Tony’s Sports Relives Its Legacy With Hyde Park Pop-Up Shop
Tony’s Sports’s storefront is emblazoned with the shop’s iconic logo. Photo by Lily Qi
Tony’s Sports, a one-time staple in Chicago’s sneaker and streetwear scene, returns to Hyde Park for a weeklong pop-up shop inviting customers to relive the store’s heyday.
During its peak in the 80s and 90s, Tony’s Sports had seven stores throughout the city, with two locations in Hyde Park. Tony Fernandez, the founder and namesake of the store, opened the first location in 1985 on 3941 N. Sheridan Road.
Tony’s Sports earned a reputation as a haven for Chicago’s hip-hop enthusiasts. The shop would regularly hold concerts with local musicians, invite local graffiti artists to design and paint murals and capitalize on fashion trends popularized by rappers at the time.
Irie Swier, an Englewood native and former graffiti artist, was a regular customer at Tony’s Sports and stopped at the pop-up to take photos of the storefront after immediately recognizing the shop’s logo.
“[The logo is] simple as hell but you don't realize how iconic it is,” Swier said. “If you're from Chicago, you know it’s Tony’s Sports. You're not mistaking that for anything else.”
He says Tony’s Sports not only focused on being a retail space, but also on creating a necessary gathering place for a community of artists and creatives.
“It was an anchor point for the hip hop community in Chicago,” Swier said. “You could find the underground publications, you could find the underground zines that were written by people from Chicago... You could buy spray can tips, markers and stuff like that too.”
Tony’s Sports vintage-inspired flyers can be seen all around the pop-up. Photo by Lily Qi
In an interview with FlightSkool, Fernandez credits Tony’s Sports’s legion of loyal customers, and its lasting legacy, to the sense of belonging the store created for its customers, an attribute that allowed it to stand out and endure from other streetwear shops of the era.
“As soon as you opened the door to Tony’s Sports, it was like walking into a whole different world,” Fernandez said. “Tony’s Sports was the go-to place… It was people greeting you. It was family.”
Tony’s Sports continued to make itself a destination by bringing then-unknown brands to the city, like FUBU and Willie Esco. The shop had cultivated such a valuable reputation that after Michael Jordan’s retirement, the Bulls legend picked Tony’s Sports as the only independent retailer in Chicago to carry Jordan Brand, making it Jordan’s first official stockist in the city outside of Nike’s flagship Michigan Avenue shop.
“I drilled through the walls, literally, me and a couple other friends with jackhammers, we’d do the spot next door, another 1,200 square foot store,” Fernandez said of the original Sheridan Road store that was selected to carry Jordan Brand. “We needed ample space. We were growing too fast.”
Fernandez, a Chicago native who now lives in Florida, grew up watching his father become an entrepreneur who eventually opened three dress shoe stores throughout the city. He would work at his father’s shop after school, an experience he says gave him a model for how he wanted his own shops to look.
After his father closed the dress shoe shops, Fernandez says his father left him the remaining $10,000 in odds and ends inventory.
“That $10,000 was left to me and I had to turn those goods into money… [it] taught me the knowledge on how [he] built this, and how he did it,” Fernandez said. “I have a passion for what I built and what I follow.”
The pop-up is open until Feb. 16 and features several limited edition items such as t-shirts and basketballs. Photo by Lily Qi
Following the death of his father and a tumultuous lawsuit over inventory with a brand he had once sold in his store, Fernandez decided his time in the industry was over.
“The reason I started this whole ordeal was through the influence my father gave me,” Fernandez said. “I felt there were other things that were more important… I had already built a house in Florida, done and paid for… I said, I’m walking away.”
Still, Fernandez and his stores possess a legacy that lives on through Tony’s Sports’s former customers. As a teenager who regularly visited the shop, Swier says Fernandez and his success — as well as the people he met at the store — served as an inspiration for him
“He was definitely someone people my age [would] look up to, like if you were 14, 15 or something and you were into hip-hop at that time,” Swier said. “He made things seem possible...these are guys that came from the same kind of background you came from.”
The Tony’s Sports pop-up shop, organized in partnership with Adidas, opened on Feb. 7 and remains open until Feb. 16 at 1658 E. 53rd St in Hyde Park. Exclusive merchandise is currently available to buy at the shop including t-shirts emblazoned with the Tony’s Sports logo and airbrushed basketballs. Special events are planned for the rest of the shop’s duration, including a tattoo parlor pop-up on Feb. 15.