Columbia Closings   What's not in Columbia anymore

According to the Lexington Patch, Goody 2 Shoes is a family owned and operated shoe store that specializes in children's footwear.

As commenter James mentioned a while back, they have been holding a very coloful going-out-of-business sale in recent weeeks. It appears that they went to the bare walls, and are now closed.

(Hat tip to commenter James)

I was unaware of this old tennis club off of Lake Murray Boulevard just west of Saint Andrews Road until commenter James mentioned it.

The place is built on two levels, with the main building and old court surfaces down a steep hill from Lake Murray Boulevard. I would not like to come in and out of this parking lot on a daily basis! The old pro-shop, clubhouse (and probably snack bar I would suspect) is at the back of the parking lot, with level space behind that where there look to have been at least two courts, and in all likelihood several others less discernable now as well.

At the side of the first level, a set of steps leads up the hill to a second level. It's all wooded now, but I suspect there was at least one more court up there. I probably shouldn't have tested the steps on my less than svelte frame, especially given the bushes and trees growing up through them and the raised nail heads, but they were still sturdier than they appeared.

UPDATE 24 August 2013: Commenter Badger sends in a link to this obituary. It seems the owner was Mr Fred Wiles Atkinson, Jr. He sounds like a nice guy, and with his life history, I would not be surprised at all if he and my parents were acquainted. He passed in 2008, so this place probably closed a couple of years before that.

(Hat tip to commenter James)

Red Hot Tomatoes was the most recent business in the old 5 Points Theatre on Harden Street. The first shot above is from 2009. I'm not sure exactly when it closed, but the 2 Fat 2 Fly truck was listing the location as "Old red hot tomatoes" as of March 2013.

In the grand cycle of reintarnation, the place is now another watering hole called Overtime Sports Bar.

Well, Hypnosis Information Line -- that's one of the more interesting listings I've seen. Unfortunately I don't know anything else about it. Or maybe I did and I've been told to forget..

LoopNet says this nice old home was built in 1930 and now has 8 offices. This link says it was forclosed on at some point, but since it also says it sits on 44 acres and was built in 1992, I'm not sure I give that any credence.

Anyway, the key point is that it is soon to become Silver Spoon bakery and coffee, something that Devine Street really could use.

Aveda affiliate Huei Salon has moved from the Target plaza at 5135-B Sunset Boulevard (next to the old Baker Brothers / Judy's location) to Topspin Plaza a bit closer to Lexington proper at 5343-N Sunset Boulevard.

(Hat tip to commenter RM)

UPDATE 20 August -- Forgot I had pix of the place in operation at the Judy's closing, so I copied one to above.

I'm not real sure what Southern Armature did. The place has bays like a garage, and an armature is part of a generator or alternator, but I can't imagine a business based on just fixing alternator parts. Perhaps they specialized in alternators as a whole, or electrical systems. Anyway, they are listed in this year's (Feb 2013) phonebook, so the sale and rezoning for City Gas is a pretty recent development.

When I first noticed the "sold" sign, the place was still intact. As of 18 August, they have ripped most of it apart, though so far they have kept the endpieces.

UPDATE 18 September 2013 -- Construction continues:

UPDATE 15 October 2013 -- work continues. The canopy looks done:

UPDATE 21 February 2014 -- City Gas is open:

Not sure what happened to my pictures here -- it looks like maybe I forgot to reset from a nighttime ISO to daylight before starting to shoot. The essentials are clear enough though, if more than a bit washed out.

The Atlanta Bread in North Myrtle Beach closed either last year or in 2011, I'm not really sure anymore. The only other ABC at the beach was this one on SC-54 just west of the US-17 bypass interchange. For a number of years, it sat sort of all by its lonesome (though the sideroad it was on obviously implied grander plans), but finally this last year Target started building behind it, and finally opened in late 2012 or early 2013.

I had had some concerns about the place -- it was the sort of operation which seemed to have no idea how many cookies to bake to last out the whole day (I'm pretty sure your loss in day old cookies is smaller than the loss you have from not making a sale..) and had the infuriating habit, which is pretty rare in chain stores, of not honoring their posted hours if things were slow. Still, it was nice to have a bread-bowl of soup there for lunch every now and then, and I figured that if they had hung on until Target opened, they were home free. That proved not to be the case, and the place was closed when I went by in late July.

The rest of the little strip mall has a gym, fro-yo, and a party shop. I had to include some pictures of the punch-me-pirate, including the one below from a few years ago.

Bumble Botique & Bee Maternal were really, as I understand it, one operation with the area under one nameplate specializing in kids' clothes and the area under the other specializing in maternity wear. Commenter Matt suggests the stores were doing OK, but were a sideline for the owners and eventually started to become too much to deal with.

I'm reasonably sure these are the storefronts previously anyway occupied by Corma's Health Foods and Bobby's Barber Shop though they have been extensively remodeled.

(Hat tip to commenter Matt)

It appears someone made a big withdrawal.

Like the Automated Post Office before it, this vanished ATM sat in the parking lot at the Shoppes At Woodhill (The former Woodhill Mall).

I noticed one day last month when I was having lunch on the patio at Jimmy John's that it was gone, and I cannot now recall what bank it was affiliated with..

There's been a fair bit of musical chairs going on at the old Dick Dyer Toyota lot on Two Notch. The latest is that this Prestige has moved from the old gas-station-looking building at the Northeast corner of Two Notch and Albritton to the old Dick Dyer Bodyshop building at the corner of Windover Street and Two Notch. Meanwhile, the body shop has moved into the old dealership building proper.

UPDATE 15 October 2013 -- It's now Spunky's Auto Sales: