Standing on the concrete stairs at Montrose Harbor, I looked around to see thousands of people, clad in colorful swimwear and ridiculous floaties.
Most people were around my age — in their early 20s, hours away from starting their day working from home. Then there were the people who seemed to just stumble upon the massive crowd while walking their dogs or heading to their boat dock. They watched from the back, their faces asking the same question I had: “What is this all about?”
Friday Morning Swim Club had flooded my Instagram feed for a few summers, but this year I couldn’t escape it. Every Friday morning, more of my old college classmates were posting sunrise photos from the same harbor.
Then came the TikToks — people filming their experience, giving tips and advice for newcomers to the grassroots meet-up.
Friday Morning Swim Club started in 2021 by word of mouth as a way for friends to catch up before the start of the weekend, the club’s co-founder told me. By the end of that summer, it had grown from eight friends to around 700 people, and by 2023, thousands were showing up each week.
Even the city’s tourism agency, Choose Chicago, and Mayor Brandon Johnson had shouted out the club as a highlight of the city’s offerings.
I gave into the curiosity, and maybe some FOMO too, and recruited two of my friends to join me on a 7 a.m. excursion to the event in July. One of my friends was a longtime Swim Club participant — branded sweatshirt and all — and the other was a first-timer too.
After dodging dozens of people posing for photos, my friends and I made it to the edge of the breakwall. Below our feet the water was dark and murky, with no way to tell how deep it was. The waves looked like rolling hills.
“1, 2, 3!”
We jumped at the same time, and as my body hit the nearly freezing water, I pushed myself to the top, looking around to find a sea of other swimmers bobbing up and down.
At 7 a.m., hours before my day usually begins, I was treading water in an icy Lake Michigan. I couldn’t help but laugh as a mix of adrenaline and accomplishment washed over me.
My veteran Swim Club friend brought along a floatie, something my other friend and I thought we’d be fine without — she was a competitive swimmer in high school, and I was a swim instructor. But soon, we found ourselves hanging onto her colorful doughnut-shaped device with the adrenaline turning into exhaustion from keeping ourselves above the unstable water.
Now, instead of swimming freely in the expansive lake, we were waiting in line for a ladder to escape the cold. Dozens of other swimmers crowded the few ladders at the side of the breakwall. Some people struggled, grasping the hands of pseudo-lifeguards kneeling at the edge of the wall, pulling up those who couldn’t wait for the ladder.
I left that Swim Club with more questions than answers. I knew what it was about now — community, a sense of accomplishment, an adrenaline rush, and yes, sometimes a good Instagram picture.
But I also wondered about the safety of the swimmers who seemed to struggle. I wondered how it seemed every outlet in Chicago had covered the club, but the city never had anything to say. I questioned whether the founders of the group were prepared for its growth.
I brought those questions to the Sun-Times’ audience meeting. We’re content people — and it was obvious to anyone with a social media account that Swim Club was content people in Chicago were interested in.
But I couldn’t help but ask: What about the safety?
That question sparked an investigation that revealed other people had the same concerns I left the meet-up with. A lifeguard expert worried about the reliance on floaties in an unpredictable Great Lake. A Chicago Park District lifeguard who knew the dangers of the no-swimming zone the club took place in feared the worst. A participant used TikTok to urge newcomers to take precautions. And the Park District, after weeks of not answering questions, finally said the event was unpermitted, without a safety plan in place with the city.
The founders said they never knew the club, which started with a few friends meeting up to chat and swim, would grow into the viral sensation it had.
“We’re always on guard or prepared to take a turn if we need,” the club’s co-founder, Nicole Novotny, told me in an interview.
When we published the article, it was met with varying responses — some from participants who expressed the same concerns as the lifeguards in the article, others who questioned whether we were just fun-killers with our eyes set on ending the club they had found community in.
One Instagram comment said, “Stop sucking the fun out of everything”; another argued that the city “has enough other issues to contend with that are far more important”; others just summed up their take in one word: “narc.”
But others pointed out their own concerns. One reader from California suggested swimmers invest in wetsuits to protect from the cold, and another person commented, “I was wondering when this was going to come up.” Some brought up other issues with the club, like traffic jams and dangers to cyclists on the Lakefront Trail.
From my reporting, I learned that two things were true about the club — it was an exciting, community-building activity that invited people to step outside their comfort zones. It also came with serious dangers that could have dire consequences if left unchecked.
To my surprise, after the story ran, Swim Club was called off for a week, then canceled for the rest of the season after hundreds showed up on a Friday morning anyway. Police were actually sent to the lakefront to monitor the situation.
“What happened last Friday isn’t what we envisioned for swim club, ever,” organizer Andrew Glatt said at the time.
The founders said they were in touch with the Park District, but the two sides couldn’t come to an agreement. The organizers put together other community events at the end of the summer in place of the Friday swims — but as of now, it’s unclear if the swim part of Swim Club will ever resurface.
