31,69 MB

Release : 2020-11-16

Category : Art

ISBN : 0826274501

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Book Description

John Fair and David Chapman tell the story of how filmmakers use and manipulate the appearance and performances of muscular men and women to enhance the appeal of their productions. The authors show how this practice, deeply rooted in western epistemological traditions, evolved from the art of photography through magic lantern and stage shows into the motion picture industry, arguing that the sight of muscles in action induced a higher degree of viewer entertainment. From Eugen Sandow to Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson, muscular actors appear capable of performing the miraculous, and with the aid of stuntmen and filming contrivances, they do. By such means, muscles are used to perfect the art of illusion, inherent in movie-making from its earliest days.



Popular Mechanics

Author :

Publisher :

Page : 250 pages

File Size : 43,49 MB

Release : 1968-11

Category :

ISBN :

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Book Description

Popular Mechanics inspires, instructs and influences readers to help them master the modern world. Whether it’s practical DIY home-improvement tips, gadgets and digital technology, information on the newest cars or the latest breakthroughs in science -- PM is the ultimate guide to our high-tech lifestyle.



Fit Nation

Author : Natalia Mehlman Petrzela

Publisher : University of Chicago Press

Page : 460 pages

File Size : 20,92 MB

Release : 2024-04-05

Category : Health & Fitness

ISBN : 0226833364

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Book Description

How is it that Americans are more obsessed with exercise than ever, and yet also unhealthier? Fit Nation explains how we got here and imagines how we might create a more inclusive, stronger future. If a shared American creed still exists, it’s a belief that exercise is integral to a life well lived. A century ago, working out was the activity of a strange subculture, but today, it’s almost impossible to avoid exhortations to exercise: Walk 5K to cure cancer! Awaken your inner sex kitten at pole-dancing class! Sweat like (or even with) a celebrity in spin class! Exercise is everywhere. Yet the United States is hardly a “fit nation.” Only 20 percent of Americans work out consistently, over half of gym members don’t even use the facilities they pay for, and fewer than 30 percent of high school students get an hour of exercise a day. So how did fitness become both inescapable and inaccessible? Spanning more than a century of American history, Fit Nation answers these questions and more through original interviews, archival research, and a rich cultural narrative. As a leading political and intellectual historian and a certified fitness instructor, Natalia Mehlman Petrzela is uniquely qualified to confront the complex and far-reaching implications of how our contemporary exercise culture took shape. She explores the work of working out not just as consumers have experienced it, but as it was created by performers, physical educators, trainers, instructors, and many others. For Petrzela, fitness is a social justice issue. She argues that the fight for a more equitable exercise culture will be won only by revolutionizing fitness culture at its core, making it truly inclusive for all bodies in a way it has never been. Examining venues from the stage of the World’s Fair and Muscle Beach to fat farms, feminist health clinics, radical and evangelical college campuses, yoga retreats, gleaming health clubs, school gymnasiums, and many more, Fit Nation is a revealing history that shows fitness to be not just a matter of physical health but of what it means to be an American.



Sand Rush

Author : Elsa Devienne

Publisher : Oxford University Press

Page : 329 pages

File Size : 13,75 MB

Release : 2024

Category : History

ISBN : 0197539750

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Book Description

An original approach to the iconic landscape of California--the beaches of Los Angeles--this book recovers untold stories of presidential jaunts, wild spring break celebrations, underground gay beaches, and engineering feats that enlarged the shores overnight. From the creation of a mini-Venice on the LA sands in 1905 to Baywatch's David Hasselhoff and Pamela Anderson captivating billions of television viewers worldwide in the 1990s, the book offers a comprehensive look at a landscape that is at once natural and artificial, but now under threat from climate change and rising sea levels.



Foundlings

Author : Christopher Nealon

Publisher : Duke University Press

Page : 223 pages

File Size : 49,78 MB

Release : 2001-10-08

Category : Social Science

ISBN : 0822380617

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Book Description

What is it like to “feel historical”? In Foundlings Christopher Nealon analyzes texts produced by American gay men and lesbians in the first half of the twentieth century—poems by Hart Crane, novels by Willa Cather, gay male physique magazines, and lesbian pulp fiction. Nealon brings these diverse works together by highlighting a coming-of-age narrative he calls “foundling”—a term for queer disaffiliation from and desire for family, nation, and history. The young runaways in Cather’s novels, the way critics conflated Crane’s homosexual body with his verse, the suggestive poses and utopian captions of muscle magazines, and Beebo Brinker, the aging butch heroine from Ann Bannon’s pulp novels—all embody for Nealon the uncertain space between two models of lesbian and gay sexuality. The “inversion” model dominant in the first half of the century held that homosexuals are souls of one gender trapped in the body of another, while the more contemporary “ethnic” model refers to the existence of a distinct and collective culture among gay men and lesbians. Nealon’s unique readings, however, reveal a constant movement between these two discursive poles, and not, as is widely theorized, a linear progress from one to the other. This startlingly original study will interest those working on gay and lesbian studies, American literature and culture, and twentieth-century history.



Misty

Author : Misty May-Treanor

Publisher : Simon and Schuster

Page : 314 pages

File Size : 12,2 MB

Release : 2010-06-15

Category : Biography & Autobiography

ISBN : 1439155771

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Book Description

The passionate, poignant, and triumphant story of two-time Olympic gold medal–winning beach volleyball icon Misty May-Treanor. More than any Olympics in history, the 2008 Beijing Summer Games captured the world’s imagination, and Misty May-Treanor became one of the biggest U.S. stars on the global stage. Now she shares the story of her life and remarkable athletic career. Destined for beach volleyball superstardom, having been raised on famed Muscle Beach in Santa Monica, California, Misty talks about the personal and professional challenges she has faced and the life lessons she has learned in the process. From growing up with two driven, competitive, accomplished athlete parents and living in a volatile household rocked for years by their alcoholism to the heartbreaking death of her mother from cancer, Misty reveals intimate details never before publicly discussed. She tells behind-the-scenes stories about her eight-year climb to the top of beach volleyball with partners Holly McPeak and Kerri Walsh; her career-threatening injuries; her role on ABC’s hit television show Dancing with the Stars; and of course, her historic two Olympic gold medals and the special rewards they’ve brought. Offering an unprecedented glimpse into the life of a cherished celebrity sports icon and an ambassador for women’s athletics, Misty will touch, inspire, and empower readers everywhere.