(Image: Gearhouse)
Evan Maynard (Image: Gearhouse)
It will be a short hike for the founder of Seattle outdoor gear rental and community startup Gearhouse to the company’s coming Capitol Hill expansion.
CHS has learned the three-year-old hiking, camping, and adventure gear and events community is planning an expansion to E Thomas just off Broadway in the former space where AT&T tested out a short-lived coffee and retail experiment.
The 2,800-square-foot space is being readied as a new outlet for the growing company that provides unlimited gear rental to members along with access to events, classes, and resources like repair, maps, and guidebooks. Permits also indicate the new Gearhouse will offer beer and wine.
“We want Gearhouse to be a place where you can get gear, knowledge and a friend base if you don’t have that network at work or in your apartment building,” founder Evan Maynard told the Seattle Times in 2021.
At the time, the former Blue Origin rocket engineer was growing the South Lake Union headquarters of Gearhouse after starting the business from his “overstuffed” Capitol Hill apartment and a van used in the beginning to deliver gear building to building and door to door, the Times reported.
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Though it might give off some REI vibes, Gearhouse is organized as a for-profit company, not a cooperative. Much has grown and improved around Gearhouse along with the amount it can ask its members to pay.
These days, joining Gearhouse comes in around $90 a month if you sign up for a full year. The company also offers gear rentals for non-members. It prides itself on providing the total package. Your Gearhouse backpack will come stuffed with gear and supplies you’ll need to survive in the wilds of the Pacific Northwest where deadly cute marmots roam and the Alpine lakes will keep your can of hard seltzer ice cold.
“Seattle’s only social club for outdoorsy people,” Gearhouse says.
We’ll have to see what more Gearhouse has planned for the Capitol Hill location which could end up its first expansion.
The former cafe will have room for a limited amount of gear but could certainly provide an outlet for pickups and dropoffs as well as a venue for events and classes. A stop for Metro’s seasonal Trailhead Direct bus service is also nearby. Add in beer and wine and the surrounding buildings home to thousands of adventure seeking apartment dwellers, and you have an easy to read map to Gearhouse Capitol Hill’s success.
The Gearhouse project is located at 800 E Thomas. Learn more at joingearhouse.com.
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It’s cool, but ‘Seattle’s only social club for outdoorsy people’ isn’t correct. The Mountaineers and Outdoors for All come to mind immediately…and there are others. We are a very outdoorsy city…
Agreed, cool to see things like this in Capitol Hill, but a tagline like that seems pretty out of touch, particularly when many would struggle paying the $90 membership. There are lots of free social groups that may not offer rentals, but definitely the social part:
https://www.wta.org/go-outside/new-to-hiking/someone-to-hike-with-hiking-groups-and-resources
This is like a frat in college. Paying for friends…lol
Not anything like it, actually. Then again, I get that this isn’t your preferred type of outdoor activity. These folks manage their waste instead of leaving it all over Cal Anderson.
Let’s try to keep stereotypes to a minimum. I run monthly cleanups in Cal Anderson and see people from all walks of life pitching in, although I will say that the folks I see/hear regularly complaining are those who actually have som capacity to do something meaningful in their community…
Stereotypes…got it. Let’s talk to Defund up there as well, and everyone else who wants to poke at anyone who doesn’t conform to their ideological world view.
I hear you, I guess your comment had a bit more of an elitist “punching down” vibe, whereas Defund seems rightfully exasperated with the status quo, which is understandable even if I don’t always agree with everything they say or how they say it.
I guess I called this out because I thought you had a good point buried in an insult… A cool thing about this business, and ones like it, is that they reduce waste. I do think it’s misleading to say that “these folks manage their waste” though. We all contribute to waste, it’s a reality of life, yet waste management has not changed drastically since the days MLK was assassinated while striking for safer working conditions and better pay for sanitation workers. I’m guessing many of the folks who join and/or use this do very little to address the status quo of our current waste problem and will just see this as an affordable way to have fun in their off time from their job that contributes to a massive global waste stream. Meanwhile, unhoused neighbors are reusing and recycling a large fraction of our “managed waste” 🤷🏻♂️
I find myself occupying that increasingly rare middle path, where not every unhoused person is a drug-addled criminal, not every police officer a racist murdering psychopath, and not every outdoors-loving tech worker with a flush bank account is an inconsiderate douche. There’s exasperation with the status quo, and there’s “let’s make fun of the frat boys because I don’t enjoy what they do, har har”. I don’t see much high-mindedness in his comment, it’s just dumb and deserved to be noted as such.
If punches are thrown, they’re more towards those who continually promote such attitudes on this board. Civility doesn’t work with trolls, nor do appeals to reason (still 50/50 on if defund is one). If poking them where it hurts gets them to recognize their own misguidedness, then maybe they’ll get beyond the same ideological rigidity that afflicts most MAGAts. Wishful thinking of course.
As for your comments on waste, I agree with you in the big picture. But the waste I was alluding to was a bit more…excretory. Perhaps it is punching down, but once you’ve had an unfortunate misstep in the park (literally) you tend not to get over it easily.
I have reported and accidentally stepped in my fair share of human and dog waste walking around and picking up trash on the hill. It’s definitely upsetting but understandable and a reality when there are not public bathrooms available for long periods of time and over large stretches of Capitol Hill.
I also have a background in civil engineering and know that there’s a lot of people who deal with human waste on a day to day basis, it’s not a pleasant smell, but someone has to do it. Touring the facilities and hearing the stories from the folks who have to clean out equipment and tanks with shovels and buckets is pretty gruesome, yet these folks often make less than the tech workers that have been displacing people in the city. Your middle of the ground approach is, to some degree, an embracing of the status quo. We have seen this cycle of boom and bust in the US for generations, and increasing inequity that comes with it.
Lastly, I think the best approach if you find someone to be a troll is to just ignore them
Intentionally mispresenting your business–and it has to be intentional, there are dozens of outdoorsy social groups– has always a red flag for me.
Just don’t be this guy…
Only outdoorsy social club…unless you count…
Seattle Outdoor Adventurers PNW Gay Men’s Outdoor AdventureOutdoor Afro SeattleKitsap OutdoorsKitsap Women’s Outdoor AdventurersWashington Outdoor Wanderers Easy Outdoor Buddies of North KitsapWomen Outdoor WarriorsSeattle Outdoor and International Adventure ClubSierra Club OutingsBlack People Into Fitness and NatureNorthwest Nature & Wildlife PhotographySeatle Queer and Queer Ally Hiking GroupWomen Explorers on the MoveSeattle Adventure ClubWashington Fly Fishing ClubPNW BackpackersAdventures in HikingPeaks AdventuresNorth Seattle Walkers, Hikers and Nature LoversSeattle Weekend WanderersKirkland Outdoor Adventures Meetup GroupPacific Adventurers, Climbers, and HikersBIPOC Women Explorers SeattleKitsap Kis and Family Hiking GroupNorthwest Wilds AdventuresOlder Adult Outdoor AdventuresOver 40 Single Hikers and AdventurersMany, many more
So, they either don’t know ANYTHING about outdoorsy social groups–or they decided to lie in their publicity release, confident that publications like Cap Hill Times won’t do their basic due diligence.
Either way, I’ll stick with REI.
Excellent list! Thank you.
You didn’t even bother to get the name of this publication right… and if you noticed this article puts that line in quotes everywhere 🤦♂️
This is gross. Are you a transplant who makes more money than you know what to do with, and want to impress in Instagram? Then give money to this white dude who got burned out selling his soul to Jeff Bezos!
A lot of the language on their site does come across this way, I did see that they offer a limited number of discounted memberships, but it would be really cool to see them actually champion that program and aim to really make getting outdoors more accessible to everyone!
Andre, is REI gross? The Mountaineers? The seemingly dozens of other outdoor clubs listed in a post above? They’re ALL gross?? Some of us enjoy the company of other humans and taking advantage of the outdoor paradise. Nothing that spectacular is free, and paying to enjoy it with like-minded folks sounds like an awesome way to make friends with your neighbors.
I moved out here and lived in temp housing until I had a job and could pay rent and the Mountaineers taught me so much about nature and, as a single woman, was practically a necessity. Have some perspective.
Annual membership for Mountaineers is $75, and this statement is near the top of their home page: “At The Mountaineers, we aspire to offer outdoor opportunities for all, and are committed to building a community where everyone feels belonging. Learn more on our Equity & Inclusion page.”
Also, REI doesn’t require any sort of annual membership fees to rent supplies.
This is clearly a different model, and I do hope them success, but it does seem aimed at the high income transplant crowd
im happy these people are contained and seperated from the rest of society as they ought to be.