Columbia Closings   What's not in Columbia anymore

Arnold's Professional Garment Care (or Arnold's Cleaners as the building signage indicates) looks to have been in this building for a good many years. The plaza, at the North West corner of Meeting and 12th Streets is a bit of a hard luck location, losing its grocery long ago, but Arnold's kept going until this location (there are others) closed on the first of February. If you had clothes there, don't panic -- they've been taken to the North Main Street store.

(Hat tip to commenter Sam)

This little strip-mall, The Shoppes at Meeting Place used to be home of Ye Olde Comic Shoppe, and a number of other operations over the years. It's kind of interesting in that it seems that each storefront has a first-level street number, ie: the first storefront is 501 Meeting Street, the next one is 503 Meeting Street, etc instead of "501-A, 501-B etc.

I don't know anything about Alternative Health Center other than it was apparently already gone by August of 2008, judging by the pictures from the Ye Olde closing. It still gets google hits though.

Title Cash of South Carolina is still listed on the strip-mall marquee, and so departed more recently. It sounds like a standard cash-for-car-title loan place. Curiously a number of these seem to have gone under recently, even though it's the kind of thing you would expect to do better in hard times.

I notice that while the 501 Meeting Street storefront seems to have only one door, it has two papered-over business signs, so it's entirely possible that it's a suite with two halves. I've tried enlarging and different enhancements, but I can't read what's behind the sign covers..

I'm not sure when this plant store on Meeting Street closed -- there was a sign on the door, but none of my pictures of it came out because of glass reflections and light ink. According to their website though, they opened (or planned to open) in the Spring of 2009, so I'm guessing they were there about a year. Again, from their site, the place was to be more than a nursery, with local peaches and other produce as well as plants and trees. It sounds a little like the niche that Grice's was in.

To me it seems like a pretty good location (It's true that there are big-box stores (and Wal Mart) not too far away, but you have to go through the bottleneck of lights in Triangle City and the big merge on Augusta Road to get to them), but apparently in the event, not good enough.

UPDATE 9 Sept 2010: Changed closing date in post title from 2010 to 2009 based on comments.

UPDATE 20 July 2011 -- It's now a drumming studio:

I don't actually know what this Meeting Street building (now Chiva Auto Sales) was. I do like it though. The look of the roadside sign, the look of the roof overhang, and the way the windows of the main building are laid out (and the way they slant) make me think it was a fast-food drive-in. Does anyone recall this place?

UPDATE 1 Sept 2010: From the comments and the 1970 phonebook, I'm able to verify this as a Bell's, and am changing the post title. Also, it was definitely open as late as 1970, so I'm changing the closing date to "1970s".

UPDATE 3 December 2014 -- I am copying these pictures from the Chiva Auto Sales closing because they actually give a much better view of the old building, and most people will probably come looking for Bell's rather than Chiva:

UPDATE 3 December 2014 -- The building has now been razed:

UPDATE 11 August 2018 -- Commenter Candace Nelms sends in this City of West Columbia Instagram image of the Bell's in operation sometime in the late 1960s:

Do you remember the old Bell’s Hamburgers Restaurant located on the corner of Lexington and Meeting Streets? Before 12th Street was built, Lexington Street was the quickest way to get to Meeting Street. Pictured in the late 1960's. #wecosc #historyiscool #tbt

A post shared by City of West Columbia (@westcolumbiasc) on Aug 9, 2018 at 3:15am PDT

I didn't read a lot of comics as a kid. I had a stash that was left to me by an older neighbor friend when he moved out of town, and those I read over and over, and when we went to the beach, sometimes I would buy a copy of The Rawhide Kid or Sergeant Rock from the rack at Lachicotts if I had the money, but in general I didn't have the money. Besides, when I got my $3.00 from mowing the lawn, I wanted to spend it on Tom Swift, Rick Brant or Doc Savage.

All that changed in the 80s, when I finally had a little money coming in. Coincidentally, this boom time for me happened about the same time comics went into a major boom. DC was shaking things up with The Crisis on Infinite Earths and Alan Moore was proving with his incredible run on Swamp Thing that comics could be the vehicle for well-written adult horror.

As comics boomed, the distribution model changed from drugstore spinner racks which were indiferently stocked by magazine jobbers and always seemed to miss crucial issues to dedicated comic book stores. At the peak of the boom, Columbia had at least four first run comic stores. There was one on Forest Drive near the Fort Jackson gate, Heroes & Dragons at Boozer Shopping Center, Silver City on Knox Abbot Drive (not at its current location however) and this store, on Meeting Street.

I can't recall now what it was called, but I often checked it on new issue days (I think comics shipments arrived on either Wednesday or Thursday at the time) to see if they had anything I hadn't seen at Silver City (which I considered my main store).

Of course with every boom there is a bust. Comics were hit by a one two punch, first the "black & white" glut and implosion where the market for "indie" (non Marvel/non DC) black and white comics completely collapsed. (Just as an aside, The Teenaged Ninja Mutant Turtles started as an indie b&w comic which was an obvious parody of Frank Miller's work on Daredevil) then second, the industry was gripped by a speculative frenzy based on varient covers for each comic (one comic might be issued with 4 different covers, including gimmicks like embossed or 3-D covers on the theory that that made them "collectible"). Well, of course it turned out that nothing collected by the thousands is worth anything (Action Comics #1 is worth a lot because nobody collected them and almost all of them were thrown out) and the twin busts took out a lot of comic shops. To this day the industry still hasn't fully recovered, and with competition from video games and the Interenet likely never will.

This particular store went into a kind of slow-motion, never acknowledged, bankruptcy. One week I came in to look at the new comics and was told "Oh, the truck didn't come this week", so I browsed last week's leftovers a few minutes and left. When I stopped by the next week, and those were still the only comics there, I understood what was happening: There was not enough money to pay the distributers for new issues, but they weren't going to admit that, and were going to try to sell a few back issues for as long as the rent and utilities were not an issue (which was, I presume, the end of the month).

After the final closing, I think a couple of different operations moved in over the years, but for the last 5 years or so, it's been a tanning store so you can look good in your own superhero costume.

UPDATE 3 Oct 2008: Changed post title to reflect the name "Ye Olde Comic Shoppe" given by "Jim" in the comments. Also changed "Cayce" to "West Columbia"