Indianapolis Skateboard Journalist

For more in-depth coverage: https://tabreedlove.com/2021/10/27/muhammad-meets-the-westboro-baptists-at-iupui/ I was just over two years post chemo and testicular cancer. My wife was being treated for stage 4 colon cancer. Despite all of our health issues, we had a child just five weeks after my last chemo infusion. That last treatment nearly ended me. A couple days after the infusions, I could barely get out of bed. Thankfully, Carmen knew something was seriously wrong and demanded I go back to the hospital. I didn’t put up much of a fight. I couldn’t. After receiving one blood infusion that evening and another the next morning, I went from barley being able to make it down the hallway, to putting baby furniture together. Over the next five weeks, three white lines running across every toe and fingernail kept reminding me of the three cycles of three chemo drugs I had experienced. That, along with bouts of fatigue and nausea, which usually came on after eating, left me wondering to what extent, and what sort, of damage may have been caused by the treatment. Soon after Buck was born, I began having problems with my balance. I was unstable while carrying him on feet that felt like sensitive bricks. My movement was slow, and I was always on the verge of tripping and falling over. Whenever I wore shoes, I thought there were lumps in my socks. For a while I even developed an electric shock in the bottom of my feet every time I looked down. My doctors ruled out MS, and my oncologist eventually, but hesitantly, admitted that the cisplatin I had been injected with during treatment had most likely damaged some of my nerves. In my frustration, I began going out on my longboard trying to push through the imbalance and awkwardness. I was a bit shaky, but made it around the neighborhood most days without falling. Over time, the Muehrcke lines on my nails disappeared as they grew out, and my balance began to improve. Buck also began riding with me on another longboard a few months before turning two-years-old. His interest in boarding developed immediately after he rejected the balance bike I bought him. Upon pushing the bike over one day, he sat down on the 42″ Meyer deck which was wide enough for both of us to sit on together. So I padded him up and away we went. We started off riding down hills as if we were sledding. After mastering our downhill runs, I began standing up behind him. As time passed, we pushed further and more frequently. Our rides together came on the heels of Carmen’s cancer diagnosis. She had one tumor in her colon and four in her liver. In between taking care of her and working during our terrible time of trouble, Buck and I often sought refuge surfing concrete across city streets and sidewalks while Carmen rested. By the time he was three-years-old, Buck had spent more time on a board downtown than most teenagers who skate. But that’s another story. Eventually, I started taking my board downtown to work with me riding it around the Mile Square. At first, I could barely maneuver around all the sidewalks and rough terrain. Over a few weeks, I started getting smoother and venturing out further from my office. I hit a lot of neighborhoods. Especially ones with Mexican restaurants. One afternoon while sitting in my office, I was intrigued to hear that some Westboro Baptists were going to be protesting on the IUPUI campus. Having obtained my BA with a Religious Studies Major from IUPUI while working part time for The Hendricks County Flyer as a reporter, I thought I’d ride over and see if I could score an interview. Upon arriving, the Westboro Baptists were setting up their protest behind two layers of fencing. Police blocking every access point to the protestors were scattered about. A large number of students nearby were holding a counter protest. The school even had a DJ and a dancefloor set up outside to dance the hate away as roaming staff yelled through megaphones pleading with students to ignore the hateful protestors. In the middle of shooting some video, an engineering student from Qatar named Muhammad started talking to me. He seemed to be making more sense than any of the other students or staff. He was neither afraid nor offended, and he said something that has stuck with me since that day, “Offense is always taken, never given.” I went back to my office after the rally and worked until early evening editing the footage on Windows Movie Maker. Operating less on skill and more on instinct, I cranked out the first edited video ever to go beyond Buck and I rolling around on a board together. The video shot up to over seven hundred views on YouTube overnight, and it occurred to me that there was much more of Indianapolis worth showing from my board’s eye view. Little did I know at the time, however, just how much more I would end up seeing rolling around. Since that first video, I’ve uploaded well over 200 videos featuring the city of Indianapolis. My shooting and editing has improved, and I’m also off the longboard and back to street skating cigar shaped decks. While making Skateboard Journalist videos, I have met a bunch of amazing people, and have become healthier than I ever was in my 30’s. The best that has happened, however, is Carmen remaining cancer free the last five years, and our son, now seven-years-old, developing into an amazing, beautiful, healthy, kind spirit. This is not the life I thought I’d be living at 49-years-old, but so far, it’s absolutely my best life. As the Skateboard Journalist of Indianapolis, I’m happy to share a little bit of my heart with a board’s eye view of the city I love.

For more in-depth coverage: https://tabreedlove.com/2021/10/19/censorship/ Nothing got burned down. No objects were thrown. Nobody rioted. Not a single person was assaulted. But here I was in the middle of an allegedly dangerous protest amongst dangerous protestors, at least according to the major social media sites like Facebook and Twitters, and Google's video hosting site, YouTube. When I started making and posting videos about downtown Indianapolis five years ago, I never imagined that YouTube would delete one of my videos under the pretext that I was spreading medical misinformation. The video they deleted featured two state reps, a local radio personality, a Lutheran minister, an Assemblies of God pastor, two nurses, a couple activists, and a woman claiming to have been injured recently by a medical procedure. Apparently, someone or numerous people in the video were too hot for YouTube. It sure wasn't because of anything I said, because I was simply documenting the day without commentary or opinion. For this, I was given a permanent warning by artificial intelligence because, "we all make mistakes." Anymore "mistakes" will receive a strike. Three strikes and my channel is deleted. Maybe they will even put me on a list with other disgruntled contrarians who are having trouble conforming. It's as if I'm facing a combination of the worst parts of the 1994 Clinton Crime Bill and 2001 Patriot Act. So here's my self censored version of a documentary video of another protest in Indianapolis. I've redacted nearly 45 minutes of public speaking so that YouTube doesn't get worried about the spread of dangerous ideas and overreact by wiping out my channel. Left in tact is my footage from Monumental Yoga, and 1000's of Indianapolis Colts fans walking back to their cars in a depressed state after a humiliating loss to Los Angeles. For those who actually can tolerate dangerous ideas without fear of threat and mental or bodily harm, feel free to reach out so I can direct you to a place where ideas flow freely beyond fear of suppression, overreaction, and malicious retribution.

For more in-depth coverage: https://tabreedlove.com/2021/08/04/free-britney-indy-one-woman-protest-on-monument-circle/ Last November, I had no idea Britney Spears was under conservatorship managed by her father until I met a very friendly, passionate, and lone protester on the steps of the Indiana State Soldiers and Sailors Monument. Priscilla was the sweetest protester one could ever meet. As a person with special needs, Priscilla was under no such conservatorship and had the full backing of her mother to follow her own dreams and goals in life without the authoritative control and subjugation to a conservatorship. Priscilla was thrilled to tell me all about Britney's troubled and long lasting ordeal which opened my mind to the ways in which people are abused by those who manage their conservatorships. If the courts can do it to Britney, they most definitely can do it to anyone surrounded by control freaks, manipulators, users, and abusers. On a day that couldn't make up it's mind whether to be sunny or cloudy, Priscilla was certainly a bright point. Not only in the day, but in all the video of people I've taken on the streets of Indianapolis.

This is the 3rd time we've hit up the Marion County Fair since Buck entered this earthly realm. in some ways, I love going to it more than I do the Indiana State Fair. There are always great shows. We opted for crash up derby over midget wrestling. This year security was a little tighter than usual, but so far there hasn't been the chaos like when a large fight broke out a couple years ago and nearly turned into a riot. This is my second compilation of the Fair, but if memory serves me right, I've got enough video from a few years ago to put together another as long as I didn't lose it on the one hard drive I had that got whacked. Hopefully not because that footage contains a water-skiing squirrel.

Last week, I had the pleasure of riding around on my skateboard with three distinguished gentlemen, Martin Kreig, Eddie Moffat, and Larry Anderson. In 1986, Indianapolis resident Martin Kreig rode the bicycle you see here across America "in front of 40 million people to the National Head Injury Foundation." I first met Martin at the Rocky Ripple Festival a few years ago when he almost ran over my wife with his bike, the Eagle. At least, that's her side of the story. Since then, I have seen him multiple times on the street riding various bicycles and have put him in a handful of videos. Eddie Moffat is a world-class Unicyclist and retired professional ballet dancer who has a home on the eastside of Indianapolis. I knew him as that "old unicyclist dude who's ranting incoherently as he goes down the street." I became friends with him online a few months back, but it was just before the ride in this video that I first met him. Larry Anderson, is a local artist and musician (drummer). I had never seen or heard of Larry until being tagged a couple days prior to this ride in a post about going on this ride. I had a great time filming all three on the Circle, at Bottle Works, Fountain Square, and everywhere else in between. We even picked up a couple more riders in Fountain Square, Andrew Heltzel & Maggie Brown, who traveled back downtown with us on their way back to Fletcher Place. So for the record: 1 Unicycle 2 Recumbent Bicycles 1 OneWheel 1 Electric Unicycle & A Skateboard If there had been any animals and clowns along for the ride, we would have looked like the circus coming to town. We spent 4 hours riding, talking, eating, and drinking to stay hydrated. We arrived back downtown near our starting point just as it was starting to rain. I stopped at the Eagle for a couple drinks and to review some of the footage, but my phone died. A group I thought was pub crawl of some kind was rolling through but were told to get out because of what appeared to be excessive intoxication. One of the group's members, who had already bumped into me and dropped her phone in my lap, hit me in the ribs while I was talking to patrons on my other side and said, "I'll be back." Neither the group or the girl ever came back, but she left behind a pair of red and white rollerblades on the floor next to me. A fitting end to the evening.

This is my first upload to Rumble and is the result of YouTube censoring my work for the first time ever. As someone who started documenting life on the streets of Indianapolis during a time of great personal crises, one of my original goals beyond documenting was to give everyone a voice including the homeless, protestors, first responders, politicians, and every day people. As much as the focus is on skin color and sexual orientation these days, I wanted to focus on the diversity of ideas no matter the color of a person's skin or their sexual orientation. I wanted to show that people with different backgrounds and ideas could get along on the streets of Indianapolis in sharp contrast to the tribalism on social media. YouTube apparently wants to keep everyone in what they claim is a safe space by censoring historical events and the documentation of reality. In my case, this was done under the guise of stopping the spread of health misinformation ("any claims that go against the consensus of local health officials or the World Health Organization"). I remember a few years back while videoing a protest called the "Poor People's Campaign," one of the protesters told me that I would wind up becoming an activist if I kept doing what I was doing long enough. That day has finally come. The following is the original text from my YouTube video description: On my way downtown to video a protest two weeks ago near IU Health headquarters on the canal, a steam pipe erupted on the corner of Senate and Michigan while I was stopped at light in my jeep talking to my mom on my cell phone. Clouds of pink smoke rolled out from underground. I told my mom there had been some type of explosion underground and she responded, "did you Brandi (her dog) died." I had seen that, but there was something serious happening. I told her her I was sorry, but needed to get out and find out what was going on. I parked in an apartment parking lot about a block west, got my board out and rolled back down to see what was up. As I stood there watching, I noticed fibers that looked like fiberglass insulation floating around in the air. Luckily, I still had my mask in my pocket and put it on. Fire crews showed up, walked around, scratched their collective heads, and waited on IPL (now AES) to advise. I rolled around shooting the tornado like steam shooting out of the ground for 20 minutes or so before rolling off to catch the protest 5 blocks up the street on the canal. It was an extremely hot day for an underground steam pipe rupture. On my way over to the canal, I could feel the sweat start to drip off my forehead. I only made it through two and a half speakers before my camera stopped working. The warning on my Samsung Note Ultra 20 said my phone was too hot for the camera to be used. My other camera was more than five blocks away back at the Jeep. Panicking and looking for shade, I climbed down from my seat, walked over to the edge of the canal, and dipped my phone in the water. Within a few seconds, I was able to use the camera again. Before the day was over, I wound up having to repeat submerging my phone in the water four more times. The protest went on for almost three hours. There were many speakers including nurses, pastors, a teacher, political activists, two state house representatives, and a radio host among others. There names can be found in the video as they are introduced. I don't want to get into the particulars of what the speakers talked about here. Social media hasn't been kind lately to those expressing themselves in ways that go against certain corporate and political narratives. Their views and opinions can be found in their speeches, most of which are in the video. Not all of the speeches are in their entirety. Beyond the parts missing from my phone repeatedly shutting down, I also took liberty to trim out parts that went off topic or were repetitive. The most recurring theme I found as I edited this video, (my longest one to date), is that now is the time to fight. "This is the hill to die on." If we don't stand up and fight now, there's no telling what sorts of policies and laws will be created and used to destroy the individual liberties and freedom of not just us, but our children and our children's children.