The first car we bought from Dick Dyer Toyota (or perhaps back then it was Dyer & Beck, with their catchy faux-asian "Dyer & Beck impor-ted-cars" jingle) was a 1980 Corolla station wagon, which I still have, and my main car is from there as well. The nice thing about Dick Dyer from my perspective, aside from the fact that they generaly seem to know what they are doing when they fix a car, was that I could walk home from there after dropping off a car, or I generally could -- I tried the hour walk in August once and nearly expired..

They have built a large new store on I-77 in Blythewood, which I have yet to visit. I believe the body shop (which I have used after taking out Bambi on I-20 once..) remains on Two Notch along with a pre-owned and scooter operation. That is all on the top part of the lot. The last time I drove by, it appeared the bottom half of the lot was for sale. I wish them well in their new digs, but it's another blow to the Two Notch corridor.

UPDATE 22 January 2021: This is now the home of Nuttall Tire:

Also adding map icon and updating tags.

Fine Foods Smartly Served!

I can't actually recall any other operation in this building, right up the hill from Dick Dyer, before Ole Place Club. That operation seems to be pretty durable despite having, at one point when Two Notch was especially bad, to put up a tart sign saying This Parking Lot is not a Loading Zone for Hookers!

The 1970 Southern Bell ad for The Celebrity Supper Club, as seemed to be common then, much longer hours than are now usual for a restaurant (though there were obviously entertainment elements as well). Nowdays almost everything closes at 10pm during the week, and if you walk in at 9:00, they act like its an imposition to stop mopping the floor and take your order.. It also seems like there were more "steak" places back then than now. I don't know if its 30 years of the food police harping on cholesterol or if tastes have just naturally changed.

UPDATE 17 October 2009: Added "(Mary's)" to the post title.

UPDATE 29 December 2009: Sadly Mary Dixon passed away on Christmas Eve 2009. From The State's obiturary:

UPDATE 29 June 2023: Adding tags & map icon.

This building off of Saint Andrews Road is now an "Ultra Lounge". I'm not sure what it was built as, but I first recall noticing it in the 1980s, when it was a strip club, the name of which I can't remember. After that, it was for a number of years the original site of The Comedy House, now on Decker Boulevard in the old Winn-Dixie building. I think it may have been something after the strip-club and before The Comedy House and after The Comedy House and before Pure, but I'm not sure.

I saw a number of comedy shows there including one guy who made me laugh so hard it hurt, but whose name (or act) I cannot now recall at all. I'm not sure what happened to The Comedy House as it was non-existent for a long while after closing shop here. Normally if a place is moving just as a normal course of business, they will do it as quickly as possible to keep a revenue stream active, but I think it took over a year in this case.

UPDATE 15 October 2009: Added a bunch of extra names to the post title based on the comments.

UPDATE 29 March 2023: Adding map icon. Also this building has been razed. Click on the address tag for details.

I don't play pool (now air-hockey is a game!), so this club has only been on the periphery of my notice over the years, but I was conscious enough of it that it caught my eye when I saw new signs up the last time I drove down Decker to I-77.

Doing a little googling I find that it has something of a tragic history, with the co-owner being fatally shot there in 2006. Google also insists that the place has been called Sue's Lounge though the Google Streetview for "Sue's Lounge" brings up the old Decker Billiard signage on the place.

The new name of the place is La Parranda which apparently means "The Big Party" in Spanish (and a song of that name was a hit for Gloria Estefan..), so I'm assuming that the ownership has switched from Korean to latin, though the graphic on the sign seems to indicate that pool and alcohol will still be available.

UPDATE 25 April 2013 -- Well it's back, sorta. I hope they didn't pay too much for those signs:

I first wrote about this building back on 10 April 2009 when I was doing a closing on Kester's Bamboo House, and China Garden may have been closed even then, at least I don't recall seeing anyone inside, and from the pictures I took then (two of which open this closing), there already appear to be signs of work around the front door.

I'm not a big fan of Chinese food, and this wasn't one of my mother's favored places, so I never ended up eating here, but China Garden has certainly been a Five Points landmark for many years. The building has been there so long that when the fatal Harden Street renovation reached China Garden, they went under the sidewalk to shore up the foundations and found there were no foundations. This caused the street work to stall in front for an inordinate amount of time while they figured out what to do. Presumably that is all fixed now..

Anyway, it's definitely closed now, and it appears that it will reopen soon as a place called Grandma's, which I expect will no longer be Asian cusine. If they keep the "pagoda" sign as it appears they will be doing, we will have two non-Chinese restaurants in town with Chinese-themed signage. (The other is Bombay Grill.

UPDATE 24 June 2019 -- Add tags and map icon.

OK, today is an anniversary of sorts. Three years ago today was the final day of operation for the Myrtle Beach Pavilion. As it happens, I was there, and made a video essay to share with friends and family. The fact of doing that, and not really having any good forum for something like that was one of the things that started percolating around in my brain and eventually led to establishing Columbia Closings.

Below is the essay pretty much unchanged from how I wrote it then, followed by a lot of still pictures (too many, I'm sure) that I took on that day and earlier in the year:

We didn't actually go to the Pavilion that often as kids, so the closing
shouldn't be that big a deal, but we always knew that there was the
possibility that we might go, and that possibility loomed large in our minds.

In the end, Burroughs & Chapin is a business, and they made a business decision to shut the Pavilion down. That said, they actually did it in a classy way. For the Last Ride celebration on Saturday September 30 2006, they presold tickets, each of which came with park access from 3PM to 8PM, free parking, and unlimited free pizza, burgers, corndogs, funnel cake and ice cream.

As I happened to be at the beach at the time, I reserved a ticket and took a CVS disposable video camera (as well as my regular film camera, and a disposable film camera) to record some last memories.

This page is devoted to the short videos I shot that day. I have converted the DVD which CVS gives you into an AVI file for each scene. While these files are not huge (except for the all-in-one file), you may not be able to stream them unless you have a fast connection. If clicking your left button on a picture does not start your movie player, or if the clip plays jerkily, I recommend clicking your right button over each picture and selecting "save target as" or the equivalent to download the clips. They should be playable with Windows Media Player on Windows, or "mplayer" on Linux.

We start off on the roof of the Pavilion parking garage, looking out at the roller coaster and other rides:

Moving to the South side of the garage roof, we look down at the lines forming to get into the Pavilion:

Coming off the roof, I took a brief shot of foot traffic on Ocean Blvd, noting the fact that the Pavilion Arcade is already closed:

Collecting my ticket and stepping inside the park, we see some kiddie rides:

More kiddie rides:

The very first thing I ever remember from the Pavilion is this 1905 German Band organ. The second thing I remember is the blow dryer in the restroom. I had never seen such a thing! I only remember Daddy being there on that trip, probably because he would have been the one taking me to the bathroom (which is alongside the organ), but doubtless Momma & Sus were around.

I was disappointed that Sugarbug could not see the organ on her trip to the park, but it was closed for repair at the time. When you consider that it is 102 years old, I suppose that's not surprising. I'm not sure it comes across in these videos, but the organ is loud!

The placards describing the organ claim some of the original cardboard punched music sheets are still used. Somehow I doubt that "Ob La Di Ob La Da" was that popular in 1905!

The only actual ride I remember from that (presumed) first trip to the Pavilion is this boat ride, which I thought was possibly the neatest thing in the world:

No trip to any amusement park would be complete without the Bumper Cars:

My attempt to film while driving a Bumper Car ended quickly when the
attendant stopped the ride. I thought I had broken a rule, but he was
after a kid who was old enough to ride, but not drive:

The swings is a nice ride because it goes around, but not enough to make middle aged stomachs queasy:

I hopped aboard a wooden pig for a ride on the carrousel. While not as old as the band organ, it is pretty old. I noticed that the carrousel music was coming from a sound system and not the antique music box. Perhaps they didn't feel it was worth repairing for the time left. I have no idea what will happen to the carrousel or band organ. It would be a shame if they were left to rot:

The Log Flume is the park's intermediate water ride. More wet than the
"boats", less soaking than the "river ride":

There was a pretty good beach band playing at the amphitheatre. The name escapes me, but they had just finished a very good version of "Carolina Girls" when I started filming. This song was well done, but not one I would call a classic:

I wrestled with whether to ride the big coaster or not. On the one hand, I was coming down with a cold and had something of a headache, on the other hand, I'd never have the chance again. Riding the intermediate coaster "The Mad mouse" decided me I wasn't ready for the big one, but here are some people who were:

Here's another shot of the Carrousel, which was strikingly pretty with
the setting sun glinting off the mirror panels. I like this one a lot; there's so much going on in this shot and some appropriately elegiac music for the last sunset on the working park:

Finally, we finish with the band organ again to take us out:

This is the whole video in one 306 megabyte, 20 minute lump:

After running out of video, I stayed until the end of the day, and rode
the final run of the Bumper Cars. It was somewhat of a melancholy experience, but I'm glad I did it.

Still pix after the jump..

Read the rest of this entry »

I remember three events coming to The Coliseum with some regularity when I was growing up. They were the The World Famous Royal Lipizzaner Stallions, Ringling Brothers, Barnum & Bailey Circus and Holiday On Ice.

I think I saw the Stallions, though I can remember nothing about it, and I saw the circus at least twice. I'm pretty sure I saw Holiday On Ice only once, and am also pretty sure (through the 'Green Giant' connection) that this was the year I saw it.

Ice skating was (and is!) pretty exotic in Columbia. I think Rockbridge club has had the only rink in town for ages, and it's private (though I did get to go there once with scouts -- unfortunately I hadn't mastered even roller skating at that point, and ice skating was a total debacle). Also, there weren't sports channels where you could see it every day as there are now. Pretty much, you saw it if you watched the Olympics, and that was about it -- Unless you saw Holiday On Ice.

I can actually only remember one thing about the show though. One segment was called "The Age of Asparagus" which 12-year-old-I thought was just astoundingly clever, and featured skating vegetables. That's the part where "The Jolly Green Giant" made his appearance.

It appears from Wikipedia and Holiday On Ice's own web site that they have exited the North American market, and now tour in Europe, Asia & Latin America -- I guess for us, The Age of Asparagus has passed.

UPDATE 8 October 2025: Update tags, add map icon. Change post title to make "The Coliseum" "Carolina Coliseum" and add street address.

I don't particularly concern myself with "timeliness" here. For one thing, I'm just one guy with a car and a camera -- there's no way I could keep up with everything closing, even if I somehow knew about it. For another thing, I may care more about some place that closed 20 years ago than some other storefront that went under yesterday.

With that said, after commenter Tom mentioned it in Have Your Say and after I saw the story in The State that today was the last day in business for Jim Moore Cadillac, I thought I might as well drive by and get some pictures.

According to The State the dealership is a casualty of GM's ongoing death-spiral restructuring. The story is a bit vague about whether the store was making a go of it otherwise, saying only that sales had been "improving".

I really don't have any mental tags for this dealership at all. We were never a Cadillac family, and the only commercials I recall were for what I presume was a related business, "Moore Hudson Olds", which all had a distinctively overmodulated announcer pretending to be live from their lot. Still it's always sad to see a landmark like this close, and Main street definitely doesn't need another vacant lot.

UPDATE 30 Nov 2010 -- Here's some more pictures taken on a brighter day:

UPDATE 19 May 2025 -- Time has not been kind to this property, and nothing else has ever moved in:

Also adding map icon and updating tags, and here is the LoopNet info.

This space, to the right of Barnes & Noble on the lower level of Richland Mall was the mall's drugstore, Eckerd Drugs.

I'm trying to remember if the original Richland Mall had a drug store and I don't think it did. Eckerd's came in with the enclosed Richland Fashion Mall stage, and may have ended there. I don't think it made it to the Midtown at Forest Acres stage, but I'm not sure exactly when that started, and I refuse to call the mall that anyway.

It certainly did not make it as late as the Rite-Aid buyout of Eckerd's. I'm not sure exactly when it closed, but I think it was the early 2000s. By that time, Eckerd's had already seen the writing on the wall which required corner stores, and had moved the Trenholm Plaza store to the current corner-equivalent location that RIte AId on Forest Drive now occupies. The Richland Mall store had no drive-through, and could never have one, and while the parking was as close to strip-mall parking as Richland Mall gets, it still wasn't as good as a real strip-mall.

UPDATE 10 August 2020: Add map icon, update tags.

These are the kind of businesses I notice off and on over the years, and if I think about them at all, wonder how they are making a living, until one day I notice that they are not anymore. These adjoining lots are on Percival Road, just east of Decker Boulevard.

The story, at least for the Upholstery shop seems to be a sad one, of the parents passing away, and the children not being able to carry on the business. I'm not clear on what the story of the little drive-in was as it was not detailed in the County Zoning hearing minutes which are online here. Apparently nobody even knew the name of the place.

The hearing seems to have focused on keeping the property commercial. The businesses had been operating on residential property as grandfathered operations, and when the business licenses lapsed, the ability to locate a business there did also. In this case it seems to me pretty much a no-brainer, and apparently it was approved. Both properties are now for sale, and time will tell what locates there.

Also, an interesting tid-bit came up in google when I was searching for the street addresses and "Duanne Warr", who was associated with the action somehow. As it turns out, in the minutes, he spoke for the proposed buyer of the property apparently as a realtor, but it appears he was once a Columbia heavy metal rocker cutting

One of the most insane records ever made!

UPDATE 7 June 2014 -- Commenter Sidney points out that the drive-in building has been razed, and so it has:

UPDATE 10 October 2016 -- The old drive-in lot is now about to be Tacos Nayarit Mexican Grill: