It’s a sunny Friday in July when 6-year-old Louie is inspecting a group of small plastic dinosaurs displayed in a Southeast Portland side yard.
“This is my second favorite dinosaur,” Louie tells his mom, Stephanie. “What kind of dinosaur is it?” she asks. “I forgot,” he says sheepishly.
Six-year-old Louie checks out the some teeny, tiny books behind a metal door build into the fence of artist Rachael Harms Mahlandt on July 11, 2025.
Crystal Ligori / OPB
The Dino Exchange is just one of the installations in the yard of artist Rachael Harms Mahlandt.
“I have the squirrel exchange up there, a thimble exchange, little free library, smaller free library, the diorama…” she explains. In all, there are nearly a dozen pieces of what she calls sidewalk joy outside this Montavilla home.
Sidewalk joy is just what it sounds like: yard installations created to bring joy. The trend likely started more than a decade ago with free little libraries, the “take a book, leave a book” exchanges which started popping up in yards across the country.
It was something Harms Mahlandt noticed when she started exploring Portland with her two young children during the early months of the pandemic.
“I realized that we felt pretty disconnected from the community and didn’t feel like I knew Portland that well,” she said. “We had moved here from Washington D.C. a few years prior, but between getting a dog and having kids, we just really hadn’t gotten to explore the neighborhoods like we dreamed of.”
She made up something called the Urban Explorers Club, and each day she would take her kids out for a few hours of adventure, like exploring a new neighborhood or going on a hike.
“We kept coming across these installations where there was like a rubber duck exchange or somebody had made a mini-gallery where they showcased local artists each month in miniature,” she explained. “My kids loved it, so that inspired us to create our own spot.”
Rachael Harms Mahlandt stands behind her ‘Dino Exchange’ on July 11, 2025. An artist and curator of the Worldwide Sidewalk Joy Map, a she’s put together a collection art displays, mug and trinket swaps, free little libraries and more all that bring a bit of whimsy and inspiration to the communities they’re in.
Crystal Ligori, Crystal Ligori / OPB
The installations in her yard all seem to have a story, like The Bee-Stop, a pollinator seed library dedicated to a bumblebee they rescued and named Harriet. Harms Mahlandt even touched on some of the less joyous parts of this art, like the potential for vandalism.
“I think as humans it’s really easy for us to picture physical destruction, and it’s hard for us to picture intangible rewards,” she said. “But in the end it comes down to balance, I wouldn’t trade the 3 plus years I’ve had these exchanges, the memories I’ve made, the community connections I’ve made, and the joy and the fun that this has brought to my life and my community, I wouldn’t trade it for the world.”
As a self-proclaimed steward of sidewalk joy, Harms Mahlandt didn’t just want people to see the installations in her yard.
“When I would see someone come by, I would start telling them about the other spaces in town that they might get a kick out of and then somebody finally suggested, ‘You know, there should be a map of spaces like this,’” she said.
In 2023, along with artist Grant Brady, she started compiling all the locations she could find, creating the PDX Sidewalk Joy Map. Today, the map has around 130 different Sidewalk Joy locations, including ten tiny, hand-crank music boxes mounted along a fence and a vintage candy machine dubbed Super Awesome Prizes, which lets patrons choose from rock facts, a daily fortune, pinback buttons, and their most popular item, the Super Awesome Surprise Pack for just 50 cents.
The map can also point you to a keychain exchange and sticker exchange, a mini Blockbuster Video, a card trading post of mainly baseball cards with a few Pokémon mixed in, and a rubber duck swap.
A row of ten, tiny, hand-crank music boxes line the fence outside a home along NE 41st Ave in Portland, Ore on July 11, 2025. They play everything from classical tunes like Beethoven’s Fuer Elise to The Imperial March from Star Wars.
Crystal Ligori / OPB
Some installations were harder to explain, like a Wishing Tree in Northeast Portland. From far away, the horse chestnut tree almost looks like the trunk is covered in debris, but closer inspection reveals palm-sized notecards, scrawled with people’s wishes. Some of the cards were weathered, smeared and unreadable while others seemed written that day. They ranged from the straightforward wish “To make more art” to the heartbreaking “I wish for the ability to feel love again.”
The PDX Sidewalk Joy Map has been spreading outside of Portland, with people from all over the world using the map.
“I kept getting messages from people visiting from far away like Japan and Australia, or people messaging me saying ‘I created something like this based on what I heard about in Portland’,” she said. “I also would get messages from people saying, ‘I wish we had this in my city.’”
Last year, Harms Mahlandt launched the Worldwide Sidewalk Joy Map, curating everything from the Eugene Mug Exchange and a trinket share in Ashland, to a Free Little Art Gallery in Puerto Rico and a Keychain Exchange in the Netherlands.
“If people are excited about the movement, check the worldwide map to see if there’s something near you,” she said. “And if you don’t see something near you, maybe it means that you should be the one to bring Sidewalk Joy to your community!”
A hand written wish tied to the Wishing Tree on the corner of NE Morris Street and 7th Avenue in Portland, Ore on July 11, 2025.
Crystal Ligori / OPB