The management Chelsea Piers is thinking of franchising its concept, by setting up in ties around the world, particularly where there are large, architecturally tnguing, endangered structures on the waterfront. is e success of Chelsea Piers is especially remarkable when you con sider how hard it is to get anything built on the New York waterfr0rit much less a 1.7millionsquarefoot complex. Roland Betts, a financier of films, was originally interested in leasing just a small part of the vast unused space of Chelsea Piers, to create an ice rink for his figureskater daughter. Told that he would have to bid on the whole complex, Betts and his partner, Tom Bernstein, went ahead, using their own money, outlasting the bureaucratic endurance test of state, city, community, and environmental regulatory approval, securing a break on the rent and, eventually a longterm lease that would allow for lowcost financing. "There were two factors that contributed to the success of the Chelsea project: it was centered on recreation at a time when the Hudson was clean and its potential recreational benefits widely recognized; and, perhaps most important, all the interested parties genuinely wanted the project to succeed. In the end, sheer force of will, a readiness to be energized rather than discouraged by frustration, political savvy, and the ability to secure private financing finally broke down a portion of the walls that had closed off Manhattan's waterfront for so long," wrote Ann L. Buttenweiser enthusiastically in her useful book Manhattan WaterBound. Being more of a skeptic, I wonder if Chelsea Piers did not itself set up its own walls on the waterfront, even as it broke others down. Sitting here at my desk and thinking about Chelsea Piers (I was only pretending to be walking around meditating), I am seized by diametrically opposed emotions: (1) a desire to run right down there and play, hit in the batting cages, try the bowling alley, the swimming pool, and make a day of it; (2) a nausea approaching disgust at the whole idea of this sports complex, springing not from any principled urbanist objections, but from my own estrangement from my body, and my fear and envy of people who celebrate life through their pores-I who live in my head, looking out at the world as if I were constantly reading a book, while my belly softens and my hair thins. When I was younger I did make more of an effort to live in my body, to be a body; to play tennis and have sex, both of which I still do, on occasion, but not as often as I would like. I see a tall woman jog ging in the street, her breasts bobbing up and down in her sweatshirt, her ponytail orbiting with every cantered step, and am all too aware that he does not see me; she is concentrated, focused on the tightening sinewsâ PIERS AND TROCCHILAND 119 CHELSEA "nibs the pheromones spreading pleasure to her brain. Perhaps she is king of her lover, "I'll show him!" or "I'll show her!" or "I am making re as exquisitely proportioned as the Parthenon.