The Left Coast Blog

The Stray Dog

Walter — Sun, 14 Jun 2009 04:09:29 +0000

I didn’t want to do it, but I figured I had to start my restaurant review section of the blog with an old stand-by. Located near the marina in downtown New Buffalo, The Stray Dog is a great place to meet friends that are in different locations along the lower LC (and have families in tow). Since I have been coming up here, it has grown into an institution. Go to any city park in Chicago on a summer afternoon and you are bound to see a spattering of kids sporting their Stray Dog t-shirt.

Usually on a summer night, the place is hopping. We tend to avoid the restaurant, because you have to wait a long time to get a table. So if you plan to go on a Friday or Saturday night, plan to go a little early. My family prefers to frequent on an early Sunday evening on our way back to Chicago. Its a nice stop to get a decent meal and have a chance to dine outside in th summer. Its actually nice on the back enclosed porch. They in fact have a rooftop that usually has a live band on playing on the weekends (c’mon…what Chicagoan doesn’t enjoy a good rooftop atmosphere???).

As for the food? It’s actually pretty good! My wife and I enjoy the fish tacos. The sandwiches are solid as well. The salads are OK. The best thing about the restaurant is that the food is good and that it is pretty family-oriented. The waitstaff is terrific. Pricing is the typical city markup, so you are not getting a great deal. But for us, its usually a great finale to a normal weekend on the way back to the city. If you are looking for a family place with a great ambience in a great location.

The Lower Left Coast…the next suburb of Chicago?

Walter — Sat, 13 Jun 2009 21:24:38 +0000

I have been busy the last month with a test I had to take. So I didn’t have the time to write. And I was stuck in Chicago. But I did get up there over Memorial Day and had a great time. And I had an opportunity to spend some time at the beach with the family and also by myself. What a recharge to sit on top of a dune and look out at Lake Michigan with no one around on a cool early morning.

This is a place to definitely get away from everything, especially when you live in a big urban area like Chicago (even more when you have kids). But there is a concern that this area could be the next suburb of Chicago if they allow the new Amtrak non-stop service between Chicago and New Buffalo to run during rush hours. Is this a good thing?

Initiatl reports are that the new service will be running during non-peak hours. But how long will that last? Its a tough call. I have personally made a contingent plan to move to this area if my family unit no longer has means to live in the city. But what if I had the choice to work in Chicago and commute from Michigan? I may actually trade up and try to buy a lakefront place on the Left Coast. But that would eliminate the recharge space I use to have by getting out of the city. You are here every day, it kind of takes away the allure (more likely to take it for granted).

The more important question would be whether the full-time residents would want to see their small town lose its charm. People that leave the city to come over to the Left Coast on the weekend/holiday do it to take part in the small town atmosphere. And most would probably say that they would like to stay here full time. It certainly would help the taxes along the whole southern end of the Left Coast. This would be money that this area has never seen before, and it could go to good use. Infrastructure would be top-notch, along with the schools. In fact, I would think that the state of Michigan would welcome the change. But I have a feeling it would definitely change the landscape.

This wouldn’t happen overnight, but I have a sense that it will eventually happen. Look at New York City. People live in New Jersey or Long Island and commute into Manhattan every day (I have a friend who commutes 2hrs each way every morning…that’s nuts!!). That could easily happen here.

We shall see…

Step 1- Location, Location, Location

Walter — Mon, 11 May 2009 05:33:59 +0000

Just got back to Chicago after a quick overnight trip to the LC! It’s nice getting up there in the Spring and start to see a pickup in activity after the Winter. You know when you are getting into the prime part of the year when most license plates are IL/IN, The Swedish Bakery in Harbert is packed, and the Sunday commute back into the city is similar to a time trial at Indy. Weather was good enough to get the kids outside and connect with Nature.

Just read this weekend that the Farmer’s market that was planned in New Buffalo has been confirmed and that it will run from next weekend until the first week in October (will be in the parking lot of Skip’s Landing–just outside of New Buffalo). This is great news! Now an easy place to get the best produce this area has to offer (although you will probably be paying Chicago prices). Awesome nonetheless. I will try to find the link to the news article.

So I wanted to give the readers a sense of how we came to pick the Lower LC as our retreat:

I have a confession. I am originally from Michigan. Grew up in the Northeastern corner of the Mitten. I eventually migrated to Chicago for work in 1992. For the first 4 years, I made countless trips back (either back to Ann Arbor/Detroit or back up north). The only reason for me to get off I-94 once I was over the state line was to get gas. The lower left coast was never explored by me until ~2000. I had been to the big cities on the lower LC (Grand Rapids, Holland, Sagautuk/Douglas, SouthHaven, St. Joseph) but never really drove the Red Arrow Highway (main road that the Lower LC hovers around- runs parallel with 94 for ~first 15 mi into Michigan). It wasn’t until my wife and I were interested in buying property, did we start to get familiar with the Lower LC.

Where should we look to Buy? Mind you, this was back in 2002, right at the start of the great housing bubble, so we were ready to go buy a place on the actual waterfront. But as most people decided to bite off more than they could chew, we became a little more pragmatic. For us, the thought of being stuck with 2 houses and one of us lost our jobs, was not something we wanted to bring into our new marriage. So we decided to pare it back a bit.

We sat down and came up with a list of questions. We kind of approached how we approached picking our neighborhood in Chicago. Here were some:

Inlet lake or the big lake?
Do we need nightlife (i.e close to restaurants, bars, etc.)?
Condo or House. Lots of land?
Close to the city or at least a 2.5-3hr drive?
Brand new house or fix-up?

Ultimately we decided that we didn’t need the nightlife (we were trying to get away from that), but we did want a house and that it be close to Lake Michigan. Some people enjoy a smaller lake to have their toys, etc. But I have always been amazed at how being on one of the Great Lakes is similar to the ocean. You can’t see the other side, and on a windy day, you actually get some powerful surf. In the end, with our pragmatism we settled down in Sawyer. It is at the north end of “Harbor Country”, but is not nearly as busy as New Buffalo or Union Pier. Yet we are close to probably one of the top 5 beaches in all of the Midwest in Warren Dunes State Park. Its a public beach, and yes you do have to contend with a mass migration to this beach by 1/3 of the city of Chicago on any given weekend in July. But it is large enough that you are not on top of each other (always think back to the Jaws movie when they are shooting the beach scenes on a 4th of July– it’s not like that!!).

But this process had a long incubation period– 3 years. We started by getting up on Saturday mornings in the spring time, grabbing our coffee and a fistful of real estate listings. We started out in New Buffalo, and then kept working north. The first 2 years we also spent a week in the summer renting a house (both New Buffalo and Union Pier). It wasn’t until 2004 that we decided to put an offer on our “dream location”…fell through. In 2005, we found a new “dream location” and put an offer down…fell through. Finally in 2006, we found a less than ideal location, with a less ideal house…bingo! It was cheaper and the location to the lake was roughly the same. But we finally had our “retreat”, although it is not exactly a retreat. Its actually a lot of work keeping 2 houses. Definitely not as romantic as the idea originally was. But we wouldn’t change it for anything.

So, my advice to anyone about buying something on the LC (and I have been asked this countless times). Don’t rush out and buy right away. Get to know the little towns. Maybe you are fine being in the car for 4 hours (if so, there are some amazing spots around the middle of the LC). But take your time and definitely go up more than just in the summer. Many people I talk to, have the itch to have something in May/June but then lose steam around August and then it is an afterthought…until the next May/June. Trust me when I say that the Left Coast in the Summer will make you want to visit, but its the Spring and Fall that make you want to stay.

Hello world!

Walter — Sun, 03 May 2009 03:20:21 +0000

Well, here it goes. I am not exactly on the cutting edge of technology (kind of ironic because I do technology research for a living). Additionally, I am not looking to chronicle my life on the Internet. But there is a void of information and stories surrounding where I spend part of my life (usually weekends). And that is on the Southernmost coastline of Lake Michigan– in Michigan… what the media likes to call “Harbor Country” or the “Hamptons of the Midwest” (don’t like the latter), or what I refer to as…

The- Left Coast

I live in Chicago. And technically this would be the Right coast (to the right of Chicago). But it is the left coast of Michigan, and this coastline is more Michigan than it is Chicago (although some residents would disagree).

Why did I start this blog? Because there isn’t enough information about this area on the Internet. Sure, there is the Harbor Country website (harborcountry.org), that has done a great job of listing the commerce in this area. But I feel the Harbor Country area is too confining (New Buffalo north to Sawyer- and east to Three Oaks). You draw a radius of ~1hr around the epicenter of Harbor Country and there is so much to augment one’s unique experience.

So this blog is here to discuss and promote the Southwest Michigan destination from the perspectives of not only the full time residents, but also from the Chicago and Indiana perspectives as well. First and foremost, I want this blog to be a starting point for the development of an online community that can share their experiences and truly show the rest of the Midwest (and the world for that matter) what an amazing area the Left Coast is.

But why stop there? I have traveled the entire Left Coast and can honestly say that the entire coastline is worthy of having it be represented as well. So I have decided to include the the northen Left Coast in this endeavor.

In summary, this blog is just the beginning of something bigger. Over the next couple of months, I will be starting a website that will contain most of what I want to do (www.the-leftcoast.com) . This will involve access to this blog, vacation tips for the area, restaurant/business reviews, daytrip ideas, biographies of successful individuals/business. And of course anything else that the online community decides we should look into. We will have our own group on Facebook (Group: The-Left Coast), and we are currently designing some hip clothes that will promote the LC. But ultimately, it won’t stop there.

Further down the road, I would like to create an online retail portal for the Left Coast that would help talented people (from the LC) get their vision (and wares) showcased around the world and to promote the “Local” initiative. Participants could range from illustrators that make beautiful visual art, to someone whose craft is culinary.

Let me know what you think. I want this experience to be viral. Suggest to me what you would like to see. I am going to start by just giving a little synopsis about how I came to reside (part-time) in the LC…And please bear with me, because this is a new space that will take me a little time to get adjusted to.