Shop at the Brown Sign With the Sewing Machine in the Corner!

At one time, South Carolina was a major player in the textile field, and I always assumed that these "factory outlet" stores scattered across the state had some South Carolina "factory" behind them, though it was never spelled out in the long running series of radio ads that always included the tag line about the sign.

I never went into one myself, but they were a feature in various shopping trips made by my female relatives. I can't remember all the locations now, but for sure there were Columbia (actually West Columbia / Triangle City), Salley and Surfside Beach.

The first pictures are of the old Surfside Beach location. This storefront (briefly an alteration shop) is at 1511 Highway 17 North (on the east side of US-17 Business between Inlet Square Mall and SC-544). Since these pictures were taken, they have finally gotten around to taking down the brown sign.

The final picture is of the West Columbia location in Triangle City. Their sign is long gone, and the location now seems to be an eyeglass botique.

I don't know exactly what happened to The Factory Outlets. My presumption is that "the factory" closed during the decline of the domestic textile industry, but that's just a guess. At any rate, while the 12th Street location was in the 1998 phonebook, I don't think it (or they) lasted much later than that.

UPDATE 25 Sep 2010 -- Well, I found the Darlington Factory Outlet (1486 Harry Byrd Highway -- almost across the street from the racetrack), and it looks like you can still get women's fashions there!

(also added the street address for the Surfside Beach location)

UPDATE 10 July 2020: Added some tags. Also adding the map icon for the 12th street location.

Club Kryptonite was in what is actually one of the more normal looking buildings in its section of US-17 Bypass (just north of Broadway At The Beach) in Myrtle Beach. Sure it is somewhat cylindrical, has huge torches and a comic-book logo on the front, but it's not a pyramid like the nearby Hard Rock Cafe or a really awkward looking sphere like the next-door Planet Hollywood.

I would hear the Club Kryptonite commercials from time to time on the radio at the beach, and they always made it sound like a really hip, risque, happening, appealing place, except for the fact that I'm years past the target demo, don't dance, hardly drink, don't much like loud techno or hip-hop and get stopped up if there's any smoke in the air... Still I wouldn't have minded seeing the inside.

Looking at the club's fossil web page and various fliers one thing that is somewhat surprising is that there is no mention of any connection with DC Comics. It's obvious that the club's logo is meant to invoke Superman's chest shield and, of course, Kryptonite is the fictional substance that is Superman's one weakness (OK, he's also vulnerable to magic, but that's not as widely known..). Obviously the club couldn't use the famous "S" logo without permission, but apparently DC neglected to ever trademark the word "Kryptonite". (I actually think the spelling "Klub Kryptonite" would have worked a little better, appropos to nothing).

According to the Myrtle Beach Sun News, Halloween 2009 was the club's last gasp:

I believe that this is the final radio ad and that this is the final promotion:

More pictures and audio after the jump..

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Merry Christmas everyone!

Posting will be light to nonexistant for a bit.

Well, I suppose it's a bit of a cheat to do a closing for an event that will repeat this weekend, but hey, it's a closing for the 11 December viewing date only.

If you can make it to the coast this weekend (17th, 18th or 19th) the show is well worth your time. The gardens are lit as you see, and there are singers, bagpipers, food and drink.

I took my tripod with me this year, set the aperture to f2.0, the ISO to 80 and let the camera set whatever exposure it liked. Often it worked quite well, other times not so much (these are some of the ones I think did OK). The long exposures mean you can see blurs for people walking by in some pictures. It was supposed to be much warmer on the 12th than the 11th, but it was also supposed to rain, so I went out on the colder night. It wasn't too bad except when I was trying to feel the little buttons on the camera and could not find them at all in some cases!

It's all pictures after the jump.

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Here's a rather interesting picture I took the other night. The moon was almost full, and I took the camera out with a tripod to get some moonlight shots. With a long enough exposure, they look very much like daylit shots except for the visible stars and the way electric lights show up.

Hope everyone had a great Thanksgiving!

I've been spending some time on the coast recently (Brookgreen Gardens had a nice little fall festival this weekend), and noticed this closing while driving by the terminally-ailing Inlet Square Mall where US-17 Business and US-17 Bypass come together at Murrells Inlet.

Tracking Grand Strand closings would be a full time job as the area has incredible churn, but I can't resist listing some here from time to time. Just two thoughts:

a) The economy must really be bad if Hooters can't sell what's on their menu.

and

b) They have a pre-printed company-logo sign (with slogan) for store closings?

UPDATE 29 August 2011 -- It's now The Carolina Tavern:

UPDATE 24 June 2024 -- Adding map icon. Updating address from 825 Mall Drive to 852 Mall drive. Updating tags

OK, today is an anniversary of sorts. Three years ago today was the final day of operation for the Myrtle Beach Pavilion. As it happens, I was there, and made a video essay to share with friends and family. The fact of doing that, and not really having any good forum for something like that was one of the things that started percolating around in my brain and eventually led to establishing Columbia Closings.

Below is the essay pretty much unchanged from how I wrote it then, followed by a lot of still pictures (too many, I'm sure) that I took on that day and earlier in the year:

We didn't actually go to the Pavilion that often as kids, so the closing
shouldn't be that big a deal, but we always knew that there was the
possibility that we might go, and that possibility loomed large in our minds.

In the end, Burroughs & Chapin is a business, and they made a business decision to shut the Pavilion down. That said, they actually did it in a classy way. For the Last Ride celebration on Saturday September 30 2006, they presold tickets, each of which came with park access from 3PM to 8PM, free parking, and unlimited free pizza, burgers, corndogs, funnel cake and ice cream.

As I happened to be at the beach at the time, I reserved a ticket and took a CVS disposable video camera (as well as my regular film camera, and a disposable film camera) to record some last memories.

This page is devoted to the short videos I shot that day. I have converted the DVD which CVS gives you into an AVI file for each scene. While these files are not huge (except for the all-in-one file), you may not be able to stream them unless you have a fast connection. If clicking your left button on a picture does not start your movie player, or if the clip plays jerkily, I recommend clicking your right button over each picture and selecting "save target as" or the equivalent to download the clips. They should be playable with Windows Media Player on Windows, or "mplayer" on Linux.

We start off on the roof of the Pavilion parking garage, looking out at the roller coaster and other rides:

Moving to the South side of the garage roof, we look down at the lines forming to get into the Pavilion:

Coming off the roof, I took a brief shot of foot traffic on Ocean Blvd, noting the fact that the Pavilion Arcade is already closed:

Collecting my ticket and stepping inside the park, we see some kiddie rides:

More kiddie rides:

The very first thing I ever remember from the Pavilion is this 1905 German Band organ. The second thing I remember is the blow dryer in the restroom. I had never seen such a thing! I only remember Daddy being there on that trip, probably because he would have been the one taking me to the bathroom (which is alongside the organ), but doubtless Momma & Sus were around.

I was disappointed that Sugarbug could not see the organ on her trip to the park, but it was closed for repair at the time. When you consider that it is 102 years old, I suppose that's not surprising. I'm not sure it comes across in these videos, but the organ is loud!

The placards describing the organ claim some of the original cardboard punched music sheets are still used. Somehow I doubt that "Ob La Di Ob La Da" was that popular in 1905!

The only actual ride I remember from that (presumed) first trip to the Pavilion is this boat ride, which I thought was possibly the neatest thing in the world:

No trip to any amusement park would be complete without the Bumper Cars:

My attempt to film while driving a Bumper Car ended quickly when the
attendant stopped the ride. I thought I had broken a rule, but he was
after a kid who was old enough to ride, but not drive:

The swings is a nice ride because it goes around, but not enough to make middle aged stomachs queasy:

I hopped aboard a wooden pig for a ride on the carrousel. While not as old as the band organ, it is pretty old. I noticed that the carrousel music was coming from a sound system and not the antique music box. Perhaps they didn't feel it was worth repairing for the time left. I have no idea what will happen to the carrousel or band organ. It would be a shame if they were left to rot:

The Log Flume is the park's intermediate water ride. More wet than the
"boats", less soaking than the "river ride":

There was a pretty good beach band playing at the amphitheatre. The name escapes me, but they had just finished a very good version of "Carolina Girls" when I started filming. This song was well done, but not one I would call a classic:

I wrestled with whether to ride the big coaster or not. On the one hand, I was coming down with a cold and had something of a headache, on the other hand, I'd never have the chance again. Riding the intermediate coaster "The Mad mouse" decided me I wasn't ready for the big one, but here are some people who were:

Here's another shot of the Carrousel, which was strikingly pretty with
the setting sun glinting off the mirror panels. I like this one a lot; there's so much going on in this shot and some appropriately elegiac music for the last sunset on the working park:

Finally, we finish with the band organ again to take us out:

This is the whole video in one 306 megabyte, 20 minute lump:

After running out of video, I stayed until the end of the day, and rode
the final run of the Bumper Cars. It was somewhat of a melancholy experience, but I'm glad I did it.

Still pix after the jump..

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Well, that was fun!

Normal posting should resume today barring any work emergencies piled up in the last 3 weeks.
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Stage 3 of my summer vacation starts today -- posting will be light to non-existent for the next three weeks, so chat amongst yourselves!

I've written about Sounds Familiar before, as the chain has been contracting ever since the digital age started. This particular store, in Myrtle Beach a couple of miles above Myrtle Square Mall, was my favorite location. It was not as large as the Rosewood or Parklane stores, but for some reason, the selection seemed to skew slightly more to stuff that caught my eye than other SF locations. For one thing, this store seemed to be the boldest in the chain as far as stocking "import" CDs went. I know I bought a number of Beach Boys / Brian Wilson "imports" there over the years including the imfamous Pet Sounds stereo sampler. Also, as might be expected for the Myrtle Beach store, they had a very good selection of "beach music" (which has no connection to The Beach Boys [other than a Carl Wilson solo song "What You Do To Me" having a brief run on the beach music charts]). In fact the whole chain had excellent beach music sections due to owning the Ripete record label, but beach music in the Myrtle Beach store was always stocked in depth.

One of my favorite touches at this store encapsulates both why I liked the place, and why the chain eventually failed -- someone had taped a faded cartoon to the cash register there. It probably came from a record-store trade magazine originally, and had a customer asking a record-store counter clerk Can you special order this out of print record for me? with the clerk responding Yes! And I can raise the dead as well.

I liked the attitude that pasted up that cartoon -- willing to poke a bit of fun at customers without the fear that someone's nose would be put out of joint. But the fact was that by several years before the store closed, any customer could special order an out of print CD from Amazon or elsewhere, and the record-store business model just didn't make sense anymore.