When spring time comes around, there are a couple of things every woman prepares for:

1. Spring Cleaning - Time to get rid of the muck and grime and organize your home!
2. Rainy weather - April showers bring may flowers…
3. And best of all….SHOPPING! SHOPPING! SHOPPING!

If ever you were looking for the newest in spring apparel and women’s fashion, the North Shore is the place to be.  A popular location found in just about every North Shore neighborhood (Evanston, Skokie, Deerfield, etc.) is the Ann Taylor Loft.  This spring the new Celebrations Collection will take fashion to another level and Ann Taylor online is offering a $5 shipping special.  Sleek, contemporary looks accented by clean white and black combinations will be this spring’s hot look by Ann Taylor.

Other trendsetting designers, such as BeBe; stores located in Northbrook at 2108 Northbrook Court and also in Old Orchard Mall (Skokie, IL), are  preparing for spring with bold  yet earthy fashions,  sporting  styles that scream sexy and sophisticated.  Check out the Crochet & Silk A-Line Dress…

Make sure to shop the North Shore for the hottest fashions of the spring as we will keep you up to date and in fashion for 2007!  Find women’s boutiques in Chicago’s North Shore neighborhoods.

Technorati Tags: north shore shopping, hot fashion, northbrook boutiques, women’s fashion, ladies designer wear, skokie boutiques

The North Shore has frequently been featured in movies and television shows—it’s a beautiful area and the local governments are cooperative.  I don’t watch Ferris Buehler’s Day Off for the storyline or even to admire Charlie Sheen—I wait for the drive-by shots of my house.  Everyone drives slowly past the Home Alone house and New Trier West?  Well, that’s Breakfast Club territory.  When my own son Beauregard was invited as a freshman to a Saturday morning at the Breakfast Club—a written invitation by the principal herself—he explained to me that I should consider it a mark of prestige rather than call it something so crass as “detention”.

But there is perhaps no television series or film that has so exploited the North Shore than Winnetka Road.  It starred Ed Begley, Jr., Josh Brolin, and Meg Tilly.  It lasted exactly four episodes in 1994 and I can’t say I understood the storyline.  But one thing I noticed immediately—Meier’s is in the wrong place.

Meier’s is a tavern at 235 East Lake Street in Glenview, just a door west of the Wilmette border.  Meier’s originally was opened by Frank in 1925 as a barn where teenagers went to purchase one dollar bottles of liquor.  There was that little misguided social experiment known as Prohibition.  So in 1935, Meier’s OFFICIALLY opened.  Frank sold the business in 1962 but continued serving drinks until his death in 2004.  That’s an impressive allegiance to alcohol.

Meier’s is the Platonic Ideal of a bar.  There’s a back room where you can take the kids.  No smoking, television playing in the corner, the comfortable grill sounds emanating from the kitchen.  There’s only two things on the menu worth having and they are perfect in their way—cheeseburger and tater tots.  No fries.  The front room is for smokers and drinkers who like to linger.  And then there’s “packaged liquors” at the cash register for those who don’t know how to let a party end.  Outside there’s a parking barrier with a dozen rosebushes—the sign says Meier’s Rose Garden.  No peeing in the Rose Garden.

In the storyline of Winnetka Road, as it can be pieced together in just four episodes, Meier’s was imbued with a sort of wrong side of the tracks vibe.  But that’s not the Meier’s that exists in Glenview.  You’re as likely to meet the president of Harris Bank as you are the plumber who fixed the backed up toilet in your powder room.  You’re also going to run into me—I’ll be the gal at the end of the bar wolfing down my cheeseburger and tater tots.   You can buy me a drink.

Technorati Tags: Winnetka, Wilmette, Glenview, Ed Begley, Meg Tilly, Josh Brolin, Meier’s, Tavern

“Fifty bucks.”

“No way,” I said.  “How many minutes are we talking about?”

“I give her one minute.”

“Lillian, I’m making money off you tonight.”

My friend Lillian and I were going to a PTA parent-teacher party.  I was excited because I would at last meet the very notorious Mrs. Betterman.  Mrs. Betterman’s son George is a genius.  He understands Einstein’s Theory of Relativity, both the Special and General.  He does calculus in his head.  He reads Herodotus for fun.  At least, this is what Mrs. Betterman says.  And Mrs. Betterman “George is a genius” stories are repeated endlessly in town.  I only heard these stories secondhand.  I wanted to meet her. 

“Everyone thinks their kid’s a genius,” I said. 

“Yeah, but she’s going to make sure you know that George is more of a genius,” Lillian assured me.  “And she’ll do it to you within one minute of laying eyes on you.”

We entered the party room and I made a beeline for my little moneymaker. 

Mrs. Betterman was in a circle of parents and I dashed right in and introduced myself to her.  Interrupting a conversation about teasing on the playground.  I nodded sagely. Teasing is very bad.  60, 59, 58. . . I was thinking of how to spend my money.  57, 56, 55.  . . Fifty smackers would translate into the left shoe in a pair from Lori’s in Northfield.

“George gets teased sometimes because he always wears the same clothes,” Mrs. Betterman said.  54, 53, 52. . . Oh, yeah, I remembered.  One of George’s quirks was that he wore the same thing every day.  I took a deep breath, trying to think of a teasing anecdote I could share that would eat up fifty-one seconds.  Mrs. Betterman beat me to it.

“But that doesn’t bother George as much as when the other children call him Genius.”

I gave Lillian a murderous gaze.  A disproportionate number of parents announced a need to refresh their wine glasses.  They had seen this conversational turn before.

“Doesn’t he sort of want to be known as a genius?”  I asked peevishly.

“He can’t help what he is,” Mrs. Betterman said with a poignancy normally reserved for discussing dying puppies.  We were now standing alone, she and I.  She could confide in me. “We only keep in the school for the opportunity to socialize with other children his age.”

Lillian laughed in the car on the way home and gave her a check with a surly growl.  After all, I’m a broadminded person—I’m willing to concede that he is a genius.  But I happen to think there’s lots of genius kids on the North Shore.  Take a look, for instance, at this year’s ISAT scores.  The standardized tests focusing on math and reading are given to elementary school students in third through eighth grades.  In a perfect world, all students would “meet or exceed state standards” but a quick glance at percentages of such students in any school in the state says no way.  Chicago public schools will very often have less than forty percent of their students meeting expectations.  But on the North Shore?  As in previous years, over ninety percent of the students meet or exceed those standards.  In Winnetka, for instance, 97.4% of third through eighth graders make those numbers.  Avoca school district 37, covering an amalgam of Wilmette, Glenview, Winnetka and Northfield?  An impressive 94.7%.  Glencoe Central School?  95.4%.

But what came first?  Are the schools truly so advanced in their teaching methods that they could take any group of kids and get the same results?  Are our children as a group so talented and gifted that the school’s methodology doesn’t matter?  Are we such wonderful parents supporting our children with tutors, educational computer games, reading books to them while they’re still in utero?  Or is it that we’re so competitive that we’ve created competitive children determined to smack down any test they’re given?  I have no idea.  All I know is that people who have the resources to move to the North Shore are guaranteed to have their children educated alongside other children who together will do aces on any standardized test.  These children also will compete for berths at the best colleges which will, in turn, create the opportunities for meeting and exceeding the averages in professional success.

But there is a minor problem for the Mrs. Bettermans of the North Shore.   George might be gifted, might be special, might be a genius, might be Einstein, Da Vinci and Shostakovich all wrapped into one, but the neighbor’s kid is pretty darned smart himself.

For a quick read on ISAT composite scores for school districts in the county, go to http://www.suntimes.com/pcds/html/stng/hs/isat/cook.html

Technorati Tags: schools, gifted, ISAT scores