Nadia Lopez (thanks to Bob P.)
Across San Francisco, colorful, decorated boxes stuffed with trinkets are popping up on street corners and on sidewalks, turning ordinary blocks into miniature trading posts.
The big picture: From the Outer and Inner Sunset to Noe Valley and the Castro, small trinket trade boxes stocked with everything from rings and rubber ducks, keychains, baseball cards, tiny ceramic animals, patches and custom pins are inviting strangers to take a tiny treasure and leave one behind.
- The rules are simple: take a trinket, leave a trinket — or just open the door and look.
Inspired by Portland’s broader “Sidewalk Joy” movement, the local trend reflects a growing effort to create accessible, community-run spaces that help strengthen neighborhood ties.
- “These are love letters from the person who makes them to their community and the way they’re treated is a love letter back,” said Rachael Harms Mahlandt, a Bay Area native and Portland-based artist who created a global map tracking these exchanges.
Catch up quick: Deanna Florendo launched San Francisco’s first trinket trade box in the Outer Sunset last November after “wanting to do something for our community that felt a bit more personal.”
- As a vintage trinket collector, she was drawn to the idea for its simplicity and ease, being that it was affordable to create and could also withstand the neighborhood’s coastal climate.
- Soon, visitors were lining up, bonding over their new finds and connecting online afterward to trace their trades.
- “What I love most isn’t even the trinkets, it’s the experience,” she told Axios.
- Now, she helps other residents start trinket exchanges in their own neighborhoods. She’s even created a collective via group chat so that owners can swap tips, promote new launches and step in to help maintain one another’s boxes when needed.
How it works: For those wanting to start their own, Mahlandt said the barrier to entry is lower than it looks. Many can be installed with minimal tools and in many cases, without a permit, she said. (continued on Page 2 or here)