Columbia Closings   What's not in Columbia anymore

There seems to be some confusion about the actual street number of this spot on Shakespeare Road. When it was Joyner Sales Co, it was listed as 6112 Shakespeare, but most sources seem to list Dealer Auto Salvage as 6110 Shakespeare, and Loopnet lists the lot as 6108 Shakespeare.

At any rate, I noticied the other day that the property is once more vacant. I was on the way somewhere and couldn't stop to get any better pix, but things don't appear to have changed greatly since the first set I took almost five years ago, aside from untrimmed vegetation.

I'm not sure of the actual closing date as I can't find the place in any of my phonebooks under the name on the sign, but I drive by often enough that I'm assuming I would have noticed it if it closed years ago (though doing this site has proved that is not always an accurate assumption..)

I don't really have a specific date for this closing, but I was down at the beach at the start of August, and am pretty sure I would have noticed if this KFC, next to the new Dollar General had been closed then as it was on Labor Day weekend.

I'm a little surprised at this closing as it was a newly renovated store. The original store, opened probably in the late 80s, was a "mini" KFC that did a mostly drive-through business, and when the time came that the chain wanted a full store, there were concerns whether they could manage it on the piece of property they had, given that the setback and spacing rules had just changed. In the event they came up with the design you see here, which apparently satisfied all the agencies and seemed to do a good business for a number of years.

Well, you may best remember this spot as Red Wing Rollerway:

but whatever follow-on operation KNC Trading did, they're not doing it any more.

The vans pulled up in late August, and now, as of 8 September, the building is empty and has once more been sold:

UPDATE 12 June 2018 -- This place is now a latin church, Centro Cristiano:

UPDATE 10 August 2022: Adding map icon.

Well, this seems to be the end of local fast Mexican stalwart, Taco Cid. This is a chain that once had a presence as far abroad as both Greenvilles, though it was recently down to one, non-custom-built, storefront location near the airport (having moved from the Charleston Highway in the summer of 2014).

I used to frequent the Decker location from time to time as part of a pre-roadtrip ritual, and thought it was pretty decent. In recent years, the chain has gotten some negative publicity over an edgy ad campaign, and some people have said here that they also lost their longtime sauce recipe to a change in food service vendors.

At any rate, while a sign inside the closed Platt Spring Road location offers some hope for the future, it appears that at this time, the Taco Cid website is down and the Taco Cid Facebook page has been closed.

For now, you can see the final cached version of that facebook page, announcing the closing, here.

(Hat tip to commenter Kc)

UPDATE 30 August 2022: Updating tags, adding map icon.

UPDATE 8 June 2023 -- Now Taqueria La Poblanta:

Well, it appears that the Decker Village shopping center in the 2300 block of Decker Boulevard has been bought out, and is starting a major renovation. The first step has been to take the distinctive triangular steel canopies off of the shopping center storefronts. I have to say that so far, it is definitely not an improvement, as you can see in the "before" pictures below. Hopefully some new facade work will be forthcoming as part of the upfit. As the sign says, the new owners are Ziff Properties Inc, but so far their site doesn't have any details about their future plans for property.

Before:

UPDATE 1 June 2019: Change address from 2312 Decker to 2300 Decker, to match what is on the plaza street sign. Also added map icon.

As I was driving down Decker the other day, I noticed that the little corner Mexican restaurant in Decker Plaza, Santa Fe Mexican Grill has rebranded as La Poblanita.

I was wondering if the name meant something like "little poblano pepper", and I guess the root is the same, but wordreference says:

In Mexico there is a state (and a city) called Puebla. The name given to people (or things) from that state is "poblano or poblana". La Poblanita is a diminutive of "poblana". So, La Poblanita is like saying the little woman (or girl) from Puebla. Cheers.

P.S. Be mindful that Puebla is a relatively common name, and there are many towns in the Spanish-speaking countries (I think mostly in Spain) with that name.

so I guess the winsome senorita in the restaurant logo is that eponymous lady.

As I was driving down Laurel Street the other day, I noticed that American Business Machines at the corner of Laurel & Sumter had moved. According to their sign, they are now at 406-D Williams Street, which seems to be somewhere down by the new USC baseball stadium.

Their sign and google suggest that ABM is a typewriter shop, but I doubt there is much business in that now, and the one time I stopped by, I was looking for bulk shredding services.

Fish & More opened in the old Blue Ocean Seafood Market location sometime in mid 2014. I thought I had some pictures of it in full operation, but so far have only found the "coming soon" pictures at the Blue Ocean closing.

At any rate, I noticed as I was driving down Forest Drive last weekend that the place is now Forest Island Bar & Grill.

Back when blogs were a new thing, the "blogroll" was an important part of a blog. Basically the blogroll is a sidebar with a list of links to other blogs the author of a particular blog follows. As people have become used to blogs, and as other social media have taken hold, the blogroll has become less and less important. I have one (it's in the right sidebar), but haven't really kept it up for years.

One site in my blogroll I do visit regularly though is Scott Meyer webcomic Basic Instructions. Meyer is a former standup comedian, so his comic has a bit of a different rhythm from a typical comic strip. In the normal case, a comic will build to a punchline in the last panel (or sometimes a punchline in the penultimate panel with a reaction in the last panel), but Basic Instructions has a punchline in each panel. The comic's conceit is that it is a guide to everyday life, so each installment has a title like "How to do something mundane" with the advice given quickly heading for left field. Meyer doesn't really draw, but has a library of poses that quickly become familar and somehow always seem to fit the dialogue. The comic has a number of stock situations. Perhaps the most common is the cartoon representation of Meyer trading insults with his best friend Rick, followed by strips where he tries to convince his wife Missy of the wisdom of some inane idea of his. After that, probably the third most common situation is Meyer as the office manager of a very inept business trying to deal with his superviser (generally known to fans as "Mullet boss").

Recently Meyer announced that he was ending the strip, having discovered that he was starting to reuse the same gags almost verbatim. The fact that he has become a moderatly successful fantasy novelist probably was a big part of it too. In the event, the final Basic Instructions was posted yesterday, though re-runs will continue to run on the site, and several very funny paperback collections are available.

All of which prelude just gives me an excuse to post my very favorite Basic Instructions, one that never fails to make me laugh out loud, even after many re-reads.

So, without further ado, How to Figure Out What Someone Said:

This Boozer Shopping Center storefront lists in the February 2015-2016 phonebook, so I'm guessing is closed sometime this spring. And, no, they weren't responsible for the Patient Rarking -- I think there's a medical operation in the same wing.