Shirley is almost 51 years old. She grew up in the Austin neighborhood. A couple of her daughters live with her. She says that the neighborhood is not what it used to be. She advises me not to walk around the Austin neighborhood without backup with me.
I asked her how she liked living there now. She said she can’t wait till she moves. She was hearing gunshots last night. She says that she thinks they were gunshots but nowadays she doesn’t really listen for them because they’re so often. She said that she’s numb to it already. She can’t wait till she moves out of the neighborhood I’m going to a safer neighborhood.
She says that people aren’t as respectful as they used to be. Kids are dangerous now and very disrespectful. She just wants to move out of the area. Says that she’s been there too long.
I told her that I had heard from a few old timers that the Austin neighborhood was really beautiful back in the 1950s and ’60s. Shirley agreed with me. But I told her that the neighborhood was coming up and getting better especially north of Chicago avenue. She once again agreed with me.
Streets were once lined with fruit trees and evergreens that sat in front of lots and houses that sold for a few thousand dollars. In the year 1912, a bungalow sold for $4,400. It was one of the first electrified areas of the Chicagoland area. They even had some of the first streetlights in the Chicago area, some residents say that they were literally the first, but that’s mostly hype. Edison Park had been a relatively young town that was annexed by Chicago just a few years prior. But amid those happy homes sat a building that temporarily housed people who were alcoholics or drug addicts who wanted to be free from the addiction. The Edison Park Sanitarium was filled with vagabonds, drunks, and drug addicts, whose lifestyles were marked by criminality. The hard wooden floors smelled of varnish, cleaning supplies, and whatever sickness flew from the bodies of the people who stayed there. Some men were committed to the facility. Some of them had the shakes from withdrawals. A lot of people had died in their beds while trying to overcome the disease, since medicine wasn’t that advanced at the time. Most of the mortality occurred in severe cases, while the mild cases typically recovered. The sanitarium offered a cure to these addictions free of charge, but if the patient survived and were able to move on with their life, they would then be charged. Medical facilities at the time were sometimes quite harsh. People believed that if they wanted to improve, they would have to endure the type of punishment that involved dealing with the staff. Heroin and morphine addicts seem to have more unpleasant withdrawals than alcoholics. A lot of the people in the Edison facility were drug addicts, among alcoholics. Morphine and heroin users would vomit and defecate on themselves, with uncontrollable diarrhea. The facility smelled terrible, which made the staff resent the place and having to deal with addicts. It was a harsh environment marked by frequent brawls and arguments with the staff. Everyone was chain-smoking at their bedside while dreaming about how to either get their next fix or become healthy. Married men would have sex with the widowed drunk women who were in the facility. Some women made their rounds with men, stirring up jealousy, which resulted in a lot of bloodshed and bad vibes that the staff tried to keep under control. Some relationships lasted for a while outside of the facility, but the time inside the joint was something they would never forget. A majority of the people were advised to go to the facility. Their minds were there, but their hearts were still in need of the drunken state. They were cured upon their release, but many flew back into their bad habits even harder. Wife beaters, guys who couldn’t keep a job, suicidal folks, widows who tried to drink away their sorrows, any many others were part of this facility, along with criminals of sorts. This group of people, some looking for help, others were there from suggestion. They all adapted to their habitat, while some contributed to the creation of the environment more than others did. Some alcoholic women would piss on themselves all the time. Other guys made the place smell like a cross between diarrhea, puke, and sweat. The staff hated being there as much as the patients did, turning the place into a type of prison with rules that made no sense. Some of these people considered the time they had there as a dark moment in their lives, serving as a conduit into a new life plan, while others became so resentful that they couldn’t wait to return to street life, leaving madder than when they came in. With the start of Alcoholics Anonymous and other similar programs, fewer people attended the facility, the line dwindled. It eventually closed sometime in the mid-20th century. The place just shut. Doors locked. Stories stayed. Edison Park remains still a very nice neighborhood that once held this facility.
A youth from the back of the yards neighborhood lived there for half his life, originally from the Little Village neighborhood. He said Chicago is dangerous. “I don’t think it’s a good idea for you to walk around here.”
He says that he hears shootings every now and then in the back of the yards neighborhood. I told him that I wanted to interview people with my camera, but he refused to be on video. He advised me not to walk around in the neighborhood on the main streets or in the neighborhood. He says he takes Uber everywhere he needs to go because it’s so dangerous there, he doesn’t want to walk anywhere unless it’s going straight to the bus. He advised me to show up at some Street event to where there will be a lot of people that may deter gangbangers from doing anything. The event passed. It’s a summer event.
On Thursday two men were shot on 47th and Justine Street. 47th is a dangerous path it seems. A 37-year-old man was shot in the head on Tuesday near Ashland and 46th Street. A kid robbed a store with a gun on 51st Street. A house was raided on Ashland and found six guns with kids sleeping upstairs. On Sunday, 51st and Hermitage a guy got stabbed out in front of church after Mass at our Lady of Guadalupe, apparently the guy was at church and when he came out of church some dude tried to rob him, but he got stabbed instead. The criminal may have been a neighborhood youth that had been loitering the week before.
Stay away from the Back of the Yards neighborhood in Chicago. This is a place where kids are afraid to go outside or avoid going to certain streets or going out after dark.
Have you ever wondered what shapes the essence of a Chicago neighborhood? What was it like then, and is it still gang infested now? Who were those Lithuanians living in the Back of the Yards neighborhood in Chicago, why did they leave? Now Latin Americans(and some undocumented ) shape the future. All the taverns, brothels, bath houses, and bakeries that once numbered in streets between the residences of the neighborhood are mostly only in the dying memories of part of the fading past. But some of the old, gritty structures still stand. The old bricks once housed sweat and tears, currently replaced by blood and fear, of the brown eyes peeking through the shades of the window. I want to see the people and document their stories. I will capture the history and also record current stories for future Chicagoans to uncover.
Driving up Ashland to 47th, then West to Wood street, and North. Keeping an eye out for some old store fronts or taverns that had been shut down, but all I seen in the streets were Mexican people in various areas. I was fed up with driving aimlessly, so I stopped and asked a guy who was with a group of other guys hanging out on the street for insight. I asked him if he knew of any historical spaces in the area or even the historic gate in the back of the yards. He was of some Latin descent, but his eyes were almost silver. I couldn’t really notice because he kept shifting his head and eyes all over the place. He almost seemed to think it was funny that I asked him the question. He may had been looking around to see if I had back up somewhere or if I was a cop. He was definitely on some type of drugs. He may have been a gang member with the others. They let me leave instead of killing or carjacking me. He must have thought that nobody was crazy enough to stop some drug addict gang bangers in the streets for neighborhood insights. He denied having any insight of old buildings in the neighborhood. He pointed me in the wrong direction to the historic gate of the historic stock yards that the neighborhood is named after. He may have been more freaked out than I had been, but for different reasons. His eyes were scanning down the street and at all the cars, while his friends kept their eyes steadily on me. There were about 12 incidents this week in the back of the yards near the same streets that I drove down. Some Latin nurse girl was doing Uber for extra cash in her neighborhood, and a group of guys used a fake account to have her pick them up. They stuck a gun into her side, then demanded that they drive. The Latinos then demanded that she go buy them some food. Near 47th and Kedzie, they had her run into the taco joint while they stole her car and left her at the taco place, which luckily was not far from where she lived. There had been at least 3 carjackings in the back of the yards this week, a huge cocaine bust, and several people getting shot or killed near 47th Street this week. I grew up a mile away from this place, now I am here to capture the history, but it’s so darn dangerous. Other incidents involved armed robberies where nobody was shot this week. There’s also an amount of carjackings that go unreported. I drove through this neighborhood as if it were 1990 still. I want to record people’s lives and the history of a neighborhood while also making history for others to read about. I’m not interested in recording the crime of the area, but sometimes that one aspect overshadows all of the other things and the essence of a community and families in a neighborhood.
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?
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.
The Essence of Chicagoland Areas 