Columbia Closings   What's not in Columbia anymore

Here is another tiny strip club on Two Notch Road. The last phonebook entry was apparently in 2009, but online sources show it was actually open at least into September of 2011.

I have to say that I quite like the sign.

UPDATE 9 October 2024: Update tags, add map icon. The Lenox building caught fire in 2016 and has now been razed. The sign remains:

Here is a note on the club re-opening in 2014, so apparently it opened again after the 2011 date in the post title.

I noticed this defunct strip club on Bluff Road the other day, on the west side of the road just south of the I-77 exit.

According to what I can find, it has been several clubs, the last of which Diamonds was in business as recently as 2009, but from the state of the building, nobody has done any maintenance since then. (Though it is still in better shape than Liquids).

The names raise some interesting questions. For instance, there was a Diamonds on Berryhill Road. Is there a connection? And: If this was Pleasers 2, where was Pleasers 1?

It is next door to a building even more decrepit about which I will try to find something out so I can eventually do a closing for it as well.

UPDATE 29 October 2012: Commenter tonkatoy says that back in the 70s, this was The Cricket Club. Bit of a sticky wicket, that!

Update 5 November 2012: Well one of the questions above is answered. Commenter BMJae says that the club was named Pleasers and then was closed due to fire, taking the name Pleasers 2 upon reopening after repair and remodel. I have added the name Pleasers to the post title.

Update 20 August 2014 -- This building is not long for the world, in fact it apparently was scheduled to be demolished on 12 August, but said demolition has not yet happened. Interestingly the demolition order gives the address as 3009 Bluff Road, which is not what I found previously with google (ie: 3028 Bluff Road), but it seems authoritative so I am changing the post title to reflect that. Also interestingly, the door was open..

This little sandwich & chicken restaurant was across the fence from Frank's, and shared the building where Mr. B's nightclub is located. This suite is also the former location of Rookie Billiards and Gardenia's restaurant.

I'm not exactly sure what "New York" means in a sub style (I hear "New Jersey" more often), but the reviews they got on Urban Spoon were positive.

UPDATE 30 October 2012: Commenter badger points out that this storefront was once a adult video store. Actually "Chasers Wholesale Video" is listed for this storefront (3122) while "Chasers' Mags-N-Mixers" is listed for the left end of the building (3128). I think the whole building (which has three storefronts now, had only one or two then).

"Boss! The Plane! The Plane!" — Sorry, but that had to be said

I'm not quite sure what is going on with Club Fantasy Island, a tiny strip club on Two Notch Road which basically shares a parking lot with the old Shrimper restaurant and the old Atlantic Twin Theater. (As I recall, the club got a bit of notoriety some years ago when there was a shooting in the parking lot, but I'm not sure if the incident was actually related to the club itself, a neighboring club, or was random.)

Anyway, I took these pictures back in early March 2012 because I had noticed that when driving down Two Notch at times the club should normally be open, it wasn't. I almost went ahead and did a closing on it then, but one night somewhat later when I drove by, it was open once more, and I saw it open normally after that. Then, in June, I think, it was closed again, so I don't know exactly what the status is, but if they re-open again, I'll just update the post title.

UPDATE 28 January 2022 -- This building has now been razed. Hope somebody got the neon sign:

Also updating tags and adding a map icon.

Well, it looks like Video Magic & Mags on Two Notch just before Fontaine has gone under despite (or because of?) their Low Low Rices, and that their Movies For The Entire Family are being cleared out.

This porn emporium has been there seemingly forever, and outlasted the one on the other side of Fontaine by probably a couple of decades.

It appears that a new incarnation for the building will be forthcoming shortly as the parking lot has been re-paved, the sign has already been painted over, and there seems to be a stream of folks in and out working on the interior.

Well, this one is ripped from the headlines -- It seems that on the morning of Thursday 8 March 2012, somebody set fire to Club Crush (aka Crush Gentlemens Club) on River Drive just down from a defunct Cash / Title shop and the old A&P.

OK, I'm jumping the gun on the theory that it was arson, but given the recent history of the club (a woman was shot on 1 March and a tow truck driver was shot at on 7 March), I doubt that it just *happened to catch fire.

Actually I find the story of the woman being shot all the more remarkable in that it recapitulates the most famous incident to happen at this building. In both cases people inside the building were shot by bullets coming in from outside the club. Luckily, the woman is said to not be gravely injured -- in the first incident a man was killed. As I recall the story, the fatal incident happened while the building was occupied by Chastitys Gold Club. It seems that a man (a lawyer in fact!) was attempting to take liberties with a dancer that neither she nor club management would countenance, and the man was thrown out of the club, whereupon he went home, got a gun, came back and fired through the (closed) front door, killing a club employee.

I don't think that Chastitys ever really recovered from the bad publicity, and after limping on for a while, closed in 2009. The building shortly re-opened as another strip club, Savannahs Gentlemens Club (no apostrophies anywhere..) which didn't last too long and was replaced by Club Crush in late 2010 or 2011.

In fact, this building has always seemed to have sort of a revolving door problem. I was amused recently when both The State and The Free Times reported on Richland County mooting a change to zoning rules to close county stripclubs, and both papers seemed to believe that Chastitys was still open (unsurprisingly they noted they were unable to get a comment from the owners about the proposed regulations, given that the club was long gone..). Some other businesses I know of in this building were Coconuts Inc, The Club House and Crockmeyer's,which all sound like night clubs, and Swipe USA which doesn't. (In fact, I'm not sure what that sounds like..).

I'm not sure about Club Crush, but the building itself did not appear badly damaged, and based on history, I predict a club will be open there again soon, whatever the name.

UPDATE 13 December 2013: According to The State the building as been denied a permit to operate as a bar under new ownership, with, I think, the subtext being: this is for all time. To me this seems like visiting the sins of the past into the future..

UPDATE 19 January 2018 -- The place either is operating as or is about to open as Tryst:

This porn emporium on Broad River Road next to the old Data Resources site and across the street from Ole Town Antiques recently gave up the ghost and is already boarded up. I like the odd fact that the advertising silhouettes are about as tame as anything involving a man and a woman together can be. There are racier beer billboards. Of course maybe that did them in!

More likely are two other factors. First, they were just down the street from This is It! at 2831 Broad River Road, and that seems to be a chain of sorts. And second, I heard somewhere that Al Gore invented something that lets you see people in their birthday suits for free...

(Hat tip to a commenter I can not locate now..)

UPDATE 8 October 2011: Added "TJ's" to the post title after finding it in google. It was a strip club.

UPDATE 11 November 2011: Added "The Ballistic Center to the post title. It was a shooting range. I've got a nice ad to scan in at some point.

UPDATE 23 November 2011 -- Here's the ad I mentiond above:

The Ballistic Center first listed in the January 1984 phonebook at "1022 Columbia College Drive". I forgot to make a note of when they first listed at this address, but the last listing was in the February 1991 phonebook.

UPDATE 17 April 2019 -- Now Michael's Cafe & Bistro:

Chateau Gentlemens Club was the follow-on operation for the building which formerly housed Touch of India, and you can still see the Indian motifs in the arches along the rooftop (though I suppose in this context you could see them as something else as well).

Garner Lane is the I-20 frontage road which you can only reach by taking the I-20 Eastbound on-ramp at Broad River Road. It's a somewhat difficult place to get in and out of, and somewhat difficult to figure out how to do that as well. I don't know if that had anything to do with this club lasting for a rather short period: It's only listed in this year's phonebook (Feb 2011), so I'm guessing less than a year.

It's listed in the phonebook as Chateau De Lamour, a name I'm pretty sure was on the I-20 visible sign at one point as well. I'm guessing that was too ambiguous to draw traffic.

The name of this little plaza has changed as well. Last year, it was Volaty Plaza, now it is S&B Plaza.

UPDATE 11 November 2011: Located the two pictures I took while the club was in operation, and added them as the first two above.

UPDATE 30 July 2012: Commenter badger suggests this was Julie's and then Chicago Smokehouse. I think he's right so I'll add those to the post title. I ate at this Julie's once long ago, but don't remember anything about it other than it did not give me food posioning like the one on Garner's Ferry.

I don't actually remember this place as an Italian restaurant, but apparently in 1974 it was one. Pizza was still a pretty exotic food to me then, but was one I liked, and I would have expected to remember a pizza restaurant in the Dentsville area. I certainly knew about the Pizza Hut on Two Notch more or less where the O'Reily's Auto Parts near Best Buy now is, and about Shakey's on Parklane Road. A 32-inch pizza sounds rather overwhelming, but the sandwiches sound quite good.

After Antonio's, it was a number of night-clubs and strip-clubs. By 1997, it was operating as L B Dynasty and got in trouble with the Department of Revenue leading to a 45 day suspension of the club mini-bottle license. Whether because of that, or for some other reason, it later became Studio 54, and was that until quite recently, I think (at any rate, the sign is still there). Despite that, it has been at least one other club, Club Gemeni before it's current incarnation as Club Ego

UPDATE 4 September 2011: After being several other things, it's now Laguna Sports Bar

When a "massage salon" is open until 3AM, one suspects that the massages offered are very thorough. Certainly the late 70s (this ad is from the 1977 Southern Bell phonebook) seem to have been sort of a peak for such. Since then, this building on the south side or Rosewood just west of Pizza Man (and which was pretty clearly originally built as a home) has been a number of things. In particular I recall a record store, which a 1998 zoning board meeting characterizes as selling mostly religious CDs, and at present (though currently it is for sale at $325,000) it houses a recording studio which seems to have a number of telephone sidelines, so -- to reuse a bad joke, you can still reach out and touch someone.