and Bolts for UPS, while working at a bookstore. On January 1, 1993, UPS decided not to renew Winick's strip for syndication, feeling it could not compete in the current market. Winick was unable to secure syndication with another company, and was forced to move back in with his parents by the middle of 1993, doing unfulfilling T-shirt work for beer companies. Winick had Nuts & Bolts in development with the children's television network Nickelodeon as an animated series, even turning the human characters into mice, and proposing new titles like Young Urban Mice and Rat Race, but nothing came of it. The Real World: San Francisco Winick applied to be on MTV network's reality TV show, The Real World: San Francisco, hoping for fame and a career boost. During the casting process, the producers of the show conducted an in-person, videotaped interview with Winick. When asked how he would feel about living with someone who was HIV-positive, Winick gave what he thought was an enthusiastic, politically correct answer, despite reservations. Winick was accepted as a cast member on the show in January 1994. The producers informed the housemates that they would be living with someone who was HIV-positive, but they did not reveal who it was. Winick and his six castmates (Mohammed Bilal, Rachel Campos, Pam Ling, Cory Murphy, David "Puck" Rainey, and Pedro Zamora) moved into the house at 949 Lombard Street on Russian Hill on February 12, Winick's 24th birthday. Winick became roommates with Pedro Zamora. Although Cory Murphy, who was the first housemate to meet Zamora, learned that he was HIV-positive when they took the train together from Los Angeles to San Francisco, Winick learned that Zamora was the housemate who had AIDS after Winick and Zamora had decided to be roommates, when Zamora told him that he was an AIDS educator, and subsequently showed his scrapbook to Winick and the other housemates. Winick's Nuts and Bolts strip began running in the San Francisco Examiner in March of that year. Winick, who is Jewish, was offended at Rainey's decision to wear a T-shirt depicting four guns arranged in the shape of a swastika, and by Rainey's refusal to accede to Winick's request not to wear it. After filming of the season ended, Winick and Ling moved to Los Angeles to continue their relationship. By August 1994, Zamora's health began to decline. After being hospitalized, he asked