Columbia Closings   What's not in Columbia anymore

Dixie Used Furniture was on Gervais Street below Assembly. If you were heading down towards the river, it would be on the left hand side of the street in the building which I think became the Vista's brew-pub and now houses some other restaurant.

Dixie was a type of store which was once fairly common but is now almost gone: The real "used furniture" aka "junk" store. To walk into Dixie as a child was to enter a world of wonder. The building was not air-conditioned, so there were always big fans keeping up a running chatter, and there was dust on pretty much everything. There were a few hanging light fixtures under the high ceiling, but parts of the store were always in shadow.

Although there was used furniture to justify the store name, it seemed to me that the main business was used appliances, and the center aisle was lined with rows of more or less decrepit refrigerators, stoves and washers. There were sometimes old vending machines too, and I think for a time the owners kept operating a Coke machine which had a manual crank like a Model-T. You paid the owner, then turned the crank, and a cold bottle came out the bottom.

My favorite part of the place was the bookshelves. These were alongside the left (closest to Assembly) side of the store, and could have absolutely anything that had ever been printed on them. The books ranged from gems like copies of the original Tom Swift books (Tom Swift and His Sky Train, Tom Swift and His Giant Searchlight etc) to semi-current hardbacks (a copy of Philip K. Dick's The Galactic Pot Healer [man I ended up hating that book!]) to old pulp magazines and trashy 60s & 70s paperbacks. After that, I liked to walk the aisles of junk: from old kitchen gadgets, toasters juicers and the like to odd electrical items I couldn't figure out.

My only problem with Dixie and other used furniture stores was that my mother was really into the "furniture" aspect of them, and it took her much longer to peruse that than it did for me to scour the shelves and sift the junk, leaving long periods of boredom after the initial excitement. The space race was on during the years of her heaviest visitations, and I recall clearly a dream in which I was on a rocket to the moon which she demanded stop at a used furniture store on the way..

As the years went on, the category of "used furniture store" gradually went by the wayside. I think that part of it was growing affluence and the migration of the best pieces of furniture to "antique" stores, the other part may have been the value of the real estate vs the value of selling junk. I very much suspect that was the case for Dixie with its gentrifying Vista location. At any rate, I think it and its sister store closed sometime in the 80s. Too bad. It sounds like they're considering "improving" our washing machines like they improved our toilets. A place with a row of used top loaders might not be so bad..

Wally & Crumb was a small cookie bakery on Forest Drive next to the La-Z-Boy warehouse near Trenholm Plaza. I stopped by a couple of times and got some chocolate chip cookies which were perfectly OK, but I think in the end the place had four problems:

1) Location

In general, a cookie store is not a destination in and of itself. I think if they had managed to locate in Trenholm Plaza, or the plaza with Piggly-Wiggly a bit up the road, they might have gotten some foot traffic from shoppers going to other destinations.

2) Signage

The main sign for the business read "cookies FOR SALE". If you were just driving by and looked over, your first impression would be that the building was for sale.

3) Lack of Marketing

Obviously I don't know what type of marketing the owners tried to do, but with their location, it would have made sense to try to get their cookies into Starbucks, The Fresh Market, Holey Dough, Hooligans & Books-A-Million at Trenholm plaza, if possible with a little placard like "We proudly offer Columbia baked Wally & Crumb Cookies!". I don't know how much freedom managers at national chains like Starbucks have to offer local products, but certainly Hooligans or Holey Dough would not have been out of the question.

4) The Product

As I said up front, the cookies were perfectly OK, but they were "hard" cookies, like Chips-A-Hoy. I think that goes against people's expectations for a "cookie store". When people go to a cookie store, they want something they can't get from Keebler or Chips-A-Hoy: freshly baked soft cookies. The hard cookie market is adequately served by the national bakers and by making hard cookies Wally & Crumb removed a reason to stop at their store.

Rosa Linda's was one of the first out-of-town places I became a "regular". Once I had a job, and car, my comings and goings from the beach came to depend more on my whims than elaborate family vacation plans, and when I was on the coast alone, I could always choose a place I liked. At the time (and still to a large extent), what I liked was Mexican and pizza.

Rosa Linda's billed itself as a Mexican/Italian restaurant, a combination which seems natural to me, but which I have seldom seen elsewhere. Of course, it wasn't authentic Mexican food, and the menu would cheerfully admit as much, but it was Mexican food prepared in a way which seemed very natural to me as a South Carolinian, and I quickly became addicted to the chips & salsa, which were almost my first experiences with "hot" food. I realize now that the salsa which seemed so amazing at the time was in fact Pace Medium, but it was certainly better than what was (and is) served at Mexican run Mexican restaurants, and the chips were made on-site, and were excellent. The pizza was prepared in a brick oven, and was the best single item on the menu. The crust was thin, but not anexoric, and firm but not brittle. It was also great for dipping in any of the salsa you might have had left over.

The wait staff was uniformly friendly, and they became so used to seeing me there, that they gave me their "locals" discount card (despite the fact that I was living in Fayetteville and then Aiken at the time) and membership pin. Supposedly, if you wore the pin, you would get seated first if there were a line. That didn't seem quite fair to me, so I never wore it, but I didn't hesitate to take advantage of the discount card which got you 10% off everything except bar drinks for the whole party. Being in the program also meant you got a postcard every year on your birthday with some sort of free food offer. I'm not sure I still have the pin or card. I know they were in my '85 Camry when it was totaled, and I'm not sure I've seen them since.

I was very upset when I came down to the beach one spring and found Rosa Linda's closed. I'm not sure I got the complete story from a lady in another local establishment but it seemed to boil down to family issues, and maybe moving somewhere outside the country to retire rather than to a failure of the business.

There were originally two other Rosa Linda's locations, each run independantly, but with the same menu. Once was in Myrtle Beach near the old Myrtle Square and the other was in North Myrtle Beach almost across from Barefoot Landing. The Myrtle Beach location was subpar. I ate there a few times, but it was never as good as the other two, and it closed before the Murrells Inlet location. The North Myrtle Beach location was as good as the Murrells Inlet (but too far a drive to become a "hangout" for me), and soldiered on until they lost their lease and were unable to find another location. A new Olive Garden restaurant was opened on that lot.

After the Murrells Inlet location closed down, no other operation was able to make a go of the location. The first to try was some sort of chain Mexican place whose name I cannot now recall. That lasted about a year and was followed by a Mexican run Mexican restaurant, which didn't last much longer. That was followed by The Royal Oak a faux English tavern operation which had a formidable number of different beers on tap, as well as burgers and pizza. I tried the pizza, and found it inferior to Rosa Linda's by a good bit. The pub folded last year, and the building is now vacant again. Oh well.

UPDATE 7 July 2009: Added scan of Rosa Linda's loyalty card above.

The Royal Oak was replaced by Spencerz's Sports Pub, which is now "closed for remodeling".

UPDATE 7 October 2009: Added the first picture, which shows Rosa Linda's with some wind damage after Hurricane Hugo in the fall of 1989

UPDATE 26 October 2009: Added the picture of the building's current tenant, Spencer'z Sports Pub (the pizza is 'ok', not nearly as good as Rosa Linda's).

UPDATE 22 Jan 2010: Well, looks like the Rosa Linda's folks are going to have a reunion (see the comments). Maybe they can rent their old building -- because Spencer'z South went under this week..

UPDATE 3 June 2010 -- Well, after 30+ years of being a restaurant, it appears the building will now be a golf shop:

UPDATE 12 April 2011 -- Good news! A new Rosa Linda's will be opening in the old Hoof 'n' Finz:

UPDATE 14 May 2011 -- The new Rosa Linda's is open!

I went by the other night, and am very pleased! They don't have a pizza oven because of structural limitations in the building, but the enchiladas taste exactly as I remember, as do the chips and Mexicana Mud.

I'm more than a litte hazy about where the giant slide was. It was definitely in the West Columbia/Cayce area. If I had to guess, I would say it may have been on Airport Blvd near what's now the I-26 interchange, but it could have been further out on the Charleston Highway.

At any rate, it was clearly an economic boondoggle which didn't last more than a single season, which was a real shame. The way I remember it, it had a large number of sliding "lanes", possibly as many as a dozen. You would get a piece of some sort of fabric to slide on, possibly a carpet patch, or a burlap sack, walk the stairs to the top, pick a lane, get on your fabric and slide down. The whole thing was built on a metal frame, and I think the lanes were fiberglass. I have the vague impression that different lanes may have had different colors. I don't remember the price and whether it was "per ride", a time limit, or per visit. At any rate, it wasn't so exorbitant that my parents wouldn't take us.

As I say, it didn't remain a going concern for very long, but it sat there, defunct for at least several years. We kids didn't quite understand the concept "out of business". The slide was still there, surely if we kept going, eventually we would catch it when it was open. Our parents, I'm sure, rolled their eyes and tried to get the concept into our minds, but eventually every time we were in Cayce for Sunday dinner, they would give in to our pestering and drive us out to the slide afterwards. I can't remember exactly when the slide was finally torn down, but I think it was gone by the Tricentennial.

UPDATE:

In the comments, Jaby Baby says the slide was called The Magic Carpet and was on Airport Blvd. Thanks Jaby!

Consider the video arcade: Is there a more 80s location you can think of? These places flourished in that relatively narrow span of years between "Pong" and ubiquitious PC and console gaming. Video games started out in corners, perhaps forcing out a pinball machine or other mechanical amusement device, then spread to their own parlors then, aside from Ocean Drive and Chuck-E-Cheese faded back into corners again.

At one time Columbia had 6 video arcades that I can think of: One in a building specially built for it on Two Notch Road near where the I-77 interchange is now, one at Decker Mall, one at Bush River mall, one at Columbia Mall, and two "Robo's" locations, one at the Jackson Blvd K-Mart plaza, and the other on Main Street.

The Robo's on Main was on the west side of the street, just across from USC's "Towers" dorms (now gone), next to the 7-11 (now gone) and the Pizza Hut (now gone) and Stuffy's (now gone), in a building now gone. You get the picture. I was living in the Towers from 1980 through 1984, when Robo's was in operation. At the time, the USC student newspaper The Gamecock ran Robo's ads which offered cupons good for a free token. Either I or my roomate would walk into the room with the newspaper and say:

Rob?

or

Galag?

Rarely would the other turn down the invitation. Robo's had a wide selection of games, some that are considered classic now, and some that are long forgotten. My particular favorites were Joust, Pengo, and above all Galaga. We played Galaga so often and so long that my hand would bleed from frantically working the controls, and while I never achieved really elite status, I could reliably get to stage 15 and above. My roomate and I developed names for certain of the games tactics and avatars. You really had to beware of "greenies" and the dreaded "triple bee-pass". I was heartened to find recently on a trip to Myrtle Beach that we both can still play the game, though perhaps not quite as well!

At some point, as I intimated above, video arcades became trailing edge, and the crowds left, leaving the businesses to gradually become more decrepit until they couldn't pay the bills. As I recall, Robo's folded long before the building housing it was torn down. I think the arcades at Bush River and Decker pre-deceased even those ill-fated malls, and the one on Two Notch became a carpet store. Oh well, we still had some good times. Got a quarter?

In general, there will be no explicit advance warning that your favorite place is about to close. There are however, some warning signs you can watch for:

The Hours Change

This is a big one. If the place was formerly open on Sunday, but now isn't, if they used to do lunch and supper but now do only lunch, if they used to be open until 10pm, but now close at 8, these are all bad signs.

They are Out of Something Mundane

If you go and they are out of something completely mundane and off the wall, like napkins, or salt, that is a very bad sign.

The Staffing Level Drops

If your favorite waitress is gone, and she has not been replaced, that is a bad sign. If there was a hostess and now there is not, that is a bad sign.

The Owner is Waiting Tables

If the owner just used to circulate occasionally checking to see that everything was OK, but then starts meeting you at the door, seating you and taking your order, that is a very bad sign.

They Drop the Sanitation Service for the Restrooms

If the restroom used to be Sanitized by Swisher, but now has a grocery store bottle of liquid soap, that is a bad sign. It's not that it isn't clean, it still is, but you know they can no longer pay to have it cleaned.

The Menu Changes

If the items that take more work to prepare, or which fewer people order vanish from the menu, that is another bad sign.

If your favorite place starts to exhibit one or more of these signs, well, enjoy it while you can.

Frank-n-Stein's was a monster themed family restaurant. The building is still standing, and now houses, I believe, an Asian eatery, The Millienum Buffet. Before that, it was a strip club called Twin Peaks. I think there were a couple of other businesses in the building over the years as well.

Frank-n-Stein's was one of our spots for Sunday lunch. I don't recall if they actually had "monster" names for all the menu items, but they did have actual steins (glass mugs with handles), which was rather unusal, and they did have franks as well as burgers. I don't know what my parents thought about the place, or remember what they ordered, but they apparently liked it well enough that they wouldn't veto the suggestion.

As with a lot of places I went growing up, I can't remember the exact time it closed, but it was long gone by the time I started driving in the laste 70s.

UPDATE 2 April 2009: Added the street address, added the 1970 Yellow Pages ad, and corrected the name in the post title to reflect the official listing.

UPDATE 12 May 2010: Added Stadium Steak House & Twin Peaks to the post title. Also added the 1998 Bellsouth Yellow Pages ad for Twin Peaks.

UPDATE 13 Oct 2010: Added the Stadium Steak House ad from the 1975-1976 Southern Bell yellow pages.

"Liggett's", as we called it, was in Trenholm Plaza more or less where The Fresh Market now is.

Liggett's was a Rexall drugstore, and like most drugstores, carried a good bit of general merchandise. Unlike most drugstores today, it also had a lunch counter, which, unlike Campbell's Drugstore across Forest Drive, boasted booths as well a counter seating. Before the invasion of Columbia by burger chains, Liggett's was one of the most convienient places in Forest Acres to have lunch. We didn't do it that often. I now eat out every day, but growing up, it was more like once or twice a week (almost always for Sunday lunch). I suspect we went to Liggett's when my mother was carting both of us kids around shopping. My clearest memory of eating there is the day my mother made me try ketchup, something she probably came to rue, since after that, I wanted it on everything!

Liggett's also had a now forgotten piece of equipment called a tube-tester. This was a complicated science-fiction looking console studded with tube sockets with a flip chart up above. You would look up your tube on the flip chart, put it in the correct socket, flip the indicated switches to the correct presets, let the tube "warm up" and then hit the test button. If the tube were good, a needle on the test meter would rise into the green zone. If it were bad, the needle would stay in red or amber. I was always pulling discarded radios and TVs from people's curbside trash on the assumption that I could fix them if I replaced the right tubes. There was actually something to this, but since we had several perfectly good radios and a working TV, my parents were generally not inclined to spring for buying new tubes when I found a bad one, and since my weekly allowance was $0.50, I wasn't often in a position to buy one. It was still fun testing though.

I'm a little hazy on exactly what happened to Liggett's. I have some idea that it might have been totally bought by Rexall, dropping the "Liggett's" name and then may have been bought out by Eckards, which definitely did eventually have a store in that general part of Trenholm Plaza. I think Campbell's outlasted it, and there was some sort of drugstore with a lunch counter that lasted at least into the late 80s (on Garner's Ferry), but I think all of the drugstores with lunch counters are gone from Columbia now. Am I wrong?

UPDATE 17 Nov 08: Thanks to commenter Dennis for the graphic of a tube tester. Try doing that with your Ipod!

UPDATE 14 March 2009: Added 1963 Yellow Pages ad.

UPDATE 30 April 2013: Added picture of the Rexall logo from an old sign displayed at the Antique Mall on Broad River Road.

UPDATE 11 October 2013: Here is an amazing picture of the old Trenholm Plaza, with Liggett's. Thanks to commenter Dennis for digging this up!

I eat out a lot, and I've come to see that there are a number of rules for running a restaurant that are honored in the breach more often than the reverse. None of these are rocket science, but I thought I would write some of them down because a lot of restauranteers really need to read them.

1) Honor Your Posted Hours

I can't over-emphasize this item. Your posted hours are part of your contract with the public. Nobody forced you to post a particular set of hours on your door, but having posted them, you need to honor them. If I have made myself work until 9:30 with the lure of a nice supper based on your promise to be open until 10:30 and I show up to hear "Well, it wasn't very busy, so we closed the kitchen at 9, it's too late for me to go elsewhere. You have ruined my evening.

I try not to be a jerk. I will not waltz in at 5 minutes before closing and order an elaborate meal, but if I show up at least half an hour before posted closing, I expect to find your establishment in full operation.

2) Make More Tea

This is a related point. If I come in at least half an hour before closing, and you are out of tea, I expect you to make more. Yes, some of it will go to waste, but it is on your menu and only costs you pennies to make. Besides, if your staff weren't so hellbent on closing before you are supposed to, they wouldn't have dumped the urn.

3) If My Glass is Empty, Fill it Up

Really what more can I say? Is this so hard to do?

4) Don't Bring the Bill While I am Still Eating

If you bring the check before I have finished my meal, it implies that you want to get rid of me, and is somewhat rude. It also implies that you are washing your hands of me, and that I can expect no further refills. It is also not in your best interests. If I have been contemplating dessert, having a finalized bill pretty much kills the chance that I will ask for anything else.

5) Don't Let the Bill Sit

This is the inverse of the last rule. If I am not ready to go, I will not put cash or a credit card on the check you brought me. When I am ready, and do place my payment, I don't want it to take twenty minutes before you pick it up.

6) Never Ask: Do You Need Change?

If I have a check for $8.21 and hand you a $20 bill and you say "Do you need any change?", it implies you are angling for a $11.79 tip. It's even worse if what I would be getting back is close to (but more than) what I would be leaving you for a tip. In that case it makes me feel stingy for begrudging you an extra eighty cents.

The correct phrase is "I'll be right back with your change". This gives me the opening to say "That's OK" if I intend you to keep everything.

7) Make Sure the Staff Instructions Agree with the Menu

If your menu describes an item of food in one way, make sure the instructions given to the kitchen and wait staff agree with the written description.

For years, the menu at Shoney's described the spaghetti as coming with mushrooms. So I would order spaghetti, and it would invariably come without mushrooms, leading to the following exchange:

I didn't get any mushrooms with my spahgetti

You didn't say you wanted mushrooms

Well, the menu says it comes with them..

The same goes for El Chico, and the guacamole that is supposed to come with the beef burrito..

8) Don't Let the Waitresses set the Thermostat

They are walking around and carrying stuff. It's a hard job, and they are working. I am not, I'm just sitting there gradually freezing to death.

9) If You Must have a TV, Mute It

Sports bars are excluded, I suppose, but if I walk into a general restaurant, I either want to talk with the rest of my party, or if I'm alone, think my own thoughts. I don't want to hear about the news, a soap opera, an infomercial or even the weather I just came in from. On most modern TVs, you can activate a close-caption mode that lets the staff follow their programs without annoying the patrons.

10) Don't Argue

It amazes me that I feel I have to list this one, but it has happened, and flabbergasts me every time.

If I say I need a new fork, don't ask me "What's wrong with that one?". Just get me the fork.

I'm sure you have your own rules that are violated all the time. Leave me a comment, and if I agree, I'll add it to the list!

The Wendy's on Two Notch Road in Dentsville, near the K-Mart and Hess station was the first one in Columbia (at least that's the way I remember it). When Wendy's opened, it had an appealing retro decor: The tables were covered with 1890s newspaper ads, and the walkway was hung with plastic hippie beads and baubles. More importantly, they could make a good burger, the way you wanted it and fast. You placed your order at the register, and by the time you had paid and walked to the end of the counter, your burger was out, hot and customized. This was in marked contrast to McDonalds, Burger King (no matter what their commercials said) and Hardee's. Even aside from getting it quickly, the Wendy's "Single" was larger than a McDonald's burger, and seemed to taste better. Having found a winning formula, they naturally decided to tinker with it. They branched out into other food items like chicken and baked potatoes, added salad bars, and most importantly, slowed down the service. At some point in the 80s, going to Wendy's had become as bad for slow, incompetent service and incorrectly prepared orders as any other burger chain. It's still a cut above McDonalds and Burger King (the jury is still out on Hardee's until I get a chance to try their new Thickburgers..), but nothing special.

I don't know if the Two Notch location was a voluntary closing as part of the general flight from Dentsville (Olive Garden, Kroger, Lizard's Thicket, Target...) or if they just couldn't make it any more.

UPDATE 18 Feb 2011 -- This place is now (and has been for some time) Nick's Gyros & Subs: