Columbia Closings   What's not in Columbia anymore

Well, it's the New Year. If your hangover has died down enough, you may notice that that calendar over on the wall is now showing LAST YEAR.

Not to worry. You can easily fix that with either a Columbia Closings or Pawleys Island 2012 wall calendar.

Columbia Closings Large Format 2012 Wall Calendar

Columbia Closings Regular Format 2012 Wall Calendar

Pawleys Island Large Format 2012 Wall Calendar

Pawleys Island Regular Format 2012 Wall Calendar

And what better way to start a new year than with good reading? You can order my book in either paperback or electronic format. At $2.99 for the Kindle version, what have you got to lose?

Paperback:

Kindle:

I don't know how I suffered this mental lapse, but somehow I convinced myself that on the day after Christmas, the Christmas rush would be over, and it would once more be safe to hit the Harbison area. Bad call!

I came up Harbison from Saint Andrews Road, and that wasn't so bad. Neither was getting into the circle for Columbiana Centre. Getting out was the hard part. It took me half an hour to merge into the counterclockwise outbound traffic and work my way to the Columbiana Drive exit. In between arriving and leaving, the mall itself was as packed as I've ever seen any mall. I guess I have been "spoiled" by the nearly empty expanses of Richland Mall, Columbia Mall and Dutch Square. I guess that makes Columbiana Centre Columbia's success story, but it doesn't make me want to go there again any time soon..

At any rate, Payless Shoe Source were in their final few days and were selling everything down to the store fixtures in preparation for clothing store Forever 21 to expand into their spot. In years past, it's always seemed to me that shoe stores are the most over-representated category in malls, but perhaps that's now changing.

UPDATE 27 February 2019: Add tags and map icon.

(Hat tip to commenter Dustin)

These are the (slightly sanitized) 100 most popular keyword searches given to search engines like Google, Yahoo and Bing which brought visitors to Columbia Closings in 2011:

These are the 100 most popular posts or pages for the year 2011 as determined by Google Analytics. Notice that the post may not have been made in 2011, what is measured is its popularity (in pageviews) for 2011.

I'm not going to attempt to rank these all according to how good they are or how well I like them as that would be difficult and pointless. Instead here are my favorite 20 posts from 2011 in rough chronological order:

01) If It's Paper:

02) Myrtle Square Mall:

03) Boardwalk Plaza (older post, but massively updated this year):

04) (The Original) Lizard's Thicket:

05) Circle K (Forest Drive):

06) Cayce Bait & Tackle:

07) Harbison Medical Building:

08) USC Bell Camp:

09) Blue Cross / Parcone at Sandhill:

10) Yo Burrito:

11) Cayce School:

12) Cafe Risque (Darien GA):

13) Splendid China Buffet:

14) CMC Construction Services:

15) Borders Books (everywhere):

16) Leesburg Road Garage:

17) South Carolina State Fair:

18) The Ballistic Center / Videos & Beyond:

19) Building 581 Myrtle Beach Airforce Base:

20) Kimbrell's Furniture on Main:

BONUS) Best Roadside Offer I Ever Saw:

Other than some "year in review" type posts, that's it for this year. I hope everyone had a great one, and has a very merry Christmas tomorrow.

Well, it's too late to give a calendar for Christmas, but remember you don't actually need them until 1 January 2012, and there's still plenty of time to get them here by then!

Columbia Closings Large Format 2012 Wall Calendar

Columbia Closings Regular Format 2012 Wall Calendar

Pawleys Island Large Format 2012 Wall Calendar

Pawleys Island Regular Format 2012 Wall Calendar

And books are good the whole year round. Why not try mine?

Here's another vacancy at The Shops At Columbiana Crossing. This one seems to have happened in 2009, and as far as I can tell, Sosi did not move elsewhere.

I find it a little curious that this strip does not seem to update either the storefront marquees or their road-side sign...

Originally, as I recall it, this was simply the Columbia Mall Theater, and opened about the same time as the mall itself. Compared to some of the other theaters in town, I don't have any really strong memories of the place. I know I saw what was pretty much the last 70s style Disney live-action movie there: The North Avenue Irregulars as well as one of Disney's periodic re-issues of The Jungle Book and the first run of The Rescuers Down Under. (Yeah, I like Disney). I also remember trying to go there for a James Bond flick, one of the later Moore ones, and finding it sold out, a pretty rare experience back then.

At some point after I moved out of town, the Mall started to decline, and the theaters actually went under (along with the nearby Capitol Centre Theater). After that, a company called Phoenix Theaters re-opened the theater, which was sort of their shtick "phoenix from the ashes"/"new theater from old". I can't find out a lot about them because every google search turns up theaters in Phoenix Arizona, but this might be their web site. If it is, they have downsized considerably. At any rate, I don't think the Phoenix incarnation lasted too long here in Columbia. I recall seeing one movie under that regime (they had the latest showtimes) and not being too impressed with the theater (or the movie as I can't now recall what it was).

After that, I think the theaters closed again, and remodeled along stadium lines, which was the latest gimmick several years ago (and is an improvement, I have to admit). I'm struggling to think of any movie I saw there after the conversion, and I don't think there is one -- by that time, I had switched mostly to Richland Mall and Forest Drive as my default theaters.

I've lost the hat tip for the commenter who pointed out this closure, and when they said it happened, but if you look closely, you can see a poster for The Darkest Hour a movie which opens on Christmas Day 2011, so it was very recent, and we can assume somewhat unexpected if they thought they would be showing that one.

UPDATE 3 July 2012 -- As the pictures below show, the place is now open again as Columbia Place Stadium Cinemas.

Getting ready to re-open (28 May 2012):

Open again (29 June 2012):

This little, much bar-ed, building is on Fort Jackson Boulevard, at Crowson Road, near the former Check World, and Jesudi's and across the street from La Brasca.

As far as I can tell, El As De Oros means "The Golden Ace", and Bar La Movida means something like "Party Bar" or "Groovy Spot Bar".

El As De Oros applied for their liquor license in 2004, which puts a timeframe on that operation. I am unsure of the status of Bar La Movida. When I took these shots, I was sure it was closed, but they applied for a liquor license in April of this year (2011), so it's possible I just never drive by late enough to see anyone there. The only data point I have on Bullwinkle's is that it was listed in the February 1997 phonebook and I don't know anything about RB's at all.