Columbia Closings   What's not in Columbia anymore

When a "massage salon" is open until 3AM, one suspects that the massages offered are very thorough. Certainly the late 70s (this ad is from the 1977 Southern Bell phonebook) seem to have been sort of a peak for such. Since then, this building on the south side or Rosewood just west of Pizza Man (and which was pretty clearly originally built as a home) has been a number of things. In particular I recall a record store, which a 1998 zoning board meeting characterizes as selling mostly religious CDs, and at present (though currently it is for sale at $325,000) it houses a recording studio which seems to have a number of telephone sidelines, so -- to reuse a bad joke, you can still reach out and touch someone.

Swensen's was a fairly popular restaurant chain in the 1980s. I'm not sure I ever went to the Columbia location (now The Hunter Gatherer) at the corner of Main & College Streets, but almost anywhere we went on a trip, there would be a Swensen's. I know for sure there was one on The Market in Charleston (now an Applebee's, I think) , and we ran into them on class trips to DC and Florida as well. The ad above from the 1985 Southern Bell phonebook has the logo I recall.

Swensen's started in San Francisco as an ice cream stand, but by the time it franchaised and locations hit the Southeast, they were casual dining restaurants (with ice cream, of course) and I think I had burgers there more often than anything frosty. Their fries were a bit unusual in that rather than being longer than they were wide, they were sort of square and waffle-hatched.

According to Wikipedia during the 1990s, the chain shrunk from 400 stores to about 200, and when it started to expand again, it was mostly overseas. I think the Columbia store closed during that wave of shrinkage. The current tenant in the building, The Hunter Gatherer brewpub has left the interior in a rather rough (if interesting) form. I suspect it was somewhat less distinctive as a Swensen's but I could be wrong. I would be interested if anyone can recall whether Swensen's had the main-floor and catwalk layout used by THG.

UPDATE 16 April 2010: Added Campus Club South and TW Muldoons to the post title and identified what year the ad is from. Added The Quarter Moon to title.

UPDATE 16 October 2023: Here is a story on the history of Swensen's. Apparently the orignal store is still around after the franchaise operation collapsed.

Also adding map icon and updating tags.

The Daily Grind was one of probably hundreds of coffee-shops of that name across the country. Not that it was part of a chain -- it just seems to be a mildly clever name for a coffee-shop. I only stopped there once. As I recall, it opened when the concept of espresso drinks was pretty new, at least for those of us not in New York or the Pacific Northwest. (If you'll recall, in the terrible Bruce Willis movie Hudson Hawk they had to explain to the audience what a cappucino was). Certainly it was long before Columbia got a Starbucks. Frankly, I can't remember being either pleased or displeased at the coffee, and Rosewood was enough out of my Columbia haunts (which I was only hitting on weekends anyway as I was out of town at that point) that I just never got back. I'm not sure when the place closed. It's listed in the 1998 Bellsouth phonebook, so I'm saying early 2000s.

Compusouth I wasn't aware of at all. I have never had any luck getting parts at these small computer storefronts. They can fix your PC or sell you one, but if you want an EIDE controller or whatever, you'll have more luck at Office Depot. (I really miss CompUSA in Augusta which was very good for parts, Best Buy -- not so much). Again, I don't know when it closed, but as they haven't gotten around to taking down the sign yet, I'm saying late 2000s.

The place is currently a lacrosse equipment store. I didn't even know we had lacrosse players in Columbia..

I was looking for the place where The Copper Door was on Rosewood Drive last weekend. As far as I can tell, if I have the right address, it no longer exists. However, I did notice while I was in the area this vacant storefront for Southern Pottery. As it turns out, they are not gone, but have moved to Devine Street. Their web site tells the story. I always liked the smell and feel of raw clay, and enjoyed my pottery class at Trenholm Park (though, frankly, I was never any good at it). It's nice to see someone is still teaching pottery and that we have actual "potters" amongst us muggles in Columbia.

When I first started getting "into" comics -- that is seeking them out at a comics store rather than just buying one every now and then off a spinner rack, I usually went to Silver City on Knox Abbott, or Ye Olde Comic Shope on Meeting Street (with the occasional visit to the one on Devine, the one on Forest Drive near Hardees, or the one on Parklane). Either Acme wasn't around at the time (mid 80s) or I missed it somehow. By the time I moved back to town, I was getting comics mostly through a subscription service or I would stop off at Heroes & Dragons with its easy access to my I-20 too-ings & fro-ings. In the event, I think I only stopped at Acme Comics once, when it was in its Rosewood location, and I can't really recall if I bought anything or not.

I must admit that I thought they were still on Rosewood, and didn't realize they had moved to West Columbia until I heard that they were closing. That part of State Street is rather interesting and eclectic though I must admit that the antique warehouse is the only one of those shops I hit with any frequency (and that proably no more than 4 or 5 times a year). I would have thought it a good fit for a store like Acme, but i guess neither the comic nor the music business is what it was these days.

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As I was coming out of Staples the other day, I noticed that Cici's Pizza Buffet in Fashion Place, the hard-luck plaza at the corner of Decker & Trenholm Extension was closed. Frankly, I had only been vaguely aware that it was there. I kind of took Cici's off my list of places to try when a soldier in Augusta told me that the one on Washington Road was the worst pizza he'd ever had and he'd had a lot of bad pizza. Now, it could have been a purely local issue, or he could have just been wrong (after all, could it really be worse than Chuck E Cheese?), but I figured Why risk it? and have yet to darken a Cici's door.

Cici's is not the first pizza restaurant to close in Fashion Place as The Italian Oven blazed that trail years ago. The first day I noticed it, there were still some guys inside doing inventory-looking stuff, and as of today there is still a lot of equipment and pizza boxes in there.

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As far as I can tell, Moolah's Hide-Away was a fairly short lived operation, as it appears only in the 1977 Bellsouth phonebook. The restaurant was in the space once occupied by Biddie Banquet and occupied for a good number of years now by Sakura. From the ad, it appears that they were pitching it as a base-gate type operation to draw off of Fort Jackson. Wikipedia claims that the restaurant was actually operated by Moolah's daughter.

Judjing by Wikipedia, The Fabulous Moolah (real name Mary Lillian Ellison) had quite an interesting life, becoming the first woman to wrestle in Madison Square Garden. The Columbia High School graduate went on to become the most famous female wrestler of the the thirty years from the 50s into the 80s and appeared in videos with Cyndi Lauper during her wrestling era. She passed away in Columbia in November 2007.

UPDATE 10 Feb 2011: Added a better picture of the current location

I think I've been in florists to send condolence flowers more often than for any other reason which is not a pleasant association. I've never done that in Columbia as far as I can remember though, and so was never in Kirby Croft According to the archived version of the their website, the company started in 1947. That's a 63 year run, which is something the family can be proud of.

The sign on the front door leaves some hope for the future, but apparently not in this location as the building is up for sale. It's a very ineresting building too, with the bay window and the house-like main section. It's almost exactly across the street from former KFC and not too far from the old Varsity, Kershaw Tires and the old Eckerd's. I'm afraid this section of Main has seen better times.

(Hat tip to commenter Jim)

Here's another of Two Notch Road's many car lots. This one (which apparently also occupied the adjacent 6600 Two Notch Road address) seems to have moved. According to their sign, to 6729-A Two Notch., which google gives that as the address of the Very's plaza.

The buildings here are nothing special, but I really like the free-standing canopy in the parking lot, both for the canted roof and for the fact that it has only one support. And of course, what would any car lot be without the strands of flag triangles?

Although I do not recall this store, I am reasonably sure from the architecture that it was at one time an A & P. The building doesn't have the classic steeple, but otherwise the look is quite similar to other old A&P buildings. If I am right, then this store would have been in the boonies when built, but the building of Spring Valley High in the 1970s proves that the population in the area was already growing.

Although Gold's Gym is a top-tier brand (or presents itself as one at any rate), it does often seem to follow the Lizard's Thicket "hermit crab" strategy of moving into existing buildings, something it did here, at the old Columbia Athletic Club, on Harbison and most recently at the old Sofa Express location at Sandhill. When Sandhill opens, they will have two locations quite close together. It would not surprise me to see this one close, though there is no indication of anything like that on their site.

UPDATE 7 April 2010: Originally (as you can tell from the text), I thought this was an A&P. I was wrong, it was a Piggly Wiggly, and I have changed the post title to reflect that.