Columbia Closings   What's not in Columbia anymore

Discount Cars & Trucks was the follow-on operation to Go Used Tires in this old Esso building in Dentsville.

I have to say I can't actually recall seeing any cars or trucks there, though I know there must have been some.

Well, you've seen the signs, now you can get $10.00 off.

I went to this Jiffylube near the I-20 interchange on Two Notch several times. While sitting in the heat and watching traffic up and down Two Notch is no garden vista, the deck was nice as it got you out of the waiting room and away from the TV.

The siting of this store was interesting as it was directly next to a Precision Tune, just as the Knox Abbott location is almost directly across the street from one.

Update 10 October 2016 -- Now Quackt Glass windshield repair:

Here's another vacant storefront in Tillman's Plaza on Two Notch. I happened to glace across the street as I was at Kinko's, printing some documents and noticed it was gone.

I noticed on my latest trip to Very's that the hydroponic gardening store in the same Two Notch plaza, All Good Hydroponics was gone and a thrift store was in its spot. The phonebook suggests that this happened sometime last year as they don't list in the 2014 edition.

For me, the term hydroponics has always reeked of science fiction as it was a common element in many books about life on space ships and space stations. Usually it was described as a thankless task that got assigned to hapless crew memebers as KP was assigned in books about army life. Visually, I would always think about those trays the Robinsons would grow food in on Lost In Space during those long planet-bound blocks of episodes where the budget didn't allow any actual spaceflight effects...

The web site is still up, but it appears that fashion botique Rags & Bags With Style in the Food Lion / Rite Aid plaza on Decker is now gone.

I like the "look" of this plaza, which has a bit of a retro feel, probably because it actually is retro.

Well, learn something new every day. Googling this western and urban wear outlet on Decker yields the information that El Rey Leon, means The Lion King, something that make total sense once you stop to look at it closely.

Of course that just raises the further question as to how that phrase is supposed to suggest western wear, and the secondary question as to whether I should alphabetize this one under El or Rey. (Hmm, I see the phonebook uses 'El', so that's good enough for me..).

O-23..

This former bingo hall is in the strip on Two notch which backs up againgst the original Best Buy and has stoplight access at the Columbia Mall perimeter road. Interestingly, Best Buy itself has no access to this stoplight. It always surprised me a little that they didn't negotiate some sort of cut through for that..

Apparently Bingo is, or at least was, pretty popular in Dentsville, as this place is only a few blocks from this former parlor on O'Neil Court.

Note the phone number -- It's not PENNsylvania Sixty-Five Oh Oh Oh, but it's close.

One more empty storefront in Columbia's volatile payday lending market, this little cash advance outlet was in the same (Family Dollar) plaza as this Coin Laundry -- I'm not sure why the street address here is 1807 instead of 1735, but that seems to be the case.

UPDATE 17 Sept 2014 -- Oops, I misplaced where I took this -- it is *not* in the Family Dollar plaza, but a little further up towards Two Notch.

This address on the North side of Shakespeare Road near Columbia Mall and almost across from Wood's Wonderland was once, according to the Secretary Of State's office Howard & Riley Real Estate & Insurance. That would have been back in the late 1960s and 1970s.

However, LoopNet says the current building wasn't built until 2005, so there must have been an older structure there at one time. (This would have been the Pink House era on Shakespeare). I don't know what the property was used for in the interim, but the last tenant was Heritage Elictrical, which has apprently moved to Elgin.

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