Columbia Closings   What's not in Columbia anymore

This year the annual Brookgreen Gardens Nights of 1000 Candles festival is set up a little differently in that you need to buy your tickets online in advance. This was done to prevent overcrowding and expedite the often rather tedious entrance process. It worked well, but I think they may have perhaps shot themselves a bit in the foot income-wise because it did seem to to reduce the crowd a good bit from previous years. At any rate, I chose 2 December this year, and the night was quite comfortable, not as cold as some years where I could barely feel the camera buttons through the frostbite, nor as warm as one or two years when I didn't need a jacket at all.

There's always a bit that's different or new every year, but this year the changes were fairly modest: I think the only one that really comes to mind is a new field of staked candles on the green space in front of Pegasus. The vintage christmas display did have some new roller coasters on the Lionel display, and they really zipped along!

The festival is running weekends through 18 December, so if you have some spare time, and are in, or can get to, the area, I highly recommend it.

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Well now, despite my taste in music, I'm probably the last person in the world to walk into a surf shop. So when I noticed that WallerBears in Myrtle Beach was closed (sometime after 18 June 2016 according to blog), it was not because I regretted missing the chance to freshen up my water wardrobe, but because I missed the sign, which impressed me enough several years ago that I took quite a few pictures of it:

This old building had been a number of things over the years, most of which I cannot at all recall, but I think at one time it was a "reproduction" furniture store, and at another time an arts & crafts store.

In fact, it was in that later incarnation that was the only time I went inside, and then only by mistake. I believe it was in the 90s, and the south strand did not yet have a lot of options for coffee. Certainly there was nothing like today's environment where every McDonalds has decent specialty coffee (and excellent regular coffee). I don't believe that Latte Litchfield had yet opened, (though the Chocolate & Coffee House in the Litchfield Exchange a mile or so north had). At any rate, to get back to the story, I was driving back to the Island and saw a sign on this building advertising Cappuccino, and thinking a late afternoon caffeine fix sounded pretty good, I turned in.

Well, as it happened, I had misread the situation, thinking that the whole building was one business, when in fact it was two. The arts and crafts store was in main front part, while the cafe operation was in the attachment to the rear, and was closed for the day, something of which I was unaware. In fact, the arts and crafts operation was closing too as it was, I think, 6pm, and as I stepped inside, the guy was turning off the lights.

He promptly turned them back on, showing rows of items I had no interest in buying (not that it was bad stuff, but I was just looking for coffee) and starting a speil about local craftsmen. In the end, I felt bad enough about causing him to re-open when he was obviously ready to leave for the day, especially when I had caused him to do so through my mistake, that I ended up buying a hand painted sheet-metal lizard magnet to make myself feel a little better about putting him to the trouble and hopefully to make him feel I had hadn't totally wasted his time. The lizard actually turned out to be a cheery little piece that is still on our refrigerator.

Both the craft store and the cafe closed fairly shortly thereafter, but as you can see from these pictures, both spaces were reoccupied, and lizards continued to be associated with the property.

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I wondered at this little place when I drove by in early 2012. Apparently it was part of replacing three different former operations on the same property

The Kickin’ Horse stayed empty for a number of years. I always hoped that something fun would pop up there… and now it has. Where the Tackleshop was, there is now The Lowcountry Mermaid (which carries new and used furniture, home accessories, etc.). The small restaurant has been taken over by the Funky Little Kitchen (great burgers!) and I just recently heard that the stages out behind the place have been taken over by Awendaw Sound

The location, on US-17 between Georgetown & Charleston is rather rural, and I wasn't sure that anything as quirky as the shop looked to be could make it there. It appears, unfortunately, that I was right as according to their Facebook page, they closed down sometime soon after 25 April 2012.

Murrels Inlet's hardluck mall Inlet Square took another blow in May with the closing of Frank Theaters.

This is actually the second set of theaters in this spot. I don't think I did a closing on it, but for many years this site was a Regal Cinema, and the setup kind of used to amuse me, since they often tore your ticket at the window and had no ticket taker inside. I'm sure many a teen just wandered in, and into a any showroom despite any lack of money or sufficent age for an "R" film.

After Regal closed, Frank Theaters leased the spot and did an extensive remodel for their cinema/restaurant/bowling/arcade conceptCine Bowl & Grille. I don't think the airport type restaurant and bar was really credible in the area, but the bowling alley portion seemed to do a good business as did the movies from what I could tell. There was no "attraction" screen like an "Imax" or "RPX", but it was all digital, and had pretty comfortable seats. I'm trying to recall the last movie I saw here, which would have been around Easter, but I'm drawing a blank.

At any rate, I was pretty surprised on my last trip around Memorial Day when I was googling movie times and nothing was coming up in Murrells Inlet: The Sun News has the story. On reflection, however, should have seen it coming. Several years before, I had seen this story about how the theater was way behind in lease payments to the mall. Since the place stayed open, I figured the two sides had worked something out. Apparently however, the theater was playing the same game as Borders Books, the "We're too important to you for you to kick us out" ploy. Given the sorry state of Inlet Square, you might almost expect that to work, but in the event, not.

In the past, when we stayed on Pawleys, we had the options of movies in Georgetown (The Hub), Litchfield (Tara), and Surfside (Deerfield Cinema), all south of Myrtle Beach. Now, the closest place is Market Commons.

I was driving South on US-17 from Pawleys to Charleston last Saturday when I happened to notice this former store on the East side of the road in McClellanville. I actually drove past it, but then decided to turn around since the light was good, and I had no confidence it would still be there the next time I was in the area.

I had figured it for an old small general-store/country-store type of operation, and I suspect that was indeed the case, but a closer inspection turned up the fact that it had most recently been a thrift shop, and indeed a good bit of the merchandise was still in the interior, including books, lamps and various small kitchen electrics.

Also, as I went around the back of the store, I caught sight of the old house to which the store was presumably attached, and it is an impressive two story structure dating, by looks, to the early years of the 20th century, possibly the 1920s. The brick columns and porch in particular put me in the mind of my great-aunt's Vox community house in the Pee-Dee. There are real estate signs for the whole three acre property, but since they are for commercial activity, and the house is obviously not being maintained, I suspect both buildings will be soon knocked down, which I feel is an especial shame for the house. I would love to have a house like that on a lot with oaks & magnolias like that -- though perhaps not on a four lane highway.

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Another day, another .

This location of the floundering chain apparently closed on 6 March, along with the Conway store, leaving the North Myrtle Beach location as the only one in Horry County (I have not checked on the one Georgetown location).

This particular parcel is behind Walmart at the southeast corner of the intersection of US-17 Bypass and SC-544. The area is still growing, with an active Kohl's/Home Depot strip across from Walmart and a Target anchored strip on the northwest corner. This resturant itself apparently did a very good business, but the problems of the parent chain nonetheless dragged it down.

4 December this year was one of the warmer iterations of Brookgreen Gardens Nights of 1000 Candles, and by that, I mean that I could feel the buttons on my camera without my hands going numb.

As usual, the Gardens were beautifully lit, and there were entertainment tents with jazz, vocal ensembles and rock sounds of the season and wandering bagpipers. My impression is that they are getting a little bolder in color choices for the lights though of course the hundreds of candles, floading candles and luminaries remain.

The festival runs for two more weekends, on 10-12 December and 17-20 December and if you have a chance, I highly reccommend you go.

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Planet Hollywood in Myrtle Beach was always an interesting building to drive by. I thought it looked a bit like an elephant "hoovering up" (as our Brit friends might say) customers from the parking lot through that trunk-like canopy and into the elephant's head. There also seem to be some scary teeth involved.

In the event, though I drove by many times, I only ate at Planet Hollywood once. I'm guessing it was back in the 90s, and I had an unobjectionable, but completely unexceptional hamburger. I have heard in recent years rumors that the place was in financial trouble, and I can only guess that people wised up to the fact that a burger's proximity to Bruce Willis's tennis shoes or whatever does not make it worth $15 -- the place limped through the 2015 Labor Day weekend and threw in the towel on the following Tuesday.

The night pictures above were taken on 3 May 2012, while the post-closing pictures below are from 3 October 2015, a gray day coming just before the bottom dropped out on 4 October (though it was not anywhere near as bad on the Waccamaw Neck as in Columbia). I find it interesting that while they did not spend a lot of effort destroying the celebrity handprints around the building, they *did* spend considerable time defacing the nameplates that would have told whose hands they were. (Though they did miss a few).

(Hat tip to my sister)

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I don't really have a specific date for this closing, but I was down at the beach at the start of August, and am pretty sure I would have noticed if this KFC, next to the new Dollar General had been closed then as it was on Labor Day weekend.

I'm a little surprised at this closing as it was a newly renovated store. The original store, opened probably in the late 80s, was a "mini" KFC that did a mostly drive-through business, and when the time came that the chain wanted a full store, there were concerns whether they could manage it on the piece of property they had, given that the setback and spacing rules had just changed. In the event they came up with the design you see here, which apparently satisfied all the agencies and seemed to do a good business for a number of years.