Back to Malibu Point with the real Gidget

Fun read on the Southern California beach and teen culture of the 1950s: Deanne Stillman's encounters with the original Gidget, posted at California Authors.com. As Stillman, a Los Angeles author and playwright, says in her essay, "the Taco Bell Chihuahua is named Gidget. So is the ladies' room at the Tres Hombres Restaurant in Hawaii. A cook on the Internet calls herself Gidget. Malibu Chicken features a sandwich called Gidget, and Barney's sells a line of Gidget lipstick." It all began -- the whole iconography of L.A. surfer girls and Gidgets -- at Malibu Beach in the 1950s with Kathy Kohner, a Jewish girl from Brentwood. Stillman's essay is included in the book Surf Culture: The Art History of Surfing.