by Leo Suarez

18 Years of RalConigraphy – The Study, and Love, of Downtown Raleigh

Today, let’s raise one up for the blog as we’ve made it 18 years since this thing has started. I am pretty sure there are some of you that have been with me since the beginning so for those folks, I thank you for sticking around. For the newcomers, as always, welcome and I hope you’ll find the content here somewhat interesting. The sister site, the DTRaleigh Community, is always interesting and I hope you’ll consider joining the conversation there as well.

The photo above was taken in 2014. There was a pop-up beer garden that took place in the gravel lot outside of the Contemporary Art Museum. It was a seemingly simple setup with some string lights, long tables, and a container that acted like a bar. With nice weather, people flocked to it. Today, CAM uses that lot to park cars.

Why mention this event that took place for a few weeks 10 years ago? It’s a stretch but I think this kind of represents my feelings of downtown Raleigh in the 2010s compared to the 2020s.

From my perspective, the first half of these 18 years of blogging was all about my online activities supporting real-life experiences. In the second half, it feels like the roles have reversed. You can blame work-from-home culture, the pandemic, or just changing times, but for me, downtown Raleigh in the 2010s had a very in-person and spontaneous energy. You just had to be there, at the beer garden. The blog posts, videos, and online discussions were more like accessories to the actual experience of being out in the city’s core.

Today, and I include myself in this, we’re more connected than ever—but in a different way. Now, going out in downtown often feels like the accessory to the online content or conversations we’re already having in our little bubbles. To cater to that, downtown is doing whatever it can to get people there, which means making a once-used event lot a space for easy parking.

Maybe that’s just my take. I’m certainly not the same person I was 10 years ago, and my priorities have shifted. But what hasn’t changed is my love for great places and how they bring people together. There’s something special about experiencing a downtown—not just as an individual, but as part of a collective moment.

In the past few years, I’ve leaned into being more of an organizer—bringing online conversations into the real world through regular meetups. If you haven’t heard, we’re ramping up the number of meetups in 2025, giving people more opportunities to connect over coffee, lunch, and happy hour. If that sounds like your thing, check out our Meetup page.

It’s an interesting time for downtown Raleigh, and I think we’re right in the middle of another transformation. Downtowns go through cycles, ebbing and flowing with people’s tastes and habits. In a way, this blog has been tracking that transformation ever since Fayetteville Street got its makeover in 2006. And 18 years later, here we are—still watching, still discussing, and still showing up.

The sites are still going strong and while I don’t need it, I do get asked how someone can contribute. I’ve set up a PayPal link if anyone wants to donate anything to support my work and that link is below.

Donate to DTRaleigh through Paypal.

Thanks again for donating or sticking around with me. I’ll see you out there.

Similar Posts:

Comments

Comments are disabled here. That's because we're all hanging out on the DTRaleigh Community, an online forum for passionate fans of the Oak City.