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If Evanston, a town that parallels Chicago’s racial diversity, did not have an AIDS problem, would Chicago? Did the city, which us north shore residents more often than not claim as our home grapple with all of the challenges of a modern, sophisticated and infected world, AIDS included? In Chicago, a total number of 23,158 cases were reported over the past twenty years (1/Appendix C), with a cumulative rate of 320 cases per 100,000 people (7). Competing with the national average cumulative rate of 329 cases per 100,000 (1/Appendix C), what constituted the large disparity between Chicago, a city only thirty minutes away, and my surrounding towns?

Area	AIDS rate	HIV/AIDS rate
Winnetka	72	-
Uptown	3106	1228
Chicago	320	147
Cook County	52	513.8
Illinois	263	128.2
United States	328	414.79

My exposure to Chicago was undeniably limited. My trips to the city revolved around high-end shopping sprees along the infamous “magnificent mile,” four-star dining escapades to “Lettuce Entertain You” restaurants conveniently managed by a family friend living in Winnetka’s neighboring town and an El ride accompanied by the rest of the white, suburban population in search of the true Chicago experience- Wrigley field on a Cubs game day. None of these require me to spend time in poor or gay areas of Chicago, so how then did I accurately guess Uptown and the South Side as areas with some of the greatest number of AIDS cases? While I never ventured past the exit ramps narrowly missing the deeper areas of south side Chicago, transportation constituted the majority of my contact with the poorer and more diverse areas of the city. The El station at Avalon Street introduced me to the gay neighborhood of Uptown when my friend and I went to a concert at the Aragon Ballroom last fall. My dad, in true Catholic fashion, mandated I bring a whistle with me upon hearing I would be entering what he claimed to be a “different, yet dangerous” neighborhood. Upon exiting the station, we noticed a series of campaign flyers advocating to get tested for the city’s most persistent health problems including STDS and HIV/AIDS and joked it was time for my whistle’s debut. It turns out that Uptown has a prevalence rate of 3106 cases per 100,000 people. Driving to and from the city was no different. Upon entering Lincoln Park, one of my many shopping destinations, a wrong turn could easily turn into the Cabrini-Green, the housing project that represented the poverty stricken housing projects prominent on the “south side of Chicago.” Terrible with directions, my friends and I almost always joke about getting shot by a black, homeless drug addict just down the next block.