The snow is gone and what’s left is the muddy palette of winter’s hangover. Gloomy skies and gloomy closets of black velvets that looked so elegant in winter and brown tweeds that looked so refined in fall.  A woman could be forgiven for reaching out for the Lily Pultizer, but STOP!  Any dollface and wiseguy can wear Lily—you’ve got wit, style, insouciance.  Okay, that last one is a French word and, like most French words, is impossible to decipher, but still. . . . you know you’re made of better things when you’re considering the upcoming Saturday fete at the Kenilworth Club.  All that pink and yellow or blue and seafoam from last year’s collection.

Repair immediately to J. McLaughlin.  Tucked into a little jewel box store in the revitalized five hundred block of Lincoln Avenue in Winnetka,  from the window it looks just too precious.  Polo shirts, khakis, how can any of this be considered. . . wait, are those SKULL & CROSSBONES on those pink ties? 

 skull and crossbones       aye, aye, captain!

Absolutely—and just check out the swim trunks.  There’s an element of surprise in everything the McLaughlin brothers create, as if to say “we’re like the Hamptons but not OF the Hamptons”.  There’s little nothing t-shirts with beaded coral or seahorses and silk sarong dresses and skirts for cocktails at the club.

I’m buying golf ball lanyards for all my pals, and I’ve got my eye on the zip code bag that declares my total town proud attitude. 

  just for w/n residents   to tee up

There’s only one J. McLaughlin in Illinois, although the entire Eastern Seaboard is littered with them.  This is the chance to wear something you won’t see on just anybody.

  put down that burberry’s right now! 

Glencoe, Kenilworth and Winnetka can’t perform the major miracle of reconstruction accomplished by Highland Park, Evanston, or Glenview.  There’s no land, no room to put an anchor store like Saks or Macy’s.  Instead, the joy of the trio of lakeside diminutives is their little treasures and the knowing wink that shoppers can enjoy as their style is admired and acknowledged by other members of the secret skull and crossbones society.

At age 92, I’ll be lucky if I’m gumming my food and able to push the button on my automatic wheelchair.  I’ll sit lazily watching the sunset, the television or the nurses at the home.  But at age 92, I don’t think I’ll be canoe-ing.  But then again, I don’t have the strength and the stamina of Mr. Glencoe.

Nanogenarian Stanton Schuman, a.k.a. Mr. Glencoe,  was canoe-ing with his son Sam and his dog CC at the Skokie Lagoons near Willow Road in Northfield.  His canoe tipped over and, unlike his son, he was not wearing a life vest.  His body was found 500 feet downriver from the accident.  His son and dog survived.

Schuman was the epitome of what a man should be.  He was born in Chicago in 1915 but his family soon moved to Winnetka.  He attended New Trier where he was captain of the football, track, basketball and cheerleading teams.  This was when cheerleading was considered training for leadership–both Bush presidents were cheerleaders.  Schuman later played football with soon-to-be President Gerald Ford at the University of Michigan.  Went to law school and married Marie Friedlander–they were married 51 years and had four children before her death.  He was drafted in 1943 and some of his first fighting experiences were during the Battle of the Bulge.  He came home to Glencoe and he wanted to honor the men and women who fought on behalf of this country.

So Schuman started Glencoe Patriotic Days in 1945, organizing Memorial Day and Independence Day events.  He remained the committee’s chairman until his death.  He served on the park board, he helped found the Am Shalom congregation, and he did pro bono legal work for Glencoe’s African-American Episcopal church St. Paul’s AME.  He gave to the North Shore and in return, the North Shore loved him back.  This week, flags at the Village Hall in Glencoe have flown half mast in honor of Mr. Glencoe.

The first time I realized La Bella Winnetka was a celebrity joint, I wasn’t actually at LaBella.  I was next door at J.P. McCarthy’s pizza joint on Chestnut Avenue in Winnetka.  Horatio and Beauregard were agog at the big black Hummer double parked on the street.  Me?  I ogled the bodyguard.  Or car-guard.  What DO you call the guy who guards the Hummer while the rest of the party dines?  Besides Oh Damn Look AtThose Muscles He Makes Me Melt?

I dared the boys to approach bodyguard.  They reported back that he had said “you don’t need to know. “  Heads of state?   Mobsters?  Quel surprise! The next morning I read in the Tribune that Martin Scorsese and Robert DiNiro grabbing a quick plate of Osso Buco or maybe the Chicken Vesuvio.  La Bella Winnetka is the IT restaurant of the North Shore. 

On the last day of February, the restaurant caught on fire.  The Winnetka Fire Deparment is extraordinarily punctually and aggressive:  The fire was put out within an hour with fire trucks called in from ten neighboring communities.

Georgio and Marianne Gigiolio have what can be best described as a love-hate relationship with the North Shore.  Yes, oh yes, there are zoning issues:  they want to put up a tent and serve food and the village of Winnetka wants something so silly and arcane as a license.  But the tent, originally billed as a temporary prop for weddings and summer parties, is now a permanent fixture.  All right–you can’t eat outside when it’s minus seven, but that’s only because the wait staff has to run back to the restaurant for orders.

The Gigiolo family is ALL about the North Shore.  Daughter Cecilia  graduated with a degree in education and promptly took a job at Skokie-Washburne Middle School.  She is the faculty sponsor for a village resolution honoring Martin Luther King.  The family drives their two-seater convertible at the Fourth of July parade.  Their son Nicholas is known for wearing a buttercream yellow suit at eighth grade graduation while the rest of the males were dressed in dark suits or navy blue suit coats.

The restaurant hopes to open in a month, but not before what promises to be a bruising battle with their landlord Winnetka Il, LLC from Park Ridge.  There had been a leaky roof, the repairs were being made, the village had held meetings about what needed to be done.  The restaurant is a shell of its former self—we wish the Gigolios all the best of luck in their reopening.