This week's Made in Chicago introduces us to a man helping surfers hang 10 on Lake Michigan.
In his Ravenswood workshop, Scott Turner works to carefully craft surfboards. Yes, surfboards! Turner says he hand-shapes and glasses surfboards - start to finish - all by himself, which is kind of a unique thing in the industry. "Most people don’t do the whole process," he explains.
Turner started building boards while living in San Diego, California and was surprised when one day, a man from Sheboygan, Wisconsin bought a used surfboard from him online. "He loved it and he bought another and bought another one and bought another one and so I was like, 'huh, I guess lake surfing is a thing,'" recalls Turner.
When Turner eventually moved to Chicago, he looked into the Great Lakes surfing community, and found it to be active and growing. "There’s at least a couple hundred surfers in the city that I know of," says Turner, adding that Indiana also has a good surf community.
So what makes surfing the Great Lakes different than surfing the ocean? Turner says the waves are a little less powerful on Lake Michigan. He explains, "that's just due to how waves are formed. We don’t have as much water and much distance for wind to create waves on and so the swells are very short-lived."
As for when is the prime surfing season in Chicago, Turner says it's the fall because "the magic ingredients for waves on the lake are cold air over warm water. The colder the air is, the bigger the waves are going to be typically," but he adds, surfers can be seen on the lake even in the winter months until the lake freezes over.
As for the boards Great Lake surfers use, Turner says he loves the creative freedom he gets in Chicago.
"It’s been a really cool challenge to come up with designs that work on the lake and make surfing the lake crazy fun," he explains.
Since opening his business in the Summer of 2023, he's made about 50 boards. "I’ve been blow away by the number of people who really want to support a local shaper," says Turner.
Flux Surfboards, Made in Chicago.