Columbia Closings   What's not in Columbia anymore

Tainos was a Caribbean restaurant in a Broad River Road building perhaps most notable for having been the original Lizard's Thicket. It's certainly been quite a number of things since then, though Tainos seems to have brought lizards back to the building.

The story told by the door notices is rather distressing, though of course it is told from the restaurant's point of view. Certainly it seems to have been a nasty surprise.

(Hat tip to commenter Soxinsc)

I haven't eaten here too often, but it was fine the times I did, and it has certainly managed to outlast most of the other restaurants in the Sparkleberry Crossing development, so I'm a little curious about what's going on at the San Jose on Sparkleberry Lane. I take it that the place will reopen after the facade work currently in progress, but I'm puzzled as to why it's being done in the first place. As I recall it, the building looked nice enough, and rather southwestern, with its stucco exterior. I can't see that adding bricks over that will improve things (though from the work around the side windows, it will still have a bit of southwestern flair), and it certainly can't be cheap.

UPDATE 13 December 2012: Updated the closing date from "December 2012" to "October 2012" based on commenter Sidney's info.

UPDATE 25 January 2023: I had completely forgotten I had already made this post, so when the restaurant was closed in early 2023, I made a new post. I am deleting that one, and putting it below:

Google shows this restaurant as Temporarily Closed, but looking at the signage, I see no indication that it is closed at all, much less a "We'll be back soon" sign.

It *is* definitely closed though, and I could not get a good view inside to say if the fixtures are still there. WIS says there was a fire here in May of 2022, but I see reviews from after that, so I don't believe that is a factor.

UPDATE 7 June 2024 -- Open again:

I don't know much about this self-service car wash in between Widewater Square and Nancy's Nook other than it has seen better days (the LoopNet listing marks it as "distressed" and as an "office building").

The interesting thing is that although I must have driven past it dozens if not hundreds of times before, I can honestly say that when I saw it the other day, I had no memory whatsoever of ever having seen it before.

I've never really seen the point of this kind of wash. Just spend the extra $3.00 and drive through one with the foam and buffer.

UPDATE 23 November 2016 -- Someone has rehabilitated this wash, and it is now open again:

Here is another tiny strip club on Two Notch Road. The last phonebook entry was apparently in 2009, but online sources show it was actually open at least into September of 2011.

I have to say that I quite like the sign.

UPDATE 9 October 2024: Update tags, add map icon. The Lenox building caught fire in 2016 and has now been razed. The sign remains:

Here is a note on the club re-opening in 2014, so apparently it opened again after the 2011 date in the post title.

Last year, a work friend of mine and her husband were driving from DC to Florida with a sidetrip to Clemson, and would be coming through Columbia on I-26. She suggested we meet for lunch, and wanting to give her a fairly straight shot off of and onto the Interstate, I suggested Al Amir on Saint Andrews road with Harbison as the connector.

"You can't miss it," I told them, "the restaurant is kind of below street level, but just go to the strip mall with the coffee kiosk in the front of the parking lot!"

The punchline is, of course, that when I got out there to meet them, I saw the kisok was gone, and they confirmed when they finally got there that they had had a Dickens of a time with my directions, and that point in particular...

Now, the kiosk, or another similar one under the name of Loveland Coffee, is coming back.

I may well buy a cup there -- but I don't think I'll include it in my directions!

Commenter Terry's remarks on the Hostess bankruptcy, and his list of other vanished American icons brought to mind once more Borders Books. I have posted before about the closed stores I found in Gainesville and Tampa.

Those stores have now been re-purposed. This store which I found in Orlando on Sandlake Road opposite a huge mall, as of August had not been. In fact, all the fixtures and some of the office equipment are still in place just as if the book supply truck could pull up any minute.

The distinctive look of a Borders puts me in a nostalgic mood, as though I might once more spend my Kansas City evenings there, drinking coffee and poring over racks of books I could never find in Columbia, Fayetteville or Aiken, or leafing through low circulation magazines I had known of only by repute until seeing them there.

Read the rest of this entry »

Here's another Columbia area Burger King getting a facelift.

This King used to be a regular Sunday lunch destination for our family. I particularly recall going there during the odd "Buy a burger, get a Neiman" promotion BK had during the 1970s. The location on the corner of Two Notch and Toronto gave the store a "sneak up" route which consisted of turning onto Dubard from Beltline and then onto Toronto, a route we kids always insisted our parents follow. Or I did, at least. Later we "moved up" to Quincy's for Sunday dinner, and I have hardly set foot in a Burger King in years.

UPDATE 15 January 2013 -- As of the evening of 14 January, this place was open again:

This is another former Shoney's which has been converted into a Lizard's Thicket.

I'm a little hazy about the time period, but it was still open in the 1976 phonebook, and closed in the 1985 one, so I'm going with "1970s".

Our preferred Shoney's location was the Two Notch one, but we did go to this one from time to time. For most of that period, it was still Big Boy affiliated, and we always got the "Big Boy & Dolly" promotional comics, and if we were lucky, the "Hot Fudge Cake". Mmm!

UPDATE 10 September 2020: Update tags, add map icon.

Well, that didn't last long.

Rum Runners replaced Jungle Jim's in Five Points early in 2012. Now, in late 2012, it has been replaced with ConCOCKtions sports bar.

So far, it appears the nautical mural remains.

UPDATE 24 June 2019: Add tags and map icon.

Here is another Master Cleaners location. This one is rather interesting because it comprises two buildings on either side of Blossom Street. The odd location is the drop-off point, and the even location is the actual cleaning, storage and pick-up point. I suppose I have driven past this spot at least once a week for the past decade or so without noticing this!

Currently, it being Five Points, the drop off location has quickly become a de-facto free-parking lot.

Read the rest of this entry »