Columbia Closings   What's not in Columbia anymore

This little storefront is on Devine Street more or less across the street from the former Burger King and in the same strip as the former Brassworks.

I don't get many hits on the address, but according to the Secretary Of State's Office, at one time this was Midlands Tax And Business Services, Inc. which disbanded in 2007.

I don't have any information on Styles By Sir Walter aside from the fact that it was listed in the February 1997 phonebook as being a few doors down from this slot at 4443 Devine.

This 24 hour gym was in Boozer Shopping Center on the Bush River Road side just a few slots down from Dunkin' Robbins. This is not too far away from the former Curves gym on Colonial Life Boulevard.

This little three suite building on Farrow Road just past SC-277 (headed away from town) was the home of the Short Stop Barber Shop & Hair Styling barber shop and salon on the right side of the building, and Dessie Short Stop III convenience store on the left side of the building and an ABC store in between.

You can still see where the barber pole was mounted on the wall, but the shop closed sometime before the February 2007 phonebook. There is a large gap in the books I have at home, but I can say that it *was* listed in the February 1997 book.

The convience store is not listed in any of my phonebooks, so apparently it went into operation after the Feb 1997 book and closed before the Feb 2007 one. (There is still another Dessie Short Stop at another location). This does not quite jibe with the Richland County business license list, which lists the place as holding business licenses as a convenience store in both 2008 and 2009 although it is consistent with the Columbia Star report of an application for a beer and wine permit in September 2006.

I don't have any information on the Red Dot ABC store in suite 2.

As I've mentioned, there was a time in my life when I saw three or four movies a week. After I left college, that dropped way off (though I still did manage to see both The Little Mermaid & The Incredibles upwards of 20 times each).

I think if I had stayed in Columbia, I might have stayed more in the habit -- I would look at the Nickelodeon calendars and see a lot that looked interesting, but having limited time in town rarely got around to it. As it is, I remember seeing two movies in particular here. The first was Gunga Din with Cary Grant. This was a splendid old light-hearted adventure film, and I saw it with my father, who had also seen it when it was first released in 1939. The second was completely different, in fact it was And Now for Something Completely Different, the first Monty Python film (which Wikipedia says is a reshooting of some of their classic sketches, which I did not realize at the time). I'm sure I saw a few other films at The Nick, but I'm a bit blurry on the details now.

Anyway, The Nickelodeon has now moved to the other side of the State House at 1607 Main Street. This is the site of the old Fox theater. I am pretty sure that the last time I was in the Fox was in 1977 to see Ralph Bakshi's Wizards. In fact, I had somehow convinced my mother and sister to go with me, and the film was so awful that they both walked out and shopped what was left of Main Street while I toughed it out to the end. I wonder if The Nick will do a Bakshi retrospective some day..

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I assume Cash Kwik was one of the areas many payday loan operations, though the sign doesn't really say anything specific. They tend to come and go fairly quickly, probably because there's a lot of competition, and they make loans to people who aren't very credit-worthy -- get the interest rate wrong by a few points and there goes your margin..

There are still a couple of this chain in town, but I am unable to find this particular one in any phonebook I have at home, so I'm just giving "late 2000s" for the closing date. Certainly it's been gone long enough to have its placard removed from the roadside marquee for Magnolia Pointe.

Magnolia Pointe is the Pig-anchored plaza at the South-East corner of Clemson Road and Hardscrabble Road. It has a few other vacancies, but still looks better than The Crossings with is just across Hardscrabble.

I noticed this vacancy on Percival Road (between Alpine & Smallwood Roads) the other day when I was running out to Sandhill and decided against taking I-20. According to this year's phonebook (February 2012), the new location for Jacob's Heating & Air is 2213 Screaming Eagle Road, several miles towards US-601 from here. Assuming they are after the Columbia market, that seems like it would be a lot more truck miles per year, but perhaps they are after Lugoff & Camden.

This garage, which apparently caught fire some years ago, is on Dreyfuss Road, just down from the intersection with Assembly Street, and to the north side of the stadium.

I didn't see an intact street number on it anywhere, so I can't google the address to see what it was. It was pretty clearly a commercial garage, but I don't see any evidence of lifts or pits, so prehaps it was more of a dispatch and storage garage than a service one. In any case, the visibility and location are poor for anything catering to the general public. I've put the closing date as the very indefinite "2000s", but even that's just a guess -- 1990s wouldn't surprise me. At any rate it's been derelict long enough to be fairly heavily tagged.

Anyone know what this was?

UPDATE 23 June 2012: Well, commenter badger provides and address "1011 Dreyfuss Road" and a link to this WLTX story about the Christmas Eve 2009 fire that gutted the place. With that address, I was able to find a number of former tenants of the place, and I have changed the post title from "Garage" to a list of names. I also note that I was wrong about the place not catering to the general public.

Commenter ED points out that the Bel-Air Barber Shop, a Boozer Shopping Center institution, has closed after 40 years. The old style places certainly seem to be closing faster than new ones are springing up. And of course it's depressing to note as well that if this place was 40 years old -- it is a lot *newer* than the places I started getting my hair cut..

(Hat tip to commenter ED)