Columbia Closings   What's not in Columbia anymore

The Boat House at Sesqui also used to be the Bath House. I didn't swim there too often since we had access to Bell Camp, but it was an odd little setup.

The park guys in the mid-section of the building (there is, or was a counter behind those wooden shutters) would give you a wire hamper and a honking big safety-pin with a numbered stamped metal tag. You would go into the Men's Dressing Room, strip out of your clothes and put them in the basket, put on your trunks, fasten the safety-pin through them, and hand the hamper to the park guys. They would put the basket with your clothes on a shelf inside and you would go swim. After you finished, you would turn in the safety-pin, they would match it to a wire hamper and give you your clothes back. Even at the time, it seemed a rather quaint and archaic procedure.

The Boat House / Bath House, like a lot of the original Sesqui structures, was built by the Civilian Conservation Corps. This was a Federal government team recruited during the Great Depression from the vast ranks of the able-bodied but unemployed. The CCC did a lot of great work on public projects, kept a lot of men off the dole and probably not coincidentally helped forestall any more Bonus Army-like incidents. I know they also built the main structures at Poinsett State Park and Florida Caverns State Park. Their work tends to have an identifiable style, and the Boat House is a good example of it. I suspect the bench alongside the structure goes back to that era as well.

I think that American youth have gradually been undergoing a "swimming wussification" over the last several generations. My grandparents' generation thought nothing of jumping into totally unimproved "swimming holes". My mother's generation were happy to swim in Hartsville's minimally improved "Black Creek". I, on the other hand, already didn't really like swimming in lakes. Bell Camp was fine since the swimming area in the section shallow enough to touch ground had had all the stumps removed and the bottom covered with sand. (Still some of my peers were irked at the way the water turned any swimsuit to yellow). The Sesqui lake was a bit too slimy for my tastes, and I didn't like touching bottom at all. I suspect the generations after me didn't want anything to do with lakes as far as swimming went. At any rate Sesqui banned swimming in the 90s, and I have to think falling demand for lake swimming had something to do with it. I read the news in The State and remarked on the end of an era though not one I had much partcipated in. I don't know if the ban was state-wide, but last time I went into Poinsett it applied there as well.

The lake is still available for fishing and walking around, but like many lakes, it has been so overtaken by filthy waterfowl, that even if you liked lake swimming, you would hesitate to thread the feces-laden-minefield from the boat house to the water's edge. Even if you could still get a hamper and pin.

For a while, the Dentsville area had two big-box toy stores as well as a couple of smaller storefronts inside Columbia mall. I can't remember the name of the first of the big ones to go, but it was in the same little plaza on Decker Boulevard and Trenholm Road Extension that Winn Dixie was in and that The Comedy House is in now. As I recall, the closing caused a lot of brouhaha and local ill-will because the place timed their closing to be after Christmas shopping and before Christmas returns. It seems to me there was another way in which they did customers dirty in addition to that, but the details escape me at this remove.

At any rate, you might have expected that with the entire "destination toy store" market in the area now ceded to it, Toys 'R' Us would have prospered and have had some incentive to stay put, but that proved not to be the case. Since I wasn't really a toy shopper at the time, I didn't pay much attention to where the store went. I just figured it had joined the general flight from Dentsville and the Decker Corridor to somewhere down Two Notch. However, doing a quick online Yellow Pages search, the only location I see in the Columbia area is near Columbiana Center. I know I'm certainly not driving out there for toys -- not when there's Amazon.

The building has never had another tenant since Toys 'R' Us departed. It appears to be in fairly good shape (some minor tagging, but only on glass) though the architecture now looks a little dated. Unfortunately, with the upcoming closing of Dillards, I can't see that any first tier replacement will be willing to locate at Columbia Mall any time soon.

Update 27 Jan 2010: Well something is happening at the old Toys 'R' Us building. From the work going on, it would appear that something will be going in there:

UPDATE 1 April 2010 -- Looks like the Virginia College Career Center is ready to open:

UPDATE 13 February 2021: Changing "Columbia Mall outparcel" in the post title to the full street address, updating tags and adding map icon.

Well, we all know the first rule about Fight Club, but here goes anyway.

This store front (which was almost certainly not actually called Fight Club) was the only amateur boxing rink I've ever seen in Columbia. Granted, I haven't looked for one, but when I first noticed it driving by on my way to and from SC-277, it put me in a retro frame of mind. Since I don't follow current boxing at all, it makes me think of 30s and 40s movies and pulp stories where the wise old trainer, who could have had a shot if he hadn't blown out his knees, shakes the arrogance out of a kid who can make it to the big time if only he will take it seriously.. There was actually a whole pulp-fiction genre with its own set of magazines devoted to boxing stories; Robert E. Howard, the creator of Conan wrote a series of such about "Sailor Steve Costigan", the fighting merchant marine.

So anyway, I would drive by, see all the cars and imagine all these dramatic scenes until the final time I drove by and the place was packed with blue-lights-blazing police cars and I never saw it open again.

Apparently a fight had broken out..

UPDATE 22 February 2017 -- Add full street address and some tags

UPDATE 13 August 2020: Add map icon.

In a comment on a previous post commenter "Jonathan" identified this building on Two Notch Road across from Columbia Mall as Continental Sound. If not for that, I probably would just think of it as "that radio building".

The place is now some sort of loan operation called Cash -n- Dash and has been remodeled, so you can't tell it now, but at one time the whole front of this building was designed to look like a dashboard radio/cassette player. What is now the left star was then the volume knob, while the right star was the tuning knob. I believe the front windows did not have the opaque blue window then so they looked like a cassete insertion slot. I also believe that there was a digital tuning display above the windows. (Though they were not common in cars until later). In the beginning, it was set to "104.7" which was WNOK, which was a rock station at the time. Later, for whatever reason (advertising bucks, new manager whatever) the tuning of the building was changed to another station. My memory says it was WCOS, which was a country station, but I could be wrong.

At one time Continental Sound commercials were ubiquitous on Columbia television, so I really should remember exactly what they did. In fact I have only a vague idea that they sold and installed car stereos because the rest of the commercial was what drew my (and everybody's) attention. Their commercials were always tagged by a girl delivering the catch phrase Sounds Real Good! in a really appealing manner. I say "catch phrase", but I believe it was just meant to be a one-time commercial closing line, until she sold it so well that they went on to feature it in every commercial they did. Again, my memory may be playing me false as it often does, but I believe they actually used the same footage all the time, so perhaps the girl was never able to give the line the same oomph in later readings. Eventually, they did change it -- sort of. The original "sounds real good" girl was average looking -- perfectly OK, but not actress/model quality in the looks department. The final "sounds real good" commercials used a sexier girl who lip synched to the original girl's line.

I don't know what happened to Continental Sound. I think they folded or moved in the 1990s. Google suggests that after that the building was home to Big Apple Music which, I think, left the building's radio motif alone. I can understand why Cash -n- Dash wanted to change it -- it's certainly not what you would expect for that type of operation and would tend to confuse casual traffic, but it's still a shame to lose such a unique building. Though I suppose in a few years parents would have had to explain what a "cassette" was anyway..

UPDATE 14 September 2021: Adding map icon and updating tags.

This store has one of those vague names I dislike, or maybe half vague. I guess I wouldn't mind a vague name like Good Stuff, but when it's half specific and have vague (not to mention cutsey) like Linens-n-Things, I start to wonder What kind of things?. (As you might guess, I don't like Bed, Bath & Beyond as a name either..).

Linens-n-Things is in the new strip out on Two Notch near Sandhill which has Target and Michaels. It at one time also had OfficeMax, which is now a Haloween store (and which I would expect to close soon after the 31st). If I were Michaels, I'd be a bit worrried. Target is a destination store, and people are going to come out for it regardless, but the aggregate traffic for the strip as a whole is going to be hit pretty bad I would think.

It was raining pretty steadily when I took these pictures, and they had one of those guys who stands on the road and waves the closing/discount sign out on Two Notch getting thoroughly soaked. Normally October in South Carolina is about the best time and place to do something like that, but today he just ran out of luck.

UPDATE 31 October 2011 -- As commenter Andrew mentions, there is ongoing work at this storefront:

Sticky Fingers was yet another victim of the declining fortunes of the Dentsville area. I believe that they were the second tenant in this building, which was built for O'Charleys before that operation followed The Olive Garden, Lizard's Thicket, Circuit City, Target, Office Depot, JC Penny and Kroger Sav-On to the new developments further out on Two Notch or at Sandhill. The closing sign says they lasted five years, though I woudn't have guessed that long.

I can't comment on their ribs as I'm not a rib guy. I believe I ate there only twice and had a burger both times. It was fine, though not spectacular. I'm a little curious about what's going on with the building. It appears to have been kept in pretty good shape, and to have not been cleaned out (notice the gum machines still in there). Furthermore, I didn't see a for-sale or for-lease sign anywhere. I wonder if Sticky Fingers is holding on to it for some reason.

UPDATE 16 May 2010 -- It's now a "brazillian-style" restaurant, Caprioska:

Their web site is here

UPDATE 19 August 2022: Adding map icon and updating tags.

By the time Sears moved from Harden Street to Columbia Mall, it was long past the catalog glory days of being the company you could by anything from, but it hadn't yet been so bloodied in the retail wars that it would reject odd ideas out of hand.

This concrete slab in the Columbia Mall parking lot by the Charleston Crab House (and still actually owned by Sears to judge from the tow-away signs) was one of them. Over this slab was a canopy, and under the canopy was an island with a number of Sears-branded gas pumps. I don't remember a whole lot about the place as we only filled up one of two times there. I'm pretty sure it was self-serve, but since there was no such thing as electronic credit card reading pumps at the time, there certainly would have been a cashiers shed with an attendant. You could pay with cash, or, of-course, with your Sears Card.

My memory is that the place was an experiment that didn't last too long. I don't know exactly what happened, but I can hazard some guesses. First, the location was not convenient unless you were already at the mall. Getting in and out of the mall parking lot was (and is) much more time consuming than stoping at a corner station. Second, in the 70s people actually had some brand loyalty to different gas chains, and felt that name-brand gas was a better product than generic. Now we tend to think it's like sugar, and there's no problem buying Domino's if Dixie Crystals is more expensive. Third, at some point in the 70s (I believe) there was a major scandal about Sears's auto repair operation ripping people off (that's why about all they will do nowadays is change tires or batteries). The opprobrium from that may have tainted their gas business in people's minds. Fourth, it is simply the fact that selling gas was not in the core retail market Sears was (is..) trying to serve. As their fortunes declined, they may have decided that selling gas was a distraction and brand-dillution. (Though I have seen Wal-Mart trying the concept recently..).

At any rate, the place closed after not too many years. The canopy stood for several years after that, but was itself finally torn down. I don't remember the tanks being torn out, and there are still some access points, so perhaps they are still there (though that seems like an enviromental cleanup bill waiting to happen if it really is the case).

UPDATE 20 February 2020: Add tags, address, map icon.

Google is a wonderful thing. I had been noticing this lot ever since I moved back to town, and I felt like I should remember what it was, but I never quite could. I had in my mind that it had been a car dealership, and that may have been correct, given what's left inside now, but the architecture didn't look right for that as a first use.

Plugging the (very visible) street address into Google though reveals that it started life as a Food Lion. In fact, we can find out that it was buit in 1978, has 22,056 square feet available on a 2.34 acre lot, and can be all yours for $900,000.. I can even now tell you that the latitude & longitude for the place are 34.034074 & -81.004620!

I also find that as a Food Lion, the store had followed a practice I dislike: getting it's Deli department into local restaurant listings. I feel the same way about groceries that use their deli to get onto the Interstate "Dining" exit signs.

I don't know exactly what happened to this Food Lion. I know that in the 80s, one of the network news magazine shows did a hit piece on Food Lion that hurt them quite a bit at the time. Perhaps that had an impact here. Perhaps they were planning the new store down Two Notch towards Pinestraw even then. In general I find Food Lions of this era to be a bit dingy and downmarket. Their newer stores are quite nice however -- the one at the South Causeway at Pawleys Island is excellent and even has Virgil's Root Beer. And here's a tip: Almost all Food Lion's have regularly cleaned, nice bathrooms in the left rear corner of the store -- good to know driving in a strange area!

It was drizzling while I took these shots, and the closing-cam works much better in bright sunshine, so the lot and building are not as depressing as they look here.

UPDATE 9 March 2011: Updated the closing date to 1997 based on the comments.

Well, here's another one I managed to miss for a good while. I did a closing for Zorba's on Decker Boulevard a while back, but this one took me by surprise.

To be honest, I only ate at this Zorba's (which was not under the same ownership as the Decker Zorba's) once, last Fall. A cousin who knew I enjoyed eating at the Decker restaurant was coming to town with her kids to do some shopping, and suggested we have dinner at the Decker place. By that time, it was only open for lunch, and I knew she was going to be hitting Circuit City, so I suggested the Two Notch Zorba's.

Going in, I got the vibe of a place in trouble. Not really anything I could put my finger on at first, but on the way over, I had been getting in the mood for some Spanakopita, and when we got our menus, I saw that there wasn't a single Greek dish listed. For a Greek/Italian restaurant, the total absence of the Greek half seemed like it was probably a recent development, and not a good one. To be clear, the food I ended up ordering was perfectly acceptable -- the choices were just not what one would expect from a restaurant called Zorba's.

When I was out getting a video card at Office Depot a while back, I saw that the place had closed. Judging from the holiday snowflakes still hung in the windows, I'm guessing they probably didn't reopen after Christmas. The window note suggests that at one time the owners were considering options for the building, but the realty sign out front implies that nothing materialized. I'm not sure there is now anwhere closer to Forest Acres than Grecian Gardens out on Sunset for spanakopita..

UPDATE 7 Oct 2010 -- Work is advancing to reopen this building as a Buffalo WIld Wings:

UPDATE 23 Dec 2010 -- The Buffalo Wild Wings is now open:

This building, not technically a Columbia Mall outparcel since it is not reachable from the mall perimeter road, has had several tenants. Right now it is a Verizion store, but at some point in the 1990s, it was Coconuts Music.

Coconuts was a fairly generic CD store, and really the only reason to have gone at all was the location, which was fairly close to my parents' house (I was living out of Columbia by then). On the other hand, Sounds Familar on Parklane was not that much farther, and when I was in town, I was just as likely to end up on the Manifest side of town anyway. So, what i'm leading up to saying is that my own personal boycott of Coconuts did not cause me any great hassle or inconvenience.

The way it happened, as I recall now, is that I had heard some great song on the radio by a band I had never heard of. When I got to Coconuts, I found that this band had in fact been around for a while and had five or six albums out. No problem, I thought, I'll just read the track lists and I remember enough of the lyrics to figure it out. So I pulled out one CD and flipped it over. Huh. There was one of those metal spiral anti-theft, ring-the-buzzer, stickers on back. A big one. Right on the track listings. Well, OK, there's three of this CD, try another. Same thing. Try one of the other albums. Same thing. Every darn CD I looked at had a huge sticker all over the track listings.

I brought this to the attention of the manager, and the response was basically That's the way we do things here.

I decided that wasn't the way places I shopped did things, started a boycott, and a few years later they were gone.

Nowdays, of course, I can just google as much of the lyric as I can rember, find the track and artist and have it from Amazon Prime in two days without leaving my house. (Yes, I could just order the MP3 from Amazon and have it immediately, but I still like having the CDs for backup purposes).