Columbia Closings   What's not in Columbia anymore

This Blockbuster Video Rental on Decker Boulevard, across from the old Decker Mall has has the going-out-of-business signs up for a few weeks now.

I stopped in about two weeks ago, and it seemed that they were continuing to do a normal rental business on some titles while selling out the rest of the store to the walls. I thought the prices were good, but not great, and picked up a couple of DVDs.

As I drove by today, I saw them carting off the sign, so as of now, Decker has lost yet another business. As with Hollywood Video, I guess Redbox, Netflix and the Internet have done a real number on their business model. Lately they have been trying to adopt the Netflix model while leveraging their store network ("Bring your DVDs back to the store for immediate credit!") but so far it doesn't seem to be working.

UPDATE 7 Jan 2010: Here is the store at night after being totally cleaned out:

UPDATE 12 Jan 2010: Added another picture.

UPDATE 30 August 2011 -- work is underway to turn this location into The Chabad/Aleph House:

UPDATE 5 October 2020: This place is now Chabad Of South Carolina though I don't have a picture yet. Also updating post tags and adding map icon.

OK, first Zorba's on Decker closed. Then the old Zorba's sign proclaimed that a new Italian sounding restaurant would be coming. That never happened.

Then a Mexican operation repainted the facade

and nothing happened for a long time.

Then (no picture) they put a paper sign up on the front door seeming to say (I don't read Spanish) that tacos were for sale, but apparently there was nobody at the building during the time this sign was up.

Then they put handmade signs on the Decker street-level "entrance"/"exit" placards saying the place was open:

At the same time they added a ramshackle looking shed to the left of the portico and posted another sign in Spanish that appears to say something about Tacos and tortiallias (Tortas?), but note again that there appears to be nobody there.

Then they took the shed down, and again nothing appears to be going on at the place (the "OPEN" roadside signs are gone too):

And all the while the whole place appears to be for sale:

THEN they put a canopy on the outside deck. Still nobody seems to be there.

Then they turn the lights on the main sign, but the building is dark at all times:

So --- your guess is as good as mine!

UPDATE 2 November 2009: Now the canopy is gone from the deck..

UPDATE 7 August 2019: Add some tags and map icon.

I don't play pool (now air-hockey is a game!), so this club has only been on the periphery of my notice over the years, but I was conscious enough of it that it caught my eye when I saw new signs up the last time I drove down Decker to I-77.

Doing a little googling I find that it has something of a tragic history, with the co-owner being fatally shot there in 2006. Google also insists that the place has been called Sue's Lounge though the Google Streetview for "Sue's Lounge" brings up the old Decker Billiard signage on the place.

The new name of the place is La Parranda which apparently means "The Big Party" in Spanish (and a song of that name was a hit for Gloria Estefan..), so I'm assuming that the ownership has switched from Korean to latin, though the graphic on the sign seems to indicate that pool and alcohol will still be available.

UPDATE 25 April 2013 -- Well it's back, sorta. I hope they didn't pay too much for those signs:

These are the kind of businesses I notice off and on over the years, and if I think about them at all, wonder how they are making a living, until one day I notice that they are not anymore. These adjoining lots are on Percival Road, just east of Decker Boulevard.

The story, at least for the Upholstery shop seems to be a sad one, of the parents passing away, and the children not being able to carry on the business. I'm not clear on what the story of the little drive-in was as it was not detailed in the County Zoning hearing minutes which are online here. Apparently nobody even knew the name of the place.

The hearing seems to have focused on keeping the property commercial. The businesses had been operating on residential property as grandfathered operations, and when the business licenses lapsed, the ability to locate a business there did also. In this case it seems to me pretty much a no-brainer, and apparently it was approved. Both properties are now for sale, and time will tell what locates there.

Also, an interesting tid-bit came up in google when I was searching for the street addresses and "Duanne Warr", who was associated with the action somehow. As it turns out, in the minutes, he spoke for the proposed buyer of the property apparently as a realtor, but it appears he was once a Columbia heavy metal rocker cutting

One of the most insane records ever made!

UPDATE 7 June 2014 -- Commenter Sidney points out that the drive-in building has been razed, and so it has:

UPDATE 10 October 2016 -- The old drive-in lot is now about to be Tacos Nayarit Mexican Grill:

Actually, this might not be Land of Oz as I can't remember if that was at both Bush River & Decker Malls, or only at Bush River with this being another operation. Whatever the name, it was definitely the Decker Mall video arcade though.

In its current incarnation, it has had somewhat "regular" doors retrofitted into the distinctive flat-arch entranceway, but originally, I believe they just drew a sliding mesh curtain at nights.

The layout I most remember had Don Bluth's pioneering "Dragon's Lair" console dead center in the entranceway facing the hall. This game was a combination of traditional hand-drawn "cel" animation served up from a laser-disc (not a DVD!) and choose-your-adventure gameplay with the transition between the scenes being guided by the game-play lever. For instance, if a dragon was about to fry your knight, and you raised your shield, the disc would transition to a "flame bounces off shield" scene, if you didn't raise it, it would transition to an "the ashes of your character blow away scene" (those are just examples, I don't recall the actual specifics). Actually like many "pioneering" technologies, it wasn't that good because they were pushing the video scene changing tech further than it was really ready to go, and the transitions were really clunky.

If you turned left at "Dragon's Lair", there was a "Bezerk" somewhere in the left side of the store. This was the pushy game that would in "attract mode" declare "COIN DETECTED IN POCKET" from time to time. You had to either shoot the robots or run them into the electric walls. I liked it, but wasn't that good.

Somewhere against the back wall, I think was "Battlezone" a vector-graphics based POV tank game. You had two levers, one for each tank tread, and you could spin in place by running one tread fowards and the other tread backwards. I usually ended up fooling around with navigating the tank and getting shot.

I don't recall any more of the layout, but they definitely also had "Asteroids", "Space Invaders","Tempest", "Defender" (which I could not play at all -- too many things to keep track of), "Milipede", and "Missle Command". I suppose they must have had "Pac Man/Ms Pac Man", but I don't really recall it. I'm prettty sure they did not have some of my other favorites, "Star Castle", "Galaxian", "Phoenix", "Gorf", and "Joust", or my all-time favorite, "Galaga". Of course, it could just be that when I was in college, I went to Robos instead of here and thus missed the gradual turnover.

I'm not really sure when they closed. The mall underwent a long gradual decline that accelerated into death-spiral when Kroger and Target pulled out, but I think they were gone before that, probably late 80s I'm guessing.

UPDATE 18 June 2012: The last city directory listing Land of Oz is 1986, so I have updated the closing time in the post title from "1980s" to "1986".

Well, I wasn't expecting that. I drove by McDonald's on Two Notch tonight and found the place razed to the ground (with the exception of the sign). There's a yellow "zoning" notice sign in front of the place, but I couldn't tell what it said from across the street, and I didn't stay because I was about to be panhandled. I wouldn't have taken night pictures anyway, but with the bulldozer parked there, I was afraid that the sign would be gone by tomorrow.

This McDonald's, on the corner of Two Notch & Beltline, took the place of Chappy's Authentic English Fish & Chips in 1987, so it had been there a bit over 20 years. I don't believe I ever ate inside though I'm pretty sure I've gotten drinks at the drive-through. In general I haven't eaten much at McDonalds since the 1970s, but lately they have been getting better with pretty good coffee and wi-fi.

Apparently, this is being done to add drive-through capacity, according to this 9 Dec 2008 Zoning Board document:

This is a request to demolish and construct a fast food restaurant (McDonald’s) with a drive-through. The property will have ingress/egress along Two Notch Road and Beltline Boulevard. The drive-through for the fast food restaurant is situated within the site such that adequate stacking for vehicles can be provided.

The ammended request for a double drive-through was apparently approved on 14 July 2009 at 10am and they didn't waste any time after that!

UPDATE 17 July 2009: OK, the above reads a bit disjointedly since I hadn't looked up the zoning documents before writing the first part, ie: I wouldn't have worried about the sign being bulldozed if I had known from the get-go that they were going to rebuild on the same lot.

Anyway, here are the daylight pictures:

UPDATE 7 November 2009 -- Open again:

Well, it appears that the Po Folks curse has struck again, and the building at 6246 Two Notch will need another new tenant. The phone is not yet disconnected (just constantly "busy"), but it seems that the Moore For Less used car dealership is gone. I would think that in this economy, used cars would be a sure bet, but perhaps the overall bank mess has affected financing, or people are holding on to what they have and not even getting new used cars...

UPDATE 13 March 2011 -- Well, in the last week they've knocked down the building and cleared the lot:

UPDATE 21 April 2011 -- It's to be a Dollar General and construction has already started:

UPDATE 25 June 2011 -- The Dollar General is open:

UPDATE 29 June 2021: Adding tags & map icon.

UPDATE 13 June 2009: The above picture is apparently the wrong spot for the adult book store, with the right spot being the corner lot (one to the left). I'll leave the first picture since people have commented on it (and its former incarnations), and add the correct one below.

I've tried a couple of times to get a decent picture of this place, but it seems that every time I go by, it's the afternoon, and the sun is against me. Anyway, this little building is on Percival Road between Decker Boulevard and Dupont Drive and has been a number of things over the years. Currently it is an El Cheapo gas station / convienience store. You can also tell from the painted-over letters on the gas island canopy that it was fairly recently a Texaco. What I recall from the 1970s and 80s is that it was an adult book store for a good many years, and the reason I recall this is one very indignant lady during the Great Ice Storm of 1979.

That storm was the biggest local event of 1979. We certainly had snow from time to time growing up, but had never seen anything like the cover of ice that descended on Columbia that day. As I recall, I went outside afterwards, and saw a bucket in our back yard. I pried it out of the ice to find that it left a neat hole with clear turf underneath, surrounded by a two-inch coat of ice. Needless to say, trees and branches were down all over the city. Our house was without power for two weeks. Nowdays, I suppose they would declare a Federal Disaster Area for anything like that, but in those days, we just coped. We had a fireplace and candles, and when things got too bad, could take a hot shower at a relative's house. We also had a transistor radio, and I remember listening to WIS's extensive coverage of the situation. The lady in question phoned in to the call-in show and expressed great ire at the fact that this adult book store had its power back, and she did not have hers. The host tried to explain that the line crews were working through the area in triage mode, and usually tried to fix the lines that would bring the most houses back at once before moving on to breaks that would bring fewer houses online. She wasn't having any of it though, and I think the host finally had to "thank" her for her opinion and hang up. Perhaps she was onto something though -- we haven't had a storm like that since the adult bookstore closed!

UPDATE 13 June 2009 See in post above about new "correct" picture. Also added the street address, 1001, to the post title.

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.

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.

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