My dad was traveling to Texas on a construction consulting job. In his spare time, he hopped over the border to Mexico, and picked up some Onyx chess sets and Elephants which my mother collected. He ended up getting friendly with the locals that made the onyx wares and decided to start a push cart at Fanuiel Hall called “The Rubbing Stone”. They sold thousands of simple pieces of onyx rubbing stones from that cart as well as the Elephants, chess sets, and bookends. After a few years it was time to expand to a store and a new name was born. The Stoned Elepant first opened on the 2nd floor of the Crimson Galeria in Harvard Square. 2nd and 3rd locations eventually at Salem’s Pickering Wharf and the Worcester Mall. Eventually the Salem store was expanded and the other 2 stores were closed to centralize efforts. The Logo has become recognizable far and wide. Thousands of t-shirts, sweatshirts, and hats were sold with that fun Stoned Elephant logo. There’s also a story on the Stoned Elephant in Salem history where some smugglers brought an elephant from overseas and had to feed it beer on the journey because they ran out of its food had nothing else to feed it, ergo a Stoned Elephant. My dad had the story printed on cards to give out at the store for fun. I read recently that a zoo in Poland is giving cannabis to the Elephants to reduce thier stress levels, seriously…
One of the first Elephants…