Michigan's Urban Geographer
Thomas DeVoy walked to his mailbox. He recently found this company online that is based out of San Francisco. They create wooden watches, and he had to have one.
He just saw the mailman drive away, so he ran down the staircase in his apartment to check.
It came.
But the company made a mistake. They sent two watches instead of the single he ordered for $75. Without hesitation, Thomas looked for the company’s phone number on his receipt and began dialing.
“Hi, I just received my watch in the mail, and you guys accidentally sent two. My last name is DeVoy.”
Thomas is a 23-year-old Michigan native. He grew up in Ann Arbor as an only child of two loving parents. His father worked as a real estate agent, and his mother was a college professor.
“We never really went without, but we never really had anything in excess,” Thomas said, looking back.
Even though he lived in a busy area, he said he survived with almost no ambition. Careers and colleges were not high on his priority list. He stayed on the straight and narrow by going to church and even leading their worship band.
He found solace in creating music, so he joined a punk band outside of the church.
Thomas enrolled in an art class in high school – drawing or something. There was a girl who had a crush on Thomas. Her name was Katie.
“I always remember seeing him in school goofing around with his friends, making awesome videos that he would show to the whole school,” Katie said, remembering the time before she knew Thomas. “He loved music back then and went on tours with some pretty big bands, and he was really popular in school, because he was so outgoing.”
After a bit of getting to know each other, the two began dating and have been together for longer than six years now.
“I trust everything that Thomas does,” she said.
Unlike most, Thomas graduated high school before starting to think about college. With plenty of hesitation, he registered at a community college because of pressure from his parents. He started with just entry-level classes. His church, 2|42 Community, offered him an internship to work on graphic design and videography for marketing and promotional tools.
“When I was in high school, I still didn’t know what I wanted to do, but I knew I wanted to do something different and make a difference,” Thomas said. “I didn’t just want a nine to five.”
He paid for college out of pocket, but never felt good or secure about it.
“I always felt weird about paying a lot of money for uncertainty,” he said. “I didn’t have a direction of what I wanted to do, and so it felt really awful to me to pay so much, even just for community college, when I was undecided about what I wanted to do.”
Thomas was learning more at his internship than he was in school. He liked how specific the work at this church was and hated how college forced him to take class he would never need. 2|42 paid him enough to the point that he did not need to work anywhere else.
After twenty classes and a few thousand dollars, he dropped out of college to work at the church full-time. His job began to let him work with some of the teenagers, and he fell in love with teaching and helping people. The ability to teach and learn grabbed him.
His church had 2 locations; one in Ann Arbor and its headquarters in Brighton, where he worked. Although he lived in Ann Arbor with his parents, he made the choice to move to Brighton to be closer to work. So he rented an apartment with a friend just outside of downtown Brighton.
He was living in Brighton for a few months when he got an idea – an idea that would really put a shift in his life. The comradery in his church and office, the close atmosphere in Brighton and the community he felt within the Michigan music scene drove him to the idea of bringing all three together.
Thomas designed a website to create a blog about events in the community, local bands and art. He wanted to showcase the talent, creativity and the togetherness.
He called the blog Urban Geographer, which literally means a person whose “main role is to emphasize location and space and study the spatial processes that create patterns observed in urban areas,” according to geography.about.com. To Thomas, it just means a person who goes out and explores their community.
This idea sparked another. Thomas brought 11 bands together from all across the state to pitch in some money to create a vinyl compilation filled with the bands’ music. That idea fueled the next. He now needed to throw a party to celebrate the release of the compilation.
Rather than a party, he wanted it to be a concert, so he rented a venue. Nearly 200 people showed up to see the five bands on the bill.
He just couldn’t stop there. He found his focus. He found his ambition. He found his “something different.”
Urban Geographer slowly evolved into a promotion company. It plans concerts across southeast Michigan and partners up with local businesses as sponsors for the events.
“He still is very passionate about music, but instead of playing as much, he wants to help local artists succeed,” said Katie. “He has become so determined and hardworking in the past six years.”
“He’s doing something he loves to do, and he really wants other people to get the same enjoyment he has when he’s organizing things,” said Corey Booth, a friend of Thomas’ since grade school. “He doesn’t seem to give up until he achieves his goals, and he works to put in the research to make the best things he can.”
Thomas gives ten percent of everything Urban Geographer makes to local charities, because his company is all about “bringing the community together and helping each other,” he says.
“I just believe more than anything that businesses can’t just focus on profit and suck the life out of the community around us,” he said.
Thomas wants to live a life in which he is constantly working on projects he loves.
“It’s exciting to think that I could put myself in a position where I will never have to rely on someone else to make enough money to be comfortable,” he said. “I believe that humans are happy when they’re creating something.”
Thomas called the watch company. He asked them how to send the watch back, but they told him he can’t, and they won’t accept it. He asked why, and they told him they do not mind letting an honest person like him keep it.
He gave the watch to a friend.