Columbia Closings   What's not in Columbia anymore

This Quincy's, which now houses a Maurice's Barbeque, was I think the first in town to close. The way I recall it, and I'm very often wrong about anything involving dates or time, this one went first, the one on Forest Drive went second, and the one on Two Notch went last.

This Quincy's was on the far side of town from us, and I think I only ate here once, when we were coming back from the airport -- it was fine. I had the opportunity a few weeks ago to check out a surviving Quincy's in Florence at US-52 & I-95. It was not as nice as I recall the Two Notch store being in the beginning, but it was perfectly acceptable.

This building, now a Marshall's can't really be considered as a Columbia Mall outparcel store because it predates the mall. It was definitely a grocery, and I'm pretty sure it was Winn Dixie. We went there only very rarely, since we considered the area to be something of a boondocks and a long way from our house. Of course this was a time when a "long distance" phone call was something you saved for special occasions, and the area now seems quite close to me even though I live in the same place.

I'm not sure why the place failed to thrive after Columbia Mall went up -- on the surface that seems like it would have driven more traffic, but apparently not. I'm pretty sure that Winn Dixie moved out of here before coming back to the area with the ill fated Decker store in the 1990s. After that, a number of things went in -- I think it was a party shop at one time, but Marshall's has been there for several years now.

UPDATE: Updated the date in the post title from "1970s" to "Late 1990s" since commenters recall this store being open until the Decker store opened.

This real estate report says this building was built in 1986 -- I would have guessed a bit earlier than that. I was first aware of it when it was a Garcia's Mexican restaurant. I'm pretty sure that this was the spot anyway, though the facade was different (the real estate link says the place was remodelled in 1996..). As I think I've written somewhere, Columbia has a hard time getting and / or keeping "national" Mexican chains. We never had a Rio Bravo, Chevvy's, Chi-Chi's or On The Border, and we lost Garcia's and Don Pablo's. El Chico seems to be the only one that sticks. To be fair though, I think the whole Garcia's chain has fallen on hard times, and they closed their Myrtle Beach location several years ago.

After Garcia's the place became Roadhouse Grill which was sort of a Western place like (but not as good as) The Texas Roadhouse on Two Notch, but that didn't last long either. After that I think the building was empty for several years until it's most recent incarnation as a Bingo hall.

UPDATE 13 May 2010: Just for grins, here's the old Garcia's building in the Kroger plaza off of US-17 in North Myrtle Beach:

In the 1990s, the restaurant chain Krystal started to make a push in to the Southeast. They had been around for a good while by then, but were new to the Columbia market. I think that originally their niche had been as the Whitecastle-like store operating in regions where there was no Whitecastle, and they had a small burger similar to Whitecastle's "slider".

However during their big expansion push, they came up with the selling point that they had menu items not usually found at fast food joints. I think these were mostly vegetables, but the only actuall one I can recall right now is "fried mushrooms", because I like fried mushrooms. (The State Fair is usually the only time I get them though). Anyway, they did a big build-out and opened lots of new stores, but for whatever reason, it didn't work out for them, and the stores all closed. I'm pretty sure the chain is still around, but they've exited Columbia, and I believe the whole state. I only went to Krystal a few times and never to this store. I'm pretty sure that this particular location was a "mini" store with drive-through and takeout only.

I don't know anything about Autogym. I don't recall hearing the name anywhere else, so I'm assuming that it was a one-off local carwash operation, and I don't think it lasted too long. I'm not sure why you would bring your car to a building not fitted out with carwash equipment, especially when there was a carwash, built as a carwash, just across Two Notch on Decker, and perhaps that was a problem for them.

UPDATE 27 April 2009:

Well, it appears I was mistaken when I tagged this building as a former Krystal. I've changed the post title to reflect that, but I'm going to leave all the verbiage I wrote about Krystal since the comments won't make sense otherwise -- I reserve the right to cut-and-paste it into a post about a real Krystal sometime!

Commenter Badger identifies the initial tenant as a Rally's. I never ate at (or got takeout from) a Rally's, but it seems to me that sometime in the early 90s, the idea for a very small takeout burger place took off, and suddenly there were about half a dozen different chains working the concept. There were Rally and Checker as mentioned in the comments, but there was also Central Park, and several others that I am completely blanking on right now. In general they didn't last long though I'm not sure why -- personally I hate to do take-out but plenty of people seem to like it.

UPDATE 12 September 2009: Well, it's open again, this time as a Chinese take-out operation, China Garden.

I don't believe I ever shopped this store, but I think it was on Rosewood for most of my life. The building is one of the older style Pigs, much like that of the Covenant Road Pig and the Marshall Street Pig, though in this case the follow-on store has not retained the Pig's marquee letters the way Kimbrell's has.

The current tenant is Dollar Tree an "everything for a dollar store. It appears from this real estate listing that the building itself is again for sale, though Dollar Tree has a six-year lease. I notice that they are building a lot of residences on the other side of Rosewood (and a bit down the hill) -- too bad the PIg didn't hold out another few years, as that would be a new customer base (though the store is small for the current Piggly WIggly concept).

UPDATE 27 April 2009: I have updated the closing date in the post title from "2000s" to the "July 2002" date supplied by Dave in the comments.

Here's another of Columbia's many drive-in theaters that I never went to, or at least I think it is. I don't really have an address from the 15 April 1973 ad in The State, just "at the Fairgrounds gate", and this lot, adjacent to Jaco's, is the only one that looks plausible. It is now, and has been for as long as I can remember, used for parking during the State Fair, and is vacant the rest of the year.

Of the three movies playing, I have never heard of two of them, and would never have heard of Blindman except for a recent retrospective review in Video Watchdog. This is a great magazine if you have any interest in SF/Fantasy/Horror/Low Budget movies. They were quite pleased with Ringo Starr's performance in this forgotten spaghetti western.

I'm not sure when the Skyway closed -- after 15 April 1973, obviously. I'm sure it was gone by the time I was in college around 1980 as I remember taking a bus to the Fair then, and I'm sure I would have noticed a drive-in as they dropped us off at the front gate.

it seems to me that that Leesburg Road used to be more fashionable than it is now. Perhaps since I-77 came through, it's a bit harder to get to, and to describe how to get to. Or it could just be my imagination, since we didn't go there much even back in the day.

In fact, I have only a very vague memory of having heard about Dick's Flamingo Club at all. If I hadn't seen the ad while I was xeroxing the "restaurants" section from the 1970 phonebook, I'm sure I wouldn't ever have thought of it again. I do notice that it was open until 11pm on weeknights, and it seems to me that more restaurants were open late in 1970 than are today. Nowdays, if you can't get there before 10, or even 9 in a lot of cases, you are pretty well hosed.

The property is currently occupied by Parklane Seafood House whose sign proclaims that they are celebrating their 30th anniversary, having started in 1978. Of course, I think they actually were on Parklane then, so I'm not sure the 1978 date was the actual closure year for Dick's.

UPDATE 5 October 2021: Adding map icon.

In my mind, Hardee's has been going down hill since they got rid of Gilbert Giddyup & Speedy McGreedy, not to mention "charco" grilling. For years though, the real reason to stop at a Hardee's when you got off the Interstate rather than McDonalds or Burger King, was for the ice.

There are a number of different types of commercial ice makers for restaurants. Some make lenticular spherical sections, others make partially hollow cubes, and some make "chewy" ice. Honestly, I don't know why a restaurant would want anything but the last kind, but some do and did. Hardee's though could be counted on for the chewy ice for years and then in a fit of madness, they gave it up. Next they started emphasing chicken such that I couldn't even go into the stores any more because of the chicken smell. Finally they were bought out by Carl's Junior wandered aimlessly for years but of late seem to have grabbed onto a workable concept with the "thickburger" line (though I have yet to sample one).

Anyway, that's all besides the point to this pair of local playground changes sent in by commenter Melanie. The "before" shots come from her, and I took the "after" ones last weekend:

The tall metal man was the playground at the Hardees beside Dutch Square before they tore it down. I think this picture was taken 1995 give or take a year.

and:

Hardees ditched another of their coolest playgrounds sometime in the new millenia. Here is a pic taken in 1995-6 of the Hardees playground from Garners Ferry where I77 goes over. They had this playground at least since I was born because I remember it always being there.

The metal man is indeed way cool. I can only speculate that either the insurance became too burdensome, or playgrounds don't really fit in with the Carl's Junior conception of Hardee's.

UPDATE 21 April 2009: Added "Dutch Square" to the post title.

UPDATE 18 December 2012: Changed the location for the "Garners Ferry" Hardees from 7942 Garners Ferry Road to 120 Veterans Road. (The Hardee's in question is not actually on Garners Ferry, but a side-street, and the Garners Ferry Address is another Hardee's entirely).

UPDATE 10 April 2019 -- This location has now closed, the closing is here. Also updated tags and added map icon.

Dreamland was one of the many small motels that lined Highway 1 ("The Camden Highway" it was called on that stretch) when it was a major inter-state (as opposed to "Interstate") artery. Since we lived in town and had no reason to stay in a Columbia motel, the place probably would have gone without me being fully aware it was there except that in the 70s we had swimming lessons there.

I'm not sure how it works today, except that it's different, but in the 70s, it seemed that most swimming lessons were sponsored, or perhaps just certified, by The Red Cross. They had a standardized curriculum with different proficency levels. The ones I recall were: Beginner, Advanced Beginer and Intermediate. I suppose there may have been an Advanced somewhere, but I never got that far. In fact, I think I had Advanced Beginner about three times. To a certain extent this was just to get us out of the house during the summer and I don't think my mother was overly concerned about the "level" we were taking as long as they covered the "don't drown" part.

As you can see by the Yellow Pages ad, by 1970, Dreamland found itself by the new I-20. I guess this had plusses, but the minuses were that the Interstates were homogenizing the country to the extent that people expected a national brand motel at an "I" exit, and that the long-haul traffic on US-1 was drying up. That's my speculation at any rate. Whatever the reason, they decided to make a little money by holding swimming lessons in the motel pool. My mother liked this as she could in theory drop us off there and then go to K-Mart or the grocery store for an hour or so before coming back for us. I don't remember much abou the lessons, I suspect it was another Advanced Beginner session, and we did in fact get through the "don't drown" part.

A few years after that, Dreamland was torn down to make way for the Spring Valley Theater which was in turn torn down to make way for Lowes (which is still there). The picture above is of the Lowe's parking lot more or less where I think the theater and motel were.

UPDATE 13 October 2009: Added scanned postcard and the text from the back.

Site of the 5437 Forest Drive DQ:

The old 1366 Rosewood, DQ building:

The old 135 Sunset Boulevard store (now an Eggroll Station):

This fish market at 3939 Beltline Boulevard isn't on the phonebook list above, but was clearly a Dairy Queen at one time:

Actually the ad lists a lot more Dairy Queens in town than I was aware of back in the day. The one I remember was the one on Forest Drive at Percival Road, about where the oil-change place is now. I'm not even sure we ever stopped there -- after Bell's closed, we were more of a McDonald's family as far as fast-food burgers went back then.

The main reason I remember this Dairy Queen was because of the national ad campaign featuring Hank Ketchum's Dennis The Menace. Dennis was one of the comics I always read in The State, so it really caught my attention when he and his pal "Joey" started doing radio spots for Dairy Queen. Most of them were not that memorable, but there was one where Dennis & Joey were discussing all the "brazier" treats that it was possible to get at Dairy Queen in those days, and Joey delivered the line

Yeah, Dennis, like a super-brazier chilli-dog!

so memorably that it became sort of a catch-phrase with my friends. Almost any conversation could be punctuated by dropping Yeah Dennis, like a super-brazier chilli-dog! into a lull.

I'm not sure what happened to the Forest Drive Dairy Queen. I have it in my mind that it may have burned down, but I know that happened to the very nearby Forest Drive Pizza Hut, so I may be confusing the two stores. At any rate, the whole brazier thing which was supposed to propel DQ into the top ranks of fast food joints didn't really work, Dennis The Menace or no, and the chain exists today under much reduced circumstances.

UPDATE 22 April 2009: Added pix of the Forest Drive site, and the Rosewood building.

UPDATE 13 May 2009: Added pix of the Sunset Boulevard building.

UPDATE 25 May 2009: Added pic of a Beltline location

UPDATE 12 June 2024: This post is a mess since it was still fairly early days for the blog, and I tried to shoehorn four different locations into one post for some reason. I should separate them out and put a map icon on each, but for right now, I am just going to update the tags a bit.