Category Archives: Voices From The Streets

Brothels in Chicago

I talk to all people in Chicago, no matter their age, race, or anything else, I want to get insights from everyone I can. I talked to a lot of youths as I try to find insights, but one really interesting young man from Marquette Park told me about prostitutes in the neighborhood. I was shocked. He told me that the Venezuelans have been moving into the area. He said the Venezuelans had a building on 59th and Spaulding, which was a brothel. I’m not certain if it was a gang ran brothel or if it had anything to do with human smuggling.

He said that some Mexican gang drove by and shot at the guys standing in front of the building, which brought the police to the spot. While the police were investigating the shooting, they discovered that the building was also a brothel run by the Venezuelans.
The young man didn’t know who the women were, but he said that they were either going to reopen it or just move it somewhere else because that place had been open for a very long time, and everybody in the neighborhood knew about it, but nobody had said anything about it. This is the same neighborhood attitude that I have read about in my history research of mid 19th century Chicago.


He told me that on his 21st birthday, his friends brought him to some other brothel near the Bridgeport area, but he didn’t like the girls, so they brought him to a different place somewhere on the north side.


Prostitution had been around in Chicago for many decades. I had no idea that it still goes on. Of course, it’s all underground. In the 19th century and early 20th century, a lot of politicians paid off cops to not shut down the brothels. There were strippers for the rest of the 20th century up until around the 90s or so, when there were strip bars with back rooms for prostitutes.

It looks like organized prostitution is coming back to the Chicagoland area through the migration of other cultures, from places where it may be the norm. Do you support or oppose this?

Writing The Essence of Chicagoland Areas

It all started with a camera, then a video, now this.

What is this page and what am I doing with it? I interview people daily for my YouTube channel or by doing Street photography in the Chicagoland area. My main goal was to interview people from every neighborhood in chicago, but the only problem is that a lot of neighborhoods are dangerous and they’re not so easy to maneuver around in, but my goal is to reach every voice that I can throughout every neighborhood, in this I will try to capture insight of every neighborhood no matter how dangerous, then write about it here unless I an about to get it on video first.

The insight I’m looking for on this channel is the current state of Chicagoland neighborhoods and the history the people have of it. I want to get a perspective from everyone that I can, and that means every soul that lives in Chicago or of has ever lived in Chicago at some point.

I generally ask questions like, “what are the rent prices, how is the crime, where is your favorite place to eat, how do you compare the past and present of Chicago”, and a mess of other questions.

I initially started the Essence of Chicagoland Areas on Instagram. I was trying to tell stories by candid pictures by doing Street photography. Then I started interviewing people while I took their pictures, but those interviews made the pictures less candid, so I quit doing that, and went back to full candid street photography. Then I opened a YouTube channel and started interviewing people around the Chicagoland area on video in various specified neighborhoods. You could look up any of those channels by searching this channel’s name, otherwise you can just read about it here.

I have some really good conversations with people in Chicago, but some of them do not want to be recorded, so I figured I would write about what they told me instead, while keeping their anonymity. And that’s what I aim for on this particular site for this channel, to focus on the stories and history of the people. The essence of Chicago from the mouths of the people and not from a city funded fairytale from city hall.

I have some of my own interesting stories of Chicagoland area. I have knowledge of Chicago since I am born and raised in the area and been here since. But in my videos I do not really want to talk about myself or tell the story of other people’s neighborhoods,  I really want to hear the perspective from the people that live in these various neighborhoods, for them to tell me about their own experiences, rather than me narrating that for them over various video clips. Although some people are ok with audio that I put over the video. I hold the camera away from their face and microphone to their mouths, and it works out fine.

I hope you like this site and find it insightful or at least interesting.