Columbia Closings   What's not in Columbia anymore

Read the rest of this entry »

Here's another bygone Columbia restaurant I knew nothing about. Commenter Melton asked about it in Have Your Say, and commeter Dennis supplied this information:

Mr. Amerigo “Rick” Busa died Saturday, August 11, 2007. Born in Philadelphia, PA, he was the son of the late Joseph and Susie Formosa Busa. He was a veteran of WW II and the Korean Conflict. Mr. Busa was a Shriner and member of the Richland Masonic Lodge and Gethsemane Lutheran Church in Columbia. He was the owner of the Zephyr Restaurant in Washington, D.C., the Belvedere Restaurant and Rick’s Mammy’s Shanty in Columbia. After his retirement, he provided consultant services for food and beverage corporations.

Dennis also supplied the site information where I was able to order the postcard which forms the top picture above. In fact, looking there and finding other links, I've been able to get a number of postcards which I'll feature from time-to-time.

I'm not sure when the postcard picture was taken as there are no cars visible, and no postmark on the card. The building already seems a bit weathered though. Melton says he recalls commercials for the place going back into the 1950s though. I can verify that it was still around in the 1970 phonebook, but since I don't really remember it I'm guessing it didn't make it through the 1970s. I'm almost sure that when we bought our 1980 Corolla Station Wagon (which I stil have..), that Dick Dyer Toyota was already at 3201 Two Notch as pictured above.

Here's another bygone restaurant, this one on Two Notch Road fairly near the intersection with Beltline. The place today is Forest Oaks Apartments apparently a city of Columbia property. I suspect the Forest in the name is a rememberance of the restaurant, though it's generic enough that I could well be wrong.

The Yellow Pages ad from the 1970 Southern Bell phonebook makes it sound fairly upscale, with lobster and "roast prime ribs of beef", which means I would have turned up my nose at any attempt by my parents to take us there (not that I had veto power, but they rarely wanted to waste money on food I wasn't going to like). In the event, I can't even recall seeing this place though we must have driven by many times before it was torn down.

These are the kind of businesses I notice off and on over the years, and if I think about them at all, wonder how they are making a living, until one day I notice that they are not anymore. These adjoining lots are on Percival Road, just east of Decker Boulevard.

The story, at least for the Upholstery shop seems to be a sad one, of the parents passing away, and the children not being able to carry on the business. I'm not clear on what the story of the little drive-in was as it was not detailed in the County Zoning hearing minutes which are online here. Apparently nobody even knew the name of the place.

The hearing seems to have focused on keeping the property commercial. The businesses had been operating on residential property as grandfathered operations, and when the business licenses lapsed, the ability to locate a business there did also. In this case it seems to me pretty much a no-brainer, and apparently it was approved. Both properties are now for sale, and time will tell what locates there.

Also, an interesting tid-bit came up in google when I was searching for the street addresses and "Duanne Warr", who was associated with the action somehow. As it turns out, in the minutes, he spoke for the proposed buyer of the property apparently as a realtor, but it appears he was once a Columbia heavy metal rocker cutting

One of the most insane records ever made!

UPDATE 7 June 2014 -- Commenter Sidney points out that the drive-in building has been razed, and so it has:

UPDATE 10 October 2016 -- The old drive-in lot is now about to be Tacos Nayarit Mexican Grill:

Personally, I don't want "Drama in Dining". That's when one of the couple at the table next to yours becomes aware that this is the "break up date". Drama is not pretty! I think I would also prefer my date not look like she comes from one of those societies where the women stretch their necks to prodigious lengths (not that there's anything wrong with that..).

I see that today the Fountain Bleau Club building houses The Fountain of Youth daycare center. Since the "fountain of youth" is normally something you think of in connection with old people, I suspect the name is a hat-tip to the former occupant. I'm afraid that I was shooting against the sun, so the pictures are not very good at all. I also note that in one of the pictures you can see a boarded up building to the right of the Fountain of Youth which appears to have been an old motel -- perhaps I'll run across its name someday.

(Ad is from the 1970 Southern Bell Greater Columbia phonebook).

UPDATE 17 March 2021 -- Commenter Jim Akins sends in this flyer for his band's performance at the Fountain Bleu back in the day. The 70s, gotta love 'em!

Commenter Melanie found these matchbook images from a place I have no memory of. 4610 Devine Street does not currently exist. Ruby Tuesday is at 4600 Devine Street, and Checkmax Payday Advance is at 4624 Devine Street. I know they have done a lot of work in the past on the streets in this area. I believe 4610 must have been torn down to make the entrance street into the new-ish plaza which houses Ruby Tuesday, Staples and Bi-Lo (I know the Pizza Hut in that area was torn down). In fact, if that street had been there originally, you would expect Ruby Tuesday and Checkmax to have different block numbers. (As an aside, I'm a little surprised to find that these are all Devine addresses -- I had thought that Garners Ferry started here, but in fact it's apparently at Rosewood).

Anyway, it's obvious from the matchbook that this place was one of the adult book stores which have been in various parts of Columbia since the late 60s, I suppose. In fact, Fort Jackson Boulevard which runs into Devine in this area used to have a number of racy operations.

Hat Tip: Melanie

I'll change the post title if someone can reliably identify this place, but for now, all I can say is that it was an 70s or 80s looking fast food drive-through operation of some sort. The place is now 1st Choice Auto Center, and is almost on the corner of Two Notch and Beltline, in between the old Food Lion and the recently torn down McDonald's. We used to eat at the Burger King across the street fairly often, so I know I must have seen this while it was in operaiton, but I have no memory of it now.

UPDATE 23 Aug 2009: OK, looks like this was McDonald's before they moved to the corner of Two Notch and Beltline, so I'll change the post title from "Fast Food Restaurant" to "McDonald's".

I should remember this place, but for some reason I don't. From the 1970 Southern Bell Yellow Pages ad, it looks much too fancy for anything that our parents might have taken us to, and when I was picking restaurants on my own, the lobster and fish would have scared me off.

As you can see from these shots, the building is long gone, and the area is now an annoying parking lot (always half empty, but zealously patrolled) at the corner of Gervais and Assembly streets bordered on the bottom by The Mellow Mushroom and on the right by the former John Paul’s Armadillo Oil Company.

Notice also on the ad another common feature from restaurants of this era: Late hours. I really wish this had continued and that there were decent places open until "11:15" on week-nights nowdays.

Anyone know what happened to this place?

UPDATE 13 October 2009: Added a postcard of The Market and the text from the back of it.

UPDATE 4 January 2012: Updated the closing date in the post title from "1970s" to "11 January 1985" based on the comments. I was only off by 10 years or so..

Actually, this might not be Land of Oz as I can't remember if that was at both Bush River & Decker Malls, or only at Bush River with this being another operation. Whatever the name, it was definitely the Decker Mall video arcade though.

In its current incarnation, it has had somewhat "regular" doors retrofitted into the distinctive flat-arch entranceway, but originally, I believe they just drew a sliding mesh curtain at nights.

The layout I most remember had Don Bluth's pioneering "Dragon's Lair" console dead center in the entranceway facing the hall. This game was a combination of traditional hand-drawn "cel" animation served up from a laser-disc (not a DVD!) and choose-your-adventure gameplay with the transition between the scenes being guided by the game-play lever. For instance, if a dragon was about to fry your knight, and you raised your shield, the disc would transition to a "flame bounces off shield" scene, if you didn't raise it, it would transition to an "the ashes of your character blow away scene" (those are just examples, I don't recall the actual specifics). Actually like many "pioneering" technologies, it wasn't that good because they were pushing the video scene changing tech further than it was really ready to go, and the transitions were really clunky.

If you turned left at "Dragon's Lair", there was a "Bezerk" somewhere in the left side of the store. This was the pushy game that would in "attract mode" declare "COIN DETECTED IN POCKET" from time to time. You had to either shoot the robots or run them into the electric walls. I liked it, but wasn't that good.

Somewhere against the back wall, I think was "Battlezone" a vector-graphics based POV tank game. You had two levers, one for each tank tread, and you could spin in place by running one tread fowards and the other tread backwards. I usually ended up fooling around with navigating the tank and getting shot.

I don't recall any more of the layout, but they definitely also had "Asteroids", "Space Invaders","Tempest", "Defender" (which I could not play at all -- too many things to keep track of), "Milipede", and "Missle Command". I suppose they must have had "Pac Man/Ms Pac Man", but I don't really recall it. I'm prettty sure they did not have some of my other favorites, "Star Castle", "Galaxian", "Phoenix", "Gorf", and "Joust", or my all-time favorite, "Galaga". Of course, it could just be that when I was in college, I went to Robos instead of here and thus missed the gradual turnover.

I'm not really sure when they closed. The mall underwent a long gradual decline that accelerated into death-spiral when Kroger and Target pulled out, but I think they were gone before that, probably late 80s I'm guessing.

UPDATE 18 June 2012: The last city directory listing Land of Oz is 1986, so I have updated the closing time in the post title from "1980s" to "1986".

I'm not sure if Video Solutions & Satellite Connection were two different businesses or two "DBA"-es for the same company. What I am sure of is that there have been many other businesses in this striking little building on Covenant Road just across from the former Piggly Wiggly and just down from Trenholm Park over the years, going back at least into the 60s. Unfortunately, I can't now recall any of them, though I'm pretty sure it started as a drycleaner's.

I put 2005 as the date for the last operations there due to this document, which appears to be related to a creditors' take-over of some *other* satellite company. There's not much information in the header part, but I'm thinking since Satellite Connection was apparently one of the creditors, they may have paid money for equipment they did not get, which is not a good situation for a small business to be in. I could be totally wrong.

Anyway, according to the construction permit, the building has been taken over by Harmony School which is the small school more or less behind this building. Since these pictures were taken, they have implemented the "Parliment" option and have torn the roof off that sucker.

UPDATE 22 July 2009: Added Sunshine Cleaners to the post title in response to indetifications from the comments.

UPDATE 7 July 2010 -- It appears that work on the building is nearly done:

UPDATE 15 Jan 2011: Correction -- it was never a Sunshine but it was Custom Cleaners & Laundry (at least from 1970 - 1976 according to the city directories) and was a Brinson Laundry & Cleaners from 1977-1984. I don't have dates for the other operations.