The Dancing Elephant
The Good Luck Store in Downtown Lake Worth Beach
The History of the Dancing Elephant
“The Dancing Elephant is a rebirth of our original store Rainbow Bridge. Rainbow Bridge was founded in 1972 by Tamas Burger, a Hungarian metaphysicist, and thrived for 50 years in various locations throughout the Lake Worth and West Palm Beach area. The store remained a pillar of the spiritual and literary community of Palm Beach County due to its incredible selection of antiquarian and esoteric books. Tamas sold the store to the Logan family in early 2022. His vision was for the store to be reborn as The Dancing Elephant, which he called "a good luck store”.
— From The Dancing Elephant website https://dancingelephant.shop/
An excellent article by Jorge Milian, One For The Books, in the Palm Beach Post, provided some of my research for this Newsletter.
Shane Logan purchased the store with money he made valeting cars at Buccan, a Palm Beach bistro, investing his valet earnings in Wall Street.
Shane is 24 years old, his other two partners are his brother Conor (25) and girlfriend Ava Zywczyk (23). “You don’t have much to lose when you’re 24,” Logan said. “You can plow your money into a passion project.”
There’s a photo of Shane reading The Wall Street Journal when he was 2 or 3. Shane’s mother, said her son was actually reading articles and not just taking a cute picture.
Shane’s mother gets credit for instilling the educational values for her family. “Reading was mandatory. Reading wasn’t an option. Reading was a passion. Everybody read.”
Shane graduated from St. Andrew’s School, Boca Raton and Purdue, Indiana’s Public Land Grant University. He chose not to waste time and money getting an MBA, opting instead to invest his money in an entrepreneurial venture that feeds his passion.
Shane is riding the waves of change in the United States educational system. The bricks and mortar institutions spent the past couple of decades teaching folks to become life long learners and folks responded by reading books.
I met Ava and Shane when Lynn Anderson and I stopped on a rainy Sunday. I showed Shane my books, hoping The Dancing Elephant may carry one. Shane chose He Who Has the Gold, Makes the Rules. I refer to Arnold Toynbee’s A Study of History in the introduction. Shane saw that and, in a Ninja like movement, picked up Toynbee’s book from a table and delivered it to me. Wow! The Dancing Elephant has thousands of books and Shane knows where to find a book from the card catalogue in his mind.
Address: 801 Lake Ave, Lake Worth Beach, Florida, 33460
Phone: +1 (561) 345-3130
Hours: M-T-W 11-6, T-F 11-9, Sunday 12-5
