A surf shop in Indiana? The Ripple Surf & Board Shop, located at 832 Broad Ripple Avenue [H4 on page 18 map], brings together a variety of board sports, along with the surf lifestyle enjoyed by boarders and non-boarders alike.

Owner Brad Maley explained, "People come in and ask 'Why did you open a surf shop in Broad Ripple?' At the same time, they are wearing Oakley sunglasses, a Quiksilver t-shirt and Sanuk sandals. In Indiana, a lot of people don't realize these are surf brands. Then we show them a video of people wakesurfing, which is surfing without a rope behind a boat and is done all the time at Geist and Morse Reservoirs. Then they start to get it."

After you walk in the shop and are greeted by Raley, the shop Labrador Retriever named after a wakeboarding trick, you see a wide variety of sunglasses, different types of boards, clothing and more. Maley operates the store with his girlfriend, Leslie Hankins and employee Garret Wilson.

Their market demographic is diverse. "Our target market is from college age to mid-thirties, but our youngest longboard customer is a six-year-old girl and we have people in their sixties still boarding as well," he mentioned.

"We have a lot to offer customers. We rent and sell stand up paddleboards (a very large surfboard ranging from 11 to 12 feet long that you stand on and paddle). We sell wakeboards, longboard skateboards, wakesurfers, some tubes, snowboards, sunglasses, sandals and clothing," Maley explained. "We have the largest Oakley sunglasses inventory in Indianapolis and we also carry RayBan, Arnette and Spy. Because we are a core shop, we are able to get in a lot of limited edition sunglasses that you can't find at a mall store." They will be adding regular skateboards next year as well.

According to Maley, the longboard skateboard business has exploded this year. "We stock over 100 boards at a time and are constantly placing orders to keep up with the demand," he added. Longboarding is a lot different than skateboarding. Longboards are used more as a mode of transportation, rather than to do technical tricks. Longboards have big soft wheels and are very "carvy". It is more like snowboarding or surfing than skateboarding.

Maley, a Muncie native and graduate of Purdue University, has spent much of his life around the water. "I grew up waterskiing, somewhat competitively. After graduating from Purdue, I moved to Chicago and didn't ski for four or five years. I moved back to Indianapolis and started skiing again. I put a wakeboard on for the first time soon after that, and I was hooked," he said. Maley went on to explain that wakeboarding is similar to snowboarding behind a boat. You have two boots attached to a board and ride sideways behind the boat.

His pastime developed into a business. "We started in the corner of a boat dealership in Cicero, Indiana, with less than 400-square feet of space. We were only there for three to four months before we opened our shop at 1430 Broad Ripple Avenue. This store was just off the White River where I wakeboard and we offered wakeboarding lessons as well as demos. We stayed in that location for a little over a year," he added. That location did not have the foot traffic for which Maley was looking, so when the spot opened up on the Broad Ripple strip, he jumped on the opportunity to expand.

"When we opened on May 15 last year (at the current location), we just had the sunglasses cases across the front of the store, but we've since expanded within the space to over 1500 square feet. We continue to bring in more product every month," he noted.

Maley was recently able to bring on Garrett Wilson as an employee, whose passion for longboarding mirrored Maley's passion for wakeboarding. Wilson, an avid longboarder for the past four years, sometimes commutes to work from downtown on his longboard via the Monon Trail and can help patrons customize their own longboard in addition to doing basic tune-ups. Wilson explained that longboarding is growing as an alterative form of transportation.

Their website is currently being developed for online sales at www.ripplewake.com, but all the basic store information is there now. The store's hours are Monday through Saturday from 11 a.m. to 8 p.m. and on Sunday from 11 a.m. to 6 p.m. You can also reach them at 317-257-7700 or email at brad@ripplewake.com. Followers of the shop's Facebook page, 5

erhaps future development in Broad Ripple could include a beach. . .