Beginning with the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr., the North Philadelphia neighborhood of Logan experienced a massive change and shifting population. The racial boiling point in Philadelphia was ten-years later in 1978. Ben's is set in the summer of that year when turf wars, crime and political upheaval were rampant in the city. The central character, Torch, is a small-time numbers writer who works for Bah-Bah, the head of a lucrative gambling and loan shark operation in south Philadelphia. When Bah-Bah is forced to change the location of his business and go underground, he runs into some tense situations with the members of Ben's. They are a loosely organized group of young men-including Torch-who are engaged in various types of petty crime and hustles. The situation is made more complicated and dangerous by the existence of a hidden meth lab and several, local rogue cops who want to find it and rip it off.
