Mr. Castillo was born in Chicago, raised in the Austin area, a neighborhood on the city’s far west side. As an adolescent growing up in some of the most turbulent times of the 20th century, Mr. Castillo observed distinct differences between himself as a Mexican American in an (at the time) mostly white, blue-collar neighborhood. As an exotic member of a gang of mostly Irish and Italian thugs he was able to persevere through sheer ‘cool’, picking up on the aesthetic of the streets, that peculiar ‘street suave’ necessary to survival, (unique) to the west Madison street area of the 1960s.