Growing Up on 104th & Parnell: Part 1

The Block That Time Forgot (But Never Left Behind)

There's a strange paradox about growing up on a city block in the 1990s: you felt simultaneously tethered to place and connected to a digital future that was rushing toward you at light speed. My block—104th and Parnell, which people always seemed to think was Roseland—embodied that contradiction perfectly. We were living in what felt like a neighborhood from 1975 while the world was preparing for Y2K. Nobody thought that was particularly weird at the time. That's just what it was like growing up around there, on the Southside.

The block itself was a self-contained universe. You knew everyone. And I mean *everyone*—the older couple two houses down, the woman across the street with her overzealous porch garden, the brothers who'd always be outside doing something either impressive or actively dangerous (often both simultaneously). The corner store knew your family's order. The alley was your domain. The block had its own politics, its own economy, its own laws. It was tribal in a way that's almost impossible to describe to anyone who didn't grow up hyperlocal like that.

1990: The Year Everything Was Happening at Once

In 1990, I was heading into my sophomore year at Percy L. Julian High School, just over on 103rd by Beverly. My older brother had just started college—that four-year gap meant he was navigating a completely different world while I was still very much embedded in the high school ecosystem. But 1990 Chicago? That was the year everything collided.

The city was *obsessed* with sports in a way that's hard to overstate now. And I don't just mean the Bulls, though we're getting to them. Chicago in 1990 was arguing about three teams constantly, and I mean *arguing*.

The Bears were in this weird limbo. The glory days of the 85 Super Bowl run felt both recent and impossibly far away. Jim McMahon was gone. Walter Payton had retired in 1987. Now you had this young team trying to figure out its identity, and the whole city was debating whether they had one. Every neighborhood barbershop was running a version of the same conversation: "The Bears ain't what they used to be, man." But you still watched. You still cared. That's just what you did.

The White Sox were doing their thing—nobody was paying them much attention compared to everyone else, which was kind of the Sox story anyway. They existed in the shadow of the Cubs' futility and the Bulls' emergence. By 1990, they were already the team people forgot about until someone reminded you they played downtown.

But the Bulls? The Bulls were *ascending*. Michael Jordan was entering his sixth season. Scottie Pippen was there. Phil Jackson was about to arrive. The dynasty wasn't built yet, but you could feel it coming. Every kid on 104th and Parnell wanted to be number 23. Every single one. You'd be out in the alley doing your best impression of MJ, even though your best impression looked nothing like his.

Black Television as Cultural Anchor

Here's something that defined the era that doesn't get talked about enough: television. Specifically, Black television. This was the last gasp of a particular moment—a moment when there were enough Black shows on network television that your family could sit down and watch something that reflected you back at yourself.

The Cosby Show was still huge in 1990, though it was in its final season. That show was *everywhere*. Every family in the neighborhood seemed to have some relationship to it—loving it, hating it, debating it, analyzing it. The Huxtable family was affluent and urban and Black and on primetime network television, and that meant something. Whether you thought it meant something good was another question, but it meant *something*.

A Different World was still running, and if Cosby was your parents' show, A Different World was *your* show. Hillman College was a place where Black college life was funny and romantic and sometimes serious and always felt like it belonged to you. The characters wore clothes you actually wanted to wear. They dealt with issues you actually cared about. The show had *flavor* in a way that didn't require you to ignore who you were to enjoy it.

And then there was everything else—Martin, which was absolutely hilarious and absolutely crude in ways your parents didn't always appreciate; In Living Color, which was pushing every boundary it could find; Living Single, which came later in the decade and felt like a direct upgrade to the traditional sitcom formula; Fresh Prince of Bel-Air, which ran the entire decade and was somehow both funny and genuinely touching.

These shows were the cultural substrate of your neighborhood. Kids at Percy L. Julian were quoting them constantly. You'd go home, watch them with your family, and the next day the entire school would be discussing the episode. It was communal in a way that's hard to describe now when everyone's watching different things on different platforms. We were all watching the same Black television, at the same time, together.

The Music Never Stopped

If television was the visual language of the era, music was the soundtrack that made everything legible. And Chicago in the early 90s had a particular sound.

There was house music, which had originated in Chicago in the 80s and was still pulsing through the city's veins. You didn't have to go to a club to hear it—it was in the air somehow. DJs mixing beats in basements and warehouses, the scene building its own culture beneath the mainstream's radar.

But the mainstream was happening too. Hip-hop was becoming *the* dominant youth culture force nationally, and the music I listened to was coming from everywhere. West Coast hip-hop was *loud*—Tupac and NWA were redefining what was possible. But there was also something brilliant happening with female MCs. Queen Latifah and MC Lyte weren't just making music; they were commanding space in a genre that wasn't always welcoming to women. They had presence, intelligence, and flow that demanded respect. Digital Underground was doing weird, experimental things that felt liberating—not everything had to be serious or aggressive; it could be playful and political at the same time.

You'd hear all of it cycling through. Your older siblings and cousins had their preferences, their debates about who was authentic and who was selling out. The sound of the era was constantly playing—at school, at home, on Walkmans, on the radio. And Chicago had its own producers and its own sound developing, but we were also absorbing everything else, everything national and West Coast and international.

Music shaped how you moved through the world. It shaped what felt possible. It was aspirational but also accessible. You could listen to someone like Queen Latifah or Tupac and see a version of where you might go. You could hear the innovation happening and understand that artistry could come from anywhere, including the neighborhoods we were from.

The Sports Wars (A Very Specific Kind of Neighborhood Drama)

Here's the thing about Chicago sports in the 90s: it wasn't just about the teams. It was about *identity*. Where you lived, who your parents supported, what version of Chicago you belonged to—all of it got coded through sports.

The North Shore had their Blackhawks and their Cubs. Downtown had their corporate loyalties. But on the Southside, in the residential stretches, you had this beautiful three-way competition: Bears fans, Sox fans, and increasingly Bulls fans.

The Bears loyalists were usually the older generation or the most traditional. The team had history. The tradition mattered. You wore that Bears insignia like it meant something about who you were.

The Sox fans were more scattered, more defensive. They had this underdog energy even though the city didn't really pay them attention. There was something stubborn about being a Sox fan in a Cubs town—or more accurately, in a town where everyone argued about the Cubs while ignoring the Sox entirely.

But the Bulls? The Bulls were *new*. The Bulls were *young*. The Bulls were *ours* in a way that felt fresh. Every kid in high school in 1990 wanted to be part of the Bulls era. You didn't have to choose between old loyalties and new possibilities—you just embraced the moment.

And the arguments that happened on stoops and in alleys and at the corner store about which team was going to do what? *Chef's kiss.* That was entertainment. That was how you practiced rhetoric. That was how you learned to defend a position.

The Coexistence of Worlds

The beautiful and bizarre thing about 1990 Chicago, about the neighborhoods on the Southside specifically, was that these worlds coexisted without contradiction. You could be deeply rooted in neighborhood and block life while simultaneously aware that the digital future was coming. You could watch network television that reflected Black life while also knowing that television was only showing you a particular version of reality. You could love multiple sports teams even though they sometimes seemed to represent different versions of the city.

Television, music, sports, and the neighborhood itself were all communicating together. They told you who you were and who you might become. They gave you language. They gave you reference points. They gave you something to belong to.

And here's the thing: it all fit. There wasn't supposed to be this weird coherence between Cosby Show family values and house music and Michael Jordan and your actual block and your actual life. But somehow it all made sense. That's what 1990 Chicago was like—improbable but coherent, contradictory but functional, grounded in place and reaching toward something else at the same time.

The Setup

All of this—the sports culture, the television landscape, the music, the block itself—was the backdrop for a household that was building something practical. My dad was an electrician. My mom was climbing the ladder at OPM, going from admin to investigator. My older brother was already out, proving that pathways existed.

This was the world I was entering my sophomore year into. This was the context. And over the next parts of this piece, I want to dig into how all of this—the 90s Chicago experience, the household, the block, the technology arriving—shaped how I think about systems and design now.

But first, we need to sit with the moment. We need to understand what it was like to be a Black teenager on the Southside in 1990, when the Bulls were ascending and Black television was still viable and music was everywhere and your block was its own complete world.

That's the 1990s Chicago that made me. That's the foundation everything else is built on.