The Near Here blog
Stories from behind the site, the local discovery problem, and the venues that deserve more of the limelight.
From the notebook
Proper posts, not keyword porridge
This is where we can be a bit more thoughtful about what Near Here is for, why local venues get missed, and what we keep learning while trying to sort that out.
Less listings page, more point of view. Which is only fair. Even a local events site is allowed a proper natter now and then.
18 July 2026
What's on around Chertsey: weekly events, July-August 2026
Near Here analysed event listings within three miles of Chertsey from 18 July to 16 August 2026, including the busiest venues and verified weekly fixtures.
Read the post →25 May 2026
How Near Here Runs on Cloudflare
How Near Here runs on Cloudflare: Workers + OpenNext for serving, D1 for platform state, Postgres + PostGIS for spatial reads via Hyperdrive + Tunnel + Workers VPC, three cache layers, enterprise bot protection, and email split between Cloudflare Email and Amazon SES.
Read the post →23 March 2026
Easter Bingo: The Most Popular Event You've Never Heard Of
From Cornwall to Cumbria, hundreds of community halls are running Easter bingo nights this spring. None of them are on Eventbrite. Most of them are invisible online. We found them anyway.
Read the post →14 March 2026
Three Questions We're Trying to Answer With One Click
Every week, the same three questions. Every week, the same dozen tabs. We built Top Picks to answer the questions people actually ask, with a shorter list of stronger stuff that's near you and worth the trip
Read the post →10 March 2026
The Best Live Music Venue Near Me is a Church (And I Had No Idea)
Fifty years of free weekly concerts, two minutes from my front door, completely invisible to the internet. When I found St Matthew's lunchtime music programme, I stopped asking 'why do I keep missing things?' and started asking 'why hasn't anyone fixed this?' That question became Near Here.
Read the post →12 February 2026
Why I Built Near Here (Or: How I Kept Missing the Tractor Rides)
I live in Surrey. There's always something on. So why did I keep missing all of it? How a tractor-obsessed toddler, a hidden fondue night, and seventeen open browser tabs led to building Near Here.
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