Columbia Closings   What's not in Columbia anymore

As far as I can tell, the old Carver Theater at 1519 Harden Street is currently vacant. This building was once one of the only two black theaters in Columbia during the years of Jim Crow. In the Waverly neighboorhood, and adjacent to the historically black Benedict and Allen colleges, the theater also had live talent shows as well as motion pictures.

I believe I can recall this place still being in business as a theater while I was growing up. This site says it closed in 1971 but this one suggests that it was open as late as 1974. My copy of The State movie listings for 15 April 1973 does not have an entry for The Carver, which supports the earlier date though I suppose they may not have advertised there.

There are a number of write-ups on The Carver Theater online as it is in the National Register of Historic Places. Here is one, here is another, and here is a third.

After the theater closed, the Agape Church moved in starting in 1998 and stayed for several years. The entry in the National Registry states that the current owners

I certainly wish them success!

UPDATE 2 September 2022: Interesting! The State says that Allen University will be re-opening the Carver as a first run theater, and venue.

Also adding map icon and updating tags.

A casualty of the digital revolution, I guess. I would notice Champagne Color from time to time over the years, and would always imagine it as the sort of place where instead of just running your film through the machine and printing whatever came out, they would check each print and dodge and burn-in each exposure as necessary, and if that wasn't true, it should have been.

I myself held on to 35mm for most of my pictures for years after it became clear that digital was not only winning, but had already won. When I started this site, I knew I had to go digital at least in part because I would be at Ritz or the drug-store every day -- it would just take too long, and cost too much.

Closing-Cam 1.0 didn't displace my old Fujica because the resolution was still too low, but Closing-Cam 2.0 (a Panasonic Lumix DMC LX3) pretty much has. My guess would be that this happened to Champagne's customers over the course of several years, and that without the resources of a national chain, they couldn't make the transition to full digital.

At any rate, whether that's a good guess or not, the building has been empty for a long time now. The location is not very easy to get into or good for parking (especially if you are coming from the Dutch Square direction) and I think you would need a "destination" store there to make it viable.

Here's a storefront on Harden Street next to Groucho's that I can't really ever recall seeing before. I suppose that's mainly due to the subject matter -- my eyes tend to glide right over decor stores. My kitchen has a 50 year old sink and counters with a 30 year old stove, and they seem to work just fine..

I'm guessing from the name of this place that it was once on Devine Street, but I don't recall it from there either.

I already wrote about the S & K closing at the Two Notch Road store, so I don't have a lot to say about the Bush River Road closing. I'm still happy with the belt I got at the other store and didn't need to go inside this location, which is good as it was late Sunday and closed anyway.

I will say that if I were going too keep one Columbia store and close the other, I would keep Two Notch and close this one based solely on parking and ease of access. This little strip (which also contains a closed Sounds Familar location) is at the corner of Bush River Road and Colonial Life Boulevard. There is no parking on the Bush River side, and it's not great on the Colonial Life side. Of course, they are closing both stores so the point is moot.

UPDATE 4 June 2012 -- It's now Fashion's Unlimited:

Here's another empty car lot on Two Notch Road (this one is near Beltline). It would be interesting to count them all up some time. If you include Beltline and Decker, I'm sure you could get around a dozen. On the other hand, new ones pop up, and old ones come back, so it's not all doom and gloom.

UPDATE 30 Sep 2010 -- Well, they've knocked down the building now:

UPDATE 25 Feb 2011 -- Well, the new building on this spot is going up pretty quickly. It seems to have car service bays:

UPDATE 11 September 2011 -- It's a car-wash, and it's open:

I believe I only ate at Golden China once, probably in the 1970s, but it was a favorite of my mother's and I know she and my father went there a number of times over the years.

I don't recall much about the restaurant itself -- I believe it impressed me as a perfectly OK Chinese place, but Chinese food is not really something I care for, so I can't say much. I do remember its long running radio commercial which featured a man and a woman trying to decide where to eat, and went something like this:

Man: I could really use some good Chinese food!

Woman: Golden China!

Man: Suuuure. I'll hop on a plane right now...

Woman: Not "go-to-China" Silly, "Gol-den China" in the Boozer Shopping Center!

Man: Oh yeah!

As you can see from the pictures, the building is now an Indian restaurant (with Chinese decor..) which opened last week (25 June 2009). On the one hand, I'm happy because I like Indian food on the other hand I'm sorry to see a longtime Columbia landmark go, even if I didn't want to eat there.

When I was taking pictures for the (final) closing of Stevie B's Pizza at the Forest Drive Wal Mart strip mall, I noticed that its next door neighbor, Check 'N Go had checked and went to 7358 Two Notch. That makes three recent vacancies in this strip, which can't be good (though I expect having Wal-Mart as the anchor makes it more resiliant than a non ahchored strip).

Well, that will teach me a lesson.

Reed's Jewelers was on the upper level of Columbia Mall, just out the door from Macy's heading towards Sears. I don't own any jewelery, but I do have a watch which needs a battery change about once a year. The last time it stopped running, I went by Reed's to have the battery replaced, and made the mistake of letting the salesman upsell me the "lifetime" battery change option. Sure it was a few dollars more, but they would continue to change it every year for the life of the watch at no additional charge.

I should have suspected that the life of the watch would be longer than the life of the store..

Welcome to all the folks coming in from The State! Be sure to check out the Alphabetical Closings for a list of other places you might remember.

This defunct I-26 adult entertainment complex apparently occupies two lots in Cayce off of Old Dunbar Road. The front lot is 1995 Old Dunbar Road, and the back lot is off the adjacent side street at 115 Overland Drive.

Read the rest of this entry »

This is probably the second most searched for closing, after The Bounty. As with The Bounty, I've held off doing a post because the place is completely gone, I don't have any pictures of it, and I don't have any personal memories to relate.

I was thinking that I could do some research at the RCPL and at least come up with an old Yellow Pages ad to hang a post on, but when I finally got a chance to check it out, I found that The Zoom Flume never had a Yellow Pages entry, at least under any category that made sense to me. In fact, they were only listed in the white pages for two years.

So here's what I know about the waterslide: The Zoom Flume was located at 107 Calvin Drive (unless you believe a city directory entry which puts it at 5959 Two Notch Road), which is a small street off of Two Notch Road in between Arcadia Lakes Drive and Fontaine Road. Calvin Drive starts perpendicular to Two Notch, then turns off parallel to Two Notch and Shakespeare Road and runs behind Freedom Suziki. 107 Calvin Drive is now a vacant lot behind Dixie Trophies, Inc.. The slide would, I assume, have been situated up the hill that elevates Shakespeare Road above Two Notch. Currently, for no reason I can discern, the empty lot is surrounded with a formidable looking 7000 volt electrical fence.

People have talked about The Zoom Flume in the comments sections of other posts from time to time, with the most solid information coming from commenter Captain Dave who said:

The one on Two Notch was indeed “The Zoom Flume”. I remember it well because they were a major sponsor at WZLD-FM where I worked. It’s heyday was the summer of 1979. We gave away free passes all the time. Ithink we tied it in with “The Ramblin’ Raft Race” on the Congaree River.

So that's pretty much it. Not a great post, but hopefully it will provide a place for people who actually went to the Flume to add comments. If anybody has pictures of themselves playing there back in the day, I'll gladly post those as well.

UPDATE 16 Dec 2010: Commenter Tonkatoy sends in this 1984 yearbook ad for Super Slide And Arcade which was apparently another incarnation of The Zoom Flume. It was slated to open in May of 1984. I don't recall that one at all. I've added Super Slide to the post title.

UPDATE 27 April 2017 -- I'm told that if you Facebook, there is a Zoom Flume photo here