A closer look
The Victorian concept of peak leisure was walking on a massive wooden stick jutting over the ocean just to avoid the horror of actually being on a boat. Eugenius Birch engineered the British pleasure pier boom so that tightly corseted tourists could 'take the sea air' and feel like they were on a maritime cruise without the violent vomiting associated with actual waves. These architectural marvels were basically land-lubber coping mechanisms, turning the simple act of staring at the water into a highly monetized, stationary cruise ship.
