Columbia Closings   What's not in Columbia anymore

Sometimes it seems as though restaurants go through phases, and for a while the "build-your-own-pizza" phase was hot. I never went to Blaze, but I have been to Mod, and I understand that it's a similar experience: You go through a line like you are building a buritto except it's a pizza, and after you have all your toppings they quick-fire it and there you go.

It's a concept that has been going through some tough times as Mod went through bankruptcy recently and closed locations, 1000 Degress never got here, and now all the Midlands Blaze locations have shut down.

Blaze is not the first restaurant to close in this storefront, back in 2013, it was Al Amir with the place sitting vacant, I believe, until Blaze moved in in 2016.

Here is the story in The State & The Free Times.

(Hat tip to commenter Tom)

The first image above made me think of Villa Villekulla over the weekend, as I took it on 4 September 2021 during my Labor Day weekend visit, so I figured it was time to do a closing.

The original Villa Villekulla of course was the ramshackle, but magical, house that Pippi Longstocking lived in alone (but with good friends close by) while her father was off plying the seas in the children's books from the early 20th century. And in fact, Fernandina already had a Villa Villekulla connection as one of the Pippi movies was filmed there with a particular house in Old Town (at 212 Estrada Street to be exact), doing duties as the setting during filming.

My memory is that the toy store opened sometime after that, when the connection was still in people's minds, but after the movie itself was largely forgotten (it was not a big hit). The location on 2nd Street, next to the Hampton Inn is an interesting one in that there are two suites in the building not exactly separated. You enter through the street level entrance, and the toy store area is off to your left, though you are basically in it already, but there is a staircase to the right, without a separate door or any barrier, which leads up to the top floor suite which is a totally separate business. When the toy store opened, the top floor was a pretty decent Italian restaurant, and later it became an art gallery. It was a bit of an odd setup.

Anyway, the toy store was somewhat eclectic, with lots of stock that I never saw elsewhere, and generally on my fall or winter visits, I would pick up a number of Christmas presents for my nieces. I remember a number of different type of slime or putty, markers for coloring on windows, throwing balls that would bounce on waves, old-time "car bingo" cards, sidewalk paints & quirky Asian toys. I also picked up a model hot-air balloon as in their logo that spins in the wind.

On my trip last December however, I noticed things had changed. The store had been rearranged leaving much more free-space, possibly to draw attention away from the fact that there was considerably less stock. I still picked up several things, but I took it as a bad sign, something confirmed when I went back in July to find the storfront empty, and papered over with notices of a new enterprise moving in.

I'm not sure exactly what happened, but at one point I found a story about how the store was adding an event space (I can't find it again now). In December, the upstairs art gallery was gone, and my surmise is that Villa Villekulla, possibly already stressed, took the space over to bring in more money, over-extended themselves and had to give it up. That's speculation, all I can say for sure is that their Facebook indicated that they had been trying to sell the store, ended up being unable to do so, and had to vacate on 30 April 2025.

Here is a bit more shared on a neighboring store's Facebook.

It's a shame, it was a nice little place for many years.

UPDATE 18 September 2025: Found an old bag of theirs:

This place is now called Veneziano's. Looking at the Google reviews, it's hard to say exactly when this happened, but apparently the ownership changed about a year ago, and the name probably changed around October of 2024. I had eaten several times at Papa Gio's, and it was not my favorite place. I found that consistently the garlic knots had very little or no garlic on them, and since they did not have 10 inch pizza, I would order a calzone, which would generally have cold ricotta in the filling.

I decided to try Veneziano's, and found the interior much the same with the exception of some tables being removed in the area directly behind the hostess stand. Service was good and friendly, but I still found that the garlic knots had no garlic, and the calzone was filled with chilled ricotta...

Commenter Gypsie points to this nice little house/office across from the Bull Street district. I'm sure it has been many things during its nearly 100 years on the spot.

LoopNet puts the build date at 1930 and says there are hardwood floors and seven parking spaces. Apparently for 240K it's yours.

(Hat tip to commenter Gypsie)

Discount Beer & Tobacco in the Luce strip mall on US-1 in Lexington is moving 1o 1600 West Main Street. This is several blocks East of the current location, and looks like it would be replacing perhaps Boost Mobile or Eagle Express at the corner of West Main (US-1) and Westside Drive.

The Bojangles at the corner of Elmwood and Park is closed for remodeling.

They have revamped a number of stores over the past few years, just reopening the one on Fort Jackson Boulevard.

The State has the story (to a very limited extent) here.

I thought every now and then that I might stop in here, but I was never in the area at the right time, or at least when I hadn't already decided where to go.

The business has been up for sale for a while, and apparently they have not found a buyer, shutting down about 13 August, judging by comments on their Facebook and this State story.

(Hat tip to commenter JamesR)

Here is another spot which has succumbed to the curse of 3315 Farrow Road. I don't know anything about it other than their Facebook suggests they opened in September of 2024.

This Olympia spot, sharing a building with liquor & convenience stores, announced late last year that they would have to close if they could not sell the operation. In the event, that did not happen, and The State has the story on the actual closing.

This is one of many spots around town I was never really aware of, but they apparently had quite a wide-ranging menu.

(Hat tip to commenter Mr. Hat)

This former Waffle House was vacant for more than ten years before becoming King Smoke & Vape sometime early in 2025. To me it seemed that the Grand Opening sign had barely gone up before the place was closed, but Google reviews suggest it was open several months at least.