Archive for the ‘out-of-area’ tag
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:
The Crab Pot Restaurant, 10024 Highway 17 South (McClellanville): late 2000s no comments
Tanners Convenience, 3745 Greeleyville Highway (Manning): 2011 10 comments
The middle route from Columbia to the Grand Strand takes you through Manning on SC-261. US-521 joins 261 there, and they run together until just east of Manning where 261 forks North to Kingstree and 521 continues on to Greeleyville.
Historically rest stops between Manning and Greeleyville have been pretty sparse, so perhaps that's why I especially noticed this rather lavish little gas plaza when it was constructed just a few years ago a little East of the 261/521 fork. That, and the fact that any sign with the word "pizza" on it tends to concentrate my attention.
While the right confluence of events hadn't ever happened, I figured it was a pretty sure thing that sooner or later I would be stopping at Tanners. Well, that was true, but not for the reasons I'd anticipated -- I noticed earlier this year that the place, which had started on such a large scale (this wasn't your typical no-name, one-guy, rural convenience store) so recently was well and truly gone.
I don't know if it turned out that US-521 wasn't as major a road as they had figured, but even with gas, pizza, bait and an attached liquor store as draws apparently the traffic wasn't there. LoopNet on the other hand, says they cleared $78,000 and 100,000 gallons monthly, so who knows?
At any rate, the road between Manning and Greeleyville is pretty empty again.
Brookgreen Gardens Nights Of A Thousand Candles: 3 December 2011 1 comment
Well, it seems to me I got better pictures last year, but I had a good time as usual at Brookgreen Gardens Nights Of 1000 Candles last Saturday. The weather was nice -- I didn't have to zip my jacket or put on gloves, and the lights were as spectacular as usual.
If you will be in the vicinity of Murrells Inlet on 9, 10, 16, 17 or 18 December this year, you should definitely stop by and check it out!
Building 581 Myrtle Beach Airforce Base, Farrow Parkway: 1993 7 comments
I noticed a new cut-in to Farrow Parkway at the (bankrupt) Market Commons shopping development in Myrtle Beach back in July.
Market Commons is the Myrtle Beach equivalent of Village At Sandhill, and is the most promenient development on the old Myrtle Beach Airforce Base. The base (which shared runways with the Myrtle Beach Jetport) was closed in 1993, and most of the old Airforce Buildings are already gone. The new cut-in to Farrow however leads to one which is still standing, more or less.
I don't know what Building 581 was used for, but the size of some of the doors make me think it may have been a vehicle maintenance facility or storage building. Probably the later, as I saw no evidence of pits or lifts. The place has now been heavily tagged with graffiti, sometimes amusingly, sometimes profanely, so some of the pictures after the jump might be considered NSFW.
Google Maps indicates a phantom road on the north side of the building, which it designates as Old Railbed Road. I suspect that it originally was a rail spur which connected to the rail line crossing the trestle connecting the Waccamaw Neck with the rest of the national rail grid, and would have been used to bring in supplies back in the day.
Winn Dixie, 3655 Rivers Avenue, North Charleston: 2005 (probably) 1 comment
Well, the talk in the comments about Winn Dixie gives me an opening to post these pictures from North Charleston.
I forget exactly why I was in Charleston last this May, but I was struck by this run-down plaza on Rivers Avenue as I headed down into the peninsula. As you can see it was a rather gray day so the pictures aren't great, and I didn't stop to do a walkabout, but it just struck me as rather sad.
Notice that as in the Decker store the chain didn't even manage to get its branding off the building.
The Mayor's House, 13089 Ocean Highway (Pawleys Island): 8 January 2011 4 comments
The Mayor's House was for many years at the South Litchfield Beach causeway and stoplight, across from Latte Litchfield and a bit north of The McKenzie Beach Motel. I would, in fact, give the location as "Litchfield" rather than "Pawleys Island", but the later designation is creeping steadily northward.
I always had the impression that The Mayor's House was a) "Too Fancy" and b) "Too Seafood" for me (what with the big pink shrimp and the Fried Lobster come-on), so I never got around to eating there despite liking the pier-like aspect of being built over a pond.
Looking for the address of the place did turn up an online review site which was decidedly... mixed. It did confirm my impression that it was probably too rich for my blood. I do wonder what happened to the shrimp though.
Steve Miller Band, House of Blues, 4640 Highway 17 South (North Myrtle Beach): 8 October 2011 4 comments
The House of Blues at (The bankrupt) Barefoot Landing in Myrtle Beach seems to make a policy of booking major "legacy" acts into its rather intimate space. In the past, I've seen Boz Scaggs, Cyndi Lauper, The Beach Boys (Carl Wilson was visibly failing), and Blondie there.
The only problem I have with the place is that while they have a reserved seating area, the tickets don't seem to be available on the standard web site, and standing up for two hours gets old pretty quick for me nowdays.
Steve Miller has, of course, been around forever, but scored his greatest success in the mid 70s with the "Fly Like an Eagle" and "Book of Dreams" albums. Supposedly he has never allowed a recognizable picture of himself on an album cover, and at the peak of his fame, could ride his bike around venue parking lots without being recognized. He has never had what you could call a "great" voice -- it's a very servicable reedy tenor, and the fact that it's never been perfect means that it hasn't dropped off much either: he was in good vocal form for Saturday's show. The Steve Miller Band is now apparently a six-man outfit. Two guitars, a bass, drums, keyboards and a (very flamboyant) second vocalist.
As you'll recall, when I saw The Doobie Brothers in North Charleston, and Al Stewart in Newberry, I was surprised at how lax the venues were about cameras. In the past it almost seemed like places would break your kneecaps before letting you in with a camera, but apprently, as in school, the Battle of the Cell Phone has been lost, and other cameras reap the benefit. Since I regretted not taking the closing-cam to those shows, I checked on the HOB ticketing site, and non-removable-lens cameras are allowed, so in it came.
The curtain opening number was "Jet Airliner" (with the synth prologue [mostly missed here] playing before the curtain dropped), and Miller went on to play pretty much all of his hits and well known songs: "Jet Airliner", "Abracadabera", "Wild Mountain Honey", "Serenade To The Stars", "Swingtown", "Dance Dance Dance", "Take The Money & Run", "Jungle Love", "Space Cowboy" (dedicated to William Shatner), "Livin' In The USA", "The Stake", "The Joker" (acoustic), and "Rockin' Me". He also played a few blues numbers (it was originally "The Steve Miller Blues Band") that really let the second vocalist shine.
In short, it was an excellent show, and if you get the opportunity to catch him, do.