Whew child, it’s taking me a minute to drop into focus. I must’ve gotten to this L.A. County Library somewhere before 2 o’clock and it’s 4 o’clock now. Could I give you the backstory to AROUND, the talk series, before these folks come over the intercom within the next couple of hours, “the library will be closing in…”?
I had a light lunch at the farmers’ market from a Francophone vendor that bears with me while I order in French. My head is trying to hurt, it’s pretending, in order to trick me out of my seat and off to get something else to eat. Not today, devil. I’m finally facing the idea that I’ve been too afraid to do much of anything beyond fantasize.
This piece is part one to my concept on a talk series.
The Talk Series That Takes You Around, Part 1: The Why
This could all be procrastination too, in another form — giving the backstory, defining, and planning. At least this way, if it is, it puts a little pressure on me. I’m sharing on a public page my personal thoughts and ideas on a talk series concept that could easily be copied. Once I put it out there and the algorithm gets a hold of it, it’s either act fast, or, that’s my a—!
If this is the first page you’ve stumbled across, I’ll quickly catch you up.
[voice comes over the library intercom] May I have your attention please, the library will be closing in thirty minutes. Well, I’ll be… that there “time” and me, we don’t go together. I have a bookmark with the library hours that I see everytime I open my French reader and I come to this same library branch multiple times a week. When I opened this writing draft, why my mind told me that I have two hours when the library closes in one… I don’t know.
I digress.
[deep breath]
Yeah, almost two weeks ago now, I rushed into this last-minute event gig in Inglewood at the Clippers’ basketball arena. It was a Fanatics Studios launch party. WTF is Fanatics Studios? Yeah, none of us knew either. Turns out, it’s a joint venture, between two billionaire-business-building men, centered around delivering original content that connects audiences closer to athletes.
Creating original content? Connecting to the audience? Conveying closeness to athletes?
Heeeeeeeey. That’s what I said. [pouts] [slams arms into fold]
Nothing motivates me more than madness.
Why athletes?
When creating a podcast, YouTube or any form of content with the intention of public consumption to grow a brand or business, any person that knows any ounce of marketing will say, know your audience. You (content creator) are making the show for whom (audience)? Who is the person for which this content is being created? If the content that a creator is creating will include interviews, or will altogether be an interview series, we need the who there too.
Now, a mish-mash of unrelated performances definitely had pioneering moments in television with variety shows. And, guests that ran the gambit saw a number of variety talk shows to success. However, you ain’t Dave Chappelle nor Oprah Winfrey yet. It’d be a dream for my interest-in-everything-talk-to-anybody behind to have a variety show, but we’re not talking far-off fantasy right now; we’re talking base-level logic. When starting a show or series, whether it be in the form of a podcast, YouTube or TikTok, there needs to be a clear, concise central theme.
What is it? Who is it?
The concept that I’m creating is a talk series with bicycle rides AROUND a particular neighborhood or city as the setting, featuring professional athletes as guests.
Why does it have to be athletes?
Would you, why don’t you, talk to people that wouldn’t bring acclaim?
Do you just want to be famous, no matter for what?
Like, like, literally, you’ll do whatever?
These were the questions that a real friend of mine actually asked me out of her mouth. Seriously. Sitting across the table from me at an upper scale taco spot. Right out of her lips. Her partner, with whom I share December 8th as a birthday, beside her, listening. And the questions were all in a sequence, as it’s written, no interruption from me. I continued to let her speak.
Everything has to be so grandiose with you, TK.
This was over the summer. We’re now back at the top of the Gregorian calendar. It’s been half a year. Still, I’m sitting in this library (a day later from when I opened this draft), dumbfounded. My jaw physically drops open as I go over this moment in my head.
She’d reworded the same question in different ways to explain what she was asking, as I wasn’t responding. I understood the question; I simply couldn’t believe it!
This is one of my intellectual friends, y’all. I’m talking, been ascending the corporate ladder, Master’s degree in Psychology, community book club member, good listener, seeks learning… that type. Yeah.
And I put real friend in bold earlier because she’s not one of those L.A. aesthetic group girlfriends — “friends” for the look of it, the ones joining forces for hoescapades^ or a social media collab to garner more engagement. This is my friend from Louisiana, down home, real friend, good intentions, good sense.
For HER… to say some stupid, dumb duck a— sh-t like that… my motherf-cking mind was blown, b-tch. There’s NO WAY someone with sense, that sees me, has been seeing me and what I’ve been doing, would formulate such f-ck a— nonsense.
You’ve got to be kidding me.
She wasn’t.
I don’t even remember what I responded. We had a whole lengthy conversation. Her words struck me.
In addition to being intelligent, disciplined, and hard-working, she’s also a sweet girl. If she were a b-tch… yeah. [teeth clench] She probably would’ve gotten it.
Girl, first of all, you got me f-cked up!
If my kind and educated friend could arrive to a thought so grim, apparently, I need to do a better job when I explain the concept again.
Here goes nothing…
Physical Movement Came First
co-worker at Neiman Marcus, Frankie, would arrive to our building in Beverly Hills by bike. (at this point, i'd not owned a bike in adult life) i'd always comment on how cool it was and ask him questions. thought about how i won the bike rally at my elementary school, followed my brother on his paper route, and tried to do tricks with the neighborhood kids. fond memories.
one day, Frankie said if i'm serious about wanting a bike, he got a new one and could give me one of his old ones that he didn't use. heck yeah!
darn near 90-year-old landlord at the time drove me over to his building in Koreatown, he brought down the beach cruiser & i rode it back home. from there, it was on! random 20-mile rides on the beach, everything. traffic tickets, boots and citations kept adding up, car insurance kept going up, accidents, ugh, i was sick of it (being a motorist) .
Movement became a way of seeing the city.
got the impulsive idea to sell my car back to the dealership and become a bicycle commuter. began research by chatting with owners at local Black-owned bike shop, ending up buying a bike from them and donating my beach cruiser from Frankie. new bike was what's called "hybrid" (still not super techy, into bike terms and stats, i just enjoy riding) ; new bike allows for more athletic rides.
one of the co-op members from the bike shop notices my interest and natural ability, starts "training" me. weekly, i meet him at the bike shop, he gives me a race bike to ride & we head out for long ones, I'm talking way to Malibu from Leimert Park! that's 50 miles alone! & that's not including the 10 miles roundtrip to/from the bike shop on my own bike to meet up with him.
i got rid of my car somewhere up in there.
friends tease "TK, you really be all around LA on that bike" or something along those lines ; i merged biking and driving so seamlessly that one of my girlfriends from Neiman Marcus didn't even notice when I got rid of my car b/c before i got rid of it, sometimes i'd drive my car to her place DTLA & sometimes I'd ride my bike. I convince another girlfriend that I used to work beside at NM to get a bicycle too; we go on a ride, she falls & never wants to ride again.
Storytelling was always there.
during a sip and chill night hosted by the leasing office, i tell my two closest girlfriends in L.A. at the time, Alasia and B. Barry, my two co-workers from NM, i want to start creating content around my adventures, I'll call it aroundLAwithTK.
Alasia is a trendy, fashion content girly and immediately says that I should do videos. i argue that i prefer to incorporate, or layer on, videos after i've set the base with writing. being a good writer is the best base of any form of storytelling. she says people don't read these days and she's right, but i don't care.
A point of intergration came to me.
i don't want to sit in front of a camera and talk to myself. oh, but what i will do is talk to people. down the line, i decide that i'm willing to make video content if it's me interviewing a subject or talking to somebody. i want to bring the subject on bike rides. boom! passions integrated. i'm having a blast with this biking business and if i could run my mouth too ?! whew!
B.Barry doesn't ever want to get on a bicycle again, so she's darn sure not going to get on one and let me record us. hmmm, who can my interview subjects be? i reach out to a client from NM that I found interesting. either i'm talking to my girls , or i'm talking to an expert ; there has to be a point .
I experimented… It was imperfect, but neccessary.
i decide , okay I'll interview experts in a given field that relate to a topic of interest in or around L.A. .. first one , plastic surgery ! BIG part of L.A./Hollywood culture . client from NM , Dr. Michael K. Obeng , has a plastic surgery practice right across the street from NM BH . perf! hiiiiiiii , Dr. Obeng [bats eyelashes] haha , I have to be persistent after I initially asked him , but he finally has someone from his team set something up with me . I couldn't get him to come for a bike ride , I didn't even know how I'd shoot that , so I settle for his practice location being the interview setting .
a media professional employed with the Clippers that I'd met at a Hookah lounge that was illegally open during the covid shutdown agreed to help me . unavailable the date I lock in to have Dr. Obeng , Clippers media guy sends his mentee to shoot it with me . I interview Dr. Obeng while the mentee operates cameras borrowed from the Clippers' media room facility. shhhh! he takes some behind-the-scenes snaps on my phone.
idk how many days or weeks later , the multimedia journalist (MMJ) from the Clippers edits the footage for me while we chill at the beautiful West L.A. home of one of the guys that played for the Clippers at the time .
hahahaha. whew child, it's kinda relieving that no one reads my little personal blog . him and the player had become basically besties over the years of the MMJ being a part of Clippers falculty and the player being signed with that team , so he had to know i was there.. right?
where the nba player who owned the home was? idk and i don't care . my footage was getting edited and i was chilling in a massage chair . [giggles] life is great .
acts of service being such a powerful love language for me , i started having a crush on the MMJ... kinda, in a way... that's another story for another day. i love a man that will go out of his way to please and provide because he's obsessed with me . & he was slick handsome , we'd've made cute babies . he has one now , he married a girl that coincidentally has a noticeably similar body type (slender/athletic), height, complexion, and maybe even similar silly/playful personality, if i remember correctly from an Instagram caption he wrote about her that i was able to see since he unblocked me. & yes , i double-tapped the post.
I post the first episode of my talk series (before I’m ready).
yeah, so, boom, Dr. Obeng's episode, the first of the aroundLAwithTK interview series is now shot and produced. i didn't publish, i wanted more. i want to have enough to roll out a series… before i roll out a series. i was given no choice but to publish it by my best guy friend , Calvin , when Dr. Obeng went viral for being the one to finally get the indestructible adhesive out of the gorilla glue girl's hair . capitalize! i posted.
In the month following the first, I manage to shoot, produce and publish another episode.
i shot another interview for my talk series with a pole dance instructor . she wanted hers to be a welcome / get to know me / intro to what she offers , so we couldn't do hers on a bike ride either ; it had to be in her living-room-turned pole studio . okay... at least i'm doing something .
In the five months following, I finally secure another subject and get a third episode up.
i go on a bike tour riding to different black-owned beauty supply stores , to post it on the blog , encouraging people to shop Black (i had a whole tab on my previous site template dedicated to that) . coincidentally meet one of the owners at one of the beauty supply stores . she didn't want to come on a bike ride either and would actually be closing her brick and motar business soon . her vibe was cool , so i still wanted to interview her . she'd gotten her esthetician license and began renting a suite , so i interviewed her there before/during/after getting a facial .
hmm.. was there anybody else ? [goes to check former aroundLA interview series page] ohhhhhhhh .
It’ll be nearly three years before I interview someone as content for my site again.
yeah . 3 whole years , THREE , 3 years after publishing the last of the aroundLA interview series , a PR company reached out to me about doing a writeup on a client . I basically said that thee only way I'd do it is if she came on a bike ride with me . the PR company wanted to secure it & the client wanted to go through with what she was paying them to set up , so , we did it !
oh , in that gap of time , I was a contestant on Let's Make a Deal and even asked Wayne Brady . normal folks weren't down , maybe a comedian would be . nope .
so yeah , the lady whose PR company set up something with me , we went on a ride , I mic'd her up , recorded the audio , then used it to write a piece on her . I turned that bad boy around so fast it made folks' head spin ! I guess some of the freelance journalists that she'd connected with before me hadn't even gotten their drafts back to the PR company .
Here's Something New: A Bike Ride Interview
note: it was unpaid... I actually paid out of my own pocket for the bicycles rentals for me, her AND her adult son that's my peer. and, it was a lot of work -- y'all don't understand how mentally taxing it is to do GOOD journalism work. the bike ride and chatting, easy! turning over a completed project?? whew!!
Confirmation.
in the midst of these years , I'd mentioned the talk series on bikes concept to a few of my athlete friends or folks I'd run into at kickbacks when it could come up in conversation casually and they were thee only ones with whom it was an immediate YES, let's do it ! i never set it up though . until finally , march 2024 , i set something up with my boy Troy Hill of the NFL's Los Angeles Rams . shot the interview for my talk series concept riding around the hills of Calabasas, it was great. i felt great! it flowed! and most importantly, he loved it!! he said, "yeah TK, you're made for this sh-t".
Troy encouraged me, “you really should do it.”
I didn't. why ? yeah, this isn't the time to beat myself up, i've done that enough. i won't try to further explain, but THAT is from where the idea came. it wasn't about "ouuuu athletes" , nor scheming on what could get *me* attention nor recognition . it sprouted organically . and to my luck , it makes so much f-cking sense!
My concept for a creative interview series wasn’t born from a strategy.
I was impregnated naturally.
Is that too dramatic?
Okay, they’ve already made the 15-minutes ‘til closing announcement over the library intercom and the nasty security guard is here today, so let me get out of his way.
If this doesn’t make sense, or I still seem like some sort of ruthless a— b-tch, PLEASE, let me know what’s not clicking, Steven. Seriously, ask questions. I don’t mind clarifying. I wasn’t upset with my girl for wondering if the creative interview series concept that I shared with her was a baseless scheme. If anything, I was upset with myself for not being open enough (with people about my passions) and not being devoted enough (to the work) for it to be evident how much it means.
When my girlfriend from Louisiana started the conversation at the taco spot that lovely midwest summer evening, she was following up about my content creation journey. So, whatcha gonna do about aroundLAwithTK? I guess I hadn’t talked about it, nor put anything out in months, which I can’t say is unusual. I pick things, I put them down. Maybe, if I had been more consistent over the years with my content creation — which is the point her husband mainly honed in on, “if you really wanted it or cared about it, you’d’ve been doing it” — my motives wouldn’t have been in question. Maybe I hadn’t worked hard and that’s why she couldn’t see my heart. Maybe if I’d’ve done something differently, she wouldn’t have misunderstood me.
[uniformed guard approaches] [finger swirls aggressively]
“Start wrapping up, we’re closing up.” I told y’all his sickening a— was coming.
If this is your first time here, I promise that I have a Bachelor’s of Mass Communication with a concentration in Broadcasting. I know how to write and speak, yeah, I ain’t lying. Proper grammar, punctuation, mm hm, all’at. Today is mental vomit. Another day, you may get journalistic excellence.
Other writers have readers; here, I have riders. Thank you for joining me and I hope you’ll stick AROUND.
Glossary
^ hoescapades = hoe + escapade, in the plural. (made this word up in the moment while writing) use context clues of sentence