Columbia Closings   What's not in Columbia anymore

This little Barber & hair and nail salon sits in a strip mall almost at the intersection Decker and Faraway.

I like those old style spinning barber poles, though you never actually seem them spin anymore.

UPDATE 15 September 2021: Adding tags & map icon.

Unless I am missing the entry somehow, this storefront busness center to the right of Food Lion in the strip mall at the corner of Pine Belt & Two Notch Roads seems to have opened and closed without being listed in a yearly phonebook.

The name is a bit vague, but I believe they offered impromptu meeting and office space and services.

Here's another Wilson Boulevard location. I have no real idea what this was, but noticed as I was driving down the street that the old parking lot for *something* is now being used as an impromptu 18-wheeler pull-off.

The shape of the sign seems vaguely familiar, but I can't really come up with anything concrete, and there is currently no street address posted that I could query.

I have noticed this old fashioned little house across Broad River Road from Boozer Shopping Center off and on over the years, and have suspected for a while that Ethel's Uniforms was closed, something I recently verified by stopping by, and finally remembering to check the phonebook. It seems to me that the place may have closed earler than 2012, but it is listed up to that point, so that's what I'm going with.

This property valuation suggests that the house was built in 1930, and that sounds about right from the look of it. There are lots of old houses like this on Broad River road, and it's hard to imagine the rural setting they must have been built in. Looking at the listed owner of the property, suggests that the original "Ethel" may have sadly passed away though I hope that is not the case.

The real estate sign and this LoopNet listing suggests the Ethel's building may be part of the surrounding strip mall property.

Judging from google and the sign over the front door, this little convenience store on the North side of Wilson Boulevard rebranded from AM PM Quick Stop to Quick Stop & Go shortly before closing. You can also see from the gas pump that they apparently disaffiliated from Exxon as well, as the only brand on the pump is now XX (though the famous tiger remains).

I forgot to get a picture but there was some sort of business license in one of the left windows dated, I believe from June of this year (2013), so I'm saying this closing was sometime this summer.

After eating at Moe's last week, I noticed that Universal Copies in the little bi-level University Corner strip-mall, is closed and papered up.

Then, when I went to make this post, I looked back on the University Corner post and realized that I had missed the closing of the place before Universal: Bits & Pizzas.

It's been a few years since I noticed this, but somehow I never got around to mentioning it: The Pizza Hut attached to the Columbia Travel Center plaza closed up shop a couple of years ago. As I recall, it was not a full Pizza Hut, but one of the "express" type operations.

I suspect it was a highly unpleasant job, but someone apparently climed the sign tower to elide the "Hut" portion of the Pizza Hut placard!

UPDATE 26 June 2023: Updating tags and adding map icon. Also, just noticed I apparently have this Pizza Hut listed twice, once on the Wilson Boulevard address, and once on the Plumbers Road address. Oh well.

Wow!

When commenter badger mentioned that the Columbia Mall outparcel Bakers Sports Pub & Grill appeared to be closed, I thought I might run over there after work to take a look. I certainly did not expect what I found.

On the east side of the building, things looked almost normal, but I noticed as I walked over from my car to the front door that part of the entrance was boarded over. Then I just figured that this was not a business related closing, but that probably they had had a fire. Looking in through the door though, there were no burned sections, just a lot of devastation.

Then I got off the porch and noticed the crime scene tape around the front and west side of the building. Then, walking around (outside the tape boundry..) I saw this:

Once home, a bit of googling established that it was exactly what it looked like -- someone had driven a pickup truck into the west side of the building. And furthermore, it was part of a police chase that saw the truck drive through *another* building, run over one suspect and leave the other suspect (the driver) shot dead by police. It's a pretty incredible story, and in fact I had glanced through it last week without making the connection with Bakers.

The State has a dramatic picture of the pickup truck after it hit the wall.

(Hat tip to commenter badger)