The ReadJack Interview: The Michael Jordan Superman Painting
Bulls fan Carlos Medina on his father's iconic Michael Jordan Superman painting at the 1998 Grant Park rally.
When Carlos Medina left his house in Cicero with his father and friend in the early hours of June 16, 1998, he didn’t know he was going to make Bulls history. But that’s Michael Jordan for you.
He always stands out.
Medina, then 17, attended the final Bulls championship rally with his friend Alfonso and his father Carlos Medina Sr., a painter who in 1996 created a huge image of Michael Jordan removing his cape to reveal the Superman symbol. The painting was an immediate hit with fellow Bulls fans, landed prominently on at least the FOX broadcast of the rally and SportsCenter, brought the Medina family photos and interviews everywhere from the Tribune to Eddie and JoBo… and 22 years later, a spot in The Last Dance, leading to a renaissance for Medina Sr.
“He put it out of his window and people were coming by and taking pictures with it again,” Medina says today. “It’s a nice little piece of memorabilia that we have.”
A Michael Jordan superfan, Medina has continued his love of the Bulls and Chicago sports as co-founder of CHIngon Deportes Network1. The team, including Carlos Medina Sr., broadcast a podcast at Fabre Studios in River North and hosted massive Bears playoff watch parties — and in a full-circle moment, they are credentialed Bulls reporters.
Now in this interview, Medina reflects on his legendary moment in the Bulls dynasty: his father’s Superman poster.
This interview has been edited.
Tell me your day — was this your first rally?
CARLOS MEDINA: It was my first rally, and it was precisely for that reason. I was telling my dad, “We gotta go.” I don’t know if you remember: the Bulls, they won the championship out in Utah, and they were selling tickets to watch the game at the United Center. That’s what we ended up doing. I told my dad, “They’re going to dismantle the team. We’ve got to go to the rally.”
My dad had made that painting in ‘96. I told him, “We have to take the painting.” We had these huge sticks, and when we got to Grant Park, they told us that they weren’t allowing any sticks. We couldn’t take that into the park. So we went back to the car and we were going to leave the painting rolled up in there, but I said, “Dad, I really want to take it.”
We’ve got these pieces of wood hanging out of it, so we broke them, and we were able to get the painting into Grant Park. We had no idea what kind of hoopla this was going to create.
What time did you get there?
Maybe six in the morning. I remember getting there super early. We ended up setting up shop on the back end. We put out a couple blankets. We were just hanging out. And I told my buddy, “Let’s open this thing up. Maybe we can get Michael’s attention.” That was my big thing, because Michael is my idol.
How early were you there compared to other people? What was the crowd like when you got there?
It was packed already.
At like six in the morning.
Oh yeah. There was a line to get in. I don’t remember what time they opened. But as soon as we opened it up and unrolled it, we took like three steps and people were like, “Oh my God, can I take a picture with that?” So there was a line to take pictures with the painting. People started coming up to us — WBBM-AM, a bunch of radio stations coming up to my dad to interview him. Eddie from Eddie and JoBo started interviewing my dad. It was crazy. It was absolutely nuts.
When the rally started, I told my buddy, “Let’s try to get as close as possible.” Remember, we were way in the back. And a couple of guys — I was 17 at the time, but I was a big dude. I’m like 6’3, 6’4, a couple hundred pounds, 220 maybe. And my buddy was about the same height. These shorter guys, they were probably 5’8, 5’9, and they were like, “We’re gonna get you on our shoulders!” And sure enough, these guys picked us up and we tried to get the painting up as high as possible so that maybe Michael would see it.
Without the internet back then, without our phones, it wasn’t until the next day when we saw the pictures of the painting on the Tribune, the Sun-Times. I logged into Yahoo or AOL and it was the first page. My dad got invited to do an interview in studio on B96 with Eddie and JoBo. He had a little 15 minutes of fame.
That’s so great!
Yeah, it was really cool man. It was a really cool experience. And just recently when they had The Last Dance, he brought it out. He put it out of his window and people were coming by and taking pictures with it again. It’s a nice little piece of memorabilia that we have.
That’s amazing. How was the sound system in there? How easy was it to hear all the speeches?
Oh man, I don’t think we heard anything! You would cheer when everybody was cheering. (Laughs.) We were really far back. I didn’t realize how far back we were until we got home and I was able to see the aerial view. “Wow, we were really far back there.” It was a cool day. A really cool day.
We’d never experienced anything like it. My dad is an artist, so he’s done galleries, lots of paintings. He was used to people saying, “That’s really nice.” But this was on a whole other level. The amount of people standing in line so that they could take pictures with it, ones with their kids, things of that nature, it was a really cool experience.
Tell me about going to the United Center to watch Game 6 from Utah.
Yeah so, again, I was 17, I was a senior in high school, and I told my dad that I wanted to go out with the festivities. I said, “We have to go to the United Center. It’s gonna be crazy. Everyone’s going to be there.” And it was pretty close to a sellout.
It’s standard definition on a Jumbotron. It was terrible. We left the game recording at home so I got home to watch it and actually enjoy it. But after they won, we celebrated. My dad had this cargo fan, like a Dodge — some type of minivan.
Where were you guys sitting in the stadium?
The 2 or 300 section. Everyone was trying to sit there because you were eye-level with the Jumbotron.
But once they won, we went driving around on Madison. We were driving around the neighborhoods. We would open the side door and we were high-fiving people on the street. It was a madhouse — literally a madhouse!
How much were tickets to go to the United Center to watch a game that’s in Utah?
They were ten bucks. We couldn’t afford to go to a game. I think I saw Michael Jordan play one time.
I saw him twice, and one of those was when my brother won a contest to shoot hoops at Chicago Stadium. That was one of them, and the other was the big Hanukkah present. My parents got them in ‘96. I was so excited.
The only time I ever went: my uncle got me tickets in ‘89 or ‘90 at the old Stadium. But I never got to see Jordan at the UC, so the fact that I got to go to the United Center to watch a game for ten dollars — I thought it was the most incredible thing.
Tell me what the streets looked like. You walk out of the United Center: what do you see?
Everybody is coming out of the stadium and we’re all high-fiving everyone. This is a natural high. We get into the minivan, and this is an old minivan so we’re able to open the door as the car’s moving. There’s no safety back then. (Laughs.) We opened up the side door and we were high-fiving people.
There was so much traffic that we’re moving really slow. My dad started driving around random neighborhoods and the entire city — it was crazy, the amount of people out. Everyone rocking Bulls.
What did you wear?
I had a reversible black and red Jordan jersey. And then the only pair of Jordans that my parents ever bought me were the 12s. So I was wearing the 12s. They were the white with black on the side. And it’s funny: I still have that jersey.
But yeah dude, it was an incredible night. When we went to go watch the game, I went with my mom, dad, sister, my friend Alfonso. There were a few of us. My little sister was I think 15. Completely bored out of her mind. But the rest of us were out there celebrating.
You got the 90s minivan! Everybody get in!
It was a cargo van! My dad’s an airbrush artist, and he had airbrushed this minivan with these paintings. On the side of it was this mermaid and the other side was half-man-half-horse. Epic-ass drawings. When he bought it, it was an all-white van, and he bought it specifically to paint it. So this thing was always grabbing attention no matter where we went.
We’re driving around this minivan and we just opened up the side door and we were waving. We had these little Bulls flags, high-fiving everybody that would come by the van. We ended up calling it a night when they started shooting fireworks at us. My dad was like, “Alright, that’s enough.” (Laughs.)
That was the first time I had ever — so, we would watch the games at home, and we would celebrate at home, and we would sit around the TV and watch all the coverage. Mark Giangreco getting champagne in his eyes. Tim Weigel. Johnny Red Kerr. All these guys getting sprayed. We would sit around watching these guys, and it never dawned on me until that last season to actually go to the rally. It was the best rally I’d been to until the Cubs won the World Series.
Any other memories from either Game 6 or the rally?
The thing that really stands out is those two guys, these two African-American gentlemen, who said, “We’re going to put you on our shoulders.” I was like, “Uh, the hell you are! I’m not going to let you carry me.”
Because you were bigger than them.
Yeah. I’m literally 6’4, 220 in high school. My friend was 6’1, 230. These guys were no more than 5’10. I was like, “You are going to pick us up?” And sure enough they got down, picked us up, and said, “Come on man — wave it! Let Michael see it!” (Laughs.) Everybody around us was trying to make noise and get attention so that Michael could see the painting. I don’t know if he ever saw it.
Now that I’m thinking about it, we had a meeting at I think the Tribune, and they were thinking about making it an insert. But then all of a sudden these attorneys started coming in. … They’re trying to get my dad to put it up for auction. He got offered a few thousand dollars.
I’m glad he kept it. Where did he keep it all these years?
He’ll bring it out. He had it in the living room. And we had it at a gallery for a while. It was up at a restaurant for a little bit. And then he had it in storage in his basement for a few years. And maybe four or five years ago we started doing a podcast and I asked him if we could put it in the background.
The podcast never really took off — it was just a bunch of buddies talking — but now I have a studio out in River North, so we do production and podcasts and TV shows and interviews and all kinds of stuff. I told my buddies, “We have a studio now, let’s launch this network.” I told my dad, “We’re going to give it new life.”
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Thank you Carlos for calling me back and giving me your time! Salute to Mr. Medina on his incredible painting. Have great photos of yourself at a Grant Park rally? Drop a note in the comments or email me at 6ringsbook@gmail.com.
Want more Bulls art? A Shot On Ehlo reader R.J. Casey shared with me this interview he did about his amazing Bulls art collection:
Want to learn more about CHIngon Deportes Network? This is a fantastic interview from Chicago Sports Bums.