Chicago neighborhoods – The Essence of Chicagoland Areas

Brighton Park Chicago Times

On the South side of 51st street a couple blocks West of western Avenue lived a young Mexican kid. He was maybe 25 years old or so. I told him that I lived a couple blocks away from there at 5005 South Artesian in Chicago back in the early 90s. He said that it was a dangerous neighborhood. I told him that it was a nice neighborhood when I lived there.
The alderman lived down the street from me North one block. Across the street from me was a really beautiful Italian girl that always tanned out in front of her house. Two doors down from him, about 4 doors from the corner, lived a kid a couple years older than me that played guitar like I did. One door South of me were these glam rock band guys that played guitar on the lower level of their house. Behind our house, from the alley, you can hear some older men play music in their garage. They were a blues band. Everyone in the neighborhood was white for the most part. There was a Mexican family at the South edge of the block. A bunch of Mexican youths would always sit on the front porch and steadily watch you walk by. Every now and then they would throw big Mexican parties while they blasted their Mexican ranchero music loud enough that you could hear in the house. We did not have central air, so all the windows were open, and you heard everything outside. White prostitutes used to walk up and down Western Avenue, but they were rarely seen. It was a nice and clean neighborhood. It was really quiet for the most part. We had everything we needed there too. On the Northwest corner of 51st and Western used to be a Butera grocery store, now a family dollar. There was a VCR video store and Nintendo game rental store on the Southwest Corner of 50th and Artesian, I believe turned into a Mexican joint. There weren’t any taco places in the neighborhood when I lived there, but now there’s a few in every direction.
This kid told me that the neighborhood became really dangerous at a time. Latin gangs filled the streets. Shootings and robberies were frequent. North of 51st street had become the more dangerous side, but the South side where he lived was a little more tranquil. He stays home and plays video games now because he is used to not going outside.
He graduated from school in the year 2015. He went to Curie high school. Curie used to be a nice school, but Bogan to the South was even better than that. I got accepted to both, but my dad sent me to De La Salle instead around 1991. He said that Curie had become a dangerous and bad school. Kids were forced to cross the street at the intersection because kids were getting killed j walking across the street from the train. He said that they even had race wars in the school. Black kids against Mexican kids. It felt like near a hundred kids outside fighting sometimes. He never participated in the fights, but he remembered them well. He believes the school is getting safer though since he attended.
There was a teacher in the school that was in the SD gang. He and his friends were Latin Kings. The teacher started throwing gang signs. Nobody had him as a teacher, so they treated him just like anyone else. They ran across the street and started fighting him in front of the dollar general store.
It was dangerous at school and at home in the neighborhood. One day after school, on his regular 20 minute walk home, he was robbed with a 45 pistol to his head, demanding money. He was safer in some parts of the neighborhood than others. Although he did hear shootings quite frequently at night. There were “two six gang members” on one side, and Latin Kings on the other side. Constant battles. He witnessed a Latin King get shot in the neck across the street from his house.

He lived in Bridgeport for a while. Said that it wasn’t too dangerous in that neighborhood. 31st or 33rd street near Morgan was one of the areas to avoid in that neighborhood. You want to stay away from there or keep an eye out. He said that 51st and Western was more dangerous than Bridgeport.
50th and Western was a nice neighborhood at one time. The craziest times back then were when the biker guys used to throw parties on the center of the boulevard. There were a lot of bars on the West side of Western Ave. That’s where the biker guys came from. They would bring games for kids, carnival rides, and beer tents, and loud classic rock music blasting. I went there a couple of times and hung with the locals. I didn’t know anyone there, but I was welcomed to sit with some bikers and their families on the picknick tables that they brought onto the grass. Hopefully the neighborhood gets back to that level of safety and social bonding.

Mexican in McKinley Park

My dad claimed to be one of the first Mexicans to live on Paulina Street in the 1970s. He used to deal weed, coke, and heroin, running around with another Mexican guy who moved in down the block around the same time. Life was different in McKinley Park back then. Bars lined almost every cross street, and the neighborhood was said to consist mostly of taverns and funeral homes. I was the last in our family to live there, staying until 1995, when it was still a somewhat nice and safe neighborhood.
One summer day in 1995, I was walking down 35th Street with my girlfriend, Lana, to get some food. About five or six Mexican guys were hanging out in front of an apartment building on the north side of 35th Street, between Honore and Wolcott. As we passed on the other side, they shouted at Lana, saying things like, “You need a real man,” among other remarks. She flicked them off, and I followed her lead. The neighborhood was beginning to change for the worse at that point, with gang members moving in and boldly yelling obscenities on the once-quiet streets.
America still felt quiet and peaceful on the streets during those years. Overpopulation and heavy traffic didn’t start until the large influx of Mexican immigrants began moving into Chicago. I miss those days, especially the empty streets on Sundays.
Recently, I met a Mexican woman who couldn’t speak English but said she’d lived in America since the 1980s. She told me she lived at 37th and Wood Streets. I shared that I lived just a couple of blocks away in the 1980s and 1990s. We were excited to connect and reminisce about the old neighborhood. My Spanish isn’t great, but we managed to talk about many things—she had to rephrase often since I’m better at speaking than understanding it.
She described how beautiful the neighborhood once was. She moved out about 15 years ago and has daughters. One of her daughters was best friends with some of my neighborhood friends. She took my name and phone number in case her daughter wanted to reach out—though it wasn’t necessary. She often spoke with her daughter’s friend Claudia, whom I used to hang out with in grade school.
We both missed the old neighborhood. She said it was once a nice, close-knit community but became too dangerous due to gangs and shootings, forcing her to move.

Puerto Rican Liked the Polish Establishments in Little Village Chicago

He moved out in 1989. Moved to Arizona. He keeps in contact with a few friends in the old neighborhood. He can’t believe how bad it has become in the Chicago Little Village neighborhood. He says that there was trouble before, but not like today. There used to be a lot of Polish and other European descent people in Little village by the 1980s, but it was mostly white with little bits of Latin Americans moving in. He loved the food. He remembers all the Polish delis and bakeries. He would name off a few foods that he liked. “Man, your don’t know what you’re missing if you haven’t tried it. I miss those places. The food was so good back then”.

He said that the white kids would sometimes pick on him. He had friends there, but sometimes he would run into the white gangs that would sometimes be around. “The two-two boys, the cobras,…” and others. Although he still misses the old neighborhood and how it used to be.

Being in the little village neighborhood before it became all Latin, it was a very safe neighborhood. He said that they didn’t call it little village, it was North Lawndale. It was a very safe and clean neighborhood. He missed the food and the people there, but not the trouble makers of the area.

I started speaking with an older Mexican woman that lived in the same neighborhood. She agreed that the food was really good and that the neighborhood was really nice. But she didn’t agree with the first guy I spoke with. She said that Little Village was mostly Polish in the 60s and part of the 70s when Mexicans started to take the area, pushing the European neighbors out.

She said she misses the old neighborhood and good food there. Her aunt worked at the furniture store that’s in the picture attached to this document. She opened a Mexican restaurant in the 70s with her husband in the area.

She said it was a nice place. But in the 60s when they first moved in, the white gangs burned their garage down, because they didn’t want the Mexicans to move in. The Mexicans moved in anyways, and all the European types moved out.

Gun Shots Are Easily Ignored in the Austin Neighborhood

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.

Addiction and Edison Park Sanitarium History

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 the first electrified area of the Chicagoland area. They even had the first streetlights in the area. 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.

It’s too Dangerous In Chicago

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.

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.