Columbia Closings   What's not in Columbia anymore

I wrote at some length about Robo's on Main Street some time ago, and that's the location I overwhelmingly went to to hone my Galaga skills (and by hone, I mean, I was "ok"). That made sense as I lived across the street from there, but when I was home and had access to a car, I would come to this location from time to time. I recently parked near there to get some pictures of the Advance Auto Parts demolition, and decided to take this shot.

At this remove, I'm not entirely sure which storefront Robo's was, but I think it was the one to the left of the blue dumpster. My memory also says that this location was something of a poor stepchild in the Robo's family -- I recall it as being smaller, less busy, and having a smaller variety of games. Unlike the University location, it didn't have a clear constituency (ie: college kids), though I suppose there are plenty of residences in the general area. I'm not sure if it outlasted the Main Street or Dutch Square locations -- it did have the advantage of not having its building torn down, but I think Main Street had folded long before that happened to its former home.

Well, it's getting close to swimming time again -- the days are warming up, and the worst of the pollen will be over in a month or so. Of course, if this were 1975, it would already be swimming time at Trenholm Park.

That's right, when the pool at Trenholm Park first opened, it was totally enclosed, heated, and open year-round. In fact, I can remember swimming in that pool when there was snow on the ground. It also had the scariest high-dive board in town, and it was something of a dare to go up and off of that thing. I never would actually dive off it -- I would just cannon-ball into the 12ft section (one of the deepest around as well -- enough to make your ears really hurt).

I can guess what happened to the high-dive: insurance, but I really have no idea what happened to the enclosure. I just recall coming back to town one day, driving by and going hey, wait a minute!. If I had to guess, I would suspect some Richland County funding issue.

The last time I swam there was 1996, when I was recovering from a car-wreck, and wanted somewhere I could walk without really putting any weight on my leg. The entrance building at the front of the pool with the changing rooms and showers seemed unchanged from the 70s, so I suspect that the shell over the pool itself was always structurally separate. And despite the absence of the diving board, and a lifeguard regime that seemed a good deal more, um, authoritarian than I recalled -- the kids still seemed to be having a great time.

Here's another of Columbia's vanished drive-ins. I don't think I was ever really aware of this one. North Main was not on any of our regular routes -- for years I had only the vaguest idea where even Columbia College was. I'm saying this closed in the 1970s because in the late 70s, one of my school groups would sometimes do fundraisers at lunch by selling corndogs, and I would go pick them up from the North Main Piggly Wiggly, where somebody's father worked. I think I would remember seeing a drive-in in the area, and I don't.

At any rate, this one seems not to have gone porno, at least in the time-frame we see here (the first ad is from 1971, the second from 15 April 1973): Nothing rated harder than GP (equivalent to the range covered by today's PG & PG-13). Yog is even rated G!

I went to North Main to see what's at 5801 now, and it's a small strip mall with a barber-shop and a tax office. I think the drive-in must have covered more ground, so it's possible some of the other structures at what are now 58xx addresses may be on parts of it as well.

Thanks to reader Terry for the 1971 ad!

Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar--

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I'm not absolutely certain that this was the Foxcroft Skating Rink but judging from some of the comments on my Redwing Rollerway post, and a recent comment on Have Your Say, this building appears to be the only one plausible. I was never a skater back in the day, so I had no personal experience with the place. Currently the building is a school.

Kneece Road is an odd little dirt road that connects Brookfield Road (where RNE High School is) with O'Neil Court (formerly Hunt Club Road on that stretch) and runs behind the U-Haul center and the old Decker Mall. I drive down it from time to time when I'm going to my storage unit or just for fun, though it can be very iffy on your suspension at points. There is a Foxcroft Road two blocks further up Decker Boulevard. I have no idea why the rink was called that rather than "Kneece Skating Rink" or "Brookfield Skating Rink" though.

Here's another closed Eckerd store, although google indicates that this one was open as recently as the Rite Aid transition, which is not how I recall it. This store sits at the intersection of Two Notch and Beltline, and is now a children's dental clinic.

I'm pretty sure this location also once housed the local AMC dealership, name now forgotten, where I bought a really awful, I mean world class bad, car, though all those structures have since been torn down (or if they were like the car, may have just fallen apart..)

UPDATE 25 January 2012 -- Interestingly, the building directly across the street (in the old Payless Shoes/Carzzz location) is also becoming a dental clinic.

UPDATE 10 August 2020: Add tags, map icon, change "Eckerd" to "Eckerd Drugs" & "Rite Aid Drugs" to "Rite Aid" in post title.

UPDATE 17 November 2022: Changed title from "Eckerd Drugs / Rite Aid" to "Rite Aid / Eckerd Drugs" based on the comments.

By all rights, I ought to remember Ravenwood Pharmacy. It was in the 1970 phonebook, so I would have been nine at the time, and I recall a lot of stuff from 1970. It was also near to Trenholm Park where we went from time to time and shared a parking lot with the Covenant Road Piggly Wiggly where my mother sometimes (though admittedly not often) shopped. Add to that the fact that presumably it lasted several years beyond 1970, and I'm a bit mystified by why I can't recall it at all. I suppose the fact that we filled almost all our prescriptions at Campbell's Drugs must explain it.

This real estate listing says the building was built in 1960, and I assume the Pharmacy was the first tenant. The second tenant was Forest Lake TV in its second location. I can't recall any tenants after that (though I would have been living out of town at the time) -- certainly the building has been empty for at least five years now.

UPDATE 31 July 2010 -- Looks like it's to be a thrift store now:

UPDATE 11 September 2010 -- Apparently that's not going to happen:

UPDATE 20 June 2016 -- Something looks to be happening here again:

UPDATE 25 April 2018 -- Well, the 2016 attempt didn't happen, but now there is more work going on:

UPDATE 14 June 2018 -- Hmm, very blue. Maybe a Pelican snocone place?

UPDATE 30 October 2018 -- Now open as DCP Convenience:

I've written before about Capitol News Stand on Main Street and Capitol News Stand on Saint Andrews Road, but this branch was on the other side of town behind the Two Notch Road K-Mart on O'Neil Court.

My memory is that the building (which now houses a fitness center) was somewhat smaller than the Main Street space. It definitely had fewer paperbacks and foreign magazines. I believe that it was the last branch that Capitol established, and I would say it started sometime in the 80s and I had the feeling that it never really established itself. The location can't have helped -- everything that goes into O'Neil Court fails, and it was somwhat lacking in a raison-d'etre. Downtown had the best selection, so if you really wanted a news-stand type thing, that's where you would look, and Waldenbooks in Columbia Mall was just a few blocks away, so if you wanted a book, that's probably where you would look first. It did have the advantage of convienience over Walden's -- you could park close by and dash in if you just wanted a newspaper where as Walden's had no outside entrance.

I forget exactly when the place closed. It certainly pre-deceased the Main Street location by a good number of years, but I think it outlasted the Hampton Street and Saint Andrews Road Locations.

I can't quite recall which storefront in the now largely defunct Capitol Centre plaza behind Columbia Mall housed Aliens & Alibis, but it was one of the ones pictured here.

Aliens & Alibis was the right store at the wrong time. It was a book store which as the name suggested, concentrated on science fiction and mysteries, something I would have been all over in the 70s or 80s. In the event, I think I went there twice. They had some nicely offbeat SF and mystery books -- things like art books of classic pulp covers and small press editions of classic authors -- stuff that wouldn't show up at Waldenbooks.

Unfortunately, they started not in the 70s or 80s, but in the 00s, and the market had completely changed. First, Waldenbooks and The Happy Bookseller were no longer the main in-town competition. Both of those stores were relatively small spaces and simply couldn't stock obscure genre books in depth. That wasn't true, though, for big-box booksellers like Barnes & Noble or Books-A-Million. Second, there was The Internet and the Amazon.com juggernaut. Now virtually any obscure small-press reprint or obscure new book by your favorite (though bottom list) author was available with a mouse click and suddenly the only thing a store like Aliens & Alibis had going for it was the serendipity factor -- going in and seeing something you didn't know existed, and that just wasn't enough, especially in the face of Amazon's improving "you might like this" technology, and internet discussion groups. I saw the same thing happen to Atlanta's Science Fiction and Mystery shop several years earlier, and was actually a bit surprised to see a Columbia operation try the same thing.

I believe that after the shop left Capitol Centre, it went to Garners Ferry and then became a web operation which is probably the only way to do it now, and good luck to them.

Going by this ad from the Southern Bell Yellow Pages, Capital Cabana Motor Inn was a happening sort of place in 1970. Judging from the graphic, the place was huge, and from the text, unaffiliated. Nowdays you would expect something that size to be part of a national chain, if only for reservations purposes. (In fact, Ocean Boulevard Myrtle Beach is about the only place where unaffiliated motels seem to hang on). I've got to admire going for a tropical island theme in landlocked Columbia (where even the state palm has a hard time in the winter and cool sea breezes are notably absent in the summer). Bring your BankAmericard!

Google suggests that 1901 Assembly is currently the Columbia headquarters for BB&T (though of course in today's environment they could be gone by the end of the week..). I'm not sure when the Capital Cabana was torn down, but since I can't really remember it at all, I'm going to say sometime in the 1970s.

I love the graphic for the Inn's attached restaurant The Pirates' Cove Supper Club. Today, it would set up all sorts of opportunities for quips such as I'd sure like to plunder her booty, but of course I would never stoop to anything like that.

UPDATE 2 Apr 2009: Added the seperate 1970 Yellow Page ad for The Pirates' Cove (now you can see her nose if you look closely).

UPDATE 11 July 2011: Added picture of a helicopter apparently about to land on top of the Capital Cabana from an old Chamber of Commerce promotional book.