Columbia Closings   What's not in Columbia anymore

It seems a bit odd now, but for years after Columbia Mall opened, Lowrey Organs sat at the top of the curving staircase on the Penny's end of the mall, across the way from The Record Bar. The spot is currently a toy store.

I say odd, because a console organ isn't really an impulse purchase -- you think about it and go to the showroom whether or not it's in a walk-by retail area. Be that as it may, the store was there for years, and the organs they sold were wonders to behold with arrays of keys and knobs, pedals, switches and lights. I believe that some of them would probably play better without a human messing around with the keyboard. My memory, in fact, is that they often had an organ playing in demo mode with noone at the keys, though they did have humans demo them as well from time to time.

I don't know when, or why, they moved out of the mall. I think some of it may have been changing times. People still buy pianos, but electronic organs have a very 70s feel in my mind. Some of it may have been changing tech as well. I bought a toy keyboard for my neice from a drugstore for $10, and it can do a lot of the same things those huge console organs did.

It doesn't look like something Captain Nemo would have in The Nautilus though, and the Lowrey Organs did.

The Byte Shop was Columbia's first computer store, or at least that's the way I remember it. You may have been able to get a TRS-80 at Radio Shack by the time The Byte Shop opened, but Radio Shack was not a computer store.

The place opened in the late 70s, and was very much an Apple shop basing their product line, if I recall correctly, around the Apple IIc. I was in high school at the time, and was, in theory, very much interested in computers. In practice, I knew nothing about them, and had no real way to learn anything. I recall that one of my classmates had a TRS-80 and bought it to school for a presentation in science class. Everyone was fascinated, but looking back, I don't think the machine actually did anything. I think there was a BASIC program which asked a few number questions and computed an answer and that was about it.

A few years after that, one of my friends got an Apple IIc with with a logo interpreter and learned how to write programs using the language's turtle graphics which I thought was amazingly neat. It was out of the question given my total lack of money at the time that I would get a computer, but eventually I did take a "continuing education" class at USC that involved using a statistical analysis program to massage numbers we entered on punch cards and produce ASCII (EBCIDIC, actually..) "graphs" on green and white fanfold line-printer paper. Luckily, this did not quite kill my interest in computers though it came close.

In 1979, VisiCalc for the Apple became the first electronic spreadsheet, and suddenly there was a reason to buy personal computers other than the fact that they were "neat". As displays improved, and daisy-wheel printers became available, word processing provided another reason.

I was only actually in The Byte Shop once that I can recall. After I started college and picked a Computer Science major, I became enamored with the ease of writing with text editors and text processors (the names vi and nroff will be familiar to some..) and convinced my sister that she ought to look into getting a computer for word processing. I still didn't have a computer of my own because I had easy access to school computers, and didn't actually know that much about personal computers, but I think I had in mind that an Apple II with an 80 column CPM card would be a good platform for Wordstar.

I think that when we went to The Byte Shop, she was willing to be talked into a purchase, but in the event it didn't happen because of the staff. Now anyplace can have a bad day, and perhaps we just walked in on theirs, but the staff that day struct me as actively rude. First we were ignored totally for a good while, and then when someone deigned to talk to us, and I started to explain the capabilities were were looking for, the reaction I got was more or less If you don't know exactly what you want to buy, why are you here?. Now I'm a doormat in these situations, but after a few minutes of this, my sister got her dudgeon up and we walked out and never went back. In the end, we waited another year, I learned a bit more about PCs (and IBM compatibles started to appear) and I set her up with a Leading Edge Model-D with NewWord and a Brother daisy-wheel printer from Softek. After using that for a surprising number of years, she did eventually end up with an Apple (Mac), but not from The Byte Shop, which had anyway gone out of business in the interim.

I had completely forgotten that the original location of The Byte Shop was on Fire Lane Drive. When I was taking pictures of the old Taylor's Restaurant the other day, I saw a building down past the firehouse with a kind of new-agey mural. I had noticed it off and on when I would go to Lowes, and it had always seemed to be empty. I got to wondering what kind of place it had been, walked over, saw the nameplate on the front stoop, and it all came back to me (though the mural may postdate The Byte Shop).

There's currently a builder's permit on the building, and some sort of renovation is going on, so perhaps something new may show up here. On the other hand, the permit is more than a year old, so I wouldn't hold my breath. I'm not sure if the horseshoe pitch dates from The Byte Shop era, or if they firestation next door unwinds there. The final picture is the Two Notch location where, I believe, The Byte Shop ended its tenure.

UPDATE 22 March 2010: Added full street addresses to post title, and added some tags.

We were a Ford/Mercury family in the 60s and 70s, and are now mostly a Toyota one, so I don't know much about Chevys or this dealership. I'm saying that it closed in this millennium since there is a prominent URL posted on the building, but I'm pretty sure it's been 5 years or more since this was a going concern.

Actually following that URL leads to Capitol Chevrolet on Newland Road. This is that new dealership off of Clemson Road. I'm guessing they bought out Newsome in Columbia, though Newsome dealerships still seem to exist in other cities. (As an aside, this is the dealership with the humongous flag that I used for a 4th of July post. It was getting a bit ragged, and hasn't been up lately -- I hope they get a new one soon).

It looks like the old Newsome lot is starting to see some tagging and vandalism. I don't know who won the auction, but they need to get something going there pretty soon, or area will continue to decline.

UPDATE 30 Jan 09: Looks like the place is to be torn down soon:

UPDATE 13 April 2011: For some reason, the demolition never happened, and the place is still standing.

UPDATE 23 December 2011 -- And here is the still undemolished building:

UPDATE 10 June 2016 -- Well, at *some* point the building finally was demolished, and now something new is going up, I don't know what:

UPDATE 30 August 2016 -- Construction continues:

UPDATE 4 October 2016 -- Whatever they're building is coming along:

Truthfully, I don't remember this place at all. I was walking around Intersection Center the other day, and coming up on the place, I was sure it was a defunct restaurant, probably a Mexican one. I think given the architecture, that probably is the case, but clearly after the restaurant departed, the building had another life as a video arcade.

Of course I could be wrong about that. I think I would remember a video arcade and I don't recall this place (plus it would have been in competition with the one inside Dutch Square), so perhaps the "video games" referred to are console cartridges etc. To confuse my recollection even further, I'm pretty sure there was a music store chain called Coconuts in town during the 80s/90s as well.

Anyone go to this place?

UPDATE: Everyone seems to agree that this was a Burger King, not a Mexican restaurant, and that it lasted into the 90s. I have changed the date on the post title line from 1980s to 1990s

I didn't read a lot of comics as a kid. I had a stash that was left to me by an older neighbor friend when he moved out of town, and those I read over and over, and when we went to the beach, sometimes I would buy a copy of The Rawhide Kid or Sergeant Rock from the rack at Lachicotts if I had the money, but in general I didn't have the money. Besides, when I got my $3.00 from mowing the lawn, I wanted to spend it on Tom Swift, Rick Brant or Doc Savage.

All that changed in the 80s, when I finally had a little money coming in. Coincidentally, this boom time for me happened about the same time comics went into a major boom. DC was shaking things up with The Crisis on Infinite Earths and Alan Moore was proving with his incredible run on Swamp Thing that comics could be the vehicle for well-written adult horror.

As comics boomed, the distribution model changed from drugstore spinner racks which were indiferently stocked by magazine jobbers and always seemed to miss crucial issues to dedicated comic book stores. At the peak of the boom, Columbia had at least four first run comic stores. There was one on Forest Drive near the Fort Jackson gate, Heroes & Dragons at Boozer Shopping Center, Silver City on Knox Abbot Drive (not at its current location however) and this store, on Meeting Street.

I can't recall now what it was called, but I often checked it on new issue days (I think comics shipments arrived on either Wednesday or Thursday at the time) to see if they had anything I hadn't seen at Silver City (which I considered my main store).

Of course with every boom there is a bust. Comics were hit by a one two punch, first the "black & white" glut and implosion where the market for "indie" (non Marvel/non DC) black and white comics completely collapsed. (Just as an aside, The Teenaged Ninja Mutant Turtles started as an indie b&w comic which was an obvious parody of Frank Miller's work on Daredevil) then second, the industry was gripped by a speculative frenzy based on varient covers for each comic (one comic might be issued with 4 different covers, including gimmicks like embossed or 3-D covers on the theory that that made them "collectible"). Well, of course it turned out that nothing collected by the thousands is worth anything (Action Comics #1 is worth a lot because nobody collected them and almost all of them were thrown out) and the twin busts took out a lot of comic shops. To this day the industry still hasn't fully recovered, and with competition from video games and the Interenet likely never will.

This particular store went into a kind of slow-motion, never acknowledged, bankruptcy. One week I came in to look at the new comics and was told "Oh, the truck didn't come this week", so I browsed last week's leftovers a few minutes and left. When I stopped by the next week, and those were still the only comics there, I understood what was happening: There was not enough money to pay the distributers for new issues, but they weren't going to admit that, and were going to try to sell a few back issues for as long as the rent and utilities were not an issue (which was, I presume, the end of the month).

After the final closing, I think a couple of different operations moved in over the years, but for the last 5 years or so, it's been a tanning store so you can look good in your own superhero costume.

UPDATE 3 Oct 2008: Changed post title to reflect the name "Ye Olde Comic Shoppe" given by "Jim" in the comments. Also changed "Cayce" to "West Columbia"

Well, talking about The Record Bar brings another record store to mind, one I haven't thought about in years.

In the early 1980s, there was a record store just across from The Horseshoe, on Sumter Street. It was on the ground floor of the building next to the restaurant that was McDonalds, then Lizards Thicket and is now, I think, Tios. This particular building also had a Sandy's Hotdogs and a video arcade.

I liked to stop into the place from time to time since it was almost on campus, and was a shorter walk than going down to Five Points, and despite its small size, it had an interesting selection of music. I remember in particular, that they had an import copy of The Beach Boys "Stack O' Tracks" album, one of the oddest releases ever put out by a major rock group, and long out of print in the US at the time, and a Stan Kenton album I wanted. Despite the fact that I bought both, neither could have been hot sellers on a college campus in 1980..

I'm guessing that the owner must have been pretty plugged into the local music scene, because of one incident I remember in particular. I was browsing in the back of the store, and a guy walked in with a bunch of 45s. The owner put one on the turntable, and the store was filled with this incredible stripped down bass-heavy New Wave groove under a piercing vocal:

A-Bomb woke me up -- only thing alarming was the noise!

At the end, the guy who had brought the 45s in said he was still a little unhappy with the mix, but that they were going to go with it. I didn't know it at the time, but the guy with the 45s almost had to have been Jeff Calder and the song was "The A-Bomb Woke Me Up" off of the Swimming Pool Qs first album The Deep End. It was a little slice of history, and a band that should have been huge.

I'm pretty sure the store was gone by the mid 80s, and I can't even recall the name now. It was not New Clear Days. NCD was in the same building, but upstairs where this store was downstairs, and came in much later. Anyone remember what this place was called?

UPDATE 17 Sep 08: Originally this post was just titled "Record Store", but the consensus seems to be that it was "Budget Tapes & Records", and I have changed the post title accordingly. Thanks folks!

I'm not a big customer of Jewelry stores. I have a watch battery that needs to be replaced about once a year, and that's pretty much it. The last time it needed changing, I used the jewelers outside the 2nd floor entrance of Macy's, and the time before that, the one that's a short walk down Two Notch from Very's restaurant. So, although I've been somewhat aware of the name, I've never been in Friedman's.

As it turns out, that was probably a good move on my part. The store seems to have been hit with a triple whammy lately. Apparently, from what I've been able to google, the chain went into bankruptcy once, came out in 2005, then went under again in 2008, and closed "all" of its stores by June 2008. If that weren't bad enough the following from Wikipedia seems to apply to the Columbia Mall store:

Any stores currently operating under the Freidman's or Crescent nameplates are currently owned by Whitehall Jewelers Inc, who had purchased these locations for about fourteen million dollars from bankrupt Friedman's. Whitehall went bankrupt and began liquidating all of its stores in August 2008.

I suppose you have to admire the optimism that makes the purchase of bankrupt stores seem like a good idea, but I sure wouldn't bet on that idea!

Another casualty of the Trenholm Plaza renovations. (Have you noticed all the new palm trees going in?)

I've always been an Electrolux guy myself, except that I figured out a few years ago that I just don't have the cleaning gene at all, got maid-service and never looked back..

UPDATE 30 Jan 2009: This is their new location a few blocks down Forest Drive in the Forest Park plaza with the Piggly Wiggly.

UPDATE 14 May 2012 -- The store has now changed its name to All Vacuums:

I went down to the sacred store
Where I’d heard the music years before,
But the man there said the music wouldn’t play.

I was just at Columbia Mall, a place I go very seldom nowadays. I couldn't help but be struck by how few of the original stores are still there. There's Sears, Waldenbooks, Radio Shack, and that's about it. (I suppose you could count Macy's since there was continuity with their purchase of Rich's..).

Anyway, The Record Bar was on the top level, right next to J.C. Penny's and above Radio Shack. It was not a large operation and wasn't "indie" the way Sounds Familiar and especially Manifest can be, but it performed its function of providing the current hit LPs & 45s with a comendable depth of back catalog for a chain store with limited space. They also had a constantly changing selection of "cut-outs" from which I bagged many a gem, especially considering my extremely limited finances in those days before I had a job.

They also were generally careful to pull out the "Hot 100" pages from the current week's Billboard magazine, and tack them up over the 45 bin. This was nice because in those pre-internet days, you might never know your favorite group had a new song out if it was still down around #60 and never showed up on the radio.

I don't know their hiring practices -- their staff was definitely not as tatooed and pierced as is the norm at Manifest, but someone there seemed to know a bit about music. I pretty much discovered rock music in 1976 as a result of being introduced to "Endless Summer" by The Beach Boys, and I would always check the Beach Boys section in the LPs. Of course by that time, Brian Wilson was still not living on Earth most days, and the Beach Boys glory days were long gone, so there were years between album releases, and even the back catalog was in sad disarray. I found though, that whenever some interesting Beach Boys artifact was released abroad, it would usually show up at the Record Bar. I remember I had to borrow a dollar from my sister to get a "Brian Wilson Rarities" record with stuff that didn't show up in the states for years.

I'm not sure exactly what happened to The Record Bar. They had two locations in Columbia, I always presumed they were a larger chain, but perhaps I was wrong. At any rate, both the Woodhill Mall and the Columbia Mall locations closed in, I believe, the 1980s. It may have been that they were unprepared for CDs to catch on as quickly as they did. It may have been that that made a good bit on 45 singles and those disappeared. It may have been competition from larger non-mall stores like Peaches, Sounds Familiar and Manifest. It could even have been in-mall competition -- I know that at one time there was a larger CD store on the bottom level near Sears (though my impression is that that came after The Record Bar was already gone). Whatever the reason, they packed up, and their stained glass window and wooden door are now long gone. Currently there's not even a storefront in the spot where they were.

The levee is dry..

Jackson Camera. At their height, they had stores all over Columbia. I can recall locations at Richland Mall (on the backside of the open-air corridor), Main Street, Five Points and Dutch Square.

The location I always visited was at Richland Mall. As a kid, I had gotten into developing and printing pictures. I can't remember exactly how, but I had already started fooling around with it when I "inherited" a bunch of (mostly hand-made) equipment from someone moving out of town to a smaller place. Originally I had no enlarger so I favored bigger-frame negatives like (the even-then archaic) 616 and slightly smaller 620 and 127 film sizes which made accptable contact prints. I'm afraid I pretty much ruined the finish on the kitchen counters with sloshing developer, stop-bath and "hypo" all over them -- the stains are there to this day. And really, there was no way to make the kitchen dark enough to be a "real" darkroom during the day (not surprisingly, my mother needed it to cook at night..), so my prints and negatives were always fuzzy, but I never hesitated to try again, and to ask for more advice down at Jackson Camera.

I'm sure the guy who was usually there, would look up, see me coming across the corridor and think Oh Lord, here we go again, but he and all the staff were always very patient and informative despite the fact that I took up way more of their time than my meager purchases of contact paper and chemicals would warrant. By middle school, I had more or less fallen out of the habit (and in high school, the darkroom had its own stock of chemicals and paper), so my visits to Jackson almost ceased.

Even as I moved out of town in 1985 though, the photo market was changing drastically. While the picture drop-off business had always (in my memory) been a chain dominated affair, in the 80s, national chains moved into the camera shop and specialty photo-finishing market. Wolf and Ritz were the big players, and when Ritz bought Wolf, they were the 500 pound gorilla that sleeps where it wants. Jackson kept on for years, but gradually closed more of their stores. The one pictured here is at the corner of Beltline Boulevard and Forest Drive, and is where, I believe, their Richland Mall shop moved when Richland Mall went to Richland "Fashion" Mall, driving out a number of stalwarts like Jackson Camera and The Happy Bookseller. Jackson finally sold out to Ritz a few years ago, and this location operated as a Ritz for a while, but with another Ritz just a few blocks away down Beltline, it didn't really make any sense to keep this one open.

Interestingly, as I went to take this shot, I saw that the follow-on business, some sort of beauty store is also closing up shop.

UPDATE 21 May 2010 -- Here's an ad from The State for 19 Feb 1979:

Also, I've added all the addresses from the ad to the post title.

UPDATE 3 December 2010 -- Here are two great shots of the Harden Street Store by Hunter Desportes on Flickr:

outside

inside

UPDATE 24 February 2013: I have added two pictures to the top of this post, above the one (of the beauty store) that the text of the post talks about. They come from commenter Thomas and were taken of the Main Street location in 1997. I love that huge marquee.. Thanks!

UPDATE 23 February 2014 -- The Forest Drive store is now Troy's Cutting Edge barber shop:

UPDATE 20 May 2018 -- Here is a picture of the Greenlawn location, which ended up getting its own post because I totally forgot Jackson had a Greenlawn location: