Columbia Closings   What's not in Columbia anymore

Well, this is unpleasant news:

Columbia Fire Department firefighters were dispatched at 11:09 p.m. to 486 Town Center Place, the location of Brixx Wood Fire Pizza, where a fire had spread up a flue from a pizza oven, Assistant Chief Aubrey Jenkins said.

Brixx is one of my regular after 10pm Tuesday night pizza hangouts (Pizzeria Uno on US-378 is the other), and it's pretty much a roll of the dice that put me at Uno on the 14th rather than enjoying the fun here. Luckily, nobody was hurt. I'm a bit surprised that the news story states that the fire was post closing -- Usually they don't close until midnight or 1am.

I think Brixx is a bit of a frustrating place in that they have a good concept and very attentive staff, but the food execution could be better. They have lots of different combos and some more unusual ingredients, but often when I get a custom pizza, the extra stuff on top is not hot, and the crust and sauce are acceptable, but not great. (Landolfi's at Pawleys Island is the best brick-oven pizza in SC, arguably the best pizza in SC period). Anyway, the sign on the door says closed until further notice, but I hope they come back soon and better than ever.

While I was in there once, one of the wait staff mentioned that the people living upstairs had been complaining about the noise at night -- I suppose that's the good old days now!

These pictures are not very good because at first there was a group of men standing under the front awning with clipboards making some sort of assesment of the situation and I didn't want to just walk up and stick my camera under their noses, snapping away. After that, it started to rain, and I had to stand under an awning at Which Wich. There were some sort of hoses running to the upstairs apartments, but given my angle you can't see them.

UPDATE 20 July 2009: OK, some more pictures, a bit closer:

UPDATE 21 December 2011:

Well, Brixx is closed again, this time for good. I had not been there too much lately because my situation had changed, and I could get to some closer places that closed earlier. However, I did make it there several times after they re-opened, with the last time being on Sunday 11 December 2011. It still wasn't my favorite pizza in town, but a perfectly acceptable one, and my toppings were all nice and hot the times I got back there recently. The waitresses were always good about keeping the tea refills coming too.

I don't know what this says about the Village at Sandhill except that it can't be good news for them as they have taken several hits in 2011 including Talbots, Corked, AAA and La Fogata.

(Hat tip to commenter Sidney)

This is a little place I would see from time to time driving down Beltline to Two Notch but not really notice. It appears from this filing in The Columbia Star that they were in business and applying for a liquor license as late as 2007.

This seems to be a hard-luck stretch of road -- below Covenant and above Two Notch. The little office plaza more or less across the street from this place has always struggled, the drugstore at the corner closed, and even the new church being built down the block has had its sanctuary windows broken out during construction.

UPDATE 15 July 2009: Add Dragon Inn, Players' Paradise and El Amigo to post title based on comments. Further fix: Dragon Inn ==> Dragon Chamber

Ok, I'll admit the brothel part was unexpected, but it's a comment from a rather staid planning document:

In more modern times, I believe this once was Dixie Used Furniture, but I would have to go back to an old phone book to verify that for sure.

Sometime in the 90s, it became a trendy brewpub, Vista Brewing Company. After that, it was The Club House (sometimes written as one word "Clubhouse"), which was also a brewpub, at least into 2004.

At some point after 2004, it became Park Place Ultra Lounge. Frankly, I've never been exactly sure what an "Ultra Lounge" is. In fact, my idea of a "lounge" doesn't lend itself to the "ultra" intensifier..

I'm not sure, but I believe that in the Park Place incarnation, beer was no longer brewed on the premises.

Park Place apparently closed this year, but I gather from the minutes of this city of Columbia planning meeting, that the ownership is not changing and that the owner plans to reopen as a restaurant after some remodeling, which was approved in the meeting. (As far as I can tell, there was no proposal to install a red light at the top of the outside stairs :-)

(Hat tip to commenter Tom)

UPDATE 15 July 2009: Added Richard's to the post title based on comments.

UPDATE 9 March 2010 -- Work seems to be going pretty slowly:

UPDATE 23 May 2010 -- Pearlz is finally open:

I've known about three Luigi's italian restaurants. The one in Fayetteville NC was great and one of my lunch and pizza hangouts -- it also made the national news due to a horrible tragedy early in the Clinton era. I tried the one in Broad Street in Augusta a few times while I was working there and was never impressed. This one, in Triangle City, was completely off my radar, and I learned about it only when I started looking through old phone books (this ad is from 1970). I'm not sure why that was as I've always loved spaghetti, and got into other Italian food, starting with pizza and lasagna in the 70s. If I had to guess, I'd say it was because it was all the way across town from our area and off my parents' radar during the years before I was driving and that after I started driving, I was, in those years, very satisfied with Pizza Hut pizza, and usually too broke to eat out anyway.

Commenter Dennis wrote:

Is Luigi's before your time?

Was a wonderful Italian place, great pizza, in an old white house
right in the middle of Triangle City.

It's now West Columbia Pawn & Loan, 1215 Augusta Rd, West Columbia.
Building has hardly changed at all on the outside.

No idea what year it closed. It was a hot spot for Carolina students
in the 70s.

The place was easy to find, though a bit hard to get to what with medians and all the odd cross streets in Triangle City. Interestingly, as I was taking these shots, a lady in a car with a sleeping kid in a car-seat pulled into the lot and basically panhandled me. She had some sob story about how she had locked herself out of the house, didn't have any money and wouldn't be able to get back in until 8pm and she was running out of gas and needed to keep the AC running for the kid. I have no idea if it was true, but the sleeping kid did it for me and I gave her some cash. This is the second time I've been "out-of-gas" panhandled taking these pictures. I don't know if I just naturally look like an easy mark, or if something about a guy out snapping pictures in the heat suggests a certain lack of common sense.

UPDATE 23 September 2009: Updated the closing date to "mid-1980s" based on commenter fw's story.

John Paul's Armadillo Oil Company was one of those places that never registered with me. First, there was the name, which didn't give me a good idea of what to expect. "Hmm, southwest? But then why drag the Pope into it?" Second, it opened while I was living out of town and third, it was in the Vista so parking was an issue.

I'm not sure if John Paul's started in Greenville and expanded to Columbia or vice-versa, but there's apparently still one up there.

As you can see from the facade work currently being done on the building, it was at one time the Royal Crown Cola Bottling Co, and if there's anything more Southern than RC Cola, it could only be RC with a Moon Pie. I would have to guess from the style that the RC incarnation may go back as far as the 30s or 40s. I'm saying that the John Paul incarnation closed in 2006 based on this restaurant review, but in that case it seems odd that there are still chairs inside three years later.

(Hat tip to commenter Tom)
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This little hole-in-the-wall deli near Wal Mart on Forest Drive got a number of really good reviews. Apparently it was mainly a Polish deli with some Latin influence and really good Cuban sandwiches. I kept meaning to go by sometime for lunch, but never did actually make it.

UPDATE 1 Oct 2010 -- Ela's (and the Sprint store next door) are now part of a 24-hour fitness center:

UPDATE 6 December 2017: Modified the street address to suite-last format and added tags.

This hole-in-the-wall Chinese restaurant sat at the apex of River Road & Sunset Drive, just across the street from the old A&P and Edna's Drive-In, sharing a lot with Buck's Sport Shop. I recall the building as being rather small, and parking quite limited (though I never stopped for a first-hand appraisal).

At some point in the 1990s (or possibly the 1980s) the place burned down, and nothing else has ever been built on the lot. There is currently a Great China restaurant in West Columbia on the Charleston Highway -- I don't know if it is related to this one or not.

I find it rather odd that someone cared enough to white over the sign, but not enough to take the sign down.

I believe I only ate at Golden China once, probably in the 1970s, but it was a favorite of my mother's and I know she and my father went there a number of times over the years.

I don't recall much about the restaurant itself -- I believe it impressed me as a perfectly OK Chinese place, but Chinese food is not really something I care for, so I can't say much. I do remember its long running radio commercial which featured a man and a woman trying to decide where to eat, and went something like this:

Man: I could really use some good Chinese food!

Woman: Golden China!

Man: Suuuure. I'll hop on a plane right now...

Woman: Not "go-to-China" Silly, "Gol-den China" in the Boozer Shopping Center!

Man: Oh yeah!

As you can see from the pictures, the building is now an Indian restaurant (with Chinese decor..) which opened last week (25 June 2009). On the one hand, I'm happy because I like Indian food on the other hand I'm sorry to see a longtime Columbia landmark go, even if I didn't want to eat there.

Well, you can't say they didn't make an effort at this Wal-Mart outparcel on Garners Ferry road. This building originally opened as a Fire Mountain Grill, which was explained to me once by a friend with contacts in the food industry as the brand Ryan's corporate used to move back into markets where they felt the Ryan's brand had been tarnished by the local franchisees.

I always felt that Fire Mountain was a bad name since it invoked images both of volcanic tropical islands like Hawaii and of heat and spiciness, none of which had anything to do with the food served. At any rate, they ran it as that for a few years, then transitioned it back into a Ryan's, which didn't last long at all.

The building looks quite impressive, especially when viewed end-on and from below, as when you walk in from Garners Ferry. Currently it's for sale. The sign doesn't mention that you get all the fixtures, but that seems to be the case -- they are still in there at any rate.

As an aside, and appropos to nothing, I parked in the lot at Aldi across the street from Ryan's while taking these pictures. I decided as long as I was parked there, I would go in -- What a weird and unpleasant place!

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Well, people have been talking about Swain's in the comments recently, so I think I'll move this post forward in the queue, though I don't have a lot to say about it.

I haven't been able to find out much about Swain's. It was a name I heard growing up, but we never went there, and indeed I wasn't quite sure where it actually was at the time, or now. From this 1970 Yellow Pages ad, it appears to have been a Southern based chain, though I get google hits on locations elsewhere in the country now as well.

You'll notice that the ad doesn't give an actual street address and neither did the white pages listing which simply said "Knox Abbott Drive" -- it's like they thought if you didn't know, you shouldn't go. I had to search up into the 1980s before I found a listing that put them at "150 Knox Abbott Drive". Just from the 1970 ad, I had at first supposed that Swain's was the original tennant in the building now housing Monterrey Mexican, but that is "199 Knox Abbott", which is on the other side of the street entirely. From the satellite view in google-maps, it appears that "150 Knox Abbott" is now vacant (and would be in the vicinity of all the new land clearing on the Guignard Bricks property.

Swain's seems to have been an upscale place with a piano bar. I also notice that like a number of places from the 1970 phone book, they were open past what is considered "normal" (10pm) now -- I wish places still did that.

UPDATE 17 June 2009: Commenter Badger says the place lasted until 1995, so I have updated the closing date from "1980s" to that.

UPDATE 1 Oct 2010 -- Southern First bank is now approximately in the old Swain's location (though the street address for the bank is 190 Knox Abbott Drive vs 150 for the vanished Swain's building: