Columbia Closings   What's not in Columbia anymore

Jackson Camera. At their height, they had stores all over Columbia. I can recall locations at Richland Mall (on the backside of the open-air corridor), Main Street, Five Points and Dutch Square.

The location I always visited was at Richland Mall. As a kid, I had gotten into developing and printing pictures. I can't remember exactly how, but I had already started fooling around with it when I "inherited" a bunch of (mostly hand-made) equipment from someone moving out of town to a smaller place. Originally I had no enlarger so I favored bigger-frame negatives like (the even-then archaic) 616 and slightly smaller 620 and 127 film sizes which made accptable contact prints. I'm afraid I pretty much ruined the finish on the kitchen counters with sloshing developer, stop-bath and "hypo" all over them -- the stains are there to this day. And really, there was no way to make the kitchen dark enough to be a "real" darkroom during the day (not surprisingly, my mother needed it to cook at night..), so my prints and negatives were always fuzzy, but I never hesitated to try again, and to ask for more advice down at Jackson Camera.

I'm sure the guy who was usually there, would look up, see me coming across the corridor and think Oh Lord, here we go again, but he and all the staff were always very patient and informative despite the fact that I took up way more of their time than my meager purchases of contact paper and chemicals would warrant. By middle school, I had more or less fallen out of the habit (and in high school, the darkroom had its own stock of chemicals and paper), so my visits to Jackson almost ceased.

Even as I moved out of town in 1985 though, the photo market was changing drastically. While the picture drop-off business had always (in my memory) been a chain dominated affair, in the 80s, national chains moved into the camera shop and specialty photo-finishing market. Wolf and Ritz were the big players, and when Ritz bought Wolf, they were the 500 pound gorilla that sleeps where it wants. Jackson kept on for years, but gradually closed more of their stores. The one pictured here is at the corner of Beltline Boulevard and Forest Drive, and is where, I believe, their Richland Mall shop moved when Richland Mall went to Richland "Fashion" Mall, driving out a number of stalwarts like Jackson Camera and The Happy Bookseller. Jackson finally sold out to Ritz a few years ago, and this location operated as a Ritz for a while, but with another Ritz just a few blocks away down Beltline, it didn't really make any sense to keep this one open.

Interestingly, as I went to take this shot, I saw that the follow-on business, some sort of beauty store is also closing up shop.

UPDATE 21 May 2010 -- Here's an ad from The State for 19 Feb 1979:

Also, I've added all the addresses from the ad to the post title.

UPDATE 3 December 2010 -- Here are two great shots of the Harden Street Store by Hunter Desportes on Flickr:

outside

inside

UPDATE 24 February 2013: I have added two pictures to the top of this post, above the one (of the beauty store) that the text of the post talks about. They come from commenter Thomas and were taken of the Main Street location in 1997. I love that huge marquee.. Thanks!

UPDATE 23 February 2014 -- The Forest Drive store is now Troy's Cutting Edge barber shop:

UPDATE 20 May 2018 -- Here is a picture of the Greenlawn location, which ended up getting its own post because I totally forgot Jackson had a Greenlawn location:

Commenter Dennis sends this picture noting:

There was a Yogi Bear's at the corner of Two Notch & Decker. Where K-Mart's parking lot is.

This sign is actually in Hartsville, and the store there is about the last one in the US. The one in Columbia had a sign identical to this one.

I don't recall this place in Columbia; I know several things have come onto that K-Mart corner though. The one in Hartsville I have seen many times -- we drive by it on the way to visit our cousins there. I believe they still prefer the chicken there over other larger brands like KFC and Church's.

UPDATE 22 June 2010 -- I get a lot of hits looking for Yogi Bear's Honey Fried Chicken. Just for fun, here are two pictures (like Dennis's above) from what I believe is the last Yogi Bear's still in operation. It's located in Hartsville South Carolina at 514 South 5th Street:

UPDATE 11 August 2022: Added the new picture at the top of the post which was sent in by Jimmy Freeman who says: "[ ] as you can see...... it was located in Winn Dixie shopping center next to that bank. When Columbia Mall was built, Winn Dixie was moved". This is actually a bit differently located than I had remembered it. Big thanks to Jimmy!

I'm also adding a map icon based on the location of Baker's Sports Pub, which seems to be pretty close to where this was.

UPDATE 12 November 2024: Commenter Aaron J. provides this link to an old The State want-ad establishing the address of Yogi Bear's as 7139 Two Notch. I will update the post title from "Two Notch at Parklane" to that number and update the map icon and tags. The ad also establishes that the place was open into late 1971 at least, so I will update the date from the vague "1960s" to the vague "1970s". Also note that the streets in that area have been reworked so much that having the actual street address may not say exactly where that address was back in the day.

Taco Cid is a local (a fact I didn't know until just now) Mexican fast-food chain. Well, I say chain but from their web site, they are down to one location, on the Charleston Highway, at present.

When I first became aware of them, they had at least three locations. The one on Charleston Highway, one on Broad River Road near Intersection Center, and this one, on Decker Boulevard just up from Decker Mall. At that time, I was just starting to sample Mexican food, and I was never a steady customer, but I had this odd custom that whenever I was going to drive to Charlotte (usually for the Heroes Convention, but sometimes for other reasons), I would hit the Decker Taco Cid for lunch first (I will rarely start any voluntary trip before noon!). I'm not sure exactly why this was. The food was better than Taco Bell, but not spectacular, and before the Completion of I-77 to Percival, Taco Cid really wasn't on the way to Charlotte in any meaningful fashion. Even now that connection is tenuous since you can only get on I-77 going the wrong way if you use Decker, but I would drive down Decker to Parklane to 277 and tell myself that made sense.

The Decker location was the first to close though it predated the total collapse that happened to Decker later. The Broad river location lasted years longer. I don't know exactly when it went under, but I don't think it has been more than 5 years ago.

The vet's office moved in a few years after Taco Cid vacated the building, and has been a steady presence there ever since as Kroger, Target, The Olive Garden, Red Lobster, and most recently Zorba's have crashed and burned around them.

UPDATE 15 Aug 2009: Added scans of Taco Cid matchbook provided by commenter Melanie.

UPDATE 18 April 2013: The building is to be Atlantic Seafood.

UPDATE 30 August 2022: Updating tags, adding map icon.

I'm not entirely sure of the details, but when I was growing up, my parents had two different banks. I suppose they had each had accounts before getting married, and decided to keep them, or perhaps there were different banks for checking and for savings (the family definitely had passbook accounts at Standard Savings & Loan). At any rate, First Citizens at Forest Lake seemed to be the one my mother stopped at most often to cash checks when in the car with us kids.

From time to time, she would go inside (and perforce drag us with her), but usually she would go through the drive-through, which we always looked forward to since the teller would usually pass out a sucker to each of us along with my mother's cash.

This particular branch of First Citizens was a bit unusual in that the drive-throughs were staffed seperately from the main building. As you can see, there was a little outbuilding by the drive-through lanes. I doubt very much that it was plumbed; I imagine the tellers had to make a trip back to the main building when nature called. Of course in those days bankers' hours were short enough that it probably wasn't a big issue.

I think the lane that was on the side of the building facing Trenholm was a drive-through as well and would have been staffed from the main building, but if I recall correctly, it was harder to get in and out of (and it may have been simply a night depository lane rather than a real teller window).

My memory on timings is always very suspect, but I think this branch closed before the main part of Forest Lake Shopping Center (with Campbell's Drugs etc) was torn down and a new First Citizens was built there, so that there was a period whn First Citizens didn't have a branch in the neighborhood.

I'm a little hazy on what happened after the bank left. I think there were a few tenants in the building before the current arrangements gelled, but I'm not sure. At any rate, I think the current clients have been there for at least the last ten years: A gallery and frame shop in the "main" building, and a garden shop in the outbuilding, teller lanes and the rest of the exterior.

I was a little surprised that the garden shop made it, as I would have guessed that that space was really to constricted to work with, but they have really prospered. I suppose the closure of Forest Lake Garden Center around where the Lazy Boy store now is opened up the area for a new store. I've been to the garden shop a few times (this spring for a pair of gloves, last year for some mint plants), but I've never been in the gallery. I like art galleries, but I always have the feeling that if one is small enough that I'll be the only person in there other than the proprietor, I'll feel like I need to buy something..

Oh, and that Flood Hazard Area sign?

They weren't kidding:

UPDATE 19 October 2013 -- Just found out the original name of this place was Commercial Bank & Trust so I have added that to the post title. Here's a picture of it in operation from 1964.

UPDATE 30 September 2016 -- The main bank building (except for the vault) was razed on 28-29 September 2016. See pictures here.

UPDATE 20 October 2022: Fixing street address, updating tags and adding map icon.

OfficeMax was the odd man out in the Office Depot/Staples rivalry. It was a perfectly fine office supply store, but apparently, at least in the South Carolina market, there wasn't room for all three chains, and OfficeMax started shuttering its local stores. The chain does continue on in other markets.

Wikipedia says that at one time OfficeMax was owned by K-Mart, which perhaps explains the location of this store in the K-Mart parking lot at the intersection of Dutch Square Boulevard and Bush River Road. I shopped at this location a number of times for non-descript stuff. I do remember when they had their going-out-of-business sale, that I picked up a good deal on a paper shredder.

Given the current state of K-Mart, I suppose the drama of this location is not What will go into the OfficeMax location?, but Will this K-Mart survive?. Given the recent opening of a super Wal-Mart a few blocks down the street, I'd have to say that's questionable.

UPDATE 30 April 2009:

It's now the Columbia Campus for Remington College:

UPDATE 11 March 2011: Update the closing date based on comments here. Also added full street address.

UPDATE 26 January 2021: Adding map icon and updating tags.

Well it seems I always get around to taking pictures of Putt-Putt locations too late. This location on Clemson Road only lasted a few years, and was completely torn up before I got around to going out there.

If I recall correctly, they had a go-kart track which was out in the area with the fire-extinguishers on the light poles. I'm not entirely sure, but I believe the actual "building" part of the "fun center" might still be standing. There is a building in the back of the area which now seems to be a welding school, but the shape of the back of it makes me think it might have been designed for a lot of in-and-out traffic to the golf course and race track.

It looks like we are to get another Interstate hotel here, which is kind of a shame, as Columbia has lots of hotels, but at this point, no minature golf courses. Or am I wrong about that? Come to think about it, the only actual working "Putt Putt" brand course I can think of is this one at the base of Atlantic Avenue in Fernandina Beach:

UPDATE 25 June 2010: Added full street address to post title. The place was actualy officially on Sparkleberry Lane, not Clemson Road as I had thought.

UPDATE 19 March 2013: Well, for whatever reason, the Wingate Inn never happened, and now, 5 years later, the parcel is still for sale:

UPDATE 9 August 2017 -- It looks like this parcel has finally, for real this time, been sold to be the new home for nearby Frank's Carwash:

UPDATE 10 August 2018 -- Now the site of the new location for Frank's Car Wash:

Too late to get a picture of this place I'm afraid. The original Dutch Square Theater was a twin-plex set against the far back corner of the Dutch Square parking lot. I believe it opened more or less at the same time the original Dutch Square mall did, and there was nothing particularly distinctive about it. It ran standard, first-run movies, and sold the standard theater food items at standard (high!) theater food prices. Since the place was on the other side of town from where I lived, it was not one of my regular movie spots, though I did see a number of shows there over the years.

It does have the distinction of being the only theater I've ever walked out on a movie at. The year was 1987, and my sister and a friend of hers were going to see Light of Day with Michael J. Fox and Joan Jett and asked if I wanted to tag along. Well, I knew nothing about the film, but I was of course familiar with Michael J. Fox and his classic "Marty" films, and I enjoyed Joan Jett's music, and had heard she was quite the character in real life, so I was expecting some kind of rock-and-roll comedy. Um, no. What I got instead was the most depressing drama I had ever had the misfortune to view. After about half an hour, I muttered something like "see y'all after the show" to my sister and walked out. Seeing the sunshine again was like having a leaden weight lifted off of me, and I spent a happy hour and a half just bumming around Dutch Square.

Not too long after that, Tapps closed, and Dutch Square's decline accelerated finally leading to re-development, complete with a new AMC 14 screen multiplex. Thus obsoleted, the original Dutch Square Theater was torn down, and now a Ruby Tuesday operates in the same location. And all the Ruby Tuesday training videos I've seen played in their stores are better than "Light of Day.

UPDATE 13 September 2009: Added theater ad from The State 15 April 1973.

UPDATE 12 May 2020 -- Adding full street address to the post title, also updating tags and adding map icon.

Here's the thing. If you're going to call yourself The Grilled Cheese Company, you ought to have really great grilled cheese sandwiches.

I was feeling pretty low last year with a bad cold (which wasn't getting any better as in the end it turned out to be a sinus infection and to need antibiotics..), and I wanted some comfort food. A good grilled cheese sandwich sounded like it would really fill the bill, so I went out to Sandhill.

I guess what I was subconsciously expecting was some sort of deluxe affair with two or three kinds of cheese grilled between Texas toast. What I got was apparently a Kraft Processed American Cheese Food single between two slices of Sunbeam, and it was a considerable disappointment in a day that was already not going well.

Read whatever you'd like into my judgement given my general maliase and grumpiness that day, but I see the place is now gone, so I'm thinking that even if everyone else liked what they got, they also realized they could do the exact same thing at home with the ingredients they already had.

Antibiotics on the other hand, are great.

UPDATE 15 May 2010: Added full street address, tags.

UPDATE 25 February 2014 -- It's now a kids' gym, My Gym:

UPDATE 10 March 2021: Adding map icon.

(7 Jan 2011):

11 April 2011:

This Krispy Kreme on US Highway 17 in Garden City had been there since forever (although it was obviously converted from a gas station at some time in the past). We used to badger our parents into stopping there from time to time growing up. It had the interesting distinction of being the only Krispy Kreme store I know of which didn't make its own doughnuts. Honestly, what is the Krispy Kreme concept without the Hot Doughnuts Now! sign? Not that they were stale, there are at least three stores up the road in Myrtle Beach that make hot ones and could supply this store on a same-day basis.

From the note, it appears that the whole "dead plaza" area around this store is to be re-developed, which w accounts for the Krispy Kreme and the auto-parts store both losing their leases. I suppose you could say re-development started a few years ago with the new Walgreens in the same block.

I was a bit surprised to see that the new Krispy Kreme location (a few blocks North, still on US-17) still doesn't make its own doughnuts.

UPDATE 3 September 2012: Added pix from 7 January 2011.

UPDATE 26 Jan 2013: Add pix from 11 April 2011.

UPDATE 4 April 2012 -- The place is now open, completely remodeled, as a Verizon store:

Also, the first new Krispy Kreme location mentioned above (north of here on the west side of the road) has now moved across the street to the east side of US-17 and *does* now make its own doughnuts, with the requisite Hot Doughnuts Now sign.

UPDATE 13 March 2025: Updating tags, putting real street address in post title and adding map icon.

The only time I ever ate at a Steak & Ale was in Tampa Florida in the late 1980s. We were setting up a new office in Tampa at the time, and I had been seconded from the Fayetteville office to work on the software infrastructure down there. In the event, I ended up spending quite a bit of time in Tampa, but never really got to see much of the city because we were working such late hours.

At any rate, most of the team working on the office startup would eat together every night, and one night I was dead tired and just wanted something simple and to go to bed. I recalled seeing what I took to be a Western Sizzling type steakhouse down the road, so during the usual "where do you want to go/I dunno, where do *you* want to go" scrimmage, I just piped up and said: "Steak and Ale". I figured there would be burgers and a salad bar and apparently beer so the guys who wanted a drink could get one. Well, it turned out to be a little fancier than a Western Sizzling. In fact it turned out to be a lot fancier, and I found to my regret that I couldn't get a burger at all. (In those rare situations, I can usually get a baked potato & French Onion soup -- my "too fancy" fallbacks).

I never went back to that Steak & Ale, and it fostered no desire in me to go to the one in Columbia. Nonetheless, it had always seemed something of an institution to me, and I was quite surprised when they closed up shop a few years ago. After they left, there was a very short-lived operation called Buster's Bistro (which I also never visited) in the building, and now the place is split between some kind of furniture shop and some sort of athletic shop.

It looks like the chain is still around, but the closest one is in Greenville.

UPDATE 25 June 2010: Added full street address to post title.

UPDATE 13 Oct 2010: Added yellow pages ad from the 1975-1976 Southern Bell phonebook.

UPDATE 16 June 2022: Adding tags and map icon.