I Swear, I Never Say This…

Take this with no irony attached.

There are some places that are great for raising a family.

I was on a teaching jaunt in the North Shore this week, and drove through a few of the quiet neighborhoods tucked away along the sideroads. These weren’t the mansions along the lake, or one of the new, bigger developments that made you feel dwarfed.

Three or four kids on BMX bikes with skateboards in their high-performance backpacks loitered outside of the school. The streets were quiet, wide, and speed-bumped, and I felt like I had just aged ten years in that instant. All of a sudden, with no warning, I thought, “This is the perfect place to raise kids.”

The North Shore has been immortalized on film countless times, from the John Hughes movies of the 80’s to Home Alone and Mean Girls. The screenwriters knew exactly what to portray—that idyllic balance of beautiful homes and beautiful families (even the main character in Ordinary People looks over Evanston as he attends his weekly therapy visit). While it’s easy to point out the generic quality to most suburbs, the mainly pre-war building in the North shore makes it tremendously different from other suburbs with similar wealth and education around Chicago.

Without many of the highrises and distractions of the urban lakefront, the North Shore has that dreamy, “I’ve always wanted to live here” quality to it. You’ve seen at least one North Shore home in a luxury magazine; if you haven’t seen the homes, you’ve probably heard of their prodigious academic institutions, like Northwestern University, New Trier High School, or the Evanston Township School. These aren’t private schools, either; contrary to popular belief, even the research giant of Northwestern is a not-for-profit institution. They just have a lot of not-for-profit to spare.

As my inaugural post, I’d like to welcome you all to a discussion of North Shore living and the homes that make us green with envy. Heck, even the homes that aren’t as spectacular are still worth looking at in this cut of Grade A Prime, Choice Real Estate. Look forward to a discussion on the neighborhoods, the municipal drama, the price hikes, the price drops, and that silly tower that might be going up in Evanston.