50 Culturally Relevant Swimming Pools

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[Editor’s note: It’s the last Friday of the summer, so your Flavorwire editors and writers are taking a much-needed break. We’ll return to our normal publishing schedule on Tuesday, but in the meantime, we’ll be revisiting some of our favorite content from the past few months. This post was originally published July 9, 2010.] Even though the East Coast’s brutal, triple-digit heatwave is technically over, we in New York are still sweating it out in under-air conditioned spaces. So, like explorers lost in the desert, we find ourselves daydreaming of water. Of course, we’ve got plenty of it to drink. But what we really want is to be entirely submerged in it. Since we would never skip work to do that, we figured we’d round up 50 swimming pools that have made their mark on pop culture.

1. The Smashing Pumpkins’ “1979” video

2. Melrose Place

3. Esther Williams in Bathing Beauty

4. The Graduate

5. 3 Women

6. Nirvana’s Nevermind album cover

7. Wild Things

8. Sex and the City‘s Soho House pool

9. Swimming Pool (duh)

10. Dumpster pools

11. Z-Boys’ pool/skate park

12. Let the Right One In

13. Chicago’s Swimming Pool Project Space

14. The Sandlot

15. Lady Gaga’s “Poker Face” pool

16. Almost Famous

17. The O.C.

18. True Blood: The queen’s pool

19. Sugar Ray’s “Fly” video

20. National Lampoon’s Vacation

21. David Hockney’s A Bigger Splash

22. Marilyn Monroe in Something’s Got to Give

23. Hugh Hefner’s Playboy mansion grotto

24. Bobbie’s World

25. Celine Dion’s lazy river

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26. Mr. Bean

27. Jayne Mansfield’s heart-shaped pool

28. Fast Times at Ridgemont High

29. Beverly Hills, 902010

30. Six Feet Under

31. Showgirls [NSFW]

32. The Notorious B.I.G. and 112’s “Sky’s the Limit” video

33. Leandro Erlich’s Swimming Pool

34. Y Tu Mama Tambien

35. Greg Louganis’ epic Olympics fail

36. Elvis’s pool at Graceland

37. Caddyshack

38. The swimming pool at Hearst Castle

39. Harold and Maude

40. Laurel Canyon

41. Gossip Girl‘s steamy pool party

42. The Great Muppet Caper

43. Liberace’s pool

44. Slackers

45. Radiohead plays “Creep” at the MTV Beach House

46. The Sopranos

47. The world’s largest swimming pool, in Chile

48. Barbie’s Pool Party

49. Sunset Boulevard

50. Guns ‘n Roses’ “November Rain” video