Who, Us? Shallow?

Compiled by Leilah Bernstein

1900s

Katherine Tingley, a.k.a. the Purple Mother, establishes the Point Loma Theosophical Community near San Diego. Theosophists are dedicated to discovering the “ancient truths” that link all religions. (1900)

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The Los Angeles City Directory lists three car dealerships: E.H. Crippen Cycle and Supply House, Locomobile Co. of the Pacific and Pacific Automobile Co. (1901)

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Industrialist Henry Huntington hires Waikiki transplant George Freeth to perform public surfing displays in Redondo Beach. (1907)

‘10s

Two years after perfecting the first cream-based makeup for use in motion pictures, Max Factor, above, introduces retail cosmetics. (1916)

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Los Angeles logs one car for every eight residents; nationally, it is one car for every 43 people. (1915)

Leach Motor Co. begins selling, often to film stars, the Leach Biltwell passenger car for $6,500; it becomes the model for the “California top,” with sliding side windows. (1918)

‘20s

Jiddu Krishnamurti, an Indian philosopher known as the “reluctant messiah,” visits Ojai. He later creates a center there for his teachings. (1922)

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Indian guru PARAMAHANSA YOGANANDA, left, brings yoga and meditation to the West, setting up U.S. headquarters for his Self-Realization Fellowship on Mt. Washington in Los Angeles. (1925)

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Sparkletts begins home delivery of water, 65 years before the sports bottle craze threatens to suck the company dry. (1925)

‘30s

Hot rodders strip down cheap Model Ts and other cars to make the first lowriders, right. (early 1930s)

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The Hollywood 18-Day Diet promotes a 586-calorie-a-day regimen of citrus, Melba toast, green vegetables and hard-boiled eggs. (1931)

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Max Factor invents the Beauty Calibrator to measure faces against what he’s decreed as proportional perfection. (1932)

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An outdoor gym (parallel bars, rings and a small tumbling platform) is installed near the Santa Monica Pier. Muscle Beach spawns the physical fitness movement, personified by JACK LALANNE, left. (1934)

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South Bay surfer John Heath “Doc” Ball sets aside a spare room in his dental office for the nascent Palos Verdes Surf Club--the first significant group of its type. At weekly meetings, members recite the club’s creed, vowing to “conduct myself as a gentleman and a club member, so help me God.” (1934)

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Dr. William S. Kiskadden of Los Angeles co-founds the American Board of Plastic Surgery and becomes one of the first certified plastic surgeons in the nation. (1937)

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Von Dutch creates a personal logo--the FLYING EYEBALL, above left--and goes to work transforming assembly-line cars into singular sensations. His freestyle pin-striping and painted flames influence a generation of artists. (late ‘30s)

‘40s

Robert E. Petersen and Wally Parks conceive Hot Rod magazine to chronicle the craze sweeping the nation. Like Petersen’s subsequent car mags, it evolves into a brand, with Hot Rod rallies, a Hot Rod TV show, Hot Rod computer games and Hot Rod Hot Sauce. (1948)

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Harold Zinkin invents Universal training equipment, the first modern gym workout machines. (1948)

Surfboard shaper Dale Velzy opens the world’s first surf shop next to the Manhattan Beach pier. Also the first shaper to imprint his name on his boards and to sponsor a team, Velzy keeps his inventory simple: balsa and redwood surfboards, at $65 each. (1949)

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Nurse Antoinette La Gasse brings to a Hollywood clientele the chemicals her father applied on burn victims in France. She passes on the skin-care formula to her apprentice’s son, who later dispenses it in Derma-Lift salons. (late ‘40s)

‘50s

Scientology founder L. Ron Hubbard publishes “Dianetics,” his guide for achieving superior health and intelligence. It will sell more than 17 million copies and lure celebrities. (1950)

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George Barris begins hacking apart and remaking cars in North Hollywood. He chops (lowers the roof of) James Dean’s black Mercury in 1955’s “Rebel Without a Cause” to create one of his early Hollywood icons. THE BATMOBILE, top, the “Beverly Hillbillies” jalopy and dozens of others will follow. (early ‘50s)

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A group of Malibu surfers tags 15-year-old Kathy Kohner with the nickname Gidget, short for “girl midget.” Her dad writes a book (“Gidget--the Little Girl With Big Ideas”) and sells the film rights, and in 1959 the world sees its first distorted image of surf culture. (1956)

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Deborah Szekely founds the Golden Door spa in Escondido, an early prototype for the glam resorts whose service menus reflect the latest trends in self-indulgence, from wraps to aromatherapy. (1958)

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Using wood scraps and thrift-store roller skates, Skip Engblom, then 12, makes and sells boards for “sidewalk surfers.” He assembles 10 a month in a Venice carport, getting as much as $4 a pop. (1959)

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Mattel introduces “The BARBIE Doll: A Shapely Teenage Fashion Model,” far right. A descendant, Malibu Barbie, becomes synonymous with pert breasts. (1959)

‘60s

Duke Boyd, a 26-year-old Huntington Beach surfer, teams with seamstress Doris Moore to create a line of surf trunks. While brainstorming brand names, she asks Boyd to describe the surfing equivalent of golfing’s hole in one. HANG TEN, left, becomes the first true surf-wear line to cross into the mainstream, reaching annual sales of more than $18 million by 1971. (1960)

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Hot rod virtuoso Ed “Big Daddy” Roth keeps alive the custom-car clan’s spirit of rebellion when he paints his Mickey Mouse mutant, Rat Fink, on a refrigerator door in Southeast Los Angeles. The disgusting creature propagates on T-shirts and stickers, then mutates for a line of Revell “monster kits” (Surf Fink, Super Fink), snapped up by kids nationwide. (1962)

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The Richards family establishes VAL SURF, left, at Riverside Drive and Whitsett Avenue in North Hollywood, quickly proving that surf gear can sell inland. (1962)

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The Beach Boys’ “Surfer Girl” hits No. 7 the same summer that “Little Deuce Coupe”cruises to No. 15. on the Billboard chart. (1963)

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Tom Wolfe publishes “The Kandy-Kolored Tangerine-Flake Streamline Baby,” detailing the eccentricities of Southern California’s custom car culture. (1965)

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“The Endless Summer,” Bruce Brown’s breezy documentary about a search for the perfect wave, opens to record crowds at the Sunset Theater in Wichita, Kan. (1966)

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Don Kracke, a partner in a Long Beach ad agency, designs psychedelic daisy stickers and smothers his Ford with them. Nothing says “flower power” more succinctly than the RICKIE TICKIE STICKIE, below. (1967)

‘70s

The Bodhi Tree opens on Melrose Avenue and soon is among the best-known spiritual bookstores in the country. It also sells crystals, incense, body bliss beads, celestial compasses. (1970)

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In the first year that California offers vanity license plates, Department of Motor Vehicles commissioner Irene Ridenor uses a mirror to screen out requests that would be obscene when reflected. (1970)

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Laguna Beach surfer Tom Morey, the sport’s resident mad scientist, invents the Morey Boogie Board. The soft but stable device will introduce millions of inexperienced beach-goers to the rush of riding waves. (1971)

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Judi Sheppard Missett brings Jazzercise, the progenitor of jazz-dance aerobics, to Carlsbad. It grows to more than 5,000 franchises worldwide. (1972)

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Vidal Sassoon opens a Beverly Hills salon and helps popularize the the wedge haircut. (1974)

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Two years before the documentary “Pumping Iron” exposes the lexicon of abs, pecs and gluts to America, ARNOLD SCHWARZENEGGER, above, retires as six-time undefeated Mr. Olympia. (1975)

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Betty Ford dishes about having had a face-lift, and her adopted hometown, Palm Springs, becomes a prime destination for plastic surgery. (1978)

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Buffed and tanned California guys take it almost all off at a new Hollywood nightclub, CHIPPENDALES, above, that spawns imitators worldwide. It sets off a landslide of hot hunk calendars. (1979)

‘80s

Fifteen years before “Yanni in Concert: Live at the Acropolis” becomes a staple during PBS pledge drives, the New Age artist releases his first album on the Los Angeles label Private Music (1980)

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Judy Mazel’s “The Beverly Hills Diet” tops the nonfiction bestseller lists. (1981)

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Ultra Limousine of Orange County stretches the definition of car, adding a pool to one and making the Guinness Book of World Records. (1982)

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“All I need are some tasty waves, cool buzz, and I’m fine.” So says fictional surfer Jeff Spicoli (Sean Penn) in the movie “FAST TIMES AT RIDGEMONT HIGH,” below. To this day, Spicoli epitomizes the negative stereotype of surfers. (1982)

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Jose Arguelles, author of “The Mayan Factor,” is driving down Wilshire Boulevard to return a rental car when he has a vision: at sunrise on Aug. 16, 1987, people would participate in “ritualistic surrender” to the Earth. It was the Harmonic Convergence. Or, as cartoonist Garry Trudeau dubbed it, the Moronic Convergence. (1983)

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Actress Shirley MacLaine publicizes her explorations into spiritual phenomena and past lives with the eventual new age bestseller “Out on a Limb.” (1983)

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Millions huff and puff to the “Workout” video by JANE FONDA, right. (1983)

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Future political pundit Arianna Stassinopolous Huffington recruits disciples for John-Roger, founder of the Movement of Spiritual Inner Awareness in Santa Monica. “I had him thrust upon me by her,” celebrity reporter Liz Smith later complains. (mid-’80s)

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Johnny G. tinkers with a Schwinn at his Santa Monica home to create the first Spinner, a godsend for bored gym rats everywhere. (1987)

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The eventual global hit “Baywatch” premieres with a Malibu backdrop. Most later scripts call for PAMELA ANDERSON, left, to run to someone’s rescue. (1989)

‘90s

Suffice it to say “Beverly Hills, 90210.” (1990)

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Oprah Winfrey tells her TV audience that she experienced 157 miracles after reading “A Return to Love,” a self-study guide in spiritual psychotherapy by L.A.’s Marianne Williamson. The book, inspired by Helen Schucman’s and Kenneth Wapnick’s “A Course in Miracles,” sells more than 650,000 copies in two weeks. (1992)

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Beverly Hills entrepreneur Ron Popeil, late of the Veg-O-Matic and other inventions, airs his first infomercials for a spray-on toupee, GLH Formula No. 9. (1992)

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Honchos from Costa Mesa surf-wear company Quiksilver, on Oahu’s North Shore for a surf contest, see dollar signs in a new trend: girl surfers wearing men’s boardshorts. Their Roxy line of functional swimwear goes ballistic, with 1999 sales expected to top $100 million. (1993)

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E! hires JOAN RIVERS, below, to ask the stars arriving for the Academy Awards a key question: “Who are you wearing?” (1995)

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Alternative sports find their answer to the Olympics when the Extreme Games (now known as the X Games) debut on Disney’s ESPN. Skateboarders, in-line skaters, even sky surfers gain mainstream recognition. By 1998, “extreme” is implanted in America’s sports lexicon. (1995)

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With the release of his “Gift of Love” CD, Deepak Chopra of La Jolla becomes the new New Age king of all media. ( 1998)

And Beyond

Heralding a new era in artificial fun, GOTCHA GLACIER, below, opens in Anaheim--the first in a nationwide chain. The 435,000-square-foot, multi-tiered facility includes indoor snowboard and skateboard parks, six separate standing waves for surfing and bodyboarding, the largest rock-climbing wall in North America, an ice rink and, of course, a food court. Purists wince. Teens rejoice. Disneyland feels the tectonic shift. (2001)