Columbia Closings   What’s not in Columbia anymore

Well, of course I never thought to get a picture of them, but every year since the 1980s, the main elevator court at Richland Mall hosted a full orchestra of animitronic bears playing Christmas music. The signage proudly announced that the conductor bear who stood with his back to the audience benches (which were in front of Barns & Noble facing the elevator) was 'Leonard Bearstein'.

Because, you know: Richland Mall, there was never a crowd for the bears, but generally there would be a couple of kids and parents, perhaps heading to or from Gymboree sitting on (or running around) the benches.

I don't know if there was too much wear-and-tear on the bears, or it's just that nobody cares anymore, or the last guy who knew how to put them together retired, but this year, the bandstand is not in evidence, Leonard Bearstein is not tapping his baton, and the holiday decor is Christmas trees only.

If this auto lot, just south of the New Brookland Baptist Church, had an office, it must have been in a trailer.

Seems like it would be a good place to sell Christmas trees, but it's too late for this year, I guess.

(Hat tip to commenter James)

Bicycle shop Summit Cycles was in this nice old house near the top of the hill on Meeting Street, just down from WECO. There's not much more I can say about it, other than if you got your bike there, I'll bet you could coast all the way to the State Museum, lights permitting..

(Hat tip to commenter jonathan)

I noticed this evening as I was driving by Columbia Mall that there were no cars visible in the outparcel parking lot of Caprioska (the old O'Charleys / Sticky Fingers location). For a Friday evening, that seemed odd, so I turned in.

Taking a tour of the parking lot revealed that the place is open, but as Brickhouse, not Caprioska.

The Caprioska web site is as succinct as any I've ever seen, and their Twitter feed and Facebook page lead me to believe that they closed some time between 15 and 20 November 2013.

In the beginning, I think this place was to be sort of a Brazilian spot, but reviews indicate that changed over time.

The story at The State.

My first thought is that the headline is a bit sensational since we learn in the second paragraph that the tracts in question are currently vacant.

My second thought is that if Kahn Development loses the land, it loses control of the future of VAS.

Well, just to continue our ongoing list of Pig closings, the store in Litchfield Beach is now gone.

This was a fairly new store, and quite nice. It also seemed to always do quite a good business as far as I could tell.

The store is located in a plaza just across US-17 from the main Litchfield resort area (with the old Tara Theater) and has a number of restaurants and a few retail operations. There has been some churn during the financial crisis, and Blockbuster, a computer store and a couple of others have gone, but Massey's Pizza and Eggs Up have moved in, so on the whole it is doing OK. Physically the site is quite nice, with moss draped live-oaks and stop-light access.

The Pig will be re-opening as a Bi-Lo, and I have to think that this will mean moving the Bi-Lo from a few blocks north into this spot. Currently the Bi-Lo (originally built as a Harris Teeter) is in an older, failing plaza, which has recently seen the only other decent store (Litchfield Books) decamp to the new Fresh Market complex.

All of this movement takes place in the total revamping of the local grocery environment. Along with the newly opened and afore-mentioned Fresh Market, the Grand Strand's first Publix will be opening in the currently dowdy Pawleys Island Plaza, and a Lowe's Foods will be opening in a new plaza at the Island's South Causeway. This has to be putting a good deal of pressure on Food Lion which has been running a rather up-scale location also at the South Causeway.

(*) All the online google hits list this location as Pawleys Island. In my mind that is clearly wrong. This is Litchfield Beach, plain and simple. Somehow the area covered by the Pawleys Island moniker has tended to spread as "Arrogantly Shabby" has become "upscale" and gained a bit of cachet.

It's that time of year, folks.

Face it, your calendar is down to one page, and you're gonna need a new one Real Soon Now.

Well, have you come to the right place!

We've got 6 different designs for Pawleys Island standard and oversized wall calendars, and this year, I'm selling them at a $1.00 mark-up. That's right, to keep your prices low, one slim dollar is all I'll take home for each one you buy!

Did I mention that calendars make great Christmas gifts?

Buy Early, Buy Often!

As if all the street work in the area weren't enough, the USC Wendy's on Assembly Street next to the CVS is being partially torn down for renovation.

In these pix from 3 December, you can see that they have totally opened the building to the air, though the walls are still standing. Apparently they have a rush order on the worlk as the crew was still on the job despite it being night, and raining.

Commenter Andrew spotted the work, and commenter Terry found this explanatory story from WIS.

(Hat tip to commenter Andrew)

Since we were talking about radio today, I thought I'd note the passing of Son Of Steve.

When TV went digital a few years back, it was almost like having cable-lite: Each channel was now split into two or three subchannels, and along with the all-weather-all-the-time air filler, we also got fairly nice content like Me TV.

I finally got a digital radio for my car after the first replacement radio gave out and found that the same thing was true for it. Of course, in Columbia, that is not saying a great deal as the only digital channels I can think of here are WUSC and 967 Steve FM. While WUSC does run a secondary channel, it always seems to be some sort of world music that I don't care for when I hit it.

Steve, on the other hand, ran a secondary channel dubbed Son Of Steve which was, in theory, a 90s jukebox. I always got the feeling that it was someone's pet project and didn't get a lot of attention from management. For one thing, there were never any commercials, so, while that was nice, it can't have been a money-maker. For another thing nobody ever went through and equalized the levels on the promos and inserts -- they were always much louder than the music, to the extent that you had to hit the volume knob sometimes. And finally, it really wasn't a 90s channel. In fact, it seemed to skew 80s more often than not. Still, I like the 80s, and it was always a sure bet to find an actual song while commercial hopping amongst all the other local stations.

The way my car radio works is when you hit the primary channel for a digital station, the next time you hit the seek button, it hops to the secondary channels in order. So, I was used to punching the Steve button, and then hitting seek to hop to Son Of Steve. I was somewhat surprised last month when doing that tuned in a sermon. It turns out that if there is no secondary channel on Steve, the next hop is 97.1 which seems to be a religious station.

Interestingly, I can't find anything on the web to prove that Son Of Steve ever existed. If it was ever anywhere on the WLTY web site or any promo material, it's gone now, and it seems nobody else ever mentioned it online.

Post updated here.