Third and Indiana: A Disturbing Reality
I spent most of my childhood in Philadelphia. Reading Steve Lopez’s first novel, Third and Indiana, brought back a lot of memories. Third and Indiana paints a vivid picture of the violent and gritty Philadelphia ghettoes, most notably, the Badlands in North Philadelphia. Even though I am very familiar with the very brutal and dangerous lifestyles of the Philadelphia ghettoes, reading about it in this gripping novel was a bit disturbing.
Third and Indiana is about a fourteen your old boy who runs away from home and finds himself entrenched in a very adult life of selling drugs. This is no ordinary tale of a runaway kid, who finds himself homeless on the street. No, this is a tale of growing up too fast, wanting to make the fast money that the drug dealers make. This is a tale that is a reality for so many youth in Philadelphia.
One thing that disturbs me about Third and Indiana is a truth that I and many others already know—that adults throw these kids into the gang and drug life, demanding loyalty and respect and their lives in exchange under the auspice of being a real family, taking care of each other and making crazy amounts of money, but the price is so high. Diablo tells Gabriel, “You see friends in other gangs; you don’t know them no more. They’re enemies. You do this job right, follow the rules and you have a future in this. You fuck up, you’re dead.” What’s worse is that this is a life that is extremely hard to escape. Once in, you become addicted to the money, to the lifestyle. You become known, almost like a celebrity, as the book explains, just by hanging out with the right people, on the corners, in the drug or safe houses. The lifestyle itself becomes a living, breathing organism that’s hard to escape.
Another piece of the book I found disturbing is Gabriel’s “anonymous” street drawings of slain Philadelphia youth. I honestly believe that the drawings are a metaphor for the outside world pretty much turning a blind eye to the plague of violence not only infesting the city, but taking the city’s children hostage. The Badlands is full of dilapidated, abandoned warehouses that are soon used as drug houses or refuge for the homeless. The abandoned warehouses are the twenty-seven slain youths abandoned by the outside world. The people driving by and either not paying attention because they are too scared or do not care—they are the outside world.
Third and Indiana is an in-your-face novel that tells the world like it is. Maybe some people think that this story is a grossly exaggerated depiction of the growing violence in Philadelphia, but I know people who live this life, have been living this life since we were kids. I know people whose lives were claimed by the street violence, who could have easily been one of Gabriel’s street drawings. I know kids who could have easily been Gabriel, or Ofelia, or Eddie, Father Laetner and even Diablo. What’s disturbing is that, as profound as this book is, still no one cares. The abandoned warehouses are the Badlands.
