Columbia Closings   What's not in Columbia anymore

I wrote about this building before when I was talking about River City Cafe and Yesterday's. At the time, I commented that Micato had lasted a good bit longer than the other two operations. Well, I'm afraid I jinxed them, because they have now closed up shop.

On the other hand, the sign says they have retired, and anyone who can retire in this economy has my admiration. I'm not sure exactly when they closed, but they were open at the end of Janurary when I made the other post. Looks like the area's "Wandering Minstrels" will have to forego appearing before The Micato on Open Mic night.

(OK, that last was way forced, but it was the best I could do!)

UPDATE 10 April 2013 -- As commenter Ken Holler notes, this place has been razed to make way for a new Family Dollar:

Site of the 5437 Forest Drive DQ:

The old 1366 Rosewood, DQ building:

The old 135 Sunset Boulevard store (now an Eggroll Station):

This fish market at 3939 Beltline Boulevard isn't on the phonebook list above, but was clearly a Dairy Queen at one time:

Actually the ad lists a lot more Dairy Queens in town than I was aware of back in the day. The one I remember was the one on Forest Drive at Percival Road, about where the oil-change place is now. I'm not even sure we ever stopped there -- after Bell's closed, we were more of a McDonald's family as far as fast-food burgers went back then.

The main reason I remember this Dairy Queen was because of the national ad campaign featuring Hank Ketchum's Dennis The Menace. Dennis was one of the comics I always read in The State, so it really caught my attention when he and his pal "Joey" started doing radio spots for Dairy Queen. Most of them were not that memorable, but there was one where Dennis & Joey were discussing all the "brazier" treats that it was possible to get at Dairy Queen in those days, and Joey delivered the line

Yeah, Dennis, like a super-brazier chilli-dog!

so memorably that it became sort of a catch-phrase with my friends. Almost any conversation could be punctuated by dropping Yeah Dennis, like a super-brazier chilli-dog! into a lull.

I'm not sure what happened to the Forest Drive Dairy Queen. I have it in my mind that it may have burned down, but I know that happened to the very nearby Forest Drive Pizza Hut, so I may be confusing the two stores. At any rate, the whole brazier thing which was supposed to propel DQ into the top ranks of fast food joints didn't really work, Dennis The Menace or no, and the chain exists today under much reduced circumstances.

UPDATE 22 April 2009: Added pix of the Forest Drive site, and the Rosewood building.

UPDATE 13 May 2009: Added pix of the Sunset Boulevard building.

UPDATE 25 May 2009: Added pic of a Beltline location

UPDATE 12 June 2024: This post is a mess since it was still fairly early days for the blog, and I tried to shoehorn four different locations into one post for some reason. I should separate them out and put a map icon on each, but for right now, I am just going to update the tags a bit.

Kester's Bamboo House occupied the spot on Harden Street now held by China Garden and Jungle Jim's. The first (rather unflattering) image comes from the 1963 Southern Bell directory and the second from the 1970 one. I'm not sure when the place closed, but I suspect it was sometime in the 1970s. I'm pretty sure I recall hearing about it as a child, but don't recall seeing it after I began to drive myself. A posting to a genealogy website says that the original Mr. Kester passed in 1966, but I don't know if the business stayed in the family after that or was sold at that point.

I also don't know if 724 Harden was split into two businesses at that point, or if Kester's occupied the whole space by itself, though the 1970 Yellow Pages ad claims banquet seating for 100, which seems larger than the current China Garden capacity. At any rate, I'm pretty sure the current China Garden building was at least part of Kester's and does date back to that era, and is somewhat responsible for the closing of The Parthenon.

As I remember it, the story in The State was that when the interminable Five Points road work of a few years ago reached The China Garden a snag developed. As the work crews went to replace the infrastructure under the building's foundation, they found that the building had no foundation! The front wall was basically supported only by the sidewalk, so before they could go under the building to work, they had to shore everything up and this took a lot longer than they expected -- and all the while they were there, access to The Parthenon was very difficult.

UPDATE 24 June 2019: Add tags and map icon.

You don't tug on Superman's cape, you don't spit into the wind, you don't pull the mask off the old Lone Ranger, and you don't open a restaurant at 2630 Decker Boulevard.

Read the rest of this entry »

Going by this ad from the Southern Bell Yellow Pages, Capital Cabana Motor Inn was a happening sort of place in 1970. Judging from the graphic, the place was huge, and from the text, unaffiliated. Nowdays you would expect something that size to be part of a national chain, if only for reservations purposes. (In fact, Ocean Boulevard Myrtle Beach is about the only place where unaffiliated motels seem to hang on). I've got to admire going for a tropical island theme in landlocked Columbia (where even the state palm has a hard time in the winter and cool sea breezes are notably absent in the summer). Bring your BankAmericard!

Google suggests that 1901 Assembly is currently the Columbia headquarters for BB&T (though of course in today's environment they could be gone by the end of the week..). I'm not sure when the Capital Cabana was torn down, but since I can't really remember it at all, I'm going to say sometime in the 1970s.

I love the graphic for the Inn's attached restaurant The Pirates' Cove Supper Club. Today, it would set up all sorts of opportunities for quips such as I'd sure like to plunder her booty, but of course I would never stoop to anything like that.

UPDATE 2 Apr 2009: Added the seperate 1970 Yellow Page ad for The Pirates' Cove (now you can see her nose if you look closely).

UPDATE 11 July 2011: Added picture of a helicopter apparently about to land on top of the Capital Cabana from an old Chamber of Commerce promotional book.

Zesto's is a Columbia area chain of almost-open-air walk-up restaurants. The older ones are generally odd in that while there may be a dining room, it does not connect to the order counter (which may or may not even be "inside"). The chain is greek influenced, and probably does most of their business in chicken, but for me the attraction has always been chocolate-dipped soft-serve vanilla cones. There's almost a little ceremony as the server fills the cone, then upends it and dips it into the vat of molten chocolate. Then, you take it, wrapped in a little napkin which soaks up the vanilla which is already running down the cone to your hand and, and bite into the just hardened shell -- perfection.

This lot on the corner of Harden & Blossom streets was for many years home to the Five Points Zesto. I believe the store was actually built as a Zesto and had a large ice-cream cone "statue" similar to the Triangle City store in Cayce. Although I typically went to the Forest Drive store across from Richland Mall for my chocolate-dip fix, I recall being quite sad when the Five Points store was demolished. What was even sadder is that the location would probably still be viable as a Zesto's, but the store which replaced it, a Record Bar offshoot called Tracks failed pretty quickly. Here's what commenter Hal had to say about Tracks:

I also worked at the Columbia Mall Record Bar. I worked from November of 85 untill the store closed in 91. Brian is correct in that there where two Record Bars in Columbia at the time. One at Dutch Square, which was store #9, and the one at Columbia Mall, which was store #94. The Tracks in 5 points open around 89 or 90, and was the mack-daddy of it’s day. It was the first two story store, which they later regreted because it had no handicap access to the second story, and it was a video rental store. It also got national news coverage when a drunk plowed his car straight trough the Blossom street wall. Hillarious.

At any rate, Tracks didn't last there too long. I forget if there was anything else before the current tenant, T-Mobile, which has been there at least five or more years.

The traffic cones, and the general drab & gray aspect of the picture are due to it being taken the day before the Five Points St. Patrick's Day fest -- what great weather they had this year!

UPDATE 4 June 2024: Update tags, add map icon, correct post title from Zesto's to Zesto.

1306 Charleston Highway:

7007 Parklane Road:

Chappy's Fish & Chips was a constant media presence on the radio (and in The State as in the coupon from 10 November 1987 above), though I think the most common image I had of the whole "fish & chips" concept came from that English N'er-do-well Andy Capp.

The 2911 Two Notch location referred to in this ad is now the McDonald's at the intersection of Beltline and Two Notch, though I believe the original Chappy's building was demolished. I never ate at Chappy's because I don't like fish (or the smell of fish), and have never been to England, so I can comment neither on how good nor on how authentic the fish and chips were.

Though it's not mentioned in this ad, Chappy's was connected with a very similar (identical except for the name perhaps?) operation called Cedric's. At this remove, it seems like an odd strategy to dilute your concept into two brands, especially since as far as I can recall, the restaurants were a purely Columbia phenomenon. The Chappy's radio commercials used to end with an exhortation to Be sure and visit my friend Cedric too!. I think the stores had at least one English "double decker" bus that they used for promotions. Wonder what happened to that?

At any rate, I'm pretty sure the stores didn't make it through the 90s. I don't think "fish & chips" was ever going to be "big" (though the coupon suggests they were moving in a more Southern direction as well -- "hushpuppies"), perhaps it wasn't big enough to support that many stores, perhaps the owners wanted to retire -- whatever the reason I don't think you can get fish & chips at all in Columbia now. And "Andy Capp" has long since left The State as well.

UPDATE 18 November 2009: Added pix of the Charleston Highway location, made minor edits to the text and added the Charleston Highway and Broad River locations to the post title.

UPDATE 27 May 2010: Added newspaper ad from The State 19 Feb 1979

UPDATE 27 June 2010: Added pictures of the Parklane location.

UPDATE 18 August 2017 -- The Charleston Highway location is now a Cricket phone store:

OK, anyone remember this one? The ad is from the Southern Bell Columbia phonebook for 1963. Given the lead time for a yellow-pages ad, I was probably one when this was prepared, and two when it ran. The address seems to match up with the current Sakura Japanese Restaurant in the remains of the old Forest Lake Shopping Center, behind Coplon's and at the other end of the corridor from the original Forest Lake TV location.

Sakura is the only restaurant that I can ever really recall being there, but I learned from some comments here that at one time the location was Moolah's, run by (or licensed by?) a famous female wrestler. Did Biddie Banquet come before or after Moolah's? My mother used to shop at Colonial Grocery (now Coplon's) all the time so they both must have been gone by the late 60s or I would have noticed them.

I have to say that apart from my whole "I don't like chicken" thing, the bottom line

Shrimp -- Fish -- Chili

sounds particularly unappetizing, and what's the deal with the quotes on "The" Original"?

I do think the chicken art is very nice!

UPDATE 10 Feb 2011 -- Here's the Biddie Banquet location, now occupied by Sakura:

I first wrote about this building, near the corner of College & Harden in Five Points, when I did a closing on Rising High. Rising High was killed (mostly) by the Harden Street roadwork of a few years ago which also claimed The Parthenon, and The Congaree Grill was the next operation in the building.

I never actually got around to eating there, and people have offered varying opinions in comments to other posts as to how good it was. My impression gleaned by osmosis was that it was supposed to be a somewhat upscale interpretation of Southern Food.

The new restaurant in the building is Pawleys Front Porch. The name invokes a certain casualness, and when I went in last week after having my taxes done across the street, it did seem rather laid back. I got the impression from the layout that its central identity is as a bar, but the Bacon, Lettuce & Pimento Cheese sandwich I got was excellent as were the onion rings.

Today's picture comes from reader Thomas who says:

Here is a pic of the old S&S on Gervais. I took it in 97 when I was USC and they announced it was closing and would be torn down.

I can only recall eating at this S & S once. If I remember correctly, we took my aunt from Florida there for some reason -- perhaps after shopping downtown. What always impressed me about cafeterias as a kid was how different the rice was from what we got at home or family gatherings. Family rice was very sticky and fluffy. Cafeteria rice, on the other hand, was a dish of discrete rice grains which did not stick together at all. I suspect now that cafeteria rice is parboiled or converted as Uncle Ben might say. Why anyone would prefer it that way I can't say, but it would make it easier to clean the dishes at a commercial establishment, I suppose.

S & S still has an operation at Richland Mall, where it replaced the old Morrison's cafeteria, which in turn replaced the older Redwood cafeteria (which was the cafeteria we mostly went to when I was a kid). For some reason, there is a Japanese facebook page devoted to the Richland Mall operation, though I can only make it come up in English if I use the google cached version.

Thanks Thomas!