Columbia Closings   What's not in Columbia anymore

For years, there were two open-air markets in the Northeast. One of them was on Decker Boulevard near the intersection with Percival Road. I think it might have been at about the location of the current O-Bok Korean restaurant -- at any rate it was on that side of the road and near there.

The other was this one on Two Notch Road, across from what is now (but was not, I think, then) the IHOP. Both markets had lots of produce, but I always remember thinking that this one was a bit of an odder duck as it also had a component which was close to a convienience store. There was no front wall to the place, and if I recall correctly, the produce was under a simple shed-like structure, a tin roof supported by beams. The back part of the store however was a 3-sided concrete box. I seem to recall that they had A/C despite the fact that there was no door, and they sold groceries and sundries so you could get your produce out front and then get your bread and milk "inside". I didn't stop there often, but every time I did, I recall thinking how odd the place was.

I believe the market on Decker closed first, probably sometime in the late 80s. This one lasted quite a bit longer and never "closed" as such. Instead, sometime in the early 2000s, the whole place burned down and all that's left now is the concrete slab it was built on, some flower pots against the back fence, assorted junk (which may or may not be remains of the store) and the skeleton of their sign. It seems as though this would be a nice property, with easy acces from both Trenhom and Two Notch, and right across from Home Depot, but after 10 years or so the property remains vacant.

I think there's currently some kind of open-air market further out on Two Notch near Big Lots, but that appears to be based on awnings rather than a permanent structure.

Note: I originally dated this closing as "1990s". Commenter JP plausibly dates it to this millennium so I have changed the date.

OfficeMax was the odd man out in the Office Depot/Staples rivalry. It was a perfectly fine office supply store, but apparently, at least in the South Carolina market, there wasn't room for all three chains, and OfficeMax started shuttering its local stores. The chain does continue on in other markets.

Wikipedia says that at one time OfficeMax was owned by K-Mart, which perhaps explains the location of this store in the K-Mart parking lot at the intersection of Dutch Square Boulevard and Bush River Road. I shopped at this location a number of times for non-descript stuff. I do remember when they had their going-out-of-business sale, that I picked up a good deal on a paper shredder.

Given the current state of K-Mart, I suppose the drama of this location is not What will go into the OfficeMax location?, but Will this K-Mart survive?. Given the recent opening of a super Wal-Mart a few blocks down the street, I'd have to say that's questionable.

UPDATE 30 April 2009:

It's now the Columbia Campus for Remington College:

UPDATE 11 March 2011: Update the closing date based on comments here. Also added full street address.

UPDATE 26 January 2021: Adding map icon and updating tags.

Well it seems I always get around to taking pictures of Putt-Putt locations too late. This location on Clemson Road only lasted a few years, and was completely torn up before I got around to going out there.

If I recall correctly, they had a go-kart track which was out in the area with the fire-extinguishers on the light poles. I'm not entirely sure, but I believe the actual "building" part of the "fun center" might still be standing. There is a building in the back of the area which now seems to be a welding school, but the shape of the back of it makes me think it might have been designed for a lot of in-and-out traffic to the golf course and race track.

It looks like we are to get another Interstate hotel here, which is kind of a shame, as Columbia has lots of hotels, but at this point, no minature golf courses. Or am I wrong about that? Come to think about it, the only actual working "Putt Putt" brand course I can think of is this one at the base of Atlantic Avenue in Fernandina Beach:

UPDATE 25 June 2010: Added full street address to post title. The place was actualy officially on Sparkleberry Lane, not Clemson Road as I had thought.

UPDATE 19 March 2013: Well, for whatever reason, the Wingate Inn never happened, and now, 5 years later, the parcel is still for sale:

UPDATE 9 August 2017 -- It looks like this parcel has finally, for real this time, been sold to be the new home for nearby Frank's Carwash:

UPDATE 10 August 2018 -- Now the site of the new location for Frank's Car Wash:

Too late to get a picture of this place I'm afraid. The original Dutch Square Theater was a twin-plex set against the far back corner of the Dutch Square parking lot. I believe it opened more or less at the same time the original Dutch Square mall did, and there was nothing particularly distinctive about it. It ran standard, first-run movies, and sold the standard theater food items at standard (high!) theater food prices. Since the place was on the other side of town from where I lived, it was not one of my regular movie spots, though I did see a number of shows there over the years.

It does have the distinction of being the only theater I've ever walked out on a movie at. The year was 1987, and my sister and a friend of hers were going to see Light of Day with Michael J. Fox and Joan Jett and asked if I wanted to tag along. Well, I knew nothing about the film, but I was of course familiar with Michael J. Fox and his classic "Marty" films, and I enjoyed Joan Jett's music, and had heard she was quite the character in real life, so I was expecting some kind of rock-and-roll comedy. Um, no. What I got instead was the most depressing drama I had ever had the misfortune to view. After about half an hour, I muttered something like "see y'all after the show" to my sister and walked out. Seeing the sunshine again was like having a leaden weight lifted off of me, and I spent a happy hour and a half just bumming around Dutch Square.

Not too long after that, Tapps closed, and Dutch Square's decline accelerated finally leading to re-development, complete with a new AMC 14 screen multiplex. Thus obsoleted, the original Dutch Square Theater was torn down, and now a Ruby Tuesday operates in the same location. And all the Ruby Tuesday training videos I've seen played in their stores are better than "Light of Day.

UPDATE 13 September 2009: Added theater ad from The State 15 April 1973.

UPDATE 12 May 2020 -- Adding full street address to the post title, also updating tags and adding map icon.

At one time, Sounds Familiar had quite a little record store empire. They had locations on Parklane, Garners Ferry, Colonial Life Boulevard, Harbison and in Myrtle Beach. There was a period of time when I really liked to go to their stores (especially the Myrtle Beach store) becase they had lots of interesting "import" CDs. (And if you don't understand the difference between import CDs and "import" CDs, I'm not going to explain it here.). They also had a very good selection of Beach Music LPs and CDs as well as a nice stock of used recordings.

Unfortunately, the industry began to change radically as first CD duplication technology and tnen Internet downloads began to take off. All record stores were hard hit and Sounds Familiar was no exception. I believe the Myrtle Beach store was the first to close, followed (I think) by this one and then the one on Harbison. In the case of this store, it can't have helped that it was just across the street from the larger and more esoteric Manifest location in Boozer Plaza.

The locations on Parklane and near Garners Ferry continue to soldier own. I was in the Garners Ferry location last week, and it appeared to be doing OK, if not great, but the last time I went by Parklane, it seemed to me that half of the floor space was just empty.

The state of the record store industry is one of those things I'm ambivalent about. I hate to see places where I found a lot of great music close, but on the other hand, I'm not going to stop ordering music online either.

UPDATE 28 June 2012: It turns out that this strip mall is actually listed as 422 Bush River Road rather than having a Colonial Life Boulevard address. I have updated the post title to include the correct street address. I should also mention that all Sounds Familiar locations have now closed (and can be found in the alphabetical closings list).

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Technically speaking, Waccamaw Pottery was only one store at this landmark dead mall, but the way I recall it, the name was casually used for the whole complex which was centered around it. Back in the 70s and 80s, the outlet mall was a real retail powerhouse on the Grand Strand, and this despite not having a single store that I as a teen wanted to go to. In fact, as I remember it, the place was notorious amongst my whole extended family as a somewhere "grown-ups" liked to go for hours and which we couldn't stand. I remember being in the car with several cousins sometime after my sister had started to drive. As we headed up US-17 towards Myrtle Beach, she suddenly hunched over, gripped the wheel tightly, put on a maniacal expression and announced "This car is going to Waccamaw Pottery and there's nothing you can do about it!"

I can honestly say I don't ever recall buying a single thing here. In fact, I can only recall ever seeing one thing that was even interesting there: In the 70s Playboy printed up a book version of some of their Bo Derek pictorials in advance of the movie "10", and one ended up on a discount table at one of the Waccamaw stores. Of course I couldn't buy it, but it certainly beat browsing festive ice-cube trays or whatever..

Wikipedia says Waccamaw Pottery went under int 2001, which matches more or less what I remember for their Augusta store, but I thought I recalled their "home turf" mall here going under in the 90s. For some reason, outlet malls seemed to go into decline in general around then.

I hadn't really planned on taking these pictures, but I spent the night at the Holiday Inn on the Waterway, and as I got in the car on July 4th, there the mall was and I coudn't resist. Although the place in general is pretty delapidated, with salt spray thick on the windows, deteriorating signage, and some graphitti, there are still some businesses hanging on in the west-most part. In particular, a design operation, a furniture store and a taxi operation. Apparently Hardrock Park is using some rooms in the main area as well (and you can see one of the Hardrock roller-coasters in the background of some of the shots). Some places apparently went under very quickly. You'll notice all the furnishings still in the ice-cream shop, and the Haggar 18 Wheeler (and Haggar history plaques) still in the Haggar store.

The place is still under active scrutiny too. You'll notice in the last picture, there is a security truck reflected in the windows behind me. I could see the reflection, of course, so I stopped what I had been doing, which was leaning suspiciously against the doors while I took some shots through the glass, stepped back and made a show of ostentatiously taking that last picture to make clear that I had a camera and that's what I had been doing. To avoid any pointed questions, when I turned around, I acted like the security guy was just who I had been looking for, and started plying him with questions about the future of the property. He was actually a nice guy and indicated there there were definite plans though he couldn't talk about them yet. We both knew he had made his point without having to say anything about trespassing, and I had plenty of pictures anyway, so I called it a day and headed for lunch.

This car isn't heading for Waccamaw Pottery..

Here's the thing. If you're going to call yourself The Grilled Cheese Company, you ought to have really great grilled cheese sandwiches.

I was feeling pretty low last year with a bad cold (which wasn't getting any better as in the end it turned out to be a sinus infection and to need antibiotics..), and I wanted some comfort food. A good grilled cheese sandwich sounded like it would really fill the bill, so I went out to Sandhill.

I guess what I was subconsciously expecting was some sort of deluxe affair with two or three kinds of cheese grilled between Texas toast. What I got was apparently a Kraft Processed American Cheese Food single between two slices of Sunbeam, and it was a considerable disappointment in a day that was already not going well.

Read whatever you'd like into my judgement given my general maliase and grumpiness that day, but I see the place is now gone, so I'm thinking that even if everyone else liked what they got, they also realized they could do the exact same thing at home with the ingredients they already had.

Antibiotics on the other hand, are great.

UPDATE 15 May 2010: Added full street address, tags.

UPDATE 25 February 2014 -- It's now a kids' gym, My Gym:

UPDATE 10 March 2021: Adding map icon.

The Atlantic Twin theater was on Two Notch road across from what is now Dick Dyer Toyota. It was something of an "outlying" theater, neither downtown, nor in Five Points, and I think probably the "Oh, I always forget about that one" location probably played a part in its eventual downfall. The fact that that section of Two Notch gradually became rather down-at-the-heels over the years didn't help either. Nonetheless, The Atlantic was the site of the only movie birthday party I ever had. It would have either been in 1967 for my sixth birthday or 1968 for my seventh. I'd say 67, but IMDB says the movie came out several weeks after my birthday, so either I had a very late party, or the film came back for second-run showings the next year.

At any rate, my mother and father arranged to take two carloads of my little friends (you could never pack cars like that today!) to The Atlantic to see "Dr. Dolittle" with Rex Harrison. At the time (and today) the film was universally panned by critics, and the ability of the studio to secure an Oscar for it is often pointed to as the last time the "studio system" was able to rig the awards. Be we liked it!

If I could talk to the animals --
Learn their languages...
Maybe take an animal degree!

The songs were catchy, and the humor with things like the Pushmepullyou wasn't over our heads, and I think we all got popcorn and drinks. Then we went back to my house and had cake..

Anyway, as I alluded above, some time after that The Atlantic fell on hard times. By the late 70s, it had become a porno-palace, and eventually the building itself was torn down. Today there is some sort of social-services building with a DSS branch there. The actual theater was in the lower part of the parking lot, about where the last picture indicates.

Not a big step forward, you'll agree.

If I spoke slang to orangutans
The advantages why any fool on earth could plainly see!
Discussing Eastern art and dramas
With intellectual llamas
That’s a big step forward you’ll agree!

UPDATE 13 September 2009: Added showtime advertisement from The State, 15 April 1973.

UPDATE 12 April 2010: Added full street address to the post title.

Grices (their sign doesn't use an apostrophe, so I won't either) was a long established open-air market on Huger (that's "You-Gee" for you non-natives) Street downtown betwen Gervais & Blossom. I visited so few times, and those all when I was a kid, that I confess I'm a little fuzzy on their whole concept, but I think they had produce, some plants and crafty things like grapevine wreaths. I know my mother liked to stop there from time to time, but I can't really recall anything specific that she bought.

The sign suggests that they thought their main business was "Fruit Baskets", but this Columbia Star story suggests they were a "produce, flower and accessory market". The story also establishes that they closed in 2006; I would have put the date lots earlier. I guess it goes to show "out of sight, out of mind".

Plato's Grecian Cafe was tucked into a strip mall across the street from Dutch Square; today it's a Personnel company. I went there several times over the years, but it never really clicked for me. I always thought of it mainly as a pizza place, and though the pizza was fine, it was not in the running for Best Pizza in Columbia.

The last time I was there, they had some sort of live music. I can't recall if it were a pop band or some kind of Greek folk thing, but anyway that seemed to be where their focus was that night, and I found the table service really suffered for it. Since my inclination to stop was never strong, I never got around to going back after that, and didn't notice for a while that the place was gone.

UPDATE 2 March 2011: Add full street address and ad from the Feb 1990 Bellsouth Yellow Pages