The mattress in Nancy Gerrish’s shiny Los Feliz dwelling seems completely regular — carved picket headboard, fuzzy brown blanket, cream-colored mattress skirt. The sheets are a tasteful leopard print. A number of brocade throw pillows lie atop the unfold to finish the earth-tone look.
However beneath that plush exterior, Gerrish’s mattress hides a jiggling secret.
Sit on the mattress’ edge and it wobbles and undulates. Lie down and it rocks gently, as if you happen to’re floating above a temperate pool of water.
And certainly, you might be.
In L.A., water guidelines every little thing round us. Drink up, cool off and dive into our tales about hydrating and recreating within the metropolis.
“I inform individuals I’ve a waterbed, and everybody laughs,” says Gerrish, 78, a monetary planner with white curly hair and manicured lavender nails. “Nevertheless it’s a really snug mattress to sleep in, and I personally don’t know why the world doesn’t have this.”
In case you thought waterbeds had gone the way in which of Seventies traits like Troll dolls and polyester pantsuits, you might be largely right. The wavy vinyl mattresses that grew to become a logo of the period’s intercourse, medicine and rock ’n’ roll life-style might not be a part of the collective consciousness besides because the butt of a joke in a interval movie or as a forbidden merchandise on a boilerplate residence lease. However they’ll nonetheless be discovered gently rippling in a handful of Southern California bedrooms.
Waterbeds account for lower than 2% of all mattress gross sales as we speak, in accordance with the Specialty Sleep Assn., however the few remaining retailers obtain day by day calls from cussed holdouts like Gerrish — largely older of us who purchased a fluid-filled mattress a long time in the past, fell in love with its wavy movement and received’t sleep on anything. Now, these waterbed lovers scour the web for substitute mattresses, heaters and water therapy techniques, decided to withstand sleeping on customary mattresses — what they name “lifeless beds” — for so long as they’ll.
“I fear,” stated Donna Martin, 77, of Glendale, who has been sleeping in a waterbed for 50 years. “I feel to myself if I ever have to enter a house, they received’t give me no waterbed.”
Forty-seven college students from UCLA pile on prime of a water mattress , March 10, 1976, to ascertain a brand new report for a human pyramid on a water mattress in Los Angeles. They broke the previous report of 16, in accordance with the press agent, in a stunt to publicize a then-current Hollywood manufacturing.
(Wally Fong / Related Press)
The ‘Pleasure Pit’ increase
The fashionable waterbed was invented in 1968 by Charles Corridor, a graduate scholar at San Francisco State, as a part of his grasp’s thesis in design. Corridor, then 24, had initially got down to create the world’s most snug chair, filling a plastic sack with gelatin after which cornstarch with disappointing outcomes. Finally, he landed on a profitable method — an 8-foot water-filled sq. vinyl mattress. He referred to as it the “Pleasure Pit” and imagined it as a bed-chair hybrid — the one piece of furnishings one would want.
“It was new, it was thrilling, it was completely different, it was attractive, it was enjoyable. It was our technology’s mattress.”
— Denny Boyd, former president of the Waterbed Producers Affiliation.
His prototype was featured in a present referred to as “Comfortable Happenings” on the San Francisco Cannery artwork gallery that summer time and articles a couple of new-fangled waterbed quickly have been showing in newspapers and magazines throughout the nation. A contemporary sleep pattern was born.
“It was new, it was thrilling, it was completely different, it was attractive, it was enjoyable,” stated Denny Boyd, former president of the Waterbed Producers Assn., who as soon as owned 35 waterbed shops all through Texas, Missouri and Louisiana. “It was our technology’s mattress.”
Waterbed gross sales skyrocketed from an estimated $13 million in 1971 to $1.9 billion in 1986, in accordance with the New York Instances. The mattresses have been pretty low cost, however gross sales of the heavy wooden frames that saved the mattresses from flopping round, plus water heaters and conditioners, introduced in huge bucks. By 1991, roughly 1 in each 5 mattresses bought in America was fluid-filled, in accordance with the Washington Submit. Corridor acquired a patent for his invention in 1971 however not often enforced it, and younger entrepreneurs shortly turned the waterbed enterprise right into a profitable trade.
“There have been an entire lot of people that have been millionaires by the point they have been 25,” Boyd stated.
It was a wild, sex-soaked enterprise. One early advert declared, “Two issues are higher on a waterbed. Considered one of them is sleeping.” Boyd remembers internet hosting pajama occasion gross sales occasions at his shops the place prospects would present up in outrageous sleepwear — see-through nighties and G-strings. The shop served wine and cheese and stayed open till 3 or 4 a.m.
“It was greater than R-rated,” Boyd stated.
Competitors among the many largely male gross sales drive was fierce. “Folks used to throw rocks at one another’s shops and look in dustbins to see shopper lists,” Boyd stated. “On the commerce exhibits, you needed to rent a safety guard to observe your area so individuals wouldn’t sneak again in and poke holes in your mattress.”
By the mid-Nineteen Nineties, nonetheless, the occasion was over. After a precipitous rise, the waterbed market dried up. Boyd says the decline was as a consequence of a handful of things, certainly one of which was the appearance of the “softside” waterbed mattress, which appeared and felt extra like a conventional mattress and didn’t require pricy mattress frames or particular sheets — equipment that generated the majority of the income for waterbed shops. On the similar time, a number of new different mattress applied sciences hit the market, together with airbeds, the Sleep Quantity, Tempur-Pedic and reminiscence foam.
“These have been extra typical beds, simpler to promote and easier,” Boyd stated. “Additionally they had a lot of promoting behind them.”
In 1995, the Waterbed Producers Assn. rebranded itself because the Specialty Sleep Assn.
Donna Martin, 77, rests on her waterbed in her residence in Glendale. Martin has used waterbeds for the previous 50 years.
(Genaro Molina / Los Angeles Instances)
Devoted ‘water heads’ stay
For some, the waterbed was by no means a passing pattern. It‘s a lifelong devotion.
Gerrish, the monetary planner from Los Feliz, purchased her first water-filled mattress in 1996 after sleeping on a pal’s waterbed. “I couldn’t consider how snug it was,” she stated. “It’s very smooth on all of your joints, and if you happen to prefer to cuddle, your arm sinks into the mattress so there’s no strain on it.”
She moved her waterbed to Los Angeles from New York 21 years in the past. When she finally sells her Los Feliz dwelling, she hopes to take it together with her wherever she strikes subsequent. (She was relieved to be taught that it’s unlawful for landlords to forbid waterbeds in California in rental items constructed after 1973, although they’ll require tenants to have insurance coverage for harm attributable to the mattress.)
“I really feel so cozy. It’s exhausting to get out of it,” she stated. “And anybody visiting me loves it. I feel the [traditional] mattress corporations don’t need this info getting out.”
Gerrish has been sleeping on a water-filled mattress for 28 years, however a number of L.A. waterbed lovers have had a fair longer relationship with Corridor’s 1968 invention.
Martin, the 77-year-old in Glendale, has been sleeping on a waterbed since she bought her first one as a hand-me-down from a pal.
“I’ve had 5 mattresses for the reason that first time I set one up. I like it,” she stated.
Not too long ago, she slept on her sister’s Swedish reminiscence foam mattress whereas taking good care of her pets for the weekend. The decision? No, thanks. Martin has a squashed disk in her backbone and finds the waterbed is simpler on her hips.
“At first it was OK, however then the identical factor occurred, an excessive amount of strain,” she stated. “I might fairly stay awake in one thing else.”
A closeup of a waterbed on the Afloat manufacturing facility in Corona.
(Chris Carlson / Related Press)
Metropolis Furnishings CEO Keith Koenig exhibits the brand new waterbed on show as he speaks throughout an interview with the Related Press in Tamarac, Fla., in 2018. Koenig and inventor Charles Corridor, pioneers of the waterbed trade in the USA, are hoping to generate a brand new wave of recognition for the previous furnishings idea by utilizing a healthful new pitch.
(Brynn Anderson / Related Press)
Steve Hertzmann, 62, of San Pedro, will get it. He’s been a waterbed devotee for 40 years and is shocked that the wavy mattresses have by no means made a comeback.
“The very best half is within the wintertime if you’re freezing chilly,” he stated. “The waterbed has a heater, and also you hop in and also you’re all heat.”
Marty Pojar, who has a retailer referred to as the Waterbed Physician in Westminster, would like to see a renaissance, however he thinks the expertise wants a rebrand.
“The phrase ‘waterbed’ creates a stigma,” he stated. “When individuals hear it, they’re considering of the massive, previous wood-frame waterbeds with a lot of wave motion.”
In truth, waterbeds have developed over time. Shoppers can now decide amongst mattresses that supply old-school full-motion waves and others which might be semi-waveless or have nearly no waves in any respect. Many beds even have two separate water mattresses, one on all sides, so if two persons are sleeping collectively and one individual will get off the bed, the opposite doesn’t expertise any rocking.
With sufficient promoting {dollars} behind it, Pojar thinks renaming waterbeds “flotation sleep techniques with temperature management” may herald new prospects.
“Reeducating the general public is an enormous problem, however there’s a huge alternative there, I consider,” Pojar stated.
For now, longtime devotees are holding his enterprise alive. Change may be troublesome for a lifelong waterbed fan, as Larry Johnson of Mar Vista has discovered firsthand.
The accountant slept on a waterbed for 50 years, till Could, when his spouse satisfied him that a normal mattress would make it simpler to get off the bed as they age.
A number of days in, Johnson was on the fence. The “lifeless mattress” was not as smooth as his waterbed. He missed the rocking movement.
“It’s going to take some getting used to,” he stated.
