Columbia Closings   What's not in Columbia anymore

Cribb's Bakery was a longtime Five Points landmark and yet another Columbia institution I never got around to visiting. Looking at the ad from the 1997 Bellsouth phonebook, I think I could have gone for some of the bagels or pastries though pound cake I'm not so keen on. I figured I would always have time, but on Sunday 30 March 2003, the place caught fire.

According to The State's archives:

Cribb's Bakery, 1030 Harden Street, was damaged Sunday in a fire that apparently originated in the building's storage room.

Plumes of smoke billowed from the attic of the peach and blue building around 9 p.m., but there was no visible structural damage.

Battalion Chief Cleveland Geter said the fire was contained to the one room, and firefighters had it contained in 10 to 15 minutes.

Despite the story's optimistic take on the scope of the damage, the bakery never reopened, and in September of 2004 the current tenant, Time Warner Cable started work to move in, as The State reported on 9 December 2004:

Time Warner to move to Harden Street site

Time Warner of the Midlands planned to begin renovations this week to the old Cribbs Bakery on Harden Street, converting it into a roomier retail and office space.

I had assumed the old bakery building was torn down for the TWC office, but it would appear from this that it was not.

American Apparel was a clothes store on Harden Street, next to the old Hiller Hardware. I gather that it served the young, hip, crowd, which is, um, not me.

In fact, for years, I didn't even know where the store was, just that it had a series of mildly risque ads on the back page of the local alternative weekly, The Free Times. These were constant fodder for the paper's Rant & Rave feature, as here, for instance.

When I went by on Saturday 5 Feb, there was still music playing from the store's door speakers, and two guys hanging around like they were supposed to be loading stuff out of there but couldn't get inside.

Doing a little googling turns of the surprising (to me) fact that American Apparel (AMEX: APP) is the largest clothing manufacturer in the United States.. They also seem to have had a good bit of financial trouble in their retail arm lately, as detailed in this WSJ piece and this "Open Market" piece (which also has an image of an ad they could never have run in Columbia..)

The company's web site goes even farther with ads -- DEFINITELY NSFW!

(Hat tip to commenter Jennifer)

UPDATE 12 September 2011 -- The follow-on operation, Urban Thread & More is open, and apparently has been at least since 16 April 2011:

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.

I've written about this idiosyncratic little building behind the Five Points Food Lion before, when it stopped being Gilligan's (after having been Ribby's and a number of other places).

Probably only in Columbia could you call a place The Cock Lounge -- so the next owners did. I'm not sure how long The Cock Lounge lasted. I did the Gilligan's post on 14 December 2008. At the time, the Gilligan's signage was still up, but I did see a guy working on the building's roof, so the conversion may have already been in progress.

I finally noticed TCL was open and got some pictures on 15 April 2010. It was definitely open through 24 July 2010.

By 22 November though, all The Cock Lounge signage was down (except for the lolipop sign) and the beach mural had been painted over with the name of the new operation: Your Mom's House.

(And yes, I have restrained myself from making several name related jokes..)

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I posted before about bygone Columbia grocery chain Edens. After I located one of the buildings on Rosewood, I have been looking for some of the others from time to time when I remember. I didn't have any luck with the two Main Street locations, but here is the Harden Street one.

Growing up, this was always Eckerd's to me, and it never really occurred to me that it had not been built as a pharmacy. Looking at it now though, I'm pretty sure this must be the original grocery building from the 1950s. In particular, I don't think anyone would site the doors on the street instead of the parking lot on any building newer than that. In fact, thinking about it, I'm surprised nobody ever changed that.

UPDATE 24 Nov 2010: Added Greenbax Stamps and Thrift Store to post title based on comments.

UPDATE 30 Nov 2010: Changed "Thrift Store" to "Community Thrift" based on Dennis's comment.

UPDATE 26 November 2019 -- This place is now Pet Supermarket:

UPDATE 10 August 2020: Update tags, change Eckerd's in post title to Eckerd Drugs.

1101 Harden Street was the address for PT's Cabaret, The Punch Line and Greenstreets as well as a gaggle of other businesses over the years including tax preparers, nightclubs, eateries, and military recruiters.

The building sat on the corner of Harden and Senate Streets (a corner I believe many people would be surprised exists..) across from Time Warner Cable and next to Food Lion. The ongoing demolition is supposed to result in a Cook Out restaurant being built, and although it was a separate address, the old Bob Andrews Motors building was also knocked down as part of the project.

Lots of pictures from three different days follow..

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Well, I believe the only Indian restaurant downtown is now gone. There is no goodbye sign on their door, but the web site is gone, the phone is disconnected, and fairly major work is being done inside. I suppose it could be a remodel, but in that case I would expect a sign to that effect.

As things worked out, I only ate at the India Pavilion once. Growing up my father had occasional "American faculty mentor" relations with visiting foreign students. At one time, this included an Indian couple. They were nice and we had them to the house for dinner a few times (my father duly explained that my sister's guinea pigs were not being raised to eat..) and they returned the favor by having us to their apartment once. Now, I was a very finicky eater with very narrow tastes, but I was informed by my parents that I would try whatever was offered to us. The only thing I can remember about it is that part of the meal was some sort of chutney, which I thought was the worst thing I ever tasted. I'm sure that it was well made, and that I would probably like it now, but at the time it made such a strong negative impression on me that I never even considered Indian food as an option until I was in my 30s, walking in Charleston and thinking Hey! That smells really good! with no preconception of what type of food it was.

So, anyway, with a childhood dislike, then living out of town and then generally going someplace with parking, I go most often to the Indian places on Bush River & Saint Andrews Road. Still, the time I did make it to India Pavilion it was fine, and it's a shame to see another longtime (an archived version of their web site says founded 1990) Five Points restaurant go.

(Hat tips to commenters Joel & Luke).

UPDATE 2 Sept 2010 -- It's to be another Pho Viet restaurant:

Well, moving a bit further into Five Points than yesterday, today's posting is "ripped from the headlines", which is to say I was reading The Free Times at lunch today and ran across a breaking story by Patrick Wall to the effect that Elbow Room was closed as of Tuesday night. He has an update on his blog that the new operation in that building will honor the existing Elbow Room bookings, which is nice if a bit odd seeming.

I've written about this building before when it was Dodd's / Von Henman's / Monterrey Jack's / Agave / Nacho Mamma's / 5 Points Pub. To be honest, I wasn't really aware that 5 Points Pub was gone and Elbow Room had moved in. In fact I'm not sure what the last show I saw in a nightclub was. Perhaps The Swimming Pool Qs at Doc's Gumbo Grille if you want to call that a nightclub. Anyway, I wish the new operation luck -- it's starting to look like anything going into that storefront is going to need it.

Here's another storefront in the strip with Clydes / This That 'n'The Other and Miss Sun Fun Headquarters. The last tenant was apparently Liberty Tax Service, a tax preparation chain which still has a number of Columbia offices.

Before that, it's a bit murky in that I can say something that wasn't in this storefront, but not anything that was.

In 1998 (or perhaps late 1997) a party store was trying to locate here, but the liquor license application was contested. According to this SC Administrative Law Court Decision, the applicants apparently gave up on that idea before their appeal and rented the property to someone else. That "someone else" could plausibly have been Liberty, though no name is given.

Liberty had to have been gone by 2006, when tattooing became legal because Cap City Ink applied for a zoning exemption to establish a tatoo parlor at 946, but later changed their minds (something usally harder to do when tatoos are concerned..)

Actually, I don't remember this place as a Caribbean restaurant at all, but that's what google is turning up for it. Apparently it was an attempt at doing well by doing good, as this 1999 ABC permit hearing decision notes:

The permit was granted despite some misgivings by a neighbor business, but as far as I can tell, the restaurant did not last long at all. I have not verified that by any phonebook research, but note that the only "Five Points Association Member Sticker" in the window is for 1999. The building certainly has not seen much if any work since then, and appears to be in a fairly advanced state of disrepair.

Now, despite not finding any online evidence for it, what I remember this place as is some sort of night club which used the roof as a deck. You can see the hutch that presumably terminates a staircase from the ground floor, and the roof is also directly accessible from the side street as the building is more or less cut into a hillside. I can remember thinking that it was pretty neat though I never visited the club.

I did find this 1998 zoning board minutes which implies that the place was some sort of restaurant in 1990 which was forclosed on at some later point, but no other details are offered..

I think I also remember some sort of drumming studio here as well.

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