Columbia Closings   What's not in Columbia anymore

This building across the street from Trenholm Plaza in the remnants of the Forest Lake Shopping Center is now Coplon's department store, but in the 60s and 70s, it was the store where my mother most like to shop for groceries: Colonial.

Although I went there many times, I was young enough that certain very specific things stick in my mind rather than a good overall memory. In particular, I recall that if you came in through the main doors (which were on the Sakura side of the building, I think), took your cart and jinked left across the row of checkout lines, you would find a wire cage filled with boxes of Barnum's animal crackers, and we would always try to wheedle our mother into buying some (it rarely worked). They also shared a house brand for cheese, Farm Charm with Big Star groceries, and we all felt that this was the best cheddar of all the local groceries.

In the right back corner of the store, there was a Coke machine (presumably mostly for employee breaks) which stayed at $0.10 long after all the other Coke machines I was familiar with had gone to $0.15. The restrooms were, I believe, through a swinging door behind the machine. As was common with grocery stores, and indeed most other stores, in this period, these were not official restrooms -- there was no customer access. Of course all bets were off with childhood emergencies and a persuasive mother. I recall she talked the staff into letting me back there once, and I was tremendously impressed by the raciness of having an exasperated handwritten sign taped up over the urinal: Those of you with shorter bats please stand closer to the plate. That never would have flown in an "official" restroom.

And then of course there was the park behind the store where we spent many hours while our mother shopped, and where I climbed the monkey bars and got stuck hanging from my knees.

Groceteria has a history of Colonial and Big Star. It's clear from that that Colonial was in trouble by the 70s and was rebranding as the lower margin Big Star, but I don't know exactly when this store closed. I know it was well before I went to college, so I'm thinking mid-70s. After it closed, we sometimes shopped the Big Star co-located with the Fort Jackson Boulevard K-Mart for Farm Charm cheese, but in general that was too far, and I think my mother usually went to Trenholm Plaza after that.

Coplon's remodelled the Colonial building to add the front drive-under canopy, and moved the main entrance to the Forest Drive side of the building. I have never been inside since Colonial left but I feel sure you can't get a $0.10 Coke there anymore.

Kester's Bamboo House occupied the spot on Harden Street now held by China Garden and Jungle Jim's. The first (rather unflattering) image comes from the 1963 Southern Bell directory and the second from the 1970 one. I'm not sure when the place closed, but I suspect it was sometime in the 1970s. I'm pretty sure I recall hearing about it as a child, but don't recall seeing it after I began to drive myself. A posting to a genealogy website says that the original Mr. Kester passed in 1966, but I don't know if the business stayed in the family after that or was sold at that point.

I also don't know if 724 Harden was split into two businesses at that point, or if Kester's occupied the whole space by itself, though the 1970 Yellow Pages ad claims banquet seating for 100, which seems larger than the current China Garden capacity. At any rate, I'm pretty sure the current China Garden building was at least part of Kester's and does date back to that era, and is somewhat responsible for the closing of The Parthenon.

As I remember it, the story in The State was that when the interminable Five Points road work of a few years ago reached The China Garden a snag developed. As the work crews went to replace the infrastructure under the building's foundation, they found that the building had no foundation! The front wall was basically supported only by the sidewalk, so before they could go under the building to work, they had to shore everything up and this took a lot longer than they expected -- and all the while they were there, access to The Parthenon was very difficult.

UPDATE 24 June 2019: Add tags and map icon.

You don't tug on Superman's cape, you don't spit into the wind, you don't pull the mask off the old Lone Ranger, and you don't open a restaurant at 2630 Decker Boulevard.

Read the rest of this entry »

You can still see the empty placard in the K-Mart sign showing where the Advance Auto Parts sign used to be -- If K-Mart were in better shape itself, they probably would have pulled that down, as it looks decrepit and bad for their brand.

Anyway, the way I recall it, this space which apparently dates from 1970 like the K-Mart, was in its first iteration, a Western Auto.

The Western Auto that I remember best was the one at Trenholm Plaza, where I used to browse the Western Flyer bikes and buy those huge 1-volt carbon-zinc batteries with the screw terminals for hobby projects. I know I went into this store a number of times, but I can't really reall anything specific about it. Wikipedia says that Western Auto was acquired first by Sears, and then later by Advance Auto Parts, which phased out the Western Auto name (mostly) in 2003 (though many stores had already switch to "Advance" by then), and in fact this store was an Advance when it closed.

That history is a bit ironic since K-Mart like Western Auto was bought by Sears. If Sears had held onto the Western Auto brand a bit longer (Sears dropped Western in 1998 and bought K-Mart in 2005), they could have had some sort of super-mega store in this building

UPDATE 4 April 2022: Updating tags, adding map icon.

I wrote at some length about Robo's on Main Street some time ago, and that's the location I overwhelmingly went to to hone my Galaga skills (and by hone, I mean, I was "ok"). That made sense as I lived across the street from there, but when I was home and had access to a car, I would come to this location from time to time. I recently parked near there to get some pictures of the Advance Auto Parts demolition, and decided to take this shot.

At this remove, I'm not entirely sure which storefront Robo's was, but I think it was the one to the left of the blue dumpster. My memory also says that this location was something of a poor stepchild in the Robo's family -- I recall it as being smaller, less busy, and having a smaller variety of games. Unlike the University location, it didn't have a clear constituency (ie: college kids), though I suppose there are plenty of residences in the general area. I'm not sure if it outlasted the Main Street or Dutch Square locations -- it did have the advantage of not having its building torn down, but I think Main Street had folded long before that happened to its former home.

Well, it's getting close to swimming time again -- the days are warming up, and the worst of the pollen will be over in a month or so. Of course, if this were 1975, it would already be swimming time at Trenholm Park.

That's right, when the pool at Trenholm Park first opened, it was totally enclosed, heated, and open year-round. In fact, I can remember swimming in that pool when there was snow on the ground. It also had the scariest high-dive board in town, and it was something of a dare to go up and off of that thing. I never would actually dive off it -- I would just cannon-ball into the 12ft section (one of the deepest around as well -- enough to make your ears really hurt).

I can guess what happened to the high-dive: insurance, but I really have no idea what happened to the enclosure. I just recall coming back to town one day, driving by and going hey, wait a minute!. If I had to guess, I would suspect some Richland County funding issue.

The last time I swam there was 1996, when I was recovering from a car-wreck, and wanted somewhere I could walk without really putting any weight on my leg. The entrance building at the front of the pool with the changing rooms and showers seemed unchanged from the 70s, so I suspect that the shell over the pool itself was always structurally separate. And despite the absence of the diving board, and a lifeguard regime that seemed a good deal more, um, authoritarian than I recalled -- the kids still seemed to be having a great time.

Here's another of Columbia's vanished drive-ins. I don't think I was ever really aware of this one. North Main was not on any of our regular routes -- for years I had only the vaguest idea where even Columbia College was. I'm saying this closed in the 1970s because in the late 70s, one of my school groups would sometimes do fundraisers at lunch by selling corndogs, and I would go pick them up from the North Main Piggly Wiggly, where somebody's father worked. I think I would remember seeing a drive-in in the area, and I don't.

At any rate, this one seems not to have gone porno, at least in the time-frame we see here (the first ad is from 1971, the second from 15 April 1973): Nothing rated harder than GP (equivalent to the range covered by today's PG & PG-13). Yog is even rated G!

I went to North Main to see what's at 5801 now, and it's a small strip mall with a barber-shop and a tax office. I think the drive-in must have covered more ground, so it's possible some of the other structures at what are now 58xx addresses may be on parts of it as well.

Thanks to reader Terry for the 1971 ad!

Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar--

Read the rest of this entry »

I'm not absolutely certain that this was the Foxcroft Skating Rink but judging from some of the comments on my Redwing Rollerway post, and a recent comment on Have Your Say, this building appears to be the only one plausible. I was never a skater back in the day, so I had no personal experience with the place. Currently the building is a school.

Kneece Road is an odd little dirt road that connects Brookfield Road (where RNE High School is) with O'Neil Court (formerly Hunt Club Road on that stretch) and runs behind the U-Haul center and the old Decker Mall. I drive down it from time to time when I'm going to my storage unit or just for fun, though it can be very iffy on your suspension at points. There is a Foxcroft Road two blocks further up Decker Boulevard. I have no idea why the rink was called that rather than "Kneece Skating Rink" or "Brookfield Skating Rink" though.

Here's another closed Eckerd store, although google indicates that this one was open as recently as the Rite Aid transition, which is not how I recall it. This store sits at the intersection of Two Notch and Beltline, and is now a children's dental clinic.

I'm pretty sure this location also once housed the local AMC dealership, name now forgotten, where I bought a really awful, I mean world class bad, car, though all those structures have since been torn down (or if they were like the car, may have just fallen apart..)

UPDATE 25 January 2012 -- Interestingly, the building directly across the street (in the old Payless Shoes/Carzzz location) is also becoming a dental clinic.

UPDATE 10 August 2020: Add tags, map icon, change "Eckerd" to "Eckerd Drugs" & "Rite Aid Drugs" to "Rite Aid" in post title.

UPDATE 17 November 2022: Changed title from "Eckerd Drugs / Rite Aid" to "Rite Aid / Eckerd Drugs" based on the comments.