Columbia Closings   What's not in Columbia anymore

Well, I'm really irritated with myself because I only got two pictures of all the storm damage. I was out drving this morning looking for a place I might be able to find coffee & Internet to work from as my power was out. There were all kind of trees down, including huge ones, and one which fell across Beltline just a few minutes (apparently) after I had passed by going the other way. Sylvan @ Trenholm was completely blocked, and Kilbourne seemed to have a tree down in every yard. So, intead of thinking to take pictures, I got worried about whether I could actually get home (given I couldn't go back down Beltline), and totally forgot to take any shots other than the ones of the Caro sign.

Hope everyone is OK!

UPDATE 30 September 2024 -- Well, to revise & extend my remarks, as they say, based on the comments, it seems that the Caro sign was damaged before the storm. I will leave the pictures, because that's it's done, but I will add a few mild actual storm damage pictures below. When I wrote this post last Friday, I thought we had been through a medium-bad event, nothing like the Flood of 2015. Obviously I now know that while we were not hit that badly here in the Midlands, our fellow Sandlappers and Tarheels took a major blow, and I urge everyone to contribute what they can.

Google Maps gives the name of this place as Pops Pops Pops, just as it is on the sign, but the Welcome To Pops sign inside suggests the official name is the more sedate (and simpler) one. It also appears they may have been a Pantry Express affiliate, though I did not see that branding displayed anywhere. At any rate, looking at Google Streetview, they have been closed since at least 2021. I find it a bit odd that the building has not been re-purposed by now, and that it is in such good shape.

(Hat tip to commenter Andrew)

Perry's Gourmet Flaming Grilled Chicken (there's a mouthfull by itself!) opened in this former Taco Cid building in on 29 August of 2022. WLTX had the story here.

Apparently the chicken was Portuguese style, which I am not familiar with, but they had traditional Southern items as well. The Google reviews are almost uniformly positive, though there are not a ton of them, which may be an indication they weren't getting the volume they needed.

And of course, the building is odd and old, something Taco Cid finally gave up on, so there may well be a lot of issues to be addressed as indicated in the Closed For Remodeling sign. Unfortunately I don't see any work going on, and those signs are often more aspirational than accurate. Hopefully that won't be the case here and they will be back, but we'll see.

(Hat tip to commenter Payne)

I had meant to go by the Festival on Saturday when I would have had some time to walk around, but in the event forgot about it completely somehow, and ended up dropping by Sunday afternoon. By that time all the Galaktoboureko was gone, but I did snag some Baklava & Kataifi to take home. There looked to be a pretty good crowd, and the weather was great, in fact unusually warm for late September!

It appears that Latino's Used Cars (and towing) has moved from this Two Notch storefront to 10531 Farrow Road, according to their Facebook.

Looking at Google StreetView, they had moved in by 2016, before which the building had been vacant for a number of years.

Molly Maid was the follow-on in this building to its original tenant Waffle House, opening in late 2016.

It appears that they have either moved to an Elmwood area office, or consolidated with an office there. At any rate, the phone number is the same, and the company is definitely still around.

The floor looks very well swept!

Hold the pickles, hold the lettuce... And everything else now too.

This Burger King is on 8th Street in Fernandina, which is the main road coming onto the island from the mainland. That makes it a high traffic location, and the store was in a decent area (there aren't any really bad spots on 8th), so I'm not sure what happened here.

Well, OK, apparently the place was just bad: The google reviews are sprinkled with one-star reports, including the classic

I recommend taco bell or starve.

and the Yelp reviews are worse. The question is how does that happen? I get that the franchaise system means local ownership, but at some level corporate has to take care of the brand.

Anyway, as I said it's a decent location, so I would expect something else before too long.

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It's a little hard to say the exact name of this place. Google has it as Grand Appliances•New Sales•Scratch and Dent Sales while their Facebook says Grand Appliances & Mattress•New Sales•Scratch & Dent Sales.

At any rate, their last Facebook post is from May 2024, so I'm going to list the closing date as "Summer 2024". There was some activity in the buildiing when I drove by last Saturday, so perhaps something new is coming.

(Hat tip to commenter Gypsie)

I can't find out much about Soda City Art, but from these third party profiles here and here, it appears they more into the fun side of printing than brouchures and the like, mentioning

Cosplay, Helmets, Armor, Prop Weapons, Digital Printing, Custom Decals, Banners & Signs.

Looking at Google Streetview, it appears they opened sometime after 2019, being definitely there in September of 2022 and being definitely gone in April of 2023.

7 Spices was the follow-on in this building to The Villa and opened in the Summer of 2023. I ate there twice, I think, and it was pretty good. Driving by recently, I noticed that it was gone and replaced by another Indian restaurant Hyderabad House. This appears to be more than a re-branding as the phone numbers are different, and the reviews (mostly positive) suggest the new place focuses more on "Nawabi style" dishes. I'm not exactly sure what that means given my limited knowledge of Indian regional cusine, but I will try to check it out at some point.