Columbia Closings   What's not in Columbia anymore

For a new Pawleys Island Wall Calendar?

Calendars make great Christmas presents!: Everybody uses time..

This year the annual Brookgreen Gardens Nights of 1000 Candles festival is set up a little differently in that you need to buy your tickets online in advance. This was done to prevent overcrowding and expedite the often rather tedious entrance process. It worked well, but I think they may have perhaps shot themselves a bit in the foot income-wise because it did seem to to reduce the crowd a good bit from previous years. At any rate, I chose 2 December this year, and the night was quite comfortable, not as cold as some years where I could barely feel the camera buttons through the frostbite, nor as warm as one or two years when I didn't need a jacket at all.

There's always a bit that's different or new every year, but this year the changes were fairly modest: I think the only one that really comes to mind is a new field of staked candles on the green space in front of Pegasus. The vintage christmas display did have some new roller coasters on the Lionel display, and they really zipped along!

The festival is running weekends through 18 December, so if you have some spare time, and are in, or can get to, the area, I highly recommend it.

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Calendar leaves anyway..

The final leaf falls in 41 days, so better stock up now for 2017!

And how better to spend the winter months than looking at images from SC's Island Paradise?

Or more succinctly, the new calendars are ready:

Choose a new design for the coming year, or pick one of the nine classic designs still available.

This old building had been a number of things over the years, most of which I cannot at all recall, but I think at one time it was a "reproduction" furniture store, and at another time an arts & crafts store.

In fact, it was in that later incarnation that was the only time I went inside, and then only by mistake. I believe it was in the 90s, and the south strand did not yet have a lot of options for coffee. Certainly there was nothing like today's environment where every McDonalds has decent specialty coffee (and excellent regular coffee). I don't believe that Latte Litchfield had yet opened, (though the Chocolate & Coffee House in the Litchfield Exchange a mile or so north had). At any rate, to get back to the story, I was driving back to the Island and saw a sign on this building advertising Cappuccino, and thinking a late afternoon caffeine fix sounded pretty good, I turned in.

Well, as it happened, I had misread the situation, thinking that the whole building was one business, when in fact it was two. The arts and crafts store was in main front part, while the cafe operation was in the attachment to the rear, and was closed for the day, something of which I was unaware. In fact, the arts and crafts operation was closing too as it was, I think, 6pm, and as I stepped inside, the guy was turning off the lights.

He promptly turned them back on, showing rows of items I had no interest in buying (not that it was bad stuff, but I was just looking for coffee) and starting a speil about local craftsmen. In the end, I felt bad enough about causing him to re-open when he was obviously ready to leave for the day, especially when I had caused him to do so through my mistake, that I ended up buying a hand painted sheet-metal lizard magnet to make myself feel a little better about putting him to the trouble and hopefully to make him feel I had hadn't totally wasted his time. The lizard actually turned out to be a cheery little piece that is still on our refrigerator.

Both the craft store and the cafe closed fairly shortly thereafter, but as you can see from these pictures, both spaces were reoccupied, and lizards continued to be associated with the property.

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When I was on the Island after Matthew, I found things in surprisingly good shape, at least since my refence point was Hurricane Hugo. The Island lost only one house during the storm, and that from fire.

However, there was obviously a good bit of storm damage, and I noticed that this house, which somehow had never struck my notice before, was in sad shape. Since it sat almost directly across the street from the Pawleys Island Chapel, I was not surprised to learn today that it was named Chapel View. I learned that because my sister brought to my attention this tweet from the Pawleys Island Police Department, showing the demolition of the house. The last picture above comes from this tweet, which I think is OK to directly post here since it was taken by a public agency.

There is a bit more information on the house at this SCIWAY post: Apparently it was owned by an artist from Virginia.

I believe this is the first house on the Island to be demolished since Wagon Wheel abuting the town park in 2010, though there is another house near the North Causeway that seems to go underwater quite often and I am not quite sure how it is still standing.

(Hat tip to my sister)

UPATE 19 March 2019: There are now extensive comments from the last owner about the house on the SC Picture Project page

4 December this year was one of the warmer iterations of Brookgreen Gardens Nights of 1000 Candles, and by that, I mean that I could feel the buttons on my camera without my hands going numb.

As usual, the Gardens were beautifully lit, and there were entertainment tents with jazz, vocal ensembles and rock sounds of the season and wandering bagpipers. My impression is that they are getting a little bolder in color choices for the lights though of course the hundreds of candles, floading candles and luminaries remain.

The festival runs for two more weekends, on 10-12 December and 17-20 December and if you have a chance, I highly reccommend you go.

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I don't really have a specific date for this closing, but I was down at the beach at the start of August, and am pretty sure I would have noticed if this KFC, next to the new Dollar General had been closed then as it was on Labor Day weekend.

I'm a little surprised at this closing as it was a newly renovated store. The original store, opened probably in the late 80s, was a "mini" KFC that did a mostly drive-through business, and when the time came that the chain wanted a full store, there were concerns whether they could manage it on the piece of property they had, given that the setback and spacing rules had just changed. In the event they came up with the design you see here, which apparently satisfied all the agencies and seemed to do a good business for a number of years.

The only time I ever ate at a Sam's Corner was Monday 30 June 1997.

I was living in Aiken at the time (and working in Augusta), but found out less than a week in advance that The Beach Boys were playing the House of Blues in North Myrtle Beach that day. It was a rare small venue appearance, and I think many fans realized it was probably one of the last chances to see Carl Wilson on stage. In the event it was a bittersweet performance. Carl played most of the set seated and I think everyone in the audience could tell he was not long for the world, though he still sounded like an angel.

At any rate, when the show was over, with it not being a weekend, I was on the hook to be at work the following morning, so I fortified myself at the NMB Sam's with a hot-dog and coffee and made it back to Aiken (after further fortification with Waffle House coffee in Manning) in time to slip into bed half an hour before I had to get up. It was not something I could do now, and could barely do then.

Truthfully I was so focused on what I had to do that Sam's made little impression on me other than it was well lit, had an acceptable chili-dog and drinkable coffee.

I think the NMB location was the second for the chain, with one by the pier in Garden City being the first.

This location on US-17 in Pawleys Island came much later, and was, I think, something of a miss-step as the South Strand is a much different place from Myrtle Beach or even Garden City. I had noticed over the few years it was open that despite the proudly proclaimed 24 Hours in fact during the off season, it was rarely open past 10, and lately wasn't open at all except during the summer. I even did a post on the dark building called 25th Hour a few months ago.

On my last trip down over the Memorial Day week I saw that the place is now officially closed, even though they apparently had a plan to upfit the office space.

The Island Cafe & Deli was for many years a dependable choice for lunch and dinner at Pawleys Island. Landolfi's is my favorite restaurant in the area, but the Deli had a nice front porch for outdoor dining, and sometimes you just want a grilled cheese or burger with black bean soup instead of pizza. Apart from those options, the menu had a number of quirkily named signature items like the Aristotle Salad or the Strom Thurmond, which the description assured us was "an illustrious member of our menu" and featured "young turkey breast".

Some years ago the place had a bad fire and was closed for an extended period, and I believe that after that, someone once drove a car through the front window. Given that history, I was very surprised when I went down in December for the candles to find the place closed.

It appears that the next tenant will be Rustic Table.