tories about the Beachside are what this web site is about. Everything you'll be reading here are published essays of Bill Cook, a New Smyrna Beach local and, until August 2001, a reporter and staff writer for the New Smyrna Beach Observer. Semi-retired and beachcombing, he is currently a correspondent for several area publications and his monthly column appears in Lifestyle Magazine.

You can read his collection here including his latest columns, and an inventory of what Bill calls his "wanna be classics," which have generated mail from some of his readers. "Is Goofy A Dog?" is one of those. It's a column that Bill wrote during the 2000 Florida election recount. Originally written to parody the voting controversies of the Presidential election, it has been republished several times, most recently in the January 2008 issue of Life Style Magazine. Meaning to make light of the issues of the day, it seems that Bill hit a hot button with some readers who wanted to really debate with him the more pressing issue of whether or not Goofy really was a dog. You can read the letters and e-mail he has received on this column, which have some entertaining moments of their own by clicking here.

Bill says his usual style of writing is an aim at the "life's whimsy." And he's in obvious awe of his surroundings on Canal Street, Flagler Avenue, and the Beachside as you'll see in PROFILES which are real keepers about New Smyrna Beach and some of the folks who live here.

Appropriately, he ends each column with "Smyrnans can usually find Bill Cook wandering about town looking for a story of interest to the folks in our locale. Maybe yours will be his next tale. You can write to him at PO Box 1029, New Smyrna Beach, FL 32170 or send e-mail to billcook@billcook.net."

Will it be your story next?