Chicago Great Lake Jumper Nearing a 365 days Streak

Dan O'Conor had no special idea or divine plan when he rode his bike from his apartment in Lincoln Square to the lakefront June 13 last year and dived into Lake Michigan.

Image From Sun-Times by Ashlee Rezin Garcia

He did not anticipate he would become the Great Lake Jumper, the insane person who would go on diving into the lake each and every day for a year, regardless of the conditions, using this to draw attention to the situation of artists and event venues affected by the COVID lockdown.

Back then, Dan was just a person who had a terrible hangover and needed to clear his head of the terrible pandemic, the lockdown, the politics, death, depression and all the other things that most people had on their minds during that time. And to his surprise, the water worked.

It was refreshing and cool, and Dan felt much better. And so it became a habit. He went for four consecutive days and then on the fourth day, he took a picture of the lake and tweeted it to have that on record.

Image From Sun-Times by Ashlee Rezin Garcia

It wasn't until he got to day 120 that he started recording videos and then after another week he started recording videos of the actual dives using his shoe as a tripod with his phone placed in it.

The videos attracted the attention of a journalist from Block Club, Chicago who put Dan on the path of fame, the news of him spreading to radio and television.

However, in his first interview, he mentioned that he had no plans to continue come winter when the lake got frozen as that would obviously be unsafe.

At this point, Dan O'Conor was already a thing and he needed some more important reason for what he was doing.

“People kept asking, 'Of what use is this? How can I support it?' ” Dan says.

It truthfully started as a way to help him and make his mental health better but he decided that it was time to give it a higher purpose.

Dan's wife, Margaret, who owns a food pantry and is very familiar with her husband's love for live performances suggested that he get people to serenade him at the lake.

Dan used to work at SPIN, a music magazine as a writer before he moved on to sales. He kept a spreadsheet of over 6,800 performances he has seen starting with Alice Cooper who he saw in 1980 at the ChicagoFest. So, he called on his friends at Chicago Independent Venue League (CIVL) to have performances so as to help fund the organisation's staff, artists and venues.

Despite what he said in his first interview, he didn't stop diving into the lake even during winter. Not when the water froze or the waves threw huge ice chunks out of the water. He continued jumping and recording it.

What he did was he would create a hole in the ice with hammers or shovels and then jump into it. He only moved to Montrose Harbour when he absolutely had to but Dan didn't break his streak.

Since January, Dan is always accompanied by musical artists for his jumps. Almost everyone from a Mucca Pazza band to a woman playing a washboard.

At the rate he's going, it should be no problem to keep the streak alive till June 12 which will be Day 365 and make it a whole year. Dan hasn't made any mention of quitting that day or that he would quit at all, but he does have a family vacation planned for July at Cape Cod, so the jumps would have to come to an end.

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