Columbia Closings   What's not in Columbia anymore

Here's another closing in The Vista, this one right on the main Gervais corridor.

I find it a little curious that they are closing on the Wednesday right before Thanksgiving rather than staying open through Black Friday, but I suppose that if you've already planned to close, there's no point in ruining your Thanksgiving to be ready for one more day.

(Hat tip to commenter Larry. Looking at his comment again, it appears that the original plan was in fact to go through Black Friday and into December..)

I noticed this building a few weeks back as I was coming out of the USC credit union on Pulaski Street. You can see a smallish picture with the Harrison sign still up in this Loopnet listing. It also notes that the facade is stucco.

This Allpages listing says the firm was in the "Hydraulic Equipment & Supplies, Hydraulic Equipment Repair & Service, Tools & Hardware Supplies" business.

Finally, this listing includes an aerial shot, and notes that the property is

located in the heart of the Innovista Master Plan

which to me at this point is rather like saying it is located convenient to Hard Rock Park..

UPDATE 14 July 2014 -- This building has now been demolished:

You can see that this Citifinancial was still in business back in December of 2009, when I took these pictures of Gooney Birds. I know they still operate several locations in Columbia, including one whose mail I always get.

This is another bit of churn in the Westland Square strip mall, which also had Gooney Birds as noted above and the Burnette's Cleaners/ Palmetto Fine Cleaners / Dasini's Hotspot"> shuffle in the corner spot.

When you say you've been to see "The Doobie Brothers", that's almost as uninformative as saying you've been to see "The Drifters" given the convoluted group histories involved. Suffice it to say that the current incarnation of The Doobies hews to the original concept, and includes founders Pat Simmons and Tom Johnston.

I've seen several shows at the North Charleston Coliseum complex, including most memorably The Eagles and Blondie, but I believe those shows were in The Coliseum proper, a much larger venue than the Performing Arts Center. The center reminds me of the Koger Center both in size and the awful European style bank seating. It seemed that never more than 5 minutes went by before some portly person or another was making way across my seat towards the far distant center. I would say the show was about 80% sold with the crowd being entirely middle aged and white..

Lack of aisles aside, the sound was very good, and the security was just as casual as Newberry. I had emptied my pockets of all nail clippers and change in expectation of being herded through metal detectors, or at least being wanded, but no such eventuality occurred. In fact, many people were taking pictures and recording the show on their cellphones. If I had know that in advance, I would have taken the closing-cam in and gotten some very nice shots and videos. At any rate, I expect some to appear on youtube and elsewhere over the next few days.

The frontman for Charleston's Blue Dogs opened with an acoustic set which was generally well received. I thought he was pleasant, but frankly didn't hear anything which would make me seek out a Blue Dogs album.

After he finished, the Doobie roadies finished setting up the stage, which took about 15 min and then the band came out. They had an interesting configuration, one that I don't think I've see a rock band use before. Of course the classic rock band setup is lead guitar, rhythm guitar, bass and drums. The Doobies have three guitarists and *two* drummers as well as bass, keyboards and sax.

So how were they? Well, I won't bury the lead too deep: They were excellent! Given the revolving door history of the band you have to start off a bit worried, but then Tom Johnston starts to sing, and well, they sound like The Doobie Brothers and if you get the chance you should go.

The setlist was what about what you would expect with all the hit singles up until the start of the Michael McDonald era (and they did do a very credible version of "Takin' It To The Streets").

The audience started a little skeptical but we were won quickly over. It's always a risk for a legacy group to try to sell new material, but the three songs from the new album were well received, mostly I think because they sounded like classic-era Doobies, not some new and evolved tangent. When they started a long blues jam with solos all round, they got their first mainly standing ovation as I think we largely came to the simultaneous realization: Hey, these guys are good!.

For me, the best moment was the encore set. When they came back out, they started a sort of non-descript mid-tempo rock where you were thinking yeah, that's ok, but what is it? and then Johnston started into the "China Grove" riff..

Woah ho, listen to the music!

There were two problems with my ever visiting Biscuit House on Bluff Road behind the stadium: A) It was way on the other side of town and B) That whole waking up before absolutely necessary breakfast thing.

Of course, lots of other people don't have those problems, and the Biscuit House apparently developed quite a reputation over the years. In fact, there was a spate of newspaper articles when its closing was announced, and even a video documentary.

In the end, the problem was the same as for the Farmers' Market: USC bought up all the land for football parking. The good news is that apparently the Biscuit House recipies will live on in franchaised kiosks in local convenience stores.

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I'm not quite sure about this spot on the West side of Sunset Boulevard between I-20 and Pizzaeria Uno. The street number on the trailer at the back of the lot is 4845, which comes up as Graceland Buildings of Lexington. This makes sense given the two outbuildings set beside the trailer. The place may even still be in business though if so, the stock is pretty limited.

However, the sign by the road does not match up with the Graceland listing. Most of it is obscured by a realty paste-up now, but it cleary says something like South Carolina ****** ***** LIquidators **** and the verbiage at the bottom of the sign sounds like it was a sales lot for reposessed mobile homes. Trying reverse lookups on the 359-2989 phone number doesn't return anything useful.

Curiously, the South Carolina state flag homage on the sign has the moon on the wrong side of the palmetto..

Studebaker's was something of a Myrtle Beach landmark, from the same era as Mother Fletcher's and Xanadu (which both predeceased it). The club started in 1981 and celebrated their 28th anniversary in 2009.

I'm not much of a club person, but I was vaguely aware of Studebaker's as a Shag venue where the National Shag championships were held.

As of now, the web site is still up (they must have paid for a full year..) and has a number of videos taken inside the club. This story from the Sun News gives some details of the closing and blames it (or the owner does) on the anti-bike rules Myrtle Beach instituted a few years ago. I can certainly see the we want peace & quiet residents' point -- the annual rallies certainly are noisy and obnoxious, but on the other hand it's probably a bad idea for a tourist town with no industry to take steps to keep people away..

The storefront is in the process of being converted to a Dollar General.

I noticed this one last week when I was heading over to Atlanta Bread to see if they had pumpkin soup this year (answer: apparently not). Pioneer Machinery was on the West side of Sunset Boulevard in-between I-20 and I-26.

From the looks of the roadside placard, there were apprently several other businesses in the building, or at least suites for several other businesses.

I don't know anything about Pioneer but they were apprently in defense contracting and won contracts as recently as 2007.

If you click through to the high-res picture, you can see a lost-dog poster on the phone-pole. Hope he got home.

Cussin' Bill's is another place I would hear about but never go around to going to. It may be just as well. From the name, I always assumed it was mainly a restaurant, but this 1997 Administrative Law Court judgement makes clear that at least by 1996 it was operating as one of South Carolina's ubiquitious video poker malls.

At this remove, it's easy to forget how pervasive video poker was in the state at that time, and how odd the operating conditions were. Video poker was legal, but only just tolerated and the ostensible rule was that no one business could operate more than 5 machines. This, of course, led to many places implementing the "mall" concept. Each room of 5 machines was operated, on paper, as a separate business. In this case, it was found that Cussin' Bill's did not have employees in each room to maintain the fiction, and they got landed with a $5000 fine and lost most of their machines.

I'm not sure when Cussin' Bill's closed. I don't think that ruling was the end for them, but I could be wrong. At any rate, after they closed, the next operation in the building was BAWA Oyster Co about which I know nothing, other than presumably they served oysters (something I have less than no interest in).

I don't even know that much about the most recent tenant, Cadallic's, which folded earlier this year. Judging from Have Your Say notes by commenters Joel & O'Reilly, it was connected with the 360 Sports Bar (also now closed) on Bush River Road, and may or may not have been a strip club.

I have to say it's a fairly attractive building (across Woodland Hills road from the old Steak & Ale and behind the old Na href="http://columbiaclosings.com/wordpress/?p=421">Steak Out) with a very nice deck. There is a lot of traffic, of course, on nearby I-20 and Saint Andrews Road, but the building is well off of those, and is fairly quiet. It seems to me that some sort of casual restaurant could do well there -- I certainly wouldn't mind having a burger or burrito out on the deck in the spring or fall.

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Not really a closing, but I was at Bruegger's Sunday, and happened to notice that the building housing Be Beep and The Happy Cafe is being re-roofed.

The Be Beep area was roped off, but they aren't open on Sunday anyway so I doubt they'll have any downtime.