Columbia Closings   What's not in Columbia anymore

I noticed a few weeks ago that the Express Check Advance adjacent to Tom's Wines & Spirits had taken their marquee down. I thought that the place might be vacant for a while, but just a few days later I saw a new sign for a Moneygram location which is apparently already up and running.

This long little strip mall on Two Notch between the mall and Arcadia Lakes Drive has had more than its share of little storefront finance offices. I know of at least three, though they probably did not all operate at the same time. This one seems to have closed up shop about a year after its suite-mate, Cash N Go moved out.

I still miss when this Two Notch lot was Dick Dyer Toyota and I could drop my car off and walk home. Since then, they've tried a couple of concepts there. I think at one point it was a scooter store, then they had the Mitsubishi & Suzuki lot. I'm not sure how to characterize what happend to that dealership. The sign says it "moved" to Love Automotive, but I'm guessing a change in franchaise went with that. At any rate it now appears that the Dick Dyer Body Shop will be moving from the bottom corner of the lot into the main building.

Facebook is a weird animal. I get a lot of hits from there, but unlike a normal website, I can't check to see what people are saying when they link here becuase you have to be a facebook member to access almost anything. Likewise there's a lot of content on Facebook that's probably interesting to ColumbiaClosings readers, but in general it is not accessible outside of Facebook and never gets indexed by google. The exception is that for some reason or another, content often leaks out of foreign language Facebook subsidiaries.

A case in point is this posting which leaked through the Korean site:

Pat Seay Garvin다음 장소에 게시Georgetown Wooden Boat Show (Georgetown, SC)
2010년 10월 10일 오후 2:22 ·

Looking for any old SEAYCRAFT wooden boats made at 3132 Two Notch Rd. in Columbia, SC in the 50's. My uncle Tom Seay owned a boat shop and made several models of wooden powerboats. My father worked for him when I was little, and I remember those boats well. Would love to see an original still alive.

It's an unlikely little storefront for a boatwright, but I suppose they may have had the whole building at the time, and probably a back lot.

Long after that, during the era when the other part of the building was Mr. B's, 3132 was
Diamond's Liquor Store.

UPDATE 9 March 2020 -- Now, very colorfully, Sam's Tobacco & Vape:

Despite the fact that they broadened their business model to full car care many years ago, I still think of Midas as a muffler place. In fact, the last time I needed a muffler, I got it at the Decker store, and as far as I can tell, they did a good job.

This store, on Two Notch near The Village At Sandhill closed sometime late in 2012. I think I noticed it in December, and kept trying to get back out there during full daylight, which I never quite managed.

The sign, Moved to Decker Blvd is a bit disingenuous as the Decker store has been there (at Fashion Place, more or less) for a number of years, so it's more of a consolidation than an actual move.

Dave's is a longtime Two Notch fixture not far past Covenant Road as you head into the city. I had noticed it often over the years, but it hit me lately that I couldn't recall seeing anyone there over the last few months when I would drive home from downtown at night, and indeed it does seem to be closed.

This review makes it sound like a pleasant low-key kind of place -- rather old school in fact, with live music by a "Drifters" alum.

(click-through rated PG-13..)

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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.

Here's another Columbia area Burger King getting a facelift.

This King used to be a regular Sunday lunch destination for our family. I particularly recall going there during the odd "Buy a burger, get a Neiman" promotion BK had during the 1970s. The location on the corner of Two Notch and Toronto gave the store a "sneak up" route which consisted of turning onto Dubard from Beltline and then onto Toronto, a route we kids always insisted our parents follow. Or I did, at least. Later we "moved up" to Quincy's for Sunday dinner, and I have hardly set foot in a Burger King in years.

UPDATE 15 January 2013 -- As of the evening of 14 January, this place was open again:

Over the last year or so, there's been some question whether Ya Food in the Walmart plaza on Two Notch was trying to change it's name, or emphasize the hibichi identity, but a few weeks ago, a commenter (whose comment and name I have unfortunately misplaced) pointed out that it was now entirely closed, and indeed that seems to be the case.