Columbia Closings   What's not in Columbia anymore

Planet Hollywood in Myrtle Beach was always an interesting building to drive by. I thought it looked a bit like an elephant "hoovering up" (as our Brit friends might say) customers from the parking lot through that trunk-like canopy and into the elephant's head. There also seem to be some scary teeth involved.

In the event, though I drove by many times, I only ate at Planet Hollywood once. I'm guessing it was back in the 90s, and I had an unobjectionable, but completely unexceptional hamburger. I have heard in recent years rumors that the place was in financial trouble, and I can only guess that people wised up to the fact that a burger's proximity to Bruce Willis's tennis shoes or whatever does not make it worth $15 -- the place limped through the 2015 Labor Day weekend and threw in the towel on the following Tuesday.

The night pictures above were taken on 3 May 2012, while the post-closing pictures below are from 3 October 2015, a gray day coming just before the bottom dropped out on 4 October (though it was not anywhere near as bad on the Waccamaw Neck as in Columbia). I find it interesting that while they did not spend a lot of effort destroying the celebrity handprints around the building, they *did* spend considerable time defacing the nameplates that would have told whose hands they were. (Though they did miss a few).

(Hat tip to my sister)

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UPDATE 23 November 2015 -- That was quick! Open again:

UPDATE 1 June 2018 -- Closed again, and for sale:

I'm not sure when this garage on Alta Vista closed as I can't find it in any of my recent phonebooks under the name on the sign, but I think I would have noticed it before if it were too long ago, so I'm going to say 2015 until someone says different.

As a side note, I never knew the name of this little uphill street which connects Fontaine Road to Shakespeare Road. Alta Vista was the first really useful Internet search engine, put together by the now defunct Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC) to showcase their 64 bit Alpha chip. It was very successful, but DEC got into trouble by never fully realizing that the mini-computer was dead and that the PC was a commodity item and went belly up. For some reason, nobody bought the Alta Vista technology (that I am aware of) and the crown passed to Google where it still remains..

UPDATE 6 April 2017 -- Now Royal Automotive:

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I noticed this vacant storefront in the Shamrock Corner section of Shakespeare Road the other day. This is not far from the former Shakespeare Fish Market.

This is the only store I have ever been lost in.

It was probably about 1965 when my mother took me here to do some clothes shopping. Now of course the clothes displays are shorter than almost all adults, but taller than almost all four years olds, and at some point I lost track of her among the racks and panicked, racing around the floor trying to find her. Since I didn't spend the rest of my life in the clothes department, I must have located her at some point, but *that* part of the debacle I can't remember..

This store was a regular stop for us throughout the 60s and 70s. We preferred the store brand jarred roasted peanuts to Planters and in those days when Sears was still in Five Points and Dutch Square was the only mall this store was always the closest place to pick up whatever odds and ends we needed. I brought my first record album here, which I still have, the Beach Boys two record compilation set Endless Summer for which I paid $5.25. Here I also bought the Focal brand camera tripod which I still carry in my trunk today.

After I left town in 1985, I rarely visited this Kmart and I remember noting when I came back to town in the early 2000s how threadbare it looked. Since it was still close, I did visit it every now and then, but invariably noted that whatever I had gone in for, they didn't have it, and gradually stopped trying.

(Hat tip to commenter joelc)

UPDATE 30 January 2016 -- As noted by a number of people, the store is now closed:

UPDATE 7 October 2019: Add map icon.

Conumdrum opened in the space formerly occupied by Bloomin' Idiots garden center, and based on the name, I reported it as a drumming studio when I did the closing for that business.

In reality, though I never got to check it out personally, it seems to have been a nice little eclectic music venue, and a five year run is not bad for a site neither in The Vista nor Five Points.

I had not noticed until recently that Sato on Beltline took major flood damage and is closed for repair. In retrospect it makes sense as the restaurant is located at the low point of Beltline as it comes down from Forest Drive and before it starts back up towards Trenholm Road. Looking at google maps, it appears that the nearby creek which presumably did the damage is called Orphanage Branch, a name I can't ever recall hearing.

Touchdown's opened in a former Sammi's Deli sometime around October 2013. I'm not a big wing fan, and it's nowhere near where I live so I never made it in. I noticed last weekend as I was drive by that it was closed and had been relaced by a pizza operation:

This little building on Airport Boulevard has apparently been a host of clubs over the years. I rember a few of the names that google turned up, but not all of them.

Most recently it was The Hanger Sports Bar and this Facebook page king of suggests, without ever saying so directly that it closed in late April of 2015.