Whether it was recently or months/years ago, a lot of you have joined me on this wild newsletter journey and given it was Christmas literally yesterday, I wanted to pause regularly scheduled programming to take a moment to firstly say THANK YOU.

No for real, you’re making a dream of mine happen simply by opening this thing weekly.

We all know what it’s like to get stupid emails in the inbox that do nothing but annoy us so I appreciate you taking the time to read this.

If this is the first issue you’re reading, I’m sorry lol - bear with me this week, I promise this turns back into the real thing next Friday!

Secondly: I wanted to reintroduce myself

I should tell you I’m not a normal writer - as I’m sure you’ve seen or will see. 

My philosophy is simple: 

If you’re giving me permission to send you an email once a week then it’s my duty to make sure it’s the damn near best thing you scroll through all week.  

I will never send anything that I personally would never want to read - and trust me, I’m ultra critical about what gets sent in my inbox, especially if it’s a newsletter. Side note, if you aren’t subscribed to the NBA’s newsletter and you like basketball, you’ll actually LOVE it. I’m jealous at how good it is tbh - such a simple, quick read!

The Origin Story

So, this all started in December 2022 when I had just lost my job and was trying to figure out what to do with my life. I had worked in the tech world all my career and the job market was miserable. 

I’ve also been a “writer” since I was in high school, building and managing all kinds of blogs - never getting paid but just doing it because I loved writing about things I’m interested in.

One of the most fun I ever had was when I started this hiphop blog and it blew up hitting around 7k monthly readers in a matter of 3 months.  I love hiphop and I love writing but alas life caught up with me and the blog faded away.  

So to keep myself busy I figured I’d start a newsletter on something I’m interested in so that 1) I’ll always enjoy writing it and 2) it’ll keep me busy and give me a bit of meaning as I remained jobless. 

And here we are 3 years later, and almost 10,000 people subscribed (AND GROWING!!) - life is crazy man. 

If you haven’t guessed it, I love sneakers

My back to school shoes were always the latest release of some sorts - British Knights, LA Gear, and eventually all Nike’s.  Which is wild because my parents had no business spending the kind of money they did on our shoes when we were lower middle class during the good years.

Back in the 90’s kids shoes were limited in styles - they didn’t make every adult size in a kid size so as much as I wanted infrared Air Max 90’s back then, I was too small. 

So I made it a point that I would get all the shoes that I missed out on but also, I kinda wanted to get the shoes I had as a kid given Nike is always releasing retros. 

Coupled with my love of hiphop, sneakers became another thing I knew I could write forever about.  And then to round it out, I just pay close attention to all things on the internet, whether it’s sports, tech, video games, film/TV, or travel, basically the things that contribute to cultural relevance online.

So, why Dulture?

I’m a dad.  But I haven’t forgotten my roots or all the things I loved growing up - a lot of which I still do, so why not give my perspective on all of it. 

Dad + Culture = Dulture

A lot of what you’ll read from me, and how you read it, is actually inspired by skate mags like Thrasher and Big Brother. The editorial sections in them used to be so much fun to read because they were written like IDGAF if you like this or not - and I guess I kinda do the same - although I do care if you like this or not lol. 

And overall, I used to be deep in a bunch of blogs back in the late 2000’s.  The Hundreds had a few blogs on their site that were really well done.  And then closer to home in Toronto, you had the 1 Love TO blog, October’s Very Own, The Legends League blog, and Lost in the Willderness - if you’re from Toronto these may resonate. 

A lot of what you’re reading is a mashup of all the things I pay attention to online blended with stuff that trends if I think it makes sense to cover it here.

If you haven’t noticed yet, I don’t cover politics, I don’t cover dumb celebrity gossip, and I don’t cover the NFL (lol). I used to be a huge Bills and Dolphins fan but that’s another story for another time.

So yeah, thank you…for real

I hope you’ll continue on this journey with me as this thing continues to grow. Lowkey I want this to become bigger than any other publication out there because let’s be honest, what website / publication / newsletter hits you regularly with something you ACTUALLY enjoy reading.

I’ve yet to come across anything I look forward to so this is why I’m doing what I’m doing - let’s talk culture but let’s make it interesting. Also there’s a million podcasts out there that talk about this stuff but where can you go to actually read about it in a way that’s interesting?

Definitely not any of these snowflake corporate takes that just show you a million pictures of watches or the other ones that just keep featuring DJ Khaled for some reason - YOU KNOW WHO YOU ARE.

Thanks again for reading every week and thanks again for being here.

See you next Friday.

P.S. from time to time people respond to the emails and we chop it up a bit - by all means don’t be a stranger, especially if you read something that triggered a thought one week. I respond to everyone 🙏