It’s engaging, it’s art, it’s fun, and Cargo has it. It’s the Venderia, a vintage vending machine where for a few bucks you walk away with prizes ranging from a random tarot card reading from The Dark Exact to a pre-addressed, stamped postcard to Donald Trump to a set of plastic vampire teeth.

The Venderia launched in 2013 when Taylor Valdés bought an old vending machine from a laundromat. She filled it with objects harvested from thrift stores, artistic friends, and kitchsy vendors, and she installed it at Beulahland. It was a hit. Over the years, she renovated more vending machines, theming their contents to their locations. Today, Taylor has 18 machines, including the custom-painted venderia just inside Cargo’s front door.

“Cargo is my favorite store in Portland,” Taylor says. “It’s so colorful—I feel transported when I’m there.” When she secured a spot for a vending machine with us, she knew just what to load into it. “International things,” she says. “Things from local makers.” 

Look into the window of Cargo’s venderia and you see Mexican embroidered face masks, Taylor’s famed Animal Spirit packages, greeting cards from Letra Chueta Press, Vortex Vintage notebooks, and so much more. With every twist of the mechanism inside the machine, one prize tumbles into the tray, and a new prize appears in its place. What you saw last week likely won’t be around the next time you stop by—the venderia’s offerings change regularly.

The Venderia came to Cargo through another of Taylor’s imaginative projects: Mano Poderosa (“Powerful Hand”) piñatas. Taylor grew up in Costa Rica, settling in Portland when she enrolled at Lewis & Clark College in 2000. As a Latina, the piñata is part of her culture. As an artist and activist, she took it a step further. 

Taylor calls the papier mâché hands—each as tall as a kindergartner—“thera-piñatas.”“Hands symbolize what you do, what you can control,” she says. Each piñata comes ready to be filled with candy and slips of paper on which you write what you intend to do with your hands—whether it’s to plant a vegetable garden, write a letter, or serve breakfast at a shelter—whatever is meaningful to you. As you bat at the piñata, you imagine the obstacles you’re crushing to reach your goal. Then, everyone reads the slips of paper that rain down and holds each other accountable for what their hands accomplish.

Taylor’s thera-piñatas entranced Brigid, who talked with her about making some to install in Cargo’s entryway. Now suspended from the high ceiling, the piñatas jostle in the breeze, and, like real hands, each one is different. One hundred percent of the proceeds of the thera-piñata’s sales supports Sankofa Counseling, a Black-owned, woman-owned, trauma-informed therapy practice serving Black, Brown, and historically underserved communities in Portland. So far, Cargo has passed on more than $1,200 to the group.

For more information about Taylor, her art, and the Venderia, visit thevenderia.com and follow her on instagram at @thevenderia. For a “hands-on” experience (excuse the pun), come visit Cargo, 11 am-5 pm, Thursday through Sunday.

Shop Taylor’s incredible creations below!