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Surf’s up north
Making connections in Wisconsin's icy Lake Michigan
“The unlike is joined together, and from differences results the most beautiful harmony.” — Heraclitus
The sky is gray and Lake Michigan looks angry on an icy March morning. The surf is up in Sheboygan, Wisconsin.
Thanks to the Dairyland Surf Classic, Sheboygan’s surf scene has appeared in national media like the New York Times and Los Angeles Times, and even on film. The 2007 animated movie Surf’s Up includes a character named Chicken Joe, who hails from Sheboygan.
“A lot of people thought I was crazy,” Chicken Joe says about surfing in Lake Michigan. “But I’m used to it.”
The inspiration for Chicken Joe is almost certainly Larry “Longboard” Williams, godfather of Wisconsin’s surf scene. Williams is what you get if you connect California with Wisconsin. He is a Buddhist who waxes spiritual about the life cycle of a wave. His day job is driving heavy construction equipment.
When he’s not riding the waves on his home turf, Williams takes several surfing trips a year and acts as an ambassador for freshwater surfing. He recently returned from one such trip to California.
“In Lake Michigan,” he’s fond of telling out-of-state surfers, “there’s never been a reported shark attack.”
Sheboygan’s surfers are also showcased in the 2001 documentary Step Into Liquid, a sequel to the seminal surfing movie Endless Summer. The film follows diverse surfing cultures all over the world, from Malibu to Ireland to Wisconsin. Williams has surfing friends in Honolulu who told him people there parroted the Wisconsin surfer accent after seeing the film.
“They say, ‘Aloha Bruddah,’ but we say, ‘Hey dere, come here once,’” Williams says. “They love the Sheboygan speak.”
There’s a scene in Step Into Liquid showcasing unathletic Wisconsinites surfing ungracefully. There’s a shot of a Chris Farley look-alike charging into tiny waves and subsequently wiping out. On the surface, these characters don’t exactly embody surfer archetypes. But surfers know that what powers a wave can’t be seen on the surface.
“I wouldn’t put me in a national contest,” veteran Sheboygan surfer Robert “Doc” Beaton…
