Columbia Closings   What's not in Columbia anymore

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To the best of my memory, I had never been in Clio until July when I drove through on SC-9. The town has obviously seen better times; Wikipedia says the current population is 726, but the downtown is still mostly intact if often vacant.

In the early years of the 20th though, it was a bit of a boom-town as the railroad came through, and took advantage of that to put up a Vaudeville theater to host acts travelling from New York to Miami. It was called an Opera House as such things tended to be, because that sounded classier.

According to The SC Picture Project and The Eccentric South, the place survived as a theater into the 1950s.

Currently it seems to be mostly empty, with a retail operation in the lower corner that looked not to have been open in a while. In the meantime, the pocket sized local police department hangs off the other side.

This old-style retail storefront is on Society Hill's main drag, next to an insurance agency. As far as I can tell from looking at Google Streetview, it may have been open as late as 2012. You can check there for a view of the "Buttercup" sign, which is no longer present. There is also a nice one taken in 2018 here. The flickr link says that Buttercup Ice Cream started in Hamlet NC in the 1920s and lasted into the 1960s, surviving as Mello Buttercup. Here's one of the whole building from the same photoset, and a much better shot than any of mine.

It's not clear to me if the ice cream operation was part of the flowers, craft & framing business, but it is on that end of the building, and the main sign does call out Coca Cola, and the Pepsi coolers inside, so beverages were also sold there.

This stretch of road does the neat trick of being US-401, US-52 & US-15 all at the same time.

I did some driving around in parts of the state I don't usually get to during July. I think I've featured a few of those closings already, and there will be some more in the future. As far as I know, I had never been down this stretch of road in Bennettsville before, on SC-9 heading towards Dillon.

I honestly don't think I've ever eaten in a Huddle House either, though it's possible I did in Fernandina once. Anyway, I've always thought of them as sort of a discount Waffle House, and the, almost uniformly bad, reviews for this place don't dissuade me from that notion. (To be fair, there are some positive reviews). At any rate it sounds to me they were having extreme post-COVID staffing issues, and I think you can disregard the the Now Hiring signage.

Le Clos was a little French restaurant in a 1906 cottage just across the street from the Hampton Inn in Fernandina Beach's historic waterfront district. I'm not a big French cuisine fan (at least for main dishes), but the pasta looked very good, so I stopped by one night and can verify it was excellent, along with (as you would expect) great bread, and a fantastic creme brulee.

I was surprised then on my most recent visit to see the place with the sign down and stripped internally. At first the story seemed rather clear-cut as described here: The owner decided to close the place, although she was able to place the staff at other local spots. A thread on TripAdvisor suggests a more confusing story, as does the cafe's web site which suggests it may re-open this fall.

Whatever comes next, it appears the building will need some work.

I was in Summerville recently, and noticed this old-school ice cream and fast food drive-through & walk-up on the main drag. It's the kind of place you don't see too much anymore, and apparently was well regarded locally (though more recent reviews mention some slippage). As far as I can tell, they closed sometime in 2022 after February. If you look at the Yelp reviews, you can see that they used to have a nice patio out back.

I'm not exactly sure what the Lodi branding was about.

T

Well, it's the summer doldrums, so posting has been light, and will continue so for a while, but here's a bit from out of town.

When I lived in Aiken, I worked in Augusta, so I ended up eating supper over there more often than not, but I certainly did eat at the Aiken Brewing Company a number of times over the years. They had a decent burger, and while I'm no beer connoisseur, I thought the porter or stout was pretty good. I guess I last ate there sometime in the fall of 2022, when it was still pleasant to sit outside on the sidewalk. When I went back recently, I found that the place was closed, and this story indicates that the owner was retiring. More recently, this story says a new restaurant will be locating there at the end of summer, but I did not see any indication of ongoing work, which seems a bit odd.

Looking at the Alphabetical Closings, I see I did not do a post for the 2022 Heroes Convention, though I'm sure I went, as I did last month.

The older I get, the harder it is to get up to Charlotte at a reasonable time, so by the time I got to the convention center, I really only had time to walk the convention floor without attending any panels or events. In fact, I didn't really have time to do the whole floor as well as I wanted to. I tried to make a plan to sweep back and forth and hit every booth, but as I got to the final stages, they called time on the day's session.

My impression is that it was not as crowded as it has been in some past years (not counting the Holiday Inn on Woodlawn years!), and there were somewhat fewer elaborate cosplay attendees.

I'm pretty disconnected from the current era of comics, but I always make it a point to pick up something from the writers & artists who put themselves out there. I got a YA indie novel for my niece, which she won't read, I'm sure, and the below swag which hopefully I will.

Well, this is probably going to be my last Tuesday Morning closing for a while, unless I end up somewhere I don't usually go. This one was in the Food Lion plaza near Carrabba's of US-17 Business in Murrells Inlet. Like the others featuring here recently, it was caught up in the chain's bankruptcy, and was selling everything down to the fixtures at the end. I don't know for sure, but I expect all of the Tuesday Morning locations in the state are now closed.

Ultimate California Pizza is one of the Grand Strand based Divine Dining Group's many concepts, and it's a good one. Their pizza is excellent, and they brew the iced-tea strong. I usually go to the one in Surfside Beach, but in the past I used to hit the ones in Murrells Inlet, or at Market Common fairly frequently. Unfortunely, those later two may feature here at some point as they are now gone.

I never made it to this one, in the Kroger-anchored Galleria plaza in North Myrtle Beach, though I kind of wish I had now, as it appears to have been their Chuck E. Cheese concept, except with more to offer adults. There are some quite nice pictures of the place on website, which is still up. I quite like this one. You can see the place in the daytime with the branding still up on the real estate listing. I find it quite amazing the the whole building is pegged at $11,250. Perhaps it's a typo.

As far as I can tell, it was COVID-19 that did them in. The last post on their blog is from March of 2020, and their last Facebook posts are from April of 2020, where at some point they mention combing operations with the Barefoot Landing location. The real estate listing apparently went up in mid July of 2020.

UPDATE 25 June 2023: There seems to be a consensus that this is a former Showbiz Pizza location as well, so I'm adding that to the post title. I barely ever got up here during the period mentioned, so I don't believe I ever saw it then.