Renovation to Pump New Iron Into Muscle Beach

Muscle Beach, Venice’s venerable but age-worn pavilion of pumping iron, is decidedly out of shape for a place renowned as an arena where its members could flex their way to fame. But the outdoor exhibition stage is about to be made over.

The gain will not come without pain.

Crews began demolishing the arena this week, closing it as the summer tourist season shifts into high gear. The payoff will come in six months when city officials finish the $516,000 renovation of one of Southern California’s most offbeat attractions, a tourist magnet made famous by a brood of well-oiled body-builders including Arnold Schwarzenegger and Steve Reeves, portrayer of Hercules, who went on to silver screen fame.

Veterans of Muscle Beach say that improvements have been needed for more than a decade. The weightlifting equipment was rusted and creaky and many bodybuilding junkies left for the more modern environs of nearby gyms.

“Because of the aging of the facility and the deterioration of the equipment, a lot of the big names just faded out,” said Bill Howard, Muscle Beach’s volunteer announcer for competitions for the last 27 years. “It basically lost the identity it had earlier.”

During its heyday, the workout area attracted such prime-time posers as the late Vic Tanny, Russ Saunders (who served as the model for a Salvador Dali painting of Christ), and Franco Columbo. “The Pit,” as it was also known before it officially became Muscle Beach in 1987 by City Council proclamation, has also served as a backdrop in a number of films, ranging from the wacky beach parties of Frankie and Annette to the fevered competition in “Pumping Iron.”

“I get kids all the time who ask me if the Hulk is here,” said Darlene Galindo, senior recreation director at the Venice Recreation Area, referring to bodybuilder Lou Ferrigno, who played the Incredible Hulk on television. “Muscle Beach is world famous and everybody comes down looking for it. It’s just one of those places you have to see if you come to Southern California.”

Although bodybuilding is more widespread among men and women, the sport was relegated to freak status before World War II. Weightlifters were known as health bohemians and members of the “physical culture.”

The Southern California bodybuilding scene was spawned in the early 1930s, when Muscle Beach was constructed as a Works Progress Administration project to help impoverished, Depression-era children. A weightlifting pen, equipment shed, tumbling platform, rings and parallel and horizontal bars were installed and the city of Santa Monica later supervised the activities.

According to local legend, the name then was Mussel Beach--taken after the sea creatures whose presence was evident when they latched on to pilings. But after the first human hulks began hanging out along the shore, people just assumed that the area was called Muscle Beach.

By the mid-1960s, the area was so well-known that the body sculptors who worked out there received fan mail labeled “Muscle Beach, USA,” according to unofficial historian Steve Ford, former chairman of the Muscle Beach Venice Membership Committee.

Despite its renown, the ocean-front gym was never awash in money. Ford recalled that at one of the annual body-building contests, the group didn’t have any cash for trophies. So Columbo, the short man’s Schwarzenegger, went home and grabbed a handful of his hundreds of awards and gave them out to the winners.

“For the people who worked out there, it always was like being part of a family,” Ford said. “Muscle Beach has always had a certain ambience and whether or not it’s an exhibitionist center, the people who work out there all have had a certain quality of accepting the public’s admiration.

“Today, now that Arnold (Schwarzenegger) is so famous, it’s treated kind of like the place where Shakespeare lived. People have to see the place where Arnold worked out. It was like a springboard for the sport of bodybuilding.”

For $30 a year, members could pump and flex for their frenzied fans. As a tourist attraction, Muscle Beach ranked as one of the top draws on the popular Venice Beach, rivaled perhaps only by the chainsaw juggler.

According to Howard and Ford, when the new facility opens in January, 1991, the bodies won’t be the only beautiful things on view at Muscle Beach. A committee of weightlifters came up with the final design, which includes a new triangular concrete stage, an equipment shed for barbells, state-of-the-art equipment and expanded bleachers.

Summer tourists won’t be completely disappointed by the temporary lack of muscle at the beach, according to recreation officials. Howard said that while the site will be fenced off for the summer, they will still hold their July 4 and Labor Day body-building contests nearby.

Not surprisingly, the Muscle Beach members are pumped.

“When it’s finished it will be among the most dramatic settings of its kind,” said Ford. “It’s like a caterpillar that’s going to turn into a butterfly.”