Jim Hoop catches a wave on the lake. Photo: Mark Urban
September 2007 | Tune In
Hangin’ Ten Lakeside
By Jessie Tierney
Mark Urban of Orland Park learned to surf during his college years in Hawaii. “When I came back [to Chicago]” Urban explained, “I thought it was all over. I used to just dream about it.” He took a camping trip to Sleeping Bear Dunes and came upon some guys carrying surfboards. He reacted how most people do: “You can’t surf on a lake!” Now he’s in Lake Michigan year-round. “We surf in 34 degree water and minus zero wind-chills,” he says, “we’re out there 365 days a year.”
Chicago native Jim Hoop learned to surf off 57th Street beach in the ’80s with some life-guarding buddies. Though surfing off Chicago beaches is no longer legal, there are plenty of good spots from Evanston to Zion to “the freshwater surfing capital of the world” — Sheboygan, Wisconsin.
Hoop is now the co-director of the Eastern Surfing Association’s Great Lakes District (network54.com/Forum/406988), an organization with 219 members, that gathers vital information for lake surfers. He says that surfing the lakes is “friendly, unlike in the oceans, where nobody even looks at one another, we’re just the opposite. You see a guy on the street with a board on his roof and you go try to catch up with him. I’ve met a lot of guys like that.”
This winter while the rest of us are layering on scarves and gloves, Great Lakes surfers will be heading out in their wetsuits to ride some of the best waves of the season.
“We come out,” says Hoop, “and there’s icicles on our faces. But you know, that’s what we like to do.”
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