Columbia Closings   What's not in Columbia anymore

This little strip-mall, The Shoppes at Meeting Place used to be home of Ye Olde Comic Shoppe, and a number of other operations over the years. It's kind of interesting in that it seems that each storefront has a first-level street number, ie: the first storefront is 501 Meeting Street, the next one is 503 Meeting Street, etc instead of "501-A, 501-B etc.

I don't know anything about Alternative Health Center other than it was apparently already gone by August of 2008, judging by the pictures from the Ye Olde closing. It still gets google hits though.

Title Cash of South Carolina is still listed on the strip-mall marquee, and so departed more recently. It sounds like a standard cash-for-car-title loan place. Curiously a number of these seem to have gone under recently, even though it's the kind of thing you would expect to do better in hard times.

I notice that while the 501 Meeting Street storefront seems to have only one door, it has two papered-over business signs, so it's entirely possible that it's a suite with two halves. I've tried enlarging and different enhancements, but I can't read what's behind the sign covers..

UPDATE 9 Jan 2011 -- That certainly is a conveniently specific insurance regulation, isn't it?

Monkey Business was an indoor arcade/amusement park off of US-1 in Lexington. I know it was open at the start of 2009, but am not totally sure that it made it into 2010.

The place was inside the largest part of a warehouse-like building (a Cheerleading school is in the smaller part), and had a number of different attractions. There were bouncy castles, jumbo slides, video games, skee-ball, a small carrousel, a snack bar and private rooms for birthday parties. I only went once, but my impression was that all the kids there were having a good time, and it appeared to be doing a good business.

Read the rest of this entry »

OK, I need some help with this one. The only things I know about this building are that it seems (there is no address on it) to be at 2250 Gervais Street, it was built in 1945 and is 280 square feet...

Just from the looks of it, I would say that it started life as a walk-up, window-service, restaurant. I know that over the years, I've seen a number of different operations there, but at this point, I can't bring any of them to mind.

In particular, I can't figure out why it seems to have a cairn out front:

F-Stop Camera Shop positions themselves as one of the last local photo stores. I'm afraid I haven't managed to visit yet, but from their site, it appears that they are following in the legacy of Jackson Camera with developing and printing supplies for the film photographer, and in fact go beyond that with rentable darkroom space.

They moved to 1224 B Huger Street (at Geddes Street) back in August. That leaves this stretch of Harden Street pretty well vacant, which is a shame, but the way it goes sometime..

(Hat tip to commenter ChiefDanGeorge)

UPDATE 8 February 2022 -- The State reports that 936 Harden is to become The Flying Biscuit Cafe.

Also adding map icon.

When I heard about the closing of the Harbison O'Charley's, my first thought was that I hadn't remembered one was over there, and my second thought was: Why Would I Go To O'Charley's?.

In fact it's always seemed to me to be a pleasant enough place without any real "hook" to get me in. I went to the one at Columbia Mall several times, and the one in Augusta at least once, and basically recall only that they had pretty good chips & salsa and burgers.

Interestingly (or not) this one closing made me try the one on Two Notch again -- I got in there, and found that a) they didn't have the chips & salsa anymore, and b) they were out of hamburgers. I had never heard of that before!

The State says that this one shut when the company

closed 16 underperforming stores Monday.

and that

The Harbison location was the only one in South Carolina to close.

(Hat tip to commenter William)

UPDATE 17 July 2011 -- work on the building and facade for the conversion to a Buffalo Wild Wings is ongoing:

UPDATE 24 September 2011 -- They're getting close.. and have certainly changed the look of the building!

UPDATE 31 October 2011 -- As commenter Andrew has already noted, it looks like they're set to open on 7 November 2011:

UPDATE 19 August 2022: Updating tags and adding map icon.

See that thing on your wall that says 2010? It's useless, defunct, obsolete, pining for the fjords, joined the bleedin' choir invisible -- it is an ex-calendar.

You can fix that! Get your Columbia Closings or Pawleys Island calendars here. Your wall will thank you.

Remember, it'll be 2011 for a whole year -- Don't be the last person writing the wrong date on your checks!