Indy Correspondent Podcast #3: Broad Ripple in the 1980s!

Other Sister and Dan Grossman

I’m delighted to present our podcast for today, which is all about Broad Ripple, a neighborhood on the north side of Indianapolis. These days, no one would blame you if you described it as one big bar surrounded by upscale apartment blocks. It’s a place where you need to be extra careful at night because of occasional bouts of gun violence. Fortunately, remnants of the older, calmer Broad Ripple remain. I mean the Broad Ripple of decades ago. There’s still ducks to be found, hanging around the Central Canal that attaches to the White River in Broad Ripple. You’ll still find people trying to kayak in the White River, and you’ll still find teenagers hanging out on the bridges. You could also find a few good restaurants tucked away here and there. But much of what used to be in Broad Ripple is lost to the past. That is, if you knew Broad Ripple when you were growing up in the 1980s but left for good afterwards, your perspective would be different than mine. So it is with my OTHER SISTER, who left Indianapolis decades ago. But here’s an excerpt of her introducing today’s podcast, clocking in at 28:03 minutes:

“And for those of you who have no idea what we're talking about, imagine a place, in the era of The Breakfast Club, when you had the princess, the jock… There were all these cliques right in your in your schools… I think many people across the nation had the experience of finding a place and finding a community that was outside of your own school, right where you chose your own friends, you chose your own identity. You could try on, shed bond, confirm who you were through, assembling, meeting, hanging out with amazing people. My backstory: I had changed schools. I was at one school, and then I changed schools… I was always the kind of geeky ballerina girl who that's what I did after school. I didn't play any sports at school. I didn't I didn't have a team outside of the dance studio, which wasn't even at my school. So then I transfer schools my sophomore year of high school, and I go to another school, and suddenly I'm the popular girl. It was weird because I was such an outcast at the other school, but I'll try to make this short, sitting in the cafeteria with all the [popular] girls… I remember everybody being afraid, all these girls being afraid to get up and use the bathroom. And the reason was every time a girl got up to go use the restroom at the popular girl table, everybody else at the table would talk about that girl, right? And I decided at that moment that I didn't want to be at that table. I didn't want to live in fear. I wanted to choose my own friends, and I had had it. I had reached that moment in my life that all I had wanted was to be the popular girl, and then I realized that it was BS and this such an 80s story. But the following summer, I wound up getting a job in Broad Ripple in which I met so many amazing creative people… they were the punks and the skaters and et cetera. Outside of the mandated group which was our world: school.”