We are pumped to be featuring one of our key retailers on the east coast, Devolve Moto. Located in Raleigh North Carolina, Devolve is a beautifully curated shop of premium motorcycle products, but it’s not your typical shop. In addition to stocking some of the most sought after brands in the motorcycle industry, Devolve also functions as a café serving coffee and beers. It’s a great spot for social gatherings and a destination for not only the motorcycle crowd but anyone who appreciates premium product, and well balanced creative atmosphere. Be sure to stop by and check out Devolve Moto if you are in the Raleigh area or passing through.
Location - We're located in Raleigh, NC and have been open since October, coming up on our one year anniversary in just under two months.
Follow Along - The easiest way to follow the shop is to tag along with our Instagram @devolve_moto or our website devolvemoto.com, we've also got all the usual social channels like FB and Twitter as well.
Rides - We do a bi-weekly bike night here at the shop that is open to any and all riders and bikes. It usually kicks off around 6:30 or 7 and is always sponsored by a different local brewery (we have about 30 in the immediate area) that comes out and showcases their latest and greatest brews and we always do a cool moto gear or apparel discount for everyone too. On the weeks in between the bike nights we do a ride-out through the surrounding countryside and then to the brewery that sponsored the week before. It gives us a chance to really get out and mix it up with our customers and the local riding scene in general. The breweries usually have food trucks on-site and take everyone for a tour of the facilities. It's a lot of fun. We post regularly about the nights on Instagram and Facebook and have the full list of our events up on our website at devolvemoto.com/events.
Community - To me, the most important parts of building a community (moto or not) is:
1. Providing a cool venue that folks can come hang around when they're able to (hence us building a large cafe into our store) people like being able to come hang their helmets up and people watch the busy street we're on or just shoot the shit with all the other regulars while grabbing a cold beer or coffee. Having a central location like ours (we're in the exact center of the city) really helps with everyone being able to get to us without too much hassle.
2. Keeping regular events. People love to get together and ride, talk shop about builds, tell their tales from the road and just be around other people that love what they love. Keeping at least one event a week provides a guaranteed chance to get to do all of that. We're so much more than just a moto-centric shop; we're catering to campers & hikers, surfers, skaters, coffee fiends, microbrew fanatics and even people who just appreciate quality clothing and cool unique goods in general. But it's the moto crowd more than any that really makes the effort to gather and push the scene further and further in our area. It's a tight knit, crazy eclectic (both bike and rider wise) group of people that just love to get out and ride.
The Bastards - Hahaha the bastards get everyone down from time to time. If I had a nickel for every time I've heard someone negatively refer to us as "that hipster bike place" I'd be retired on a fucking island somewhere sipping Mai-Tai's all day. We just laugh it off with a "Yeah that's the one" and go about our business. Some people thrive on negative comments and making other people miserable, walking talking facebook comment sections basically, they're unavoidable though. You just gotta keep doing what you're doing and block out the bullshit. There's a really great quote by Dorothy Parker, "Living well is the best revenge", I'm a firm believer in that. The bastards won't ever keep us down.
The Vibe - The vibe at devolve is very laid back and fun. Like a good porch hang with old friends over a bottle of whiskey. We built out the shop using a lot of recycled and re-purposed materials, 90 year old pine planks we dumpster snatched from the roof rebuild of our next door neighbor turned into our shelving, old book cases with a new layer of wood became bike platforms, an old spiral staircase turned into an amazing window display. The store has kind of an industrial modern/mountain getaway mixed aesthetic that lends itself well to the goods we carry which cater to all kinds of adventure seekers from skaters/surfers to moto enthusiast, camping nuts and everything in between. Probably one of my favorite descriptions of the shop came from a customer who said "It's like Steve McQueen had a drunken five-way with REI, Brookstone, Huckberry and Revzilla inside of a Hemingway styled mountain cabin.". We keep things fresh by constantly re-merchandising the store. Everything gets moved around and rotated about every month, it helps bring a lot of products to peoples attention that may have missed it the last time they wandered through the shop. We're also constantly adding and subtracting items from our inventory as we see what the bulk of our customer base is attracted to.
Surfing in NC? - You bet your ass there's surfing in NC. When most people think of NC they think Michael Jordan, barbecue and tobacco. There's a lot more going on here then a lot of folks realize though. The western half of NC is dominated by the beautiful Blue Ridge and Smokey Mountain ranges, home to some of the best moto riding roads in the country including the infamous "Tail of the Dragon". Central NC has sprawling cities and acres upon acres of farmland. And our coast? We've got the always firing Outer Banks, and this region is renowned as one of the best surfing destinations from New York to Florida. Surfers from all over the country and the world flock to the Outer Banks for the annual ESA tournament, or just after a storm swell, to paddle out to the Atlantic and enjoy some of the best waves on the east coast.
The Good Life - To us the good life is a simple one. We're not seeking international fame or insane fortunes, we're about good friends, cold beers and (when time allows) the occasional outdoor adventure. Adventure is a word that gets tossed around a lot these days, especially by shops like us that purvey gear that suits an adventurous lifestyle. We think adventure can come in all shapes and sizes, from getting lost in the woods for a weekend with a good camp full of friends to trekking across the country on your favorite motorcycle and everything in between.
Storm Troopers or Ewoks? - We're going rogue on this one and choosing Jedi. In touch with our surroundings, using the force (for good) in the natural world.
Flat Trackers or Cafe Racers? - Flat Trackers all day long. More than anything we consider ourselves a scrambling family. We like bikes that have the ability to jump off the beaten path at the drop of a hat and push us through anything to get where we wanna go. We're infatuated with flat track racing though and hoping to put together a amateur team through the shop in the near future. In Charlotte there's a really great AMA track that we're itching to rip up and it would be AWESOME to be able to come out and watch the RSD Super Hooligan Team show up and teach everyone how it's done (cough, cough).
Leather or Kevlar? - We're equal opportunity skin keepers.
Wheelies or Burnouts? - Do a wheelie!
Shout Out's/Events - We're coming up on our 1 year anniversary this October. Pretty exited/amazed that it's been a whole year already. It still feels like we just opened a few weeks ago. Shout out to the city of Raleigh and everyone that's supported us since we've opened! We couldn't do this without them.
"You never know who’s wandering into your shop. Taylor White had come in several times, and we knew she was cool. What we didn’t know was that she’s a badass, internationally recognized artist from right here in Raleigh. Taylor’s work is incredible. She’s best known for her murals, which can be seen on city streets in Norway, Australia, Berlin, Miami to name a few. She’s recently been commissioned to do a mural at downtown’s Raleigh Raw in October and has an exhibition at GreenHill Center for NC Art in Greensboro running from August 17th to September 18th."-Devolve Moto
(Devolve cont..) Taylor came by to do some shopping for this month’s haul, saying she likes things that are both “functional and stable,” which is why she started with the Roland Sands Maven jacket. It’s hard to beat Roland Sands’ jacket game when it comes to utility. (They look pretty sweet too.) This one fit her perfectly, and she noted happily as she zipped it up, “This feels like it will last forever.”