Our biggest news in years you can see right on your screen: the complete, extreme makeover of The Nearby Café by the Toronto-based web-design team of Marc and Nacia Miller, known as Crossbeam. This constitutes the first top-to-bottom design renovation the Café has undergone since 1995. The result radically upgrades and unifies the visual appearance of the Café; streamlines and simplifies its navigation system; makes it easier on the eyes in all respects; and brings it decisively into the 21st century.

In terms of content, we have combined several previously separate subject areas (Food & Travel, Art & Photography) while adding a new one, Love & Lust.
You'll find three new menu items in Love & Lust, and one (Villa Florentine) under Literature & Writing. The Art & Photography menu now includes Colleen Thornton's Copenhagen Calling, an early Café feature that returns to us in updated form. Other familiar Café specialties, such as the History of Photography Calendar, have been considerably reconfigured. And all the Café's menu items now boast added content.

We have also added a Café Store, for the inveterate shoppers among you.

This full-scale reorganization will enable us to post new material on a much more regular basis, so we recommend that you check in regularly at the Nearby to see what's new.

-- A. D. Coleman
Executive Director
(TBD), 2004