....like you, i had a front row seat for the phenomenon called white flight. it was weird to watch, but as a kid looking for more kids to play with, the changing of the neighborhood was good because most of the families on our block and the blocks around us had been older white folks with no kids my age and then younger black families moved in with kids who wanted to play baseball and football and whatever, just like i wanted. i went to st. lucy grammar school on lake street.
in the mid-70s we moved to norwood park and it was culture shock for me....it was a fairly affluent neighborhood that i later referred to as "the great white northwest side". most of the kids in my school there had never really known any black people....i don't even remember black people working at any of the businesses there until much later. i still wanted to play unorganized sports in the street and one thing i noticed was that a large percentage of the white kids in that hood played dirty and cheated.....i never experienced that with the kids on the west side. that, and some other things made me miss austin. the best part of norwood park, for me, was the close proximity to caldwell woods and the bike trails, as i have always been a nature and wildlife lover.
during high school (i went to lane tech) a lot of my friends lived in rogers park so i hung out there during most of my free time. i retained most of those friends through college and i went to loyola so i was in rogers park every day. i started going to biddy mulligan's from the time i was 18 and a senior at lane and spent many nights there until i left chicago in 1990, watching the greatest blues artists of our time play. buddy guy and luther allison were the first two artists i saw play there and i was hooked for life.
after college i moved to andersonville (foster and ravenswood) and in 1990 i moved to miami.
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