Lubbock Residents Overreact to Local Clown Filming TikTok Videos

The only thing worse than a clown on skates are his neighbors.

The character of Patches the Clown has been around for almost 15 years now. Patches used to be a regular fixture at my Halloween park, but he's all grown up and working a respectable job and being an upstanding citizen. Patches does like to update his character's social media every now and then, so he decided to film some stuff for TikTok.

This is where the people of the Nextdoor app and local Facebook groups come in. (I personally lasted one day on the app before deleting it. If you're really looking to feel bad about humanity, some of these folks tend to be one worm-infested stepping stone below where the commenters on our local TV station websites live.)

Some of the Nextdoor creeps proved to be as contemptible and humorless as people can be by taking things completely out of context and apparently forgetting that there's a holiday called Halloween. Immediately they sprang to thoughts of shooting this person or putting a gun to his face without knowing if the character was male, female, another kid or, what he actually is: someone who's just really into Halloween.

They accused my business of putting Patches up to this when we haven't spoken to the clown in a year. (Not denying I love him, we just haven't been in touch.)

They built these "clown sightings" up in their minds as if there was an actual evil clown that would show himself in broad daylight for all to see. Seriously, what are these people going to do when trick-or-treaters show up at their door? I'm sure they all have keyboard warrior vigilante fantasies about shooting clowns. Good luck telling a judge you shot a guy in a Halloween costume on a public sidewalk.

I was fortunate enough to get Patches' side of the story, and it's pretty dang innocent:

(I) Went skating on Friday the 27th around 8:30 ish Saw people in cars gawking and taking pictures. Saw someone walking their dog, said hi they turned and stared. There comes a spot on 92nd (between milwalkee and frankford) where the smooth paved road becomes a terrible road to skate. So I hopped over onto the sidewalk. I'm a person who is hyper aware of my surroundings. I notice details that people seem to glance over. I saw a girl who looked like she was doing some dances and a phone screen propped up on a truck. I wanted to do minimize any potential suprise on her and possibly get a cameo in her Tik Tok. I skated on through and said "howdy" as I skated by, she screamed after I was 5-6 houses away but I continued my 3.5 mile route . The next day I finally decided was the day I was going to doing my Tik Tok content. Patches was utilizing my fence and the AT&T box behind it to give the illusion that he was floating as high as a fence. My neighbor came out and instead of asking anything started taking pictures/recording a video and didn't ask Patches anything. After recording my content I made the decision to skate my newfound route once again. This time it was around 5:30-6PM while there was a lot of sun out. While I was skating I noticed my music kept getting interrupted with both text and facebook messages. I didn't want to stop and read them I wanted to continue my session. When I got home, I started reading the messages from my friends asking if the clown they saw on facebook was me. I was able to find the source of one screenshotted image was from nextdoor and another from a facebook group. I signed up for nextdoor and readup on what people were saying in the two seperate posts. I later found out that my neighbor went straight to the NextDoor to push a false narrative. In his post he even had even said that Patches was Dancing and acting funny. If you looked at the photo ______ took you can see the tripod on the fence. Regardless, my neighbor could have came and politely knocked at the door and asked me about my friend and I would have gladly let him meet him or answered any questions he had. Instead he chose to incite hysteria over the internet and call the police over something really miniscule that could have been resolved by communicating effectively. I then reached out to the concerned parent and informed them that the story tha was told to them was a little embellished. After conversing with "Dad" was able to get things squared away. Blurring out photos and names in other facebook screenshots. "Mom" had also did her best to dispel the hate as well. Now that that was out of the way was time to focus on the other issue. The post claiming that Patches was peeping over fences. I posted on Nextdoor informing letting the people of the community know of the situation and explained my intentions. MOST people actually read it, those that didn't still didn't understand and continued to push the notion that Patches was approaching kids, animals, and backyards. They wanted to know WHY this was happening, and thats the issue, it wasn't happening. Yesterday (Monday the 30th) While at work. I was still getting messages saying that I had broken Lubbock facebook and was everywhere. My family had even contacted me asking if that was me and telling me that I can't be doing what I was doing. Shaming me for no reason. I needed to contact the woman who had posted an 2 images with a caption that I was yelling and up to no good (It was shared 400+ times). After messaging her and waiting 2 hours for a response she finally responded. She had some words for me and I had politely responded and informed her what had actually happened. She hadn't responded back to me however it was late and I needed to rest. Today as part of my daily routine I checked up on facebook and noticed she had taken it down.

One more item: one neighbor (the father of the girl) was awesome enough to realize that no harm was meant after Patches the Clown contacted him. He was totally cool once he found out what was going on. I'd like to give him more credit, but it's probably best he's not on blast:

If you'd actually like to follow or connect with a rollerblading clown who's actually a pretty cool guy, you can do so on TikTok or Facebook.