Columbia Closings   What's not in Columbia anymore

I got to Brookgreen a bit later than I had planned this year, and so did not hit all the spots I usually hit, but it was still a very nice evening out in the cold and lights. Actually, the weather was relatively moderate compared to some prior years -- I was able to hold my camera and adjust the controls without my fingers going numb. There is still an official ban on tripods, and I decided this year I wouldn't go for much in the way of "set the camera on something and do a time exposure" shots, so I cranked the ISO way up and took what I got, so I have to admit I've gotten better shots in previous years. I did play around with the in-camera HDR setting, and that's where some of the freaky green-lit exposures come from. Sometimes it did quite a good job of capturing both the lights and normal objects, and sometimes it didn't (I haven't used those spoiled shots here, obviously).

Getting in was a little quicker this year as they did not bring back the suboptimal secondary dirt road route they tried last year, although there was still quite a jam on US-17 (where I witnessed a fender-bender just as I finally got waved through). You still have three more chances to catch the lights this year on 18 December, 19 December and 20 December, and you really should if you are anywhere near the area.

UPDATE 5 December 2023: Update tags and add map icon.

I got to Brookgreen a bit later than I had planned this year, and so did not hit all the spots I usually hit, but it was still a very nice evening out in the cold and lights. Actually, the weather was relatively moderate compared to some prior years -- I was able to hold my camera and adjust the controls without my fingers going numb. There is still an official ban on tripods, and I decided this year I wouldn't go for much in the way of "set the camera on something and do a time exposure" shots, so I cranked the ISO way up and took what I got, so I have to admit I've gotten better shots in previous years. I did play around with the in-camera HDR setting, and that's where some of the freaky green-lit exposures come from. Sometimes it did quite a good job of capturing both the lights and normal objects, and sometimes it didn't (I haven't used those spoiled shots here, obviously).

Getting in was a little quicker this year as they did not bring back the suboptimal secondary dirt road route they tried last year, although there was still quite a jam on US-17 (where I witnessed a fender-bender just as I finally got waved through). You still have three more chances to catch the lights this year on 18 December, 19 December and 20 December, and you really should if you are anywhere near the area.

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I noticed this pair of co-located derelict businesses driving US-601 through St. Matthews towards I-26 this Spring.

I wasn't sure at first what the restaurant was, but a close look at the menu board pretty well pins it down to a Sub Station II.

I can't think of any obvious reason why both businesses in this building would have failed at what seems to be more or less the same time. While the restaurant market is fickle, laundromats are places where you must go. I'm guessing early 2000s for the timeframe here, but the building does seem rather enthusiastically vine encrusted, and if the realtor posting the sign does succeed in selling the place, I doubt there's much that can be done beyond knocking the place down and starting over.

UPDATE 31 March 2022: Updating tags. I can't add a map icon because I have no idea where this was now.

UPDATE 1 April 2022: Commenter Andrew has located this place on Google maps (it was apparently still standing in 2018), and following his lead, I come up with the address of this place as (probably) 181 Harry C Raysor Drive, St. Matthews SC 29135. With that, I am able to make a map icon. Also, I will put that in the post title. Harry C Raysor Drive is the local name for US-601.

Celtic band Cu Dubh.

So, I thought at first I had made a big mistake heading up to the Carolina Renaissance Festival last weekend. It was a cold and rainy Halloween when I hit the road, and I awoke Saturday to find out that Snowpocalypse had hit the Midlands while I was gone and that it was cold, rainy, wet and miserable in Huntersville.

Fortunately, although I had to use the wipers driving out to the festival grounds, but the time I got there, it had stopped raining and was just cold and miserable. Obviously the crowds were thin, but the performers gave it a good go and the sun finally did peek out during the late afternoon giving them (and me) some relief. Sunday, however was gorgeous, and all these pictures date from then.

It seemed to me that a good portion of the performers were back from last year, but there were some new faces as well. As before, everybody had a very polished and entertaining line of patter and were quick to improv as circumstances demanded. There are plenty of kid centric and family friendly shows as well as more ribald "loose cannon" performances for those of us a bit longer in the tooth.

The festival continues on weekends through 23 November and it's a great way to spend a (hopefully sunny!) Fall afternoon.

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I wonder a bit about how Atlanta Bread is doing. They had their category to themselves for a number of years, but nowdays, it seems as though I see new Panera stores opening more often than ABCs. In fact the opposite seems to be true. ABC has left the Grand Strand with the closing of the North Myrtle Beach and Socastee stores, and here in Columbia, they have closed Sandhill (which was *directly* replaced with a Panera) and Lake Murray Boulevard (twice!).

This ABC, off I-26 exit 205, is one I would sometimes stop at on my way into Charleston if I wanted a cookie and spot of wifi before heading downtown. The last time I tried that, in June, I found the place closed for some time and already on the way to becoming a Firehouse Subs.

It's a few months until the candles, but what better way to spend a gorgeous Fall weekend than out in the sun at Brookgreen Gardens Harvest Home Weekend? You can build a scarecrow, paint a pumpkin, make a birdfeeder, see butterflies up close and personal, gawk at extroverted otters and cruise past basking alligators.

If you don't happen to have children in tow, you could even look at some sculpture,

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OK, this one is all about the sign rather than any deep attachment to a closed Italian fast-food chain outlet.

That said, this building was a Fazoli's until November 2010, and with this closing, Fazoli's has no locations on the Grand Strand. In fact, the closest Fazoli's to the Grand Strand would seem to be either the Two Notch Road location or the Fayetteville NC location. I'm a bit ambivalent about the chain. I like the breadsticks, but it always seemed to me that every time I found a main menu item I liked, they would change the menu..

Well, I don't really need much of an excuse to visit Fernandina Beach, one of my favorite places, so when my sister noticed that there was an Amelia Island comics, steampunk, gaming and anime convention, , I decided to check it out.

Compared to the Charlotte Heroes Convention, Ameliacon was quite small. There was one exhibit hall, in the park on Atlantic Avenue which houses the municipal swimming pool, with gaming and presentation events in the town womens' center behind the park. It seemed to me also that the convention focus was definitely more on gaming, costuming and cosplay than on comic books, though there were some authors and artists there.

I certainly felt out of the loop on some issues! Magna/Anime character design generally hurts my eyes, so I was pretty clueless about one of the properties that seemed to be a very big thing Attack on Titan. There were a number of costumers basing their characters on that. I was also completely in the dark about what is apparently a very popular podcast Welcome to Night Vale, something the contest winning cosplayers based their presentation on.

I missed the morning presentation on Steampunk, having somehow convinced myself that it was in the afternoon, but did catch an interesting presentation by Joshua Johnson on doing video special effects on, basically, zero budget.

The audio for the presentations was the most problematic facet of the convention. I got the impression from listening to one of the organizers talk during the costume contest that someone had promised the convention a PA system and then left them totally in the lurch. I could follow ok during the effects presentaion, and parts of the Marvel/DC artist's presentation, but I gave up during the Homestruck panel where the panel were all using their indoor voices, and where I was only sitting in to try to figure out what Homestruck actually was anyway.

The costumers were out full force in the exhibit hall, and then at the closing costume/cosplay contest.

During the costume contest, it was announced that the convention would be shifting out of the fall and into February, so there will be no Ameliacon 2015. The next will be Ameliacon 2016 though they did announce a sequence of local get-togethers in advance of that. I certainly enjoyed myself -- I don't know that I would have driven that far for a convention of that size in a place I didn't have other motives to visit, but in the event, it was a nice trip.

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What with the recent talk here about Family Dollar closings and the ongoing buyout war over the chain, this store in Greelyville caught my eye as I was going to the beach back in July, and then again with the building vacant as I was going for Labor Day.

I don't know a lot about Greelyville except that one of my childhood babysitters was from there and that I have been driving through it for years. From the 60 through the 80s, the local high school always had some sort of clever message on their roadside marquee-board, but they seem to have gone generic lately. During the same time period, one of the local gas stations had cylindrical above ground gas storage tanks painted to resemble soft drink cans. The place was also home to one of the unfortunate sailors who lost his life in the huge gun explosion on the USS Stark in 1987, and is memorialized on a roadside plaque. There is also the marvelously named "Pearl Whack Park" on US-521 just before the tracks.

And on 29 August 2014, I saw one of the best rainbows ever driving through the area, unfortunately with nowhere to pull off and get a really scenic framing for a shot.

I have had my eye on this location of Carolina Wings & Rib House because the chain has been cutting its Columbia operations to the bone, and I figured this peripheral coastal location wouldn't last much longer. In fact, the place was open for the Memorial Day weekend, but by the time I went by again in late July it had apparently (from the state of things inside) just closed.

This location was in Litchfield Beach, in an outparcel of what was the Litchfield Piggly Wiggly shopping center (but which is now the Bi-Lo shopping center. Although I suspect that the general troubles for the chain were the biggest problem for this location, I also note that it is not visible from US-17 which can't have helped either.

UPDATE 20 April 2020: Add tags and map icon.