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This garage stopped me cold while prowling the side streets of Lakeside, Michigan, a summer-home and resort area just over the state line from Indiana on Lake Michigan. The swim-capped bathing beauties are reminiscent of tourism ad campaigns, now resurrected in nostalgia posters available at local shops. At first only the garage could be photographed clearly. Its paint scheme an echo of the cottage a few feet away under the late summer shade of trees. The owner of the garage,Vance Lancaster, discovered TinyHouses.net and provided the third picture, the walkway leading to the cottage back door. To learn more about this little home near Lake Michigan, look at the cottage rental website. Frequented by both quick-getaway travelers and summer-long residents from the Chicago area, Lakeside is a community on the “South Shore,” still accessible by a commuter railroad of that name. Lakeside is also served by the Red Arrow highway, which weaves across lower Michigan linking one classic village after the next. Lovell & Whyte, a home decor business just off the Red Arrow, is a shop that always has different choices whether lovingly restored classics, something new of classic quality or limited pieces of unusual origin. (Our new coffee table was once a low, Chinese school desk.) The service is classic too. Thanks to proprietors Doug GeBraad and Jim Fitzmaurice and their attentive staff, every visit is a treat. “Lakeside's answer to Restoration Hardware meets Crate and Barrel,” says Lake Magazine. Nah, it's way better than that! Around the corner from the maroon and sage garage, on the Red Arrow, is a perpetually for-rent used-to-be gas station, made of brick and glass, which was about to be swallowed whole by ivy crawling up the back wall. In late 2006 it was revived by the J.L. Powell clothing catalog, “the Three Oaks-based clothier that trafficks in distinctive adventure and leisure-wear - clothes that evoke an era when men were men, and when adventure meant hunting lions on the African veldt.”(Lucinda Hahn, Lake Magazine, April 2007.) It's been a favor to the neighbors and the Red Arrow to see this little structure brought back to life as a sentinel of style, showcasing some of the items available through Powell's catalog.
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