Well! This Market and cache has gone through several moves over the years. From the old Maxwell St area to Canal St and finally here.
This cache is a replacement for the archived cache by the same name GCRAD6.
Be sure to visit on Sunday otherwise your trip will be wasted. :)
The History
The Maxwell Street marketplace was to Chicago what the Lower East Side was to New York. At the turn of the century, when the first major wave of Russian Jewish immigrants settled in America, Chicago's Maxwell Street became famous for its open-air Sunday marketplace crowded with Jewish pushcart-peddlers--an institution which has survived in the hands of fresh waves of immigration.
The market was one of the greatest outdoor urban bazaars ever. There will never be another -- it was a unique part of Chicago's history. It was a 'neutral' spot, where Blacks, Whites, Asians and Hispanics all felt comfortable mixing.
Although the basic food, clothing, and household commodities were the most important products sold on the street, anything and everything was sold there. Most of it, by far, was new merchandise -- some even of very good quality, which later attracted affluent buyers. But on the stands, especially those of the weekend-only merchants, could be found piles of clothing, rusty nails, used toothbrushes, shoes and shoelaces, used carpeting from Pullman sleeping cars, used plumbing fixtures, coffins, bicycle parts, and even jinx-removing incense.
Bargaining was an accepted and expected part of retailing. Both the merchant and the frequent customer knew the rules of the games. There was often high-pressure selling and…ploys…Customers were often shrewd bargainers themselves and would shop from store to store looking for the best buy. Generally most customers did get good bargains because of the merchants' low overhead and because the merchants often obtained samples, odd-lot merchandise from auctions, or merchandise from overstocked manufacturers and wholesalers at low cost.
History of the Open Air Market
A flea market, also known as a swap meet, is a place where vendors come to sell their goods. The goods are usually inexpensive and range in quality depending on several factors which might include; urban or rural location of the flea market, part of the country that you are in, or popularity/size of the flea market. Flea market shopping is a popular pastime for many people in the Western world.
The vast majority of flea markets in rural areas sell goods that are second-hand. Larger selections of newer but usually inexpensive items can be found at some of the larger or more urban flea markets. The semi-spontaneous nature and vendor-oriented open-market layouts of flea markets usually differentiate them from thrift stores.
The original flea market is likely to be the Marché aux puces of Saint-Ouen, Seine-Saint-Denis, in the northern suburbs of Paris, a large, long-established outdoor bazaar, one of four in Paris, that earned their name from the flea-infested clothing and rags sold there. From the late 17th century, the makeshift open-air market in the town of Saint-Ouen began as temporary stalls and benches among the fields and market gardens where rag pickers exchanged their findings for a small sum. In modern days, the largest "flea market" for antiques is still that at Saint-Ouen.