Tag Archives: migrant neighborhoods

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.

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?