Columbia Closings   What's not in Columbia anymore

Well, it's official!

Please see my original post on Red Wing Rollerway which I have updated today with lots of new pictures, including interior shots. (If you have any thoughts, leave them there -- in fact, I think I'll turn comments off on this "heads-up" post).

The Paperback Exchange was on of my favorite places downtown in the 70s and 80s. It was not fancy, in fact it was a dump. My memory says that it was a little one story building on the East side of Assembly. The address was very easy to memorize, and is now occupied either by the former AT&T building or a the parking garage, I'm not sure which, so I'm including pictures of both.

The place had big glass windows on either side of a central door, and there was a wide wooden display shelf behind each window. I don't know what the building housed originally, but by the time The Paperback Exchange occupied it, this area was strewn with old magazines and comics yellowing in the afternoon sun.

The place was definitely a bit seedy, and porn was a good part of their stock in trade, along with men's "adventure" magazines like, um Argosy, Soldier of Fortune and the like. (Looking back, I'm a little surprised my mom would drop me off there sometimes while she shopped. Of course, she would have first look at whatever I bought...) There were never many customers when I was there, and I've wondered over the years if perhaps the place was a front of some sort though I never saw any indication of that at the time.

All that aside, what I went for was the Science Fiction rack (and later in the 80s, used comics). This was more or less in the center of the store and was, I believe, two double-sided wooden rack units. The books were in no particular order, but they did seem to turn over with fair regularity, and the place always seemed to have quite a few Ace Doubles. This was an interesting concept that Ace books pioneered in the 50s and 60s (though it lasted into the 70s) where the company would publish two books (often novellas by today's length standards) under the same cover, but upside-down to each other. Each book would have it's own front cover and there was (necessarily) no "back" cover. The books might be by the same author (Jack Vance: The Houses of Iszm with Jack Vance: The Son of the Tree for example) or different authors (Jaunita Coulson: The Singing Stones with E. C. Tubb Derai for another). Although I did not know this at the time, Donald A. Wollheim, who later founded DAW Books was the SF editor at Ace during a large part of this time, and since his tastes were often congruent with mine, I liked a lot of those old Ace Doubles. Anyway, I got a bit distracted there -- my point was going to be that at the time, at The Paperback Exchange, those doubles weren't yet collectible, they were just old and over the years I added many to my shelves.

The end came with development. As I said, I'm not sure exactly which of these two building occupies exactly the "1234" address, but between the two of them, they took out the entire contents of the first block of Assembly. I'm not saying The Paperback Exchange was any architectural treasure either, but in my opinion the AT&T building, at least, should not have been built there as it overshadows the Capitol... As far as I could tell, The Paperback Exchange never relocated to any other spot after it was evicted -- there were several other such operations in town at the time and perhaps they didn't have the margin to reestablish and compete. At any rate, I still have all those Ace Doubles.

I picked up a Free Times at lunch today, and see that the vote for the 2008 "Best of Columbia" is on. If you've enjoyed any of these posts over the past year, why not keep columbiaclosings.com in mind when you vote for Best Local Web Site or Blog? (Don't worry, you can still read this site even if you vote for someone else :-).

Ballots are in this week's paper, or online at www.free-times.com at the "crown" logo.

I have bowled, I believe, four times. The first time, I had beginner's luck, the other times -- not so much. I have the impression that this alley, on Broad River Road not too far from Briarsgate, has changed hands a couple of times over the years I've been driving by it, an impression reinforced by the repainted look of the No Loitering sign. I'm pretty sure it was a going concern until fairly recently -- the plants inside are still OK, right?

As with many places, I have no idea what happened here. It seems to me that bowling used to be a good bit more popular when I was a kid -- it was often on TV on weekends, and you could send in cereal box-tops for free admission to alleys, but given that there are so many channels now it could just be that I don't run across it as much (and I don't eat cereal anymore either..). I believe that the Robert Putnam's Bowling Alone used the decline of bowling teams as a metaphor for what he thought was wrong with American society in the 90s, but I don't believe that was meant to imply the sport as a whole was on the way out, just the social/team aspect of it. I didn't notice any for sale signs on the property, so I'm not sure what the outlook for it is.

UPDATE 6 October 2017 -- It appears that something is happening here. The notices (from 2015) seem to be to the effect that the owners either need to do some minimal repairs (the building was apparently open to anyone wanting in) or tear it down. I'm not sure if that's what the dumpsters are all about or if there is actually something going in there. The cross painted on the side made me think perhaps a church was taking possession, but there is still a realty sign at the road front, so probably not..

UPDATE 5 February 2019 -- As reported in the comments, now Immunotek:

I like to take pictures in the afternoon, because it seems to me the light is best then (leaving aside the fact that I rarely get my act together before 1 or 2pm anyway if I don't have to..), and so since I happened to be out in the Intersection Center area one Saturday afternoon recently, I decided to walk the whole place and take a bunch of pictures. I think I've already used some, and others will show up from time to time.

This former Chinese restaurant really caught my eye because of the life-sized cut-out figure still affixed to the front wall. I wouldn't call it fine art, but someone put a good bit of work into it once upon a time and it's a shame that it will probably go under the wrecking ball sooner or later. I was going to get a lot closer to the building and do my standard trying to look into the doors etc, but as I turned the corner, I saw a Highway Patrol car sitting beside the next defunct business. I believe there was a major drunk driving crackdown on at the time, and I suppose they were watching Broad River for people they could pull. I know I wasn't doing anything wrong, and I know the Highway Patrol could care less about most non-car related shenanigans, but it made me a bit nervous, so I made sure to flourish the camera very ostentatiously, and tried to look very much like I was not "casing the joint"...

I don't know what happened to Chung King. I think a lot of Chinese restaurants are family run and operate on a shoestring. Perhaps the place put the kids through college and it was time for mom & pop to retire. Perhaps being in a dying strip mall meant there was too little drive by traffic. To me it seems like the place has been closed forever, so I'm saying 1990s in the tag line, but apparently it was open recently enough that one of the online restaurant sites thought it was worth entering in their database -- something that does not give me a great deal of confidence in the rest of their listings!

UPDATE 22 January 2020: Add map icon, update tags.

I only ate at The Santorini Grill once, about two or three years ago, I guess. I believe that the place had just been written up either in The State or The Free Times, and had gotten a pretty good review. After that, I meant to get out there several times, but the location, on Hardscrabble Road, just made it very difficult to do from Forest Acres. You had to take either I-20 or Two Notch to Clemson Road, and then go through a bunch of lights and it was just too much to make it a habbit. That said, the time I did get there, it was quite good. Their now-zombie site has a partial menu (it seems to be missing the "Greek" and "Dessert" pages):

I can't quite recall what I had, but it was probably either Spanakopita if I was going "Greek", or Lasagna.

I know I had trouble getting out there, but given how much the area has grown in the last few years, I would have thought that the place could have made it on the population that lives out there now. I don't know what happened -- perhaps Santorini was simply too upscale.

I see that it will become a pizza place. I wish them luck, but there was a "fancy" pizza place in the previous block of Hardscrabble (where Computer Renaissance is) and it lasted only a few months before going under (the space is some sort of Asian place now).

I like the Santorini building quite a bit. It's a nice structure, and I am partial to Lantana. It's a bit disappointing to see it from the rear and realize the nice smooth top lines are provided by false walls, but you really do need all that stuff on top of a restaurant, so there's not much else you can do. This final picture is from their zombie web-site. Normally I don't do that, but I guess in this case it's pretty moot. I include it because I like neon, and didn't get a chance to take any of my own pictures with the place lit up.

Thanks to commenter "Elizabeth" for the heads up that this place was gone!

UPDATE 9 June 2009: Well, apparently the North East Pizza Palace idea didn't pan out -- It's now another San Jose

OK, I'm not entirely sure what happened here (housing market crash related perhaps?), but it has the earmarks of being a big mess both for customers and the new owners, who have apparently put themselves in the unenviable position of running a store under the same name while having to explain to customers how they have no connection with the previous owners nor any responsibility to make customers whole vis-a-vis their dealings with same. I give them points for apparently making a good faith effort in that regard though. And where does this other company TRS fit into the picture?

I believe this is the third store on the highly visible left-front side of Sandhills to have something bad happen to it after The Atlanta Bread Company and Sofa Express.

UPDATE:

On the night of Saturday 25 Oct 2008 on my way back from Red Robin, I saw a new sign on Ashley. It was an official notice from the Sherrif or a Magistrate to the effect that Ashley either had to pay their rent or show cause why they shouldn't be evicted. I didn't have my camera with me, and on Sunday the 26th, it was gone

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

UPDATE 21 May 2010 -- Apparently this place will become a Gold's Gym. I had previously reported that the Gold's would be going into the neighboring former Sofa Express location, but that seems to be a temporary presale operation only, with the actual gym going here:

UPDATE 14 July 2010: The Gold's Gym setup is done, and the temporary gym/presale in the old Sofa Express building is closed, with the new gym now running in this building.

UPDATE 25 April 2018 -- Ashley has returned to Sandhill, in the former H. H. Gregg location at 230 Forum Drive:

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.

I believe that over the years, I was only in Corma's once, to get some barley malt syrup for a bagel recipie. They had it, and I was saved a trip over to the Rosewood Market. What with the ongoing renovations to Trenholm Plaza, if you want that syrup, or some Flower Essences, you need to head towards the Fort a block or so and check them out in their new location, the site of the old Wally & Crumb cookie store next to Ed Robinson Laundry and Cleaners.

I had noticed this salon off and on for a number of years. It was what I took to be an office strip mall on Two Notch Road near Very's and across the road from Dentsville Baptist Church. I noticed earlier this month that it had closed up, but when I stopped to take some pictures of it, I found that the "strip mall", Dentsville Office Mall was actually more interesting.

I had never realized it, but it's obvious once you go back into the parking lot for the place that it used to be one of the many US 1 roadside motels in Columbia. The old guest rooms form a "U" shaped court with a two story Office/Lobby in the center. I don't know what it was called as a motel, or exactly when it closed, but you can tell from a couple of these shots something that was confirmed by a gentleman who came out to chat with me: The grassy plot in front is actually the former swimming pool area. Once you know it was a motel, even the main sign looks like it's a 50s design with the panels relabeled.

As you can also see here, some of the guest rooms behind Touch of Joy have been fire damaged in recent years, and the plan is apparently to convert them into a number of self-storage units rather than try to restore the old hotel electrical and plumbing in that area. The rest of the mall seems to be "destination" businesses which don't rely on high street visibility: A tax service, a dental lab and and an alteration shop. It's a nice little bit of history I never noticed before.