The bed in Nancy Gerrish’s bright Los Feliz home looks perfectly normal—a carved wooden headboard, a fuzzy brown throw, a beige bedskirt. The sheets feature an elegant leopard print. A few damask throw pillows sit on top of the sheets to complete the earth-toned look.
But beneath the luxurious exterior of Gerrish’s bed lies a disturbing secret.
Sit on the edge of the mattress and it will rock and undulate. Lie down and it gently sways like you’re floating on a heated pool of water.
Indeed, you are.
In Los Angeles, water rules everything around us. Grab a drink to cool off and dive into our stories about hydrating and relaxing in the city.
“I tell people I have a waterbed and everyone laughs,” said Gerrish, 78, a financial planner with curly white hair and manicured lilac nails. “But it’s a very comfortable bed to sleep on, and I personally don’t know why there isn’t one like this in the world.”
If you thought waterbeds had followed the troll dolls and polyester pant suits that were popular in the 1970s, you’d be mostly right. The wavy vinyl mattress became a symbol of the era’s sex, drugs and rock ‘n’ roll lifestyle, but it may no longer be part of the collective consciousness, other than as the butt of jokes in period films or a prohibited item in model apartments. But they can still be found gently rippling in several Southern California bedrooms.
Waterbeds currently account for less than 2% of all mattress sales, according to the Specialty Sleep Assn., but the few remaining retailers receive orders from Gerrish on a daily basis. Waiting for calls from die-hards, mostly seniors who bought liquid mattresses decades ago, they’re stuck. Now, these waterbed enthusiasts scour the Internet for replacement mattresses, heaters and water treatment systems, determined to resist sleeping on a standard mattress – which they call a “death bed” – for as long as possible.
“I’m worried,” said Donna Martin, 77, of Glendale, who has slept on a waterbed for 50 years. “I thought to myself, if I had to go into a home, they wouldn’t give me a waterbed.”
On March 10, 1976, 47 UCLA students set a new record for a human pyramid on a water bed in Los Angeles. According to press agents, they broke the old record of 16 shows and it was a stunt to promote a Hollywood production at the time.
(Fang Wally/Associated Press)
“Happy Pit” craze
The modern waterbed was invented by San Francisco State University graduate student Charles Hall in 1968 as part of his master’s thesis in design. Hall, then 24, initially set out to create the world’s most comfortable chair by filling plastic bags with gelatin and then cornstarch, but the results were disappointing. Eventually, he found a winning solution—an 8-foot-long square vinyl mattress filled with water. He calls it a “joy pit” and imagines it as a bed-and-chair hybrid—the only furniture one needs.
“It’s new, exciting, different, sexy and fun. It’s the bed of our generation.
— Danny Boyd, former president of the Waterbed Manufacturers Association.
That summer, his prototype appeared in a show called “Happiness Happens” at San Francisco’s Cannery Art Gallery, and articles about the new waterbed soon appeared in newspapers and magazines across the country. A modern sleep trend was born.
“It’s new, it’s exciting, it’s different, it’s sexy, it’s fun,” said Denny Boyd, former president of the Waterbed Manufacturers Association, who has worked in Texas, Missouri and There are 35 waterbed stores in the state and Louisiana. “This is the bed of our generation.”
According to the New York Times, waterbed sales surged from $13 million in 1971 to $1.9 billion in 1986. Mattresses are fairly cheap, but big money comes from sales of the heavy-duty wooden frames that keep them from tipping over, as well as water heaters and air conditioners. According to the Washington Post, by 1991, about one-fifth of the mattresses sold in the United States were liquid-filled. Hall received a patent for his invention in 1971 but rarely executed it, and the young entrepreneur quickly turned the waterbed business into a lucrative industry.
“A lot of people become millionaires by the time they’re 25,” Boyd said.
It’s a crazy, sex-filled industry. An early ad proclaimed, “Two things are better on a waterbed. One of them is sleeping.” When Boyd remembers hosting slumber party sales at his store, customers would wear shocking pajamas—transparent pajamas. and thongs. The shop serves wine and cheese and is open until 3 or 4 a.m.
“It’s not just R-rated,” Boyd said.
Competition among male-dominated sales teams is fierce. “People used to throw rocks at each other’s stores and look in the dumpsters for customer lists,” Boyd said. “At a trade show, you have to hire a security guard to monitor your space so people don’t sneak in and poke holes in your mattress.”
By the mid-1990s, however, the extravaganza was over. After a steep rise, the waterbed market is drying up. Boyd said the decline is due to a number of factors, one of which is the emergence of “soft-sided” waterbed mattresses, which look and feel more like traditional beds and don’t require expensive bed frames or special Sheets – These accessories generate the majority of a waterbed store’s revenue. At the same time, several new alternative mattress technologies entered the market, including air beds, Sleep Number, Tempur-Pedic, and memory foam.
“These are more traditional beds that are easier to sell and less complicated,” Boyd said. “There’s a lot of advertising behind them.”
1995. Waterbed Manufacturers Association. Renamed itself the Professional Sleep Association.
Donna Martin, 77, rests on a waterbed in her Glendale apartment. Martin has been using waterbeds for the past 50 years.
(Genaro Molina/Los Angeles Times)
Reserve a dedicated “water head”
For some, waterbeds have never been a popular trend. This is a lifetime dedication.
In 1996, Gerrish, a financial planner in Los Feliz, bought her first water-filled mattress after sleeping on a friend’s waterbed. “I couldn’t believe how comfortable it was,” she said. “It’s very soft on all your joints, and if you like cuddling, your arms will sink into the bed so there’s no pressure.”
She moved her waterbed from New York to Los Angeles 21 years ago. When she finally sells her Los Feliz home, she hopes to take it with her wherever she moves next. (She was relieved to learn that it’s illegal for California landlords to ban waterbeds in rental units built after 1973, although they can require tenants to buy insurance for damage caused by waterbeds.)
“I feel so comfortable. It’s hard to get rid of it,” she said. “Anyone who comes to visit me loves it. I think [traditional] Mattress companies don’t want this information leaked.
Gerrish has been sleeping on a water-filled mattress for 28 years, but several waterbed enthusiasts in Los Angeles have a longer relationship with Hall’s 1968 invention.
Martin, 77, of Glendale, has been sleeping on a waterbed since she got her first one from a friend.
“I’ve had five mattresses since my first one. I love it,” she says.
Recently, she slept on her sister’s Swedish memory foam mattress while taking care of her pets on the weekends. judgment? no thanks. Martin, who suffered a crushed disc in her spine, found the waterbed easier on her hips.
“It was okay at first, but then the same thing happened again and it was so stressful,” she said. “I’d rather not sleep on anything else.”
Close-up of the waterbed at the Afloat factory in Corona.
(Chris Carlson/AP)
In 2018, City Furniture CEO Keith Koenig showed off a new waterbed during an interview with The Associated Press in Tamarack, Florida. The concept of old furniture has set off a new wave of popularity.
(Bryn Anderson/AP)
Steve Hertzmann, 62, of San Pedro gets it. He’s been a waterbed enthusiast for 40 years, but to his surprise, corrugated mattresses have never made a comeback.
“The best part is in the cold winter,” he said. “The water bed has a heater, so you can jump in and warm yourself up.”
Marty Pojar, who owns a shop called Waterbed Doctor in Westminster, would like to see a revival but thinks the technology needs to be rebranded.
“There’s a stigma created by the word ‘waterbed,'” he said. “When people hear it, they think of those big, old wooden waterbeds with a lot of wave action.”
In fact, waterbeds have evolved over the years. Consumers now have a choice between mattresses that offer old-school full dynamic waves and others that offer semi-waveless or almost no waves. Many beds also have two separate water mattresses, one on each side, so if two people sleep together and one person gets up, the other person won’t feel any shaking.
With enough advertising to spend, Pojar thought rebranding the waterbed as a “temperature-controlled floating sleep system” could attract new customers.
“Re-educating the public is a huge challenge, but I believe there is a huge opportunity there,” Pojar said.
For now, the longtime enthusiast is keeping his business going. Larry Johnson of Mar Vista knows firsthand that change can be difficult for lifelong waterbed aficionados.
The accountant slept on a waterbed for 50 years until his wife convinced him in May this year that a standard mattress would make it easier for him to get out of bed as he got older.
A few days later, Johnson was taking a wait-and-see approach. The “death bed” wasn’t as soft as his water bed. He missed the swing.
“It takes some getting used to,” he said.
