Miguel Sabogal

In 2015’s newsworthy year-end reviews, Baltimore will be mentioned. 

I recently returned to the online dating arena and was immediately reminded of why I left. As a man interested in the arts I find myself at odds with that acme of the stereotypical alpha male, bare chested post-gym workout selfie. Ladies, here are my notes on what you should expect from a manly man vs. a hipster dude on OkCupid.

A walk through a popular museum of art or a search on the internet makes it abundantly clear that the portrayal of women is a popular subject in painting. More often than not they are unclothed. This image of a nude woman in painting invites spectatorship.

Absent in the media narrative is the existing community of adult black individuals currently engaged and interested in civil dialogue.

In Baltimore I watched as the fantasy element of the music scene grew from a seed of charming oddness into an escapist monster.

Folks rail the most against “types.” A white girl with a shaved head living in a non-white neighborhood is a type. She is also a gentrifier. It doesn’t matter whether she is a starving artist or whether she works in finance. The color of her skin represents something bigger than herself. She’s the brass ring, money in the bank, and social mobility.

“Those are the tightest jeans I’ve ever seen on a man,” my then roommate Josh told me one day in our kitchen circa 2008. Far from an insult, I was pleased by his assessment.

Everyone is talking about Caitlyn Jenner, including those who don’t want to talk about her. She is familiar with the paradox. When she called herself Bruce, he didn’t want to talk about her either. Now that she’s here, the value of Caitlyn is being decided.

The United States is a place with binary opinions. In that spirit of drastic over-simplification there are two wars being carried out on in the United States in 2015, a war on foreign terrorism and a war on American citizens carried out amongst themselves.

With the conviction of Ross Ulbricht in The Silk Road Trial, the United States federal government is claiming a substantial new victory on the war on drugs. The war on drugs is frustrating to dissect because as a whole its rationale is seemingly as sound as it is chest-beatingly ridiculous.