On the side of The Electric restaurant in the Avondale neighborhood of Birmingham, there’s a small teal and green box full of small toys and goodies. Wind-up animals, action figures, stickers, bracelets — all for the taking. At any given time, the inside of the box will look completely different.
Megan McCormick works at The Electric, 4426 Fourth Ave. South, and she kept seeing posts about these trade boxes online. Post after post about these “take one, leave one” boxes where in exchange for one item, another item is given. Most of the time these boxes are for books or music, but sometimes extend to categories such as pet toys.
McCormick said she found a website showing all the places in the world with registered trade boxes…