Columbia Closings   What's not in Columbia anymore

I drove up in the parking lot of the Kroger on Fort Jackons Boulevard because I had noticed some activity there and wanted to see what was going on. In the event I'm still not sure about that, though it appears to be water utility work, but while I was there, I noticed that this Goodyear car repair place on the Kroger outparcel was gone.

There's no date on the note they left on the door, but I believe it's fairly recent. I've used the one on Forest Drive, and they seem pretty decent, so I'm not sure what the issue here was. From this real estate report it appears that the property was built in 1974. I guess that would be not long after the Starlite Drive In there went out of business -- I know it was still there in 1973.

UPDATE 5 April 2009: I see in a comment about the Garners Ferry Kroger that I had forgotten that this place closed in April of 2008 -- I've updated the post title to reflect that.

UPDATE 29 February 2012 -- As mentioned by commenter Andrew below, this building has now been razed:

I wrote at some length about Robo's on Main Street some time ago, and that's the location I overwhelmingly went to to hone my Galaga skills (and by hone, I mean, I was "ok"). That made sense as I lived across the street from there, but when I was home and had access to a car, I would come to this location from time to time. I recently parked near there to get some pictures of the Advance Auto Parts demolition, and decided to take this shot.

At this remove, I'm not entirely sure which storefront Robo's was, but I think it was the one to the left of the blue dumpster. My memory also says that this location was something of a poor stepchild in the Robo's family -- I recall it as being smaller, less busy, and having a smaller variety of games. Unlike the University location, it didn't have a clear constituency (ie: college kids), though I suppose there are plenty of residences in the general area. I'm not sure if it outlasted the Main Street or Dutch Square locations -- it did have the advantage of not having its building torn down, but I think Main Street had folded long before that happened to its former home.

I was going to Panera Bread the other day, and noticed that this Advance Auto Parts store in an outparcel of the Garners Ferry Road K-Mart was gone. Actually, the day I noticed it, one of those fly-by-night sofa sales operations had set up shop in the parking lot (which is well located for access and visibility). The door sign optimistically states "closed temporarily", but we shall see. Interestingly (or not :-) this place is just catty-cornered across the street from the NAPA Auto Parts store I wrote about a while back.

And as a special added bonus, the historical marker for "Camp Jackson", which is in the store parking lot:

UPDATE 18 March 2009:

Well, looks like I took those pictures just in time. I went by on 12 March, and they had already knocked the whole place down (except for the front steps) and were digging a honking big hole where it was. So far the historic plaque is untouched.

UPDATE 17 Dec 2010: Fixed the post title to indicate "Devine Street" rather than "Garners Ferry Road". Added a second picture of the new store.

UPDATE 5 October 2009: The new store is built and open:

UPDATE 17 Dec 2010: Changed post title to indicate Devine Street rather than Garners Ferry Road. Added another picture of the new store.

UPDATE 4 April 2022: Updating tags, adding map icon.

The whole area on Garners Ferry near where this Pizza Hut sat has been reworked so much over the years that it's hard to say exactly where the restaurant actually was, but I think it's not far off the mark to say it was about where Ruby Tuesday now is.

I don't know what the ownership structure of Columbia Pizza Huts in the 70s & 80s was, but as far as I could tell, they were almost all about the same, with no real standouts or bad stores. (I believe PH was in general better back then -- I don't care too much for it today). I say almost because this store was something of an outlier.

I remember that my sister and I stopped there once in the late 70s, and after our pizza came we ate for a few minutes before, independantly, coming to the conclusion that while the crust was fine, the cheese properly melted, and the toppings we had ordered had been duly applied -- there was no sauce anywhere on the pizza. I believe we raised it as an issue to the manager, but decided to take a discount on the check rather than wait for a new pizza to be prepared.

I didn't think much of the incident though obviously it did not move that PH to the top my "where to eat pizza" list. Still about five years later, I found myself in the area when it was time to eat and decided to stop by again. As I'm sure you already suspect, my pie was once again served sauceless. Now, the old saying is

Once is happenstance
Twice is coincidence and
Three times is enemy action.

and I didn't try a third time, so I can't rule out coincidence, but I can't help suspect that there was a management policy to cut costs by shorting the sauce. After all it's the least noticable bit of the pizza, being normally mostly hidden under the cheese anyway.

I can't remember exactly what happened to the place. Either it burned down (I know the one of Forest Drive did, so I may be conflating with that) or was torn down during one of the plaza remodels. At any rate, it was never rebuilt, and I can't say I'm too heartbroken about it.

UPDATE 5 March 2011: Changed the post title to use "Devine Street" rather than "Garners Ferry Road". I thought the name changed at Fort Jackson Boulevard, but actually Devine Street goes all the way to Wildcat Road.

UPDATE 26 June 2023: Updating tags and adding map icon.

I only went in to Columbia Photo Supply once. I have an old Fujica ST-605 35mm camera that my mother bought me in tenth grade (75 or 76 I think) for photography class. Aside from a built in exposure meter, this is a completely manual SLR and had given me years of good service, and in fact I took a number of the older pictures on this site with it (for instance The Towers).

Unfortunately, the film advance started giving me trouble resulting in double exposures in some cases and missed shots in others when I could not advance and cock the shutter at all. With the closure of Jackson Cameras, I didn't really know of a full service camera store in the old sense (a store that might actually have local people that knew something about fixing cameras), but I decided to try Columbia Photo. I thought it did have a bit of that old Jackson atmosphere, and I enjoyed looking at all the paraphernalia like developer and stop baths that I hadn't come into contact with in years, but in the event it turned out that the camera was too old to get parts for, so I wasn't able to get it fixed.

Not too long after that, the store went out of business, and now Rogers Brothers Fabrics has moved from Trenholm Plaza into the old Columbia Photo building.

And the camera saga had a fairly happy ending. I went on ebay and got an identical ST-605 (which came from Australia with a roll of film showing some kid posing in his karate uniform with his pet rabbit..) which works fine and which I still use when I want to shoot something high-res (though that may change now that I have a new digital "closing cam 2").

UPDATE 27 July 2010: Rogers Brothers at this location has now closed

Electrolux makes a good vacuum. Or at least they did make a good one -- I can't speak to their current models since the 35 year old one I inherited from my mother still works fine.

In fact, the only problem the basic unit ever had that I can recall is that at some point in the late 60s, I think, one of the wheels broke off. I don't recall the circumstances, but I would be surprised if I or my sister weren't involved somehow. My mother was very reluctant to try and have it fixed because she didn't want to be without her vacuum while it was shipped back to Sweden or whatever, and because she figured it would be expensive as well as time-consuming. We must have dragged that vacuum around limping on its three wheels for seven or eight years. Sometime in the 70s, I finally convinced her to take it to the shop. As I recall, once we got it there, the guy set it on the counter, went "hmm", pulled a wheel out of a bin, snapped it on and said that will be $5. We were in and out in ten minutes. I guess there's some sort of life-lesson there.

The Electrolux store was on Devine Street in the space now occupied by a wig shop. They closed sometime in the 70s and the current store is out on Broad River Road at St. Andrews. I don't know if it is the same operation or completely separate, but the one time I went in, it seemed to have a really different attitude -- I just wanted to buy some bags, and I felt like the salesman wasn't going to let me out of there without buying a new unit!

UPDATE 24 March 2011: Added full street address to post title.

Monterrey Jack's was an Americanized Mexican restaurant on Santee Avenue behind Yesterday's. Actually that's a bit inaccurate: While Santee was the "main" entrance, there was also an entrance on Devine Street. The main entrance debauched into the bar area while the "back" entrance led into the non-smoking section.

It was also the case that, even if you were a non-smoker, you wanted to sit in the bar area since a) the waitstaff actually checked those tables from time to time, b) the lighting and decor were much better, and c) the bar had possibly the largest CD collection of any Columbia restaurant, and the music there was always interesting.

The food was, in retrospect, not that good. This place was one of the ones that started in the era when jokes about the spiciness of Mexican food were a staple of comedy and commercials, and it was thought that Mexican food had to be toned down and domesticated for American (and especially, I suspect, Southern) patrons. I don't disagree with tampering with authenticity as I've said in a number of posts on Mexican restaurants. Authenticity for it's own sake is not necessarily a virtue (for instance, while American pizza is only loosely based on the Italian model, that's not a flaw) but in general I like going the other way -- adding much more spice. As I recall, the chips here were always burnt tasting and the beans were especially bland and gloppy. Still it was edible, and the atmosphere was interesting. We usually ate lunch there, but I think the main draw for the college crowd was the bar in the evenings.

After Monterrey Jack's closed, there was another "Mexican" operation in the location: Nacho Mamma's. This was an Yo Burrito / El Burrito type place that, I believe, started as on Broad Street in Augusta. Or at least there was one that opened in Augusta while I was working there, and the local press made it sound like the first, so I always assumed the Five Points location was the second, and their attempt at becoming a chain. I can't speak for the Five Points one, but the one in Augusta struck me as severely sub-par. They had only shredded beef (no ground beef) as your cow option, and the chips and salsa were not very good. At any rate, the Columbia Location did not last long. I believe there were a couple of other short-lived eateries/drinkeries in the storefront before the current tennant, The Pub on Santee moved in. I haven't paid close attention, but I think that operation has been there several years now.

UPDATE 26 May 2010: Added a lot of former names to the post title. Also note that 5 Points Pub is gone now too. This will continue on the entry for The Elbow Room.

UPDATE 30 January 2019: Add tags, map link

My high school didn't have a cafeteria, so you either brown-bagged lunch, ate off campus if you had a car, or ate microwaved Stewart Sandwiches from the canteen. These were universally acknowledged to be awful, but they had a strange fascination, and we ate them anyway even as we joked about them. I for one, never could tell the difference between the Stewart "Steak Sandwich" and the Stewart "Hamburger".

The company was apparently originally called Stewart In-Fra-Red Commissary of Minnesota and their slogan was the dubious "Sold Almost Everywhere". After my encounter with them in the 1970s, they bought a couple of other companies, changed their name to Stewart Foods, Inc. then merged with Blevins Concession Supply, Co. and changed their name to Stewart Blevins, Inc.. That was in 1992, and I can't seem to find them after that.

Anyway, I was driving around off of Huger Street in the 1980s, and came across their local office. It was something of a revelation as in my mind, Stewart Sandwiches more appeared than were made and distributed on purpose!. The place now appears to be yet another barbecue restaurant: The Palmetto Pig. It may well be a great place, but while the location seems reasonable to me for a food distribution operation, I think it would be a bad place for a restaurant.

UPDATE 1 June 2011: Commenter Andy says this was Shealy's Sandwiches, not Stewart, and that Shealy moved here from the Assembly Street location (now TakoSushi).

Well, I'll try to verify that it was never a Stewart in old City Directories when I get a chance, but in the meantime, I'm leaving all the Stewart's memories here. (Similarly to what I had to do when I screwed up Krystal..)

I had noticed for a couple of years that this Taco Bell was gone, and kind of wondered what happened. The location seems pretty good, with easy access from both Garners Ferry and Rosewood, and the chain is in no trouble, so it piqued my curiosity a bit, though never until recently at a time when I both had my camera and could stop.

In the event, my question actually was answered by a sign that explained exactly what had transpired. It still seems a little curious in that I think there is enough distance between this and the new location that the market could have supported both stores.

Obviously no name-brand restaurant is going to take up residence in a building that is clearly a former Taco Bell, but I think the site would be nice for a local restaurant. It doesn't fit into the concept of a fast-food chain like TB, but Gills Creek runs along the edge of the property, and I think you could build a very nice creekside deck there for spring and fall al-fresco dining.

UPDATE 20 December 2009: Changed the address from "Garners Ferry Road" to "4716 Devine Street".

UPDATE 9 May 2012 -- After a prolonged zoning battle with the city (or it *seemed* long anyway) this place is finally open again, as an "Adult Superstore":

(Also resized all pictures to 600 pixels wide, which I guess I wasn't doing consistently back when this was first posted).

I was driving down Divine Street the other day after eating at Yo Burrito, and noticed that Tiffany's Bakery has closed. I had never been in this place -- The one time I stopped it was closed though it seemed to me a reasonable hour to be open. I believe there is another location on Two Notch not too far from I-77, but I have never stopped there either.

UPDATE 3 Jan 2010: Added full street address to post title

UPDATE 25 March 2011: Added some new names to the post title based on the comments about Conrad's.