Columbia Closings   What's not in Columbia anymore

Well, this is one of the last old-time "service stations" around town. Looking inside is like visiting another age. The "Maps Here" sign is particularly evocative -- there was a time you got your branded highway maps at a service station. I still have a cubby full of old "Gulf" maps, some predating the completion of the 'I' system. That was also a time when we were convinced that gas was *not* a commodity product, and that "Good Gulf" was better than "putting a tiger in your tank" or vice versa.

And a man would actually come out to your car, pump the gas, check your oil, check your tires, check your battery and radiator and wash your windows.

Their sign says they were here for 33 years, which is a good run.

And for context, you can see two former closing in the background: here and here.

UPDATE 16 March 2017 -- Rather Hopperesque:

UDATE 1 September 21018 -- Something is happening here:

UPDATE 21 February 2019 -- Now a Cheap Way convenience store:

This little fabric shop at the triple corner of Fontaine, Two Notch & Shakespeare has been in business for 11 years according to The State although only 3 of them have been in this location.

Co-located New Coverings will remain in the spot.

(Hat tip to commenter Rick)

UPDATE 13 August 2020: Add map icon.

I just noticed that this print shop on Two Notch by the old Mayo's Suit City was vacant. They list in this year's phonebook, so I'm going to 2016 on the date.

The name caught my eye because when I first started work, we had a bunch of Imagen printers on our network and would deploy them to various clients. The engines were 300dpi Canon behemoths that would keep working through flood, fire or the zombie apocalypse. It was the same engine, in fact, that Apple used shortly thereafter for the first LaserWriter. The engine however, sat on top of a cpu box with a 5.25 floppy that booted the printer operating system and provided Imagen's page description language: Impress. After the LaserWriter came out, suddenly Diablo 630 daisy-wheel emulation wasn't enough, and we spent a lot of time and effort trying to make those sunk-cost Impress printers work like Apple PostScript..

Taps was for sale a couple of years ago, and I took a picture then in anticipation that I might need it, but of course now that they actually have closed, I can't find it. If you google "taps bar columbia" it will point you to a nice google streetview picture..

At any rate, this little bar was tucked in next to the Big Lots plaza on Two Notch behind Dunkin Donuts and when I was at Big Lots the other day, I noticed that it had been reflagged as R & B Bar & Grill which is rather more '&'s than usual.

The last review I see is from 10 August 2016, so I'm putting the closing as "Summer 2016".

El Camino was the follow-on operation to Golden City in the Big Lots plaza on Two Notch.

This one came and went before I even knew it was there, which is a little odd as the name El Camino should have caught my eye as I used to work for a Bay Area company, and El Camino Real is the main drag there.

UPDATE 19 February 2017 -- Oops! As mentioned in the comments, I was wrong about this place. In fact it was setting up to open, and is now open:

UPDATE 6 October 2017 -- Really closed this time:

As far as I can tell East Bay Gourmet was a Charleston area based butcher chain founded in the early 90s which later expanded into Columbia & Wilmington. An old version of their web site is archived here.

Their local operation was apparently in this Two Notch building until around 2013 after moving from 1465 Bella Vista Drive, down the street from the former Studio 54. They are not listed in any location in the current phonebook, and the web site is no longer active, so I believe the whole chain has closed down.

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This storefront is in the Two Notch strip mall that almost abuts Best Buy. I've always thought it was a little curious that Best Buy never worked out some sort of deal to bring a lane around behind their building to get access to the traffic light here as they have none.

Anyway, this cellphone operation seems to have closed in 2015 judging from my phonebooks.

I'm guessing about the closing date here. The last post on their Facebook page is from February 2016, but I think the closing is much more recent than that given the signs are still up and the fixtures still in place.

I noticed the other day that the Doctor's office on the west side of the Farm Bureau building is becoming First Class Bar & Grill.

UPDATE 23 June 2016: Well, as established in the comments, this bar is not going into the doctor's office. I was misled by the little sign on the side of the building with the office name -- it actually is an arrow pointing to the other side. So what was this place? Looking at the door in the west side with the new 'A' restaurant sticker on it, I see that it calls out the space behind the door as unit B & C. With that information, I see that unit B, at least, was once Serenity Day Spa

UPDATE 21 March 2017 -- Apparently First Class is not going to happen: