Marriage of Mind, Muscle : Entrepreneurs: Combination chess club and gymnasium limps along in Woodland Hills. Owner rents rooms to boarders to survive.

In ancient Athens, David Esser’s Gym for the Mind might have fought a major ad war with the Academy of Plato. Something for the body, something for the mind.

That ideal apparently isn’t much regarded in modern Los Angeles, if Esser’s combined chess club and gym in Woodland Hills provides a test. It is constantly on the verge of joining the glory that was Greece in oblivion.

A dance last Sunday raised a few hundred dollars to pull the club out of danger for a few weeks. But it was a temporary fix, and Esser said he is looking for more permanent sources of income.

Esser, a tall, thin, balding Pennsylvania native who pronounces Los Angeles with a hard G, figures that while Angelenos spend hours each day pumping up their bodies, they don’t take much interest in developing the jelly between their ears.

“Most people are not a bit interested in mental activities,” said Esser, 45, who says he is a self-taught sociologist and long-distance runner. He opened Gym for the Mind in 1988 to see if he could exercise people’s physical and mental sides by placing chessboards next to barbells and encouraging patrons to try both.

“I’m from an old-fashioned school,” he said. “The only way to exercise your mind is not by rubbing a crystal on your head, but to read a book once in a while or play a tough game of chess. But for most people it’s too much of a bother, too much of a headache.”

When he was growing up in Pennsylvania, Esser said, he was never much interested in school. But in the early 1970s he began reading in earnest and decided to educate himself.

In 1972, he opened the Thought Barrier, a Pittsburgh club that encouraged the discussion of music and offered a library of music magazines and books. That club disbanded in 1974 after he could not afford the required licenses.

Esser moved to California two years later, figuring if such a venture could be successful anywhere, it would in Los Angeles. During the next 12 years he worked the graveyard shift at a Sherman Oaks newsstand and was a supervisor at a fast-food restaurant.

All the while, he saved money for the bodybuilding weights, and he read--sometimes as many as two books every three days.

Esser’s club has always operated on the edge of profitability. After three years in Topanga, Esser moved the gym last year to a nondescript Woodland Hills house tucked between a hair salon and a gift boutique on Topanga Canyon Boulevard, south of Ventura Boulevard. A mural on a wall outside depicts a chessboard with dumbbells as pawns and Arnold Schwarzenegger as king.

On any afternoon, the house is filled with chess players quietly contemplating their next move as bodybuilders grunt and sweat a few feet away. The walls are lined with such books as Will and Ariel Durant’s 11-volume “Story of Civilization,” “Chess Life” and “Getting Built.”

So far, though, there is little crossover between the physical and intellectual pursuits. Chess players tend to prefer nothing more physical than moving knight and rook. Bodybuilders for the most part find enough mental stimulation in counting reps on the bench press.

In four years, Esser said, only seven people have stopped to pull a book from a shelf and open it. Of those, only one actually read the book.

But there are exceptions. Tracy Teresi, 22, works out several times a week at the gym and occasionally plays a game or two of chess. An aspiring actor and model, Teresi said he likes working out at Esser’s facility because it’s never crowded.

That’s the problem. With only 150 chess members and 35 or 40 gym members, Esser said it is increasingly difficult to come up with the $3,000 or so he needs each month to stay in business.

In recent months, he has rented out rooms to help meet his monthly expenses. He sleeps on the covered patio outside so he can rent all of the house’s three bedrooms.

Chawn Weingarten, 20, moved in six months ago after ending up at the gym by mistake. Weingarten, a bicycle mechanic, said he was looking for a room to rent several blocks away, but read the address wrong and instead inquired at Esser’s.

“I like the atmosphere,” he said, shrugging his shoulders. “I like to work out and I like to play chess, so. . . .”

Although Esser admitted it may be difficult for his club to continue much longer, he does see a bright spot: “At least I don’t have any competition,” he said wryly.