Columbia Closings   What's not in Columbia anymore

The thing about Tio's is that it is open late. However, that's not enough in my opinion. I went there a few years ago when it was after 10pm and not a weekend night, so my choices for Mexican were severely limited. I was a bit encouraged by the place featuring dozens of bottles of different kinds of hot sauce, but unfortunately, they didn't seem to actually use any of them in preparing the food. When I was on campus recently, I picked up a copy of the student newspaper, The Daily Gamecock which had a less than positive review.

Anyway, I mention Tios because it has moved from Main Street at the base of the Capitol to Sumter.

UPDATE 21 December 2023: Adding map icon, updating tags.

Painter's Ice Cream is a creamery chain local to the Grand Strand (as far as I know). They make good ice cream, and very good milkshakes. Their fortunes have varied over the years with some stores coming and going (they used to have a store in the strip across from "Magic Harbor" for example), but this particular store has been on US 17 a mile or so North of Inlet Square Mall for at least the past 20 or so years. It abuts, or did abut Pacific Beachwear, one of the Strand's ubiquitous "beachwear" stores. I believe I went into Pacific once. I didn't find anything I wanted, but it reminded me more of a place from the 70s than the 2000s.

Apparently the fire broke out in the afternoon of 2 October with Painter's last two customers served as part of the evacuation(!). There is video of the blaze here. I'm not sure what the circumstances of the two cars burned were -- it seems that with the blaze in the daytime, there would have been enough time to get them away if the drivers were around. Luckily, the wind was not blowing in the direction of the fireworks store across the street.

The beachwear store is a complete and total loss, but it appears that salvage work is going on at Painters (though the Sun News story indicates that in the immediate aftermath the owners didn't know if they would be back). I hope it comes back!

UPDATE 18 September 2009: It did come back. Demolition started fairly quickly as can be seen in this picture from 6 November 2009:

and the place was rebuilt and open on 14 August 2009 when I stopped by for a nice shake. A beachwear store is in the new strip too, but it is not the same Pacific Beachwear as was in the old strip.

Sticky Fingers was yet another victim of the declining fortunes of the Dentsville area. I believe that they were the second tenant in this building, which was built for O'Charleys before that operation followed The Olive Garden, Lizard's Thicket, Circuit City, Target, Office Depot, JC Penny and Kroger Sav-On to the new developments further out on Two Notch or at Sandhill. The closing sign says they lasted five years, though I woudn't have guessed that long.

I can't comment on their ribs as I'm not a rib guy. I believe I ate there only twice and had a burger both times. It was fine, though not spectacular. I'm a little curious about what's going on with the building. It appears to have been kept in pretty good shape, and to have not been cleaned out (notice the gum machines still in there). Furthermore, I didn't see a for-sale or for-lease sign anywhere. I wonder if Sticky Fingers is holding on to it for some reason.

UPDATE 16 May 2010 -- It's now a "brazillian-style" restaurant, Caprioska:

Their web site is here

UPDATE 19 August 2022: Adding map icon and updating tags.

I've written about D's before. Recently in the comments people mentioned that several other D's had now closed. I was over in the Harbison area, so I decided to check that one out, but found that I actually didn't know where it was, and had been thinking of Wild Wing (which is still open). After that, I decided to check on this location, which is on Clemson Road at Sparkleberry in a strip mall which has seen a number of restaurants flounder.

What I found was a little odd in that while there was a floor sign offering a "franchaise opportunity" (when "opportunity" is used in this way, I always decode it as in the immortal phrase from Pogo: We are confonted with insurmountable opportunities!) for this restaurant, the one in "Bythewood" and the one in Harbison, all the lights were still on, and the place looked as though it had been straightened up for business, not closing. Nonetheless it wasn't open. Still, it looked so not closed that I hesitated to post on it. Then when I was on my way to Brixx the other night I stopped by again and saw a very definite sign saying that the place would be reopened on 16 October, though it also used the dreaded "renovations" word which often indicates more of a fond wish to re-open someday than anything else (especially as no renovation work was visible through the windows). So, we will see tomorrow!

UPDATE 17 Oct 2008:

Well, they did not reopen on 16 October..

UPDATE 6 May 2009: They are definitely gone for good now, so I have taken the "(temporary?)" tag off the post title. I have also updated the post title with the full street address of the store, and added the word "Northeast" to the store name.

UPDATE 10 Jan 2010: A new operation "7 Grill & Bar" is moving into the old "D's" slot:

UPDATE 28 April 2010 -- The D's replacement, 7 Grill is now open:

UPDATE 11 December 2012: Interesting tip from commenter Frank to the effect that D's will be reopening here soon. These pictures pretty much confirm it. The 7 Grill marquee is still up, but the interior has been filled with D's stuff. In fact, that cigar store Indian is almost certainly the one from D's on Beltline so it would appear that the Beltline store is moving here!

UPDATE 23 October 2015 -- OK, this is getting a little hard to follow, but this location (D's Northeast) closed in 2008, then the building became 7 Grill which closed, then the D's from Beltline (which was a seperate operation) moved here, and now it has closed. As you can see by the door note, this latest closure came sometime before 15 September 2015:

UPDATE 7 December 2016 -- Now a J Peters:

For many years, The Keg O'Nails or perhaps a Keg O'Nails sat down at the other end of Rosewood, in the Jim Casey Fireworks lot near Midlands Tech. I add the perhaps clause because there was a good deal of hoo-ha surrounding the "move" to the current location across from the Dairy Bar. I forget most if not all of the details now, but it was something like two people thought they had the right to the name "Keg O'Nails", and one wanted to leave it where it was and the other wanted to move it. I imagine that this is the reason for the word "Original" in the name of the current restaurant much as Bill Pinkney had to bill his band as "The Original Drifters" rather than simply "The Drifters". The hole in this theory is that the (apparently now also closed) restaurant that stayed at Jim Casey's was called The French Quarter rather than The Keg O'Nails.

At any rate, I never ate at the old location and only once at the new. I had a burger, and it was quite good -- nice if you happened to be in the area, but for me not worth driving over to Rosewood as a destination. There is no signage of any kind on the place indicating why it closed, or even that it is closed (though the doors being locked and the lack of staff is rather a giveaway there).

Thanks to commenters "Justin" & "O'Reilly" for the heads up!

UPDATE 16 April 2012 -- It's now an Ole Timey Meat Market:

UPDATE 25 April 2012: Added the full street addres to the post title.

I used to see this place whenever I was driving down I-26 to Charleston and wonder what it would be like. My guess was that it was a no-nonsense meat & 3 for hungry travellers, but I'll never know for sure now. If I had to speculate, I'd say it wasn't far enough out of town anymore and that traffic was now stopping at national chains before getting this far. (It's just a few miles up I-26 to Harbison or up I-77 to Two Notch). From all the work being done inside though, it looks like something wil set up in the building.

UPDATE 9 June 2009: Well, something did set up there -- Maggie Mae's! Looks like they're open again.

UPDATE 6 Nov 2010 -- Closed again:

UPDATE 11 November 2011: Found an extra interior picture and added it above.

UPDATE 24 January 2024: Adding tags and map icon, and putting the full street address in the post title.

Although I originally designated Tuesday as my "pizza night" to conform with the practice of the local Pizza Hut when I was living in Fayetteville, I generally don't go to buffets anymore. I would rather wait and pay to have something exactly like I want rather than take what's out. That being the case, I've never been to this Stevie B's Pizza located in an outparcel strip at the Wal-Mart complex on Forest Drive.

Judging from their signage, their main marketing pitch (for supper, at least) was for after-game free-for-alls by kids' sports teams. That certainly seems like a viable market niche to me, especially with no Chuck E. Cheese on this side of town. In the event though, perhaps not. I may be wrong. This place may come back on October 29 as the closed for remodeling sign suggests, but closed for remodeling is a standard, hopeful, dodge of places that have actually gone under. Add to that the fact that this is a new building with Stevie B's being the first tenant, and that looking inside shows no actual remodeling being done, and I have my doubts, especially since their phone number has been disconnected.

UPDATE 3 Nov 2008:

I was wrong -- they're back. Good for them!

UPDATE 17 June 2009:

Gone again!

UPDATE 26 Aug 2009: Took the 'temporary' out of the post title -- they are gone for good this time.

UPDATE 25 March 2010: Added full street address to post title.

UPDATE 21 March 2011 -- It's now a Navy Federal Credit Union:

The Golden Spur was USC's on-campus, University sanctioned (and run) bar. That sounds odd now, but before 1984, there was a quaint notion that you should punish people for public drunkenness or drunk driving, not forbid them access to the means beforehand.

Anyway, the Spur was on the second floor of the Russell House at the top of the stairs that ran from the row of phonebooths on the ground-floor sidewalk all the way to the third floor if I recall correctly. I think the stairwell area was semi-segregated from the upstairs fast-food area by swinging doors and that there was some sort of trail-mix kiosk across the space from the Spur.

I wasn't a drinker, so I only went one time to the Spur that I can recall. They often had lounge acts in there, and I went to see some young female blues singer. The only thing I can recall now is that she sang Bessie Smith's "Gimme a Pig Foot" -- the first time I had heard that song.

In 1984, the federal government (which acknowledged that it had no right to raise or lower a state's drinking age on its own) passed a law saying that highway funds would be withheld from states which did not raise their drinking age to 21. South Carolina gave in to this bit of extortion, and suddenly the majority of college students were too young to drink. The Spur closed as a bar during this period. I believe various things were done with the space, but I don't recall any permanent re-purposing by the time I left grad school.

When I went to check on it recently, I found that the whole upstairs food-area of Russell House had been completely revamped. Gone was the collection of ARA burger & pizza windows and now national brands seem to provide all the upstairs food. The space has been completely remodeled as well, and the old seperate Golden Spur area has been torn out and is copmpletely gone except that a new "private" meeting-room/dining-room occupies the area I'm pretty sure it once did.

The name lives on though. I found that in Carolina Underground the dim and depressing failed retail mall that is in the basement of the Russell House, a new Golden Spur has been set up, as a game room where you can "Wii for Free":

Well, I wasn't going to do two Mexican restaurants almost back-to-back, but this one came up in the comments to El Chico, and has come up in other comment threads as well. Besides, someone may want to take advantage of the 31 October deadline.

I only ate here once, years ago, when it was Little Mexico. I think it had just been written up in The State's weekend section as the best Mexican restaurant in Columbia. I liked it well enough, but it seemed like fairly standard "authentic" Mexican fare to me: good, but not worth driving almost all the way to Irmo vs San Jose, Casa Linda and the like.

I noticed a while ago that it had changed the name to Cancun, but I never got around to checking it out again. Various people in the comments have speculated about what happened, and have said that it wasn't as good as Cancun as it was as Little Mexico.

You can see here that apparently the "Little Mexico" name was actually embedded in the tilework by the front entrance. It appears that it was taped over during the Cancun period. Also, I find it a bit interesting that the "Little Mexico" sign was hauled around to the back of the place and stored. Why not throw it out? It seems like an odd kind of thing to save.

Columbia has had trouble getting & keeping national brand Mexican restaurants. Garcias, Don Pablo's, and Cucos have all come and gone while Chevy's, Rio Bravo, On The Border and Chi-Chi's never made it here.

El Chico is the only one I can think of that has been here and stayed here, and I like it a good bit. I'll say, in fact, that once you add the crushed hot peppers, their salsa is the best in town, and chips & salsa are about 60% of what I grade a mexican meal on. (I also think that it's a very American story that an Indian family comes to America to open a restaurant -- a Mexican restaurant.)

I was disappointed last week when I made it to that side of town just in time (I thought) to scoot in before closing, and found the place shuttered due to a fire. I called this week to see if they were back and was told that it will be until about the end of the month (I think I was quoted a date of 27 Oct) before they will be open again.

UPDATE 7 Feb 09: I should mention that El Chico is now open again (and has been for a while).

UPDATE 24 July 2010 -- Not a good sign: The hours have been cut to close at 9pm Sun-Thur and 10pm Fri/Sat.

UPDATE 4 January 2012 -- As mentioned in the comments, El Chico has had another fire and is currently closed again. From the look-see I took just before Christmas, it does not seem to have been an especially bad fire, so I would not expect them to be closed for long:

UPDATE 14 March 2013 -- After a long while with no apparent activity, cleanup has started at El Chico, so it appears that they definitely will re-open:

UPDATE 18 September 2013 -- Still no sign of any rehabilition work at the place:

UPDATE 22 October 2013 -- As reported by several people, the end has come for El Chico and they will not be reopening:

UPDATE 27 January 2016 -- It looks like we are finally getting near to an opening date for Persis Biryani Indo-Mexican Grill:

UPDATE 4 May 2016 -- As mentioned in the comments, now open as Persis Biryani Indian Grill: