Placing $navbar in the header ... impossible?

[Cyburbia]

The Subject: line explains it all.

In my forum (see http://www.cyburbia.org/forums/ ), I'd like to display the navbar at the top of the page, below my header image and web site navigation tabs. (If you visit the page, you'll see a header that I want to duplicate across all the pages on the Web site. The "crumb tail" will be in the grey area.)

Thing is ... I've been told that $navbar is generated after the header is generated. I was told once "just post the contents of the $navbar template where you want it to go," but unfortunately that doesn't work either.

I tried searching for such a hack here, without much luck. Can $navbar be placed in the header?