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?
The Essence of Chicagoland Areas 