Recalling Ford City's Fabled Peacock Alley And The Nickel Bag

CHICAGO — By the time Ford City Shopping Center opened at 76th Street and Cicero Avenue 60 years ago this month, over 4,500 enclosed shopping centers that were small cities unto themselves dotted the American landscape.

The jewel of Chicago’s Southwest Side, Ford City rose from its humble beginnings as a munition’s factory making B29 bombers during World War II and, later, airplane engines in the Korean War, before being retrofitted to make automobiles. Part of the old factory building was remodeled for the then-cutting edge retail center you see today.

Ford City was the largest enclosed shopping mall in Chicago, until it was knocked off that mantle by the opening in 1971 of Woodfield Mall in Schaumburg. It joined other mid-century cavernous barns across the Chicago region. Retail marvels offering shiny stores and shops in a climate-controlled environment that turned polar vortexes into spring, with chandelier fixtures and water fountains, where occasionally the Hare Krishna’s would break out in spontaneous dance.

>>> Proposed Plan For $150 Million Massive Redevelopment Of Ford City Not A Done Deal Yet

In recent years, Ford City Mall has struggled with significant vacancies and disinvestment. The distressed mall was purchased in 2019 for $16.6 million by Namdar Realty Group, giving many area residents hope that the “dead mall” could be resurrected as a contemporary shopping center with standalone stores.

The late great Chicago DJ — Yvonne Daniels — visits the Nickel Bag.

So when a proposed plan to demolish the old mall and transform the parcel into a $150 million modern, master-planned industrial campus, it unleashed a tsunami of memories from area residents. Evoking the most nostalgia was the old Nickel Bag.

Natale “Nate” and Diana Passaro opened the Nickel Bag in 1970, downstairs in the basement of Ford City Mall in the fabled Peacock Alley. It was the place to go if you were looking for a pair of bell-bottoms, a fringy vest, leather jacket, chokers, black light posters, candles, incense, toys, novelties, rolling papers, bongs, pipes or a “Gas, grass or ass, nobody rides for free” bumper sticker.

Nate was an orphan raised by his old world Italian grandparents in Bridgeport, where he snuck out to play with the neighborhood hooligans. The vivacious Diana Ippolito, was a proud graduate of Steinmetz High School on the city’s Northwest Side. The charismatic teens met through mutual friends. They married in 1956 – some would say much too young – when they were both 18.

“My dad lived all over the city, mom was a North Sider,” their daughter, Michele Reichert, 65, told Patch. “My [maternal] grandparents came from Sicily. Her father wasn’t too thrilled with her choice of husband.”

A jack-of-all-trades who liked to dabble in various careers, Nate was a driver for McLean Trucking (“the only job I remember him having,” Reichert says) and then the Nickel Bag, a slang term for a five-dollar baggy of pot.

“They both were very smart with good business sense, my mom especially,” Reichert said. “They never went to college.”

Neither Reichert nor her older sister, Kathy Ring, 68, a retired advertising attorney, knew what the papers and bongs were when they went on weekends to help their mother fold bell-bottoms at the Nickel Bag. They don’t know if their parents smoked weed.

A hip young couple graced the merchandise bags at the Nickel Bag.

“I remember asking one of my dad’s friends what a roach clip was,” recalled Ring, who was in seventh grade at the time. “He told me it was for catching roaches, and I believed him.”

The Nickel Bag’s biggest competition in Peacock Alley was a Just Pants store which was always trying to undercut the Nickel Bag’s prices on jeans, Gingiss Formalwear, a karate studio and the John Amico Beauty School.

“I remember you had to pay a dime to use a stall in the women’s room,” Reichert said.

Painted inside the store was a mural of Janis Joplin, Jim Morrison and Jimi Hendrix that took up an entire wall. The Nickel Bag hosted fashion shows, and Chicago FM DJs would often drop by for special appearances. Rock music blared constantly throughout the store.

Teens model the hip fashions at the Nickel Bag.

But then Nate and Diana decided to split up, and the Nickel Bag closed after only a few years.

“My parents were very good-looking,” Ring said. “They were always getting hit on.”

Diana, a talented entrepreneur, went on to open another store on her own, the Jean Machine on 63rd Street off of Kedzie Avenue, that carried jeans and silkscreen concert tee shirts. After the Jean Machine, Diana opened another shop, More Than Video, which she did very well with for many years.

“My mother would go out of her way to help customers find jeans in their sizes,” Ring said. “I have friends who to this day say my mother was the best at fitting them.”

Nate sold cars for a while and moved to California.

“My dad was wild and fun, he loved his kids, but he would never settle down,” Reichert said. “I think it was because he was raised by other people. He was extremely intelligent and read constantly.”

On Wednesday, Sept. 10, Ald. Derrick Curtis (18th) will be hosting a community meeting to hear more from the developers, and where residents can give input into the proposed plan, starting at 6 p.m. in the auditorium at Richard J. Daley College, 7500 S. Pulaski Road, Chicago.

Meanwhile, memories of the now gone, great chains that anchored Ford City — Polk Bros., Carson Pirie Scott, Sears Roebuck, Wieboldt’s and Monkey Ward — linger on, including the Nickel Bag.

“I have the bags they used to put merchandise in and a bong and leather poncho in my closet,” Reirchert said.