As you’ve prob­a­bly guessed from the stag­nant web­site and halted emails, we’ve decided that the time has come to end Boxed City. It’s a deci­sion that we’ve been mulling over for a lit­tle while now, and it’s one that we believe makes the most sense.

Now, we’re not a prod­uct of the reces­sion. In fact quite the oppo­site — as design­ers in Hamp­ton Roads, we’ve sim­ply come to the point where we’re too busy to do Boxed City as well as it should be done.

Even as Boxed City closes, we have great hope for the cre­ative com­mu­nity in Hamp­ton Roads. As of last week, we passed 1700 email sub­scribers at Boxed City (143 dur­ing Jan­u­ary while the site was com­pletely unchang­ing). And while this num­ber is minus­cule com­pared to what a larger pub­li­ca­tion might draw, for our lit­tle niche it’s impor­tant. It means there’s 1700 other peo­ple here who love the music you love, love the art & fash­ion that you love, and care about the food they eat.

This wasn’t always the case here. Just the fact that a band like Of Mon­treal came to Nor­folk last week, and that peo­ple actu­ally went to see them is some­thing we never could have imag­ined 5 or 10 years ago. Cul­tural advances seem to come in waves here, but in our opin­ion, things are cer­tainly push­ing forward.

So now it’s up to all of us to keep that wave mov­ing for­ward. Sup­port oth­ers around you that are doing things well. Let busi­nesses that are con­tent to be mediocre know that that’s not good enough in our city. If the food isn’t deli­cious, and pre­sented beau­ti­fully, go to a restau­rant that cares about that stuff. If a com­pany doesn’t care about good design, don’t patron­ize them. And if a venue brings an inter­est­ing act to their stage, be sure to take the time to go see them. It’s the only way things will get bet­ter here.

That said, there are plenty who are doing it right. We can’t urge you enough to sup­port Alt­Daily. No one is doing more to push good urban design and liv­abil­ity in Nor­folk than they are.

So, there you have it. We’re sad to see Boxed City go, but excited about all the other projects we’ve got­ten our­selves into. If you fol­low Boxed City on twit­ter, you can keep fol­low­ing us at @acraigwilliams and @yourAUX.

If you see us around be sure to say hello.

Craig & Kath­leen
Boxed City 757