Archive for the ‘out-of-area’ tag
Borders Books, 1051 Sand Lake Road (Orlando): 2011 2 comments
Commenter Terry's remarks on the Hostess bankruptcy, and his list of other vanished American icons brought to mind once more Borders Books. I have posted before about the closed stores I found in Gainesville and Tampa.
Those stores have now been re-purposed. This store which I found in Orlando on Sandlake Road opposite a huge mall, as of August had not been. In fact, all the fixtures and some of the office equipment are still in place just as if the book supply truck could pull up any minute.
The distinctive look of a Borders puts me in a nostalgic mood, as though I might once more spend my Kansas City evenings there, drinking coffee and poring over racks of books I could never find in Columbia, Fayetteville or Aiken, or leafing through low circulation magazines I had known of only by repute until seeing them there.
Kangaroo Express, 2950 Glenns Bay Connector (Surfside Beach): Fall 2012 3 comments
The Glenns Bay Connector runs, under a couple of different street names, from oceanfront in Surfside Beach, across US-17 business, across US-17 bypass and to SC-707.
Between US-17 and 17 bypass, it is two lanes only. This has not been enough for years, especially since a large number of appartments have been built off of the road in this area. If you are trying to go from the bypass to US-17 in the afternoon, there will always be somebody stopped in the road trying to make a left turn into their complex, backing traffic up for blocks.
Currently there is a project underway to widen the road, and it has apparently eaten this Kangaroo Express on the north east side of the intersection. Don't cry for Kangaroo because there is *another* one on the south east side of the intersection.
It looks to me as though the carwash has been closed longer than the store itself.
Post Office, SC-261 Paxville South Carolina: 1990s 3 comments
As far as I have ever been able to tell, Paxville is simply a cluster of buildings at the intersection of SC-261 and US-15 in between Pinewood and Manning on the way to the beach.
Driving to the beach growing up, we used to marvel at the little Paxville Post Office, which was the leftmost in the small strip pictured here. The Pawleys Island Post Office (in those days) was certainly tiny, but the Paxville Post Office managed to both out-tiny and out-decrepit it, and I never saw anything anywhere else to compete either. Although we never stopped to get a closer look back in the day, my impression always was that it was an official US Post Office, and not a contract Post Office.
Finally one trip, I believe it was in the 1990s, I noticed that the place was no longer open. For a time the pictured convenience store serving the intersection had a sign up advertising a contract Post Office which I guess functioned as a replacement, but that no longer seems to be the case, and the USPS web site seems to show the nearest facility is now in Pinewood.
UPDATE 12 September 2023 -- The buildings have been razed:
Going by Streetview, this would have happened between August 2019 and September 2021.
Also adding map icon.
30th Anniversary Heroes Convention, Charlotte Convention Center: 24 June 2012 1 comment
Socastee Mini Mart, 8545 Highway 544 (Socastee): Fall 2011 (open again) 9 comments
Someone can probably look at the gas price signs and make a better guess at exactly when Socastee Mini Mart went under, but I'm pretty sure it was open last summer and not last November 13th (when these pictures were taken -- Unfortunately, it was not a sunny day).
The place is on SC-544, probably 5 miles on the Socastee side of Coastal Carolina. SC-544 is the handy little cut-through from US-501 to US-17 and can save you a lot of grief if you end up inbound to Myrtle by the north route. It's less useful than it used to be though, as there are now more lights and a constant 45MPH speed limit. For many years, the road had a real rural character, and this station is a holdover from that era. Now however the area is getting more and more built up, and "regular" chains are starting to move in.
The Beach Boys' 50th Anniversary Tour, Chastain Park Atlanta, 28 April 2012 7 comments
[Front Row Bottom left-to-right: Brian Wilson-Piano/Vocals, Jeff Foskett-Guitar/Vocals, David Marks-Guitar, Mike Love-Vocals, Al Jardine-Guitar/Vocals, Unknown, Bruce Johnston-Keyboards/Vocals]
(Wanted to get this out last night, but my uploads didn't finish..)
The Ramble Inn, 18139 Commercial Way (US-19) Hernando County Florida: 15 August 2010 no comments
I couldn't help but notice this biker friendly bar, the The Ramble Inn, on US-19 just South of Necklace Warbler Road in Hernando County Floridy recently as I drove past.
Obviously, the place had seen better times, and google reveals that it burned down on 15 August 2010 and that arson is suspected though it does not appear that anyone was ever arrested.
Satellite Launch, 4263 N US1 Melbourne, Fla: 5:15pm 24 Febuary 2012 4 comments
Well, yesterday I had the good fortune, wholly by accident with no pre-planning whatsoever, to be on the Indian River deck of Captain Katanna's Dockside Restaurant when the Navy launched their latest Mobile User Objective System satellite. Here's another, better video.
It was an impressive moment, and it's always nice to see a little bit of (good) history being made.
Kmart, 1525 Sadler Road (Fernandina Beach): March 2012 (probably) 7 comments
You'll recall that we discussed the announcement a few months back about how Sears & Kmart have announced a round of store closings which largely left South Carolina stores (except for Sumter) untouched.
Well, I was recently in Fernandina Beach, and found that their Kmart is one of the ones which got the ax. The store is on Sadler Road, which is the first major connector between 8th Street (the bridge road onto the island) and the beach, an area which is in general doing *quite* well, with lots of new upscale shops (both there and on the other side of the bridge).
When I was growing up, Fernandina was still quite a small town, and this would have been a major blow. Now there is a Wal-Mart a few blocks away, and Target within a mile.
The store is still open for now, and while the inventory is starting to hollow out and the vacant space to spread (as in the Dutch Square Kmart) there is still while until the final days when the fixtures start to go..
UPDATE 10 October 2012 -- As these pictures from 5 August 2012 show, the place is closed and all the logos and branding is gone:
UPDATE 7 October 2019: Add map icon, update tags.
UPDATE 22 December 2021 -- The main part of this store is now a Bealls, and has been for a good while. The garden center part of the store is now an Eat The Frog Fitness, which is new within the past year:
