Columbia Closings   What's not in Columbia anymore

At one time, Sounds Familiar had quite a little record store empire. They had locations on Parklane, Garners Ferry, Colonial Life Boulevard, Harbison and in Myrtle Beach. There was a period of time when I really liked to go to their stores (especially the Myrtle Beach store) becase they had lots of interesting "import" CDs. (And if you don't understand the difference between import CDs and "import" CDs, I'm not going to explain it here.). They also had a very good selection of Beach Music LPs and CDs as well as a nice stock of used recordings.

Unfortunately, the industry began to change radically as first CD duplication technology and tnen Internet downloads began to take off. All record stores were hard hit and Sounds Familiar was no exception. I believe the Myrtle Beach store was the first to close, followed (I think) by this one and then the one on Harbison. In the case of this store, it can't have helped that it was just across the street from the larger and more esoteric Manifest location in Boozer Plaza.

The locations on Parklane and near Garners Ferry continue to soldier own. I was in the Garners Ferry location last week, and it appeared to be doing OK, if not great, but the last time I went by Parklane, it seemed to me that half of the floor space was just empty.

The state of the record store industry is one of those things I'm ambivalent about. I hate to see places where I found a lot of great music close, but on the other hand, I'm not going to stop ordering music online either.

UPDATE 28 June 2012: It turns out that this strip mall is actually listed as 422 Bush River Road rather than having a Colonial Life Boulevard address. I have updated the post title to include the correct street address. I should also mention that all Sounds Familiar locations have now closed (and can be found in the alphabetical closings list).

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Technically speaking, Waccamaw Pottery was only one store at this landmark dead mall, but the way I recall it, the name was casually used for the whole complex which was centered around it. Back in the 70s and 80s, the outlet mall was a real retail powerhouse on the Grand Strand, and this despite not having a single store that I as a teen wanted to go to. In fact, as I remember it, the place was notorious amongst my whole extended family as a somewhere "grown-ups" liked to go for hours and which we couldn't stand. I remember being in the car with several cousins sometime after my sister had started to drive. As we headed up US-17 towards Myrtle Beach, she suddenly hunched over, gripped the wheel tightly, put on a maniacal expression and announced "This car is going to Waccamaw Pottery and there's nothing you can do about it!"

I can honestly say I don't ever recall buying a single thing here. In fact, I can only recall ever seeing one thing that was even interesting there: In the 70s Playboy printed up a book version of some of their Bo Derek pictorials in advance of the movie "10", and one ended up on a discount table at one of the Waccamaw stores. Of course I couldn't buy it, but it certainly beat browsing festive ice-cube trays or whatever..

Wikipedia says Waccamaw Pottery went under int 2001, which matches more or less what I remember for their Augusta store, but I thought I recalled their "home turf" mall here going under in the 90s. For some reason, outlet malls seemed to go into decline in general around then.

I hadn't really planned on taking these pictures, but I spent the night at the Holiday Inn on the Waterway, and as I got in the car on July 4th, there the mall was and I coudn't resist. Although the place in general is pretty delapidated, with salt spray thick on the windows, deteriorating signage, and some graphitti, there are still some businesses hanging on in the west-most part. In particular, a design operation, a furniture store and a taxi operation. Apparently Hardrock Park is using some rooms in the main area as well (and you can see one of the Hardrock roller-coasters in the background of some of the shots). Some places apparently went under very quickly. You'll notice all the furnishings still in the ice-cream shop, and the Haggar 18 Wheeler (and Haggar history plaques) still in the Haggar store.

The place is still under active scrutiny too. You'll notice in the last picture, there is a security truck reflected in the windows behind me. I could see the reflection, of course, so I stopped what I had been doing, which was leaning suspiciously against the doors while I took some shots through the glass, stepped back and made a show of ostentatiously taking that last picture to make clear that I had a camera and that's what I had been doing. To avoid any pointed questions, when I turned around, I acted like the security guy was just who I had been looking for, and started plying him with questions about the future of the property. He was actually a nice guy and indicated there there were definite plans though he couldn't talk about them yet. We both knew he had made his point without having to say anything about trespassing, and I had plenty of pictures anyway, so I called it a day and headed for lunch.

This car isn't heading for Waccamaw Pottery..

The Atlantic Twin theater was on Two Notch road across from what is now Dick Dyer Toyota. It was something of an "outlying" theater, neither downtown, nor in Five Points, and I think probably the "Oh, I always forget about that one" location probably played a part in its eventual downfall. The fact that that section of Two Notch gradually became rather down-at-the-heels over the years didn't help either. Nonetheless, The Atlantic was the site of the only movie birthday party I ever had. It would have either been in 1967 for my sixth birthday or 1968 for my seventh. I'd say 67, but IMDB says the movie came out several weeks after my birthday, so either I had a very late party, or the film came back for second-run showings the next year.

At any rate, my mother and father arranged to take two carloads of my little friends (you could never pack cars like that today!) to The Atlantic to see "Dr. Dolittle" with Rex Harrison. At the time (and today) the film was universally panned by critics, and the ability of the studio to secure an Oscar for it is often pointed to as the last time the "studio system" was able to rig the awards. Be we liked it!

If I could talk to the animals --
Learn their languages...
Maybe take an animal degree!

The songs were catchy, and the humor with things like the Pushmepullyou wasn't over our heads, and I think we all got popcorn and drinks. Then we went back to my house and had cake..

Anyway, as I alluded above, some time after that The Atlantic fell on hard times. By the late 70s, it had become a porno-palace, and eventually the building itself was torn down. Today there is some sort of social-services building with a DSS branch there. The actual theater was in the lower part of the parking lot, about where the last picture indicates.

Not a big step forward, you'll agree.

If I spoke slang to orangutans
The advantages why any fool on earth could plainly see!
Discussing Eastern art and dramas
With intellectual llamas
That’s a big step forward you’ll agree!

UPDATE 13 September 2009: Added showtime advertisement from The State, 15 April 1973.

UPDATE 12 April 2010: Added full street address to the post title.

Grices (their sign doesn't use an apostrophe, so I won't either) was a long established open-air market on Huger (that's "You-Gee" for you non-natives) Street downtown betwen Gervais & Blossom. I visited so few times, and those all when I was a kid, that I confess I'm a little fuzzy on their whole concept, but I think they had produce, some plants and crafty things like grapevine wreaths. I know my mother liked to stop there from time to time, but I can't really recall anything specific that she bought.

The sign suggests that they thought their main business was "Fruit Baskets", but this Columbia Star story suggests they were a "produce, flower and accessory market". The story also establishes that they closed in 2006; I would have put the date lots earlier. I guess it goes to show "out of sight, out of mind".

I can't for the life of me recall what chain this motel belonged to, though I believe the closing is fairly recent. I'd have liked to walk on back into the property and get some more shots, but the place is "posted" to a fare-thee-well. I'm not sure what the deal is with the place. It looks like they have started a renovation, but there is also a "For Sale" sign, and I can't imagine anyone renovating it on speculation. At any rate, if you need a couch, I think you could get one here fairly easily..

Garner Lane is one of those odd and obnoxious streets that you can only get to by starting down an Interstate on-ramp (in this case the East-bound on-ramp for I-20 from Broad River Road), and to make matters worse, traffic leaving has to get back on the I-20 ramp -- going the wrong way! I don't think I have been down there since Julie's closed. I had never driven all the way to the end before; it stops at a driving range on the river flood plain. (Curiously, nobody was out when I was there). I also see that the Touch of India restaurant from the doomed Intersection Center has moved down there. I wish them luck, it seems like a difficult spot for a restaurant.

UPDATE 25 June 2008: Commenter "Ken" identifies it as a La Quinta Inn, which with that info I am able to verify via google -- I've changed the post title from "Unknown Motel" to "La Quinta Inn".

UPDATE 30 April 2009: It's now open as a Quality Inn

At one time, downtown had a lot of pawn shops. I seem to recall several on Assembly Street. There are fewer nowdays. Some of them got re-developed, and I think some of them got out-competed by shops in more logical places like Decker Boulevard. I never went into one until I was in my 40s. Though I can't recall either of my parents ever saying anything against pawn shops, I just always had the feeling growing up that they were sort of places of ill-repute. Perhaps that's because the classic n'er-do-well Andy Capp was the only character I associated with the shops.

I believe this shop on Main closed at about the same time as the Capitol Restaurant and that First Citizen's is supposed to do something with the property someday. Maybe they'll open it back up. I should think pawn-shopery is a lot less risky than mortgage lending..

UPDATE 4 May 2010: Added full street address to post title.

Once upon a time, housewives stayed home and did the grocery shopping. That was the theory anyway, and it had a good bit of reality behind it for many years. One of the corellaries to this theorem was the assumption that houswives would have time to fool with trading stamps.

Trading stamps are one of those things that is hard to explain because it just sounds ridiculous:

You mean they had these rube-goldberg machines with hundreds of round buttons sitting on top of the cash registers, and when you bought something, the clerk punched in numbers and the machine spat out a bunch of stamps!!??

But the machines were there, and you did take the stamps home and paste them into books. And when you got enough books, you could take them to the redemption center and exchange them for various household items...

There were several different, competing, brands of trading stamps. The name I can always remember is Greenbax (a week pun on the idea that "greenbacks" are dollars, and that you got something back "bax" from the stamps), but each grocery chain had their particular affiliation. I'm pretty sure that this building, at the base of Gervais Street (near the Trenholm intersection) was the Greenbax Redemption center. (It was definitely the redemption center for some trading stamp line). I can only remember going there once (it took a long time to get enough books for anything desirable), and I can't remember what we got, but my impression is that the shelves were not packed and the place was not crowded.

At some point in the 70s, things changed. For one thing, more women were working, and not willing to put up with spending hours pasting stamps into books. For another, several grocery chains decided to give customers a break by, you know, having lower prices rather than pie-in-the-sky redemption offers. Trading stamps were the old version of the modern rebate scam. Companies love rebates since it lets them offer what sounds like a killer deal, but they know half the customers will forget to fill out the paperwork and they will never have to make good on it. Trading stamps were the same thing. The store seemed like it was giving you something extra, but they knew most people would forget about the stamps.

I see that Greenbax is still around as some kind of Pig loyalty program, but in general trading stamps had all died off by the 80s. I don't know what the Greenbax building had been before that -- It looks rather like an old A&P, but I don't think it was one. At any rate, it seems to have found new stable tenants since then. I think the current mix has been there for at least ten years.

UPDATE 13 Jan 2010: Added full street address to post title.
Also, the followup operation Columbia Paint & Decorating has closed.

Well, this one is still open, but it's going soon!

I've always thought of The Sharper Image as sort of a store for people who have too much money (which doesn't mean I haven't lusted after some of their tecno-porn myself!). Given however, that their entire stock is 'nonessentials', I suppose it's not surprising that they would be hurting in an economic downturn.

I'm starting to wonder a bit about Sandhills itself. This is the third Sandhills closing I've blogged, and the place isn't that old. There also seem to be a lot of never-occupied storefronts out there. Now they still well be ramping up, and the place doesn't seem to lack for shoppers, but it makes me wonder..

UPDATE 16 May 2010: Added full stree address,tags.

This building, which Harbor Inn has just vacated was originally a Ryan's steakhouse. A friend who writes software for the restaurant industry told me once that Ryan's corporate felt that the local franchises had run the brand into the ground and had introduced a new name Fire Mountain (which was once out on Garner's Ferry) for markets where the Ryan's name had been ruined. Be that as it may, my recollection is that when this Ryan's closed, it was not to move out towards Sandhills where there is a Ryans today, but that Columbia was Ryans-less for a few years.

At any rate, Harbor Inn took over the building and had a fairly good run there. I'm not sure why they decided to move to the old Quincy's building near Lowes on Two Notch, but I did get the impression after stopping to take these pictures that the Quincy's location is easier to get in and out of. And, of course, it's nearer to the Interstate as well.

I wondered if Columbia could support a store like this, and unless they have just moved somewhere else, I guess the answer is no: Even a non-profit store has to pay rent & utilities.

If I understand the concept, Ten Thousand Villages was to sell crafts from third world countries with more of the selling price making its way back there than is the usual case. That's a nice idea, but people still have to buy them. Walking by there from time to time on my way to CVS, I would see things that, while I could appreciate the skill and craftsmanship that went into them, I really didn't have any desire to put in my house. Of course I'm the sort who thinks you can never have too many pictures of the beach on your walls, so take that for what it's worth.

Too bad.

UPDATE 4 March 2010: Added full street address and precise closing date (from this link) to post title.