Columbia Closings   What's not in Columbia anymore

This little building sits more or less on the Northeast corner of Beltline Boulevard and Forest Drive, across from the Walgreen's. As commenter Dennis pointed out when he noted this closing, it is sort of turned backwards in that the side of the building which faces Beltline has very little signage. Given that all the parking is in the back, locating the "front" signage back there may have made sense to the designer, but it's bad for business as folks driving by on Beltline have very little way to tell what businesses are located here. In fact, I did not realize there was a Subway here for quite a while.

Any time a business, especially a restaurant, puts up a note that they are closed "temporarily", it is a very bad sign. Of course there are times when it's necessary, such as for a serious illness (which I certainly hope has not happened here), but in general once a bad situation is exacerbated by adding "no money coming in" to whatever problem existed, these temporary closings tend to become final. In fact, this happened in this very building in the case of Bruster's Real Ice Cream.

(Hat tip to commenter Dennis)

UPDATE 16 April 2011 -- Well, it did re-open. Good for them!

UPDATE 8 March 2012 -- The sign on the side facing Beltline has been replaced, but I'm hard pressed to find any differences between the new one and the old one..

UPDATE 2 March 2020 -- This has closed temporarily on several occasions since I first listed it. It is now closed for good:

UPDATE 17 June 2022: UPdating tags.

When I was in high school, a new radio station came to town, with a new concept: "Album Rock".

The station was WZLD (or "Z-96") and operated out of Cayce, first from a little storefront (apparently now vacant) to the left of a barber shop on State Street, and later from an odd looking building out on Airport Boulevard (at least I think that's where I remember seeing the sign).

I'll admit that the concept of "album rock" confused me a bit. I had only discovered rock music in 1976, and I was still a little iffy about all the definitions. For instance, I thought "acid rock" was the same thing as "heavy metal" since the only acid I had heard about was sulphuric, and I could imagine heavy metal dissolving stuff in the same way.

So, to make a full confession, I kind of took the promos about how "we play album cuts, not just singles" to heart and was deeply disappointed that they were not playing tracks from my then current favorite album, Billy Joel's "The Stranger". In fact, I went so far as to write them a deeply embarassing post card (in retrospect..) complaining that they were playing Van Morrison's "Wavelength" which was a Top-40 hit, and not "Scenes From An Italian Restaurant". I'm sure the DJs had a good laugh at it, and I've come to the point where I'm a huge Van Morrison fan nowdays (he can be very inconsistent in shows, but tore up the place in Atlanta last May..)

From what I've been able to gather from looking at old phonebooks down at the library, WZLD first showed up in the December 1974 Southern Bell phonebook. I don't think they were "album rock" at that time, or at least I didn't hear of them as such until later, but they were already at 1303 State Street, and already had their long-running phone numbers of 796-8896 business and 796-9996 for the contest line.

In the Janurary 1983 phonebook, their address changed to 2334 Airport Boulevard, and in the Jan 1984 phonebook, they took out their first yellow pages ad which rebranded them as "Number 1 Hit -- Kicker". Now, that phrase, "hit-kicker" is very similar to a non-radio-friendly phrase sometimes used to describe Country music, so I'm wondering if they underwent a change to a Country format at that time. I was still living in town at the time, but I don't think I was listening to them very much, and have no memory of it one way or another.

At any rate that catch phrase didn't last very long, and the yellow pages ad in the Feb 1985 phonebook described them as "Red Hot Radio 1". That also didn't last too long, and while the Feb 1988 phone book did not have a full ad, the tagline in their listing for that year was "All Hit".

They were not listed in the Jan 1989 phonebook and seem to have left the airwaves at that time.

Along the way, they did some memorable promos, with the most famous probably being the annual "Ramblin' Raft Race" on the Congaree. At this remove, sponsoring something like that seems as though it would be an insurance nightmare, but in those olden days, apparently encouraging tipsy people to navigate was OK..

Here's a few WZLD comments we've had here from time to time:

UPDATE 2 July 2012 -- As mentioned in the comments, the A-frame looking building I have pictured above is not the Airport Boulevard location for WZLD. The correct building is next door, and I have finally gotten a picture of it:

UPDATE 27 September 2017 -- The Airport Boulevard building has now been razed and is a vacant lot:

UPDATE 17 November 2017 -- Commenter Rick sends in this picture of a picture showing a WZLD remote (circa 1981) at Roger's Car Stereo:

Rick identifies the fellow on the left, enthusiastic about being in a picture, as radio personality "Mountain Man", the young lady as another WZLD DJ, name unknown, the guy in the checked shirt a WZLD program manager or salesman and the third man unknown. Be warned, the click-through picture is not blurred.

This building, on a Columbia Mall outparcel facing Two Notch Road, was built as a Don Pablo's Mexican restaurant. By the time I did a closing for Don Pablo's, in March of 2008, the building had been a Charleston Crab House (they list in the phonebook as "Charleston Crabhouse" for some reason) for a couple of years already.

Like lobsters and shrimp, I consider crabs "sea bugs" and don't want anything to do with them so I never checked the place out. I do know that they used to have another Columbia store somewhere out by Columbiana Mall and they still have three locations in the Charleston area. Interestingly The State quoted the owners in a story about business taxes back in Jan 2011:

Charleston Crab House owner John Keener is fuming.

“We’re getting taxed on future growth of our business,” said Keener, whose three Lowcountry restaurants employ about 220 workers during the busiest time of year.

Keener said the tax increase, which will cost him more than $4,000 this year, caught him off guard. He warned his colleagues of the increase in an e-mail blast he sent out earlier this week.

That text suggests that the Columbia store was already closed on 15 Jan 2011, so I am putting the closing date as "late 2010". At any rate I don't think it could have been too long given the equipment still inside the place.
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I noticed today that the bridge over Gill Creek at Eight Mile Branch behind the old Forest Lake Shopping Center (and beside the old Forest Lake Park is closed.

Google maps suggests that the road, at least on the east side of the bridge (in the area behind Zoe's) is known as Forest Lake Place, but doesn't seem to realize that it goes all the way over the creek and out to Trenholm Road. I do have to admit that it's not entirely clear to me either whether the area to the west of the creek is an actual road or just a parking lot. If it's a real road, it's pretty poorly maintained, but if it's a parking lot, why have a bridge in the first place?

At any rate, there is no indication how long the closure is to last and there did not seem to be any actual bridge work going on that I could see at all...

Buck Cooper Motors is a right at the intersection where Two Notch and Shakespeare flat-iron into each other and is actually a tiny little lot for a used car place. I've noticed for a while now that there were no cars on the premises. I stopped by a couple of weeks ago, and there was a sign on the door to the effect that all cars had been moved to another Buck Cooper location. That sign seemed to be gone when I went back by today.

UPDATE 17 Feb 2011: Added Phillips 66 to the post title based on the comments.

UPDATE 9 April 2011 -- It's now Classic Auto, tinting and carwash:

I've held off doing a post on Uncle Sam's because I don't remember much about the place. In fact, I can't say for certain that I ever set foot inside, though it certainly was a longtime fixture on Two Notch while I was growing up. I have the feeling that it was either a shoe store, or a sort of discount department store like Rose's. Despite the name, I'm not recalling any top-hatted mascot, or red white and blue bunting about the place, but I could well be wrong at this remove.

The current bingo and thrift store operations have been there for at least ten years at this point

UPDATE 5 March 2011: Added the "Showplace of Values" to the title. Be sure to see commenter Ronna's thoughts below.

Gabby's Pizza replaced D'Avino's Pizzaeria (which closed in September 2009) in the little doorless corner spot across from the former Chick-Fil-A. On the face of it, this seems like one of the better spots in Dutch Square, as it sits just down from the movie theaters so that you could grab a slice before your show, but in practice apparently no so much.

While I don't know this for a fact, the name "Gabby's" is unusual enough when associated with pizza that I'm sure this outfit was connected with Gabby's Pizza & Buffet which recently closed at Fashion Place on Decker Boulevard.

(Hat tip to commenter Kc)

This Quiznos is in the Barns & Noble plaza on Harbison, right in-between where Sesame Inn used to be and Barnes & Noble itself.

Normally I'm a little sceptical when a place claims to be closed on a temporary basis as these periods without money coming in have a way of becoming permanent. On the other hand, in this case, the pickles are still in the pickle jars, so there's some evidence that, at the least, the store hasn't been unstocked.

(Hat tip to commenter Tom)

UPDATE 10 March 2011 -- As mentioned in the comments, the closure looks pretty permanent now:

b>UPDATE 15 March 2013 -- It's now a Yoghut:

"100 great wines for $25 or less" -- it sounds like a reasonable enough idea, but the as Corked found out, the area may not be ready for wine stores. Or possibly they sold their 100th bottle and achieved their mission.

Is there another two story retail gallery in the area? I can't think of one right now.

Golf Etc. at The Village at Sandhill, just south of Panera is gone now, and is already almost another mattress store. I actually had a picture of this place as Golf Etc., but appear to have deleted it in a fit of absence of mind.

I have to admit that I personally find golf (at least the kind without windmills and dinosaurs) much more soporific than mattresses anyway.