Columbia Closings   What's not in Columbia anymore

Well, moving a bit further into Five Points than yesterday, today's posting is "ripped from the headlines", which is to say I was reading The Free Times at lunch today and ran across a breaking story by Patrick Wall to the effect that Elbow Room was closed as of Tuesday night. He has an update on his blog that the new operation in that building will honor the existing Elbow Room bookings, which is nice if a bit odd seeming.

I've written about this building before when it was Dodd's / Von Henman's / Monterrey Jack's / Agave / Nacho Mamma's / 5 Points Pub. To be honest, I wasn't really aware that 5 Points Pub was gone and Elbow Room had moved in. In fact I'm not sure what the last show I saw in a nightclub was. Perhaps The Swimming Pool Qs at Doc's Gumbo Grille if you want to call that a nightclub. Anyway, I wish the new operation luck -- it's starting to look like anything going into that storefront is going to need it.

I noticed this indoor flea market back in September, I think. It was in the old Capitol Centre strip behind Columbia Mall. This is an ill starred retail complex which has seen the failure or relocation of Circuit City, Capitol Centre Theater, Movies Behind The Mall, Office Depot, Aliens & Alibis and Cucos Mexican Cafe. It was several hours before the closing hour stated on the doors when I walked in, but most of the vendors had already covered their wares and gone for the day. I believe I was the only customer in the place, which is always uncomfortable for the amount of attention you get then. In particular a guy came up to assure me that it was usually much busier than this and that anyway they were going to do a grand re-launch event in October. I thanked him and wished them well, but was mentally shaking my head as I walked out. Just from the atmospherics I was 90% certain the place was going to be gone before the New Year, which is in fact what happened.

This kind of place can make it, but I think it requres some special circumstances. For instance, there is an indoor flea market on US-17 just south of Myrtle Beach that has been going for ten years or so. *But*, they have high visibility from a busy highway *and* have an operating Food Lion in the plaza which brings in traffic. Unfortunately, Jim's Discount Mall was not visible from any road. Even if you were coming into Columbia Mall (which is not the draw it was once anyway), you cannot see up the hill into Capitol Centre. Further, there is no store still operating in the plaza that pulls in any regular traffic. Without any of that, it would take a lot of advertising to get the word out, and that is a problem for a low margin operation. If I were going to pick a place in Columbia where an indoor flea market would have a chance to work, it would be one of the empty Goody's buildings which still have good visibility and working stores in their plazas (this actually has sort-of happened on a temporary basis) or the old Circuit City area on Two Notch. (There is also distressed space in The Village at Sandhill, but I suspect they are not yet ready to accept lower market clients on a long term basis). Of course all those rents are probably still higher than Capitol Centre.

Club Kryptonite was in what is actually one of the more normal looking buildings in its section of US-17 Bypass (just north of Broadway At The Beach) in Myrtle Beach. Sure it is somewhat cylindrical, has huge torches and a comic-book logo on the front, but it's not a pyramid like the nearby Hard Rock Cafe or a really awkward looking sphere like the next-door Planet Hollywood.

I would hear the Club Kryptonite commercials from time to time on the radio at the beach, and they always made it sound like a really hip, risque, happening, appealing place, except for the fact that I'm years past the target demo, don't dance, hardly drink, don't much like loud techno or hip-hop and get stopped up if there's any smoke in the air... Still I wouldn't have minded seeing the inside.

Looking at the club's fossil web page and various fliers one thing that is somewhat surprising is that there is no mention of any connection with DC Comics. It's obvious that the club's logo is meant to invoke Superman's chest shield and, of course, Kryptonite is the fictional substance that is Superman's one weakness (OK, he's also vulnerable to magic, but that's not as widely known..). Obviously the club couldn't use the famous "S" logo without permission, but apparently DC neglected to ever trademark the word "Kryptonite". (I actually think the spelling "Klub Kryptonite" would have worked a little better, appropos to nothing).

According to the Myrtle Beach Sun News, Halloween 2009 was the club's last gasp:

I believe that this is the final radio ad and that this is the final promotion:

More pictures and audio after the jump..

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I mentioned the situation of the Economy Inn on Briargate Circle in passing in my closing for The Delhi Palace Indian restaurnt which moved from the Inn to Saint Andrews Road.

To recap briefly, the place had gotten into a really odd state, and the original Lobby and meeting rooms in the front building by the restaurant had fallen into disuse and genteel disrepair. Oddly instead of combating this, the hotel had decided to lease the area to a church and remodel an area in the guest room building as a new lobby.

I don't know if it was triggered by Delhi Palace moving out and leaving the front building entirely unused or some other consideration, but the place has dropped the Economy Inn affiliation, and is now a Rodeway Inn & Suites (though you can still see the Economy Inn branding on the new lobby area for now.

Well, I suppose it's a bit of a cheat to do a closing for an event that will repeat this weekend, but hey, it's a closing for the 11 December viewing date only.

If you can make it to the coast this weekend (17th, 18th or 19th) the show is well worth your time. The gardens are lit as you see, and there are singers, bagpipers, food and drink.

I took my tripod with me this year, set the aperture to f2.0, the ISO to 80 and let the camera set whatever exposure it liked. Often it worked quite well, other times not so much (these are some of the ones I think did OK). The long exposures mean you can see blurs for people walking by in some pictures. It was supposed to be much warmer on the 12th than the 11th, but it was also supposed to rain, so I went out on the colder night. It wasn't too bad except when I was trying to feel the little buttons on the camera and could not find them at all in some cases!

It's all pictures after the jump.

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Today's bonus post comes from commenter Dennis, as do the photos:

After driving past a million times and promising myself to take some pictures before USC bulldozes it, I finally stopped and got some photos of the old Woman's Club building at 1703 Blossom St., next to their tennis center.

As you can see it is slowly moldering away. It has achieved a wonderful haunted house feel, and I'm sure it has a thousand stories and a few ghosts. I don't think it's used for anything currently. For years it was a little rundown but still rented a lot for fraternity and sorority parties. I've been to several wedding receptions and parties there.

It's basically one big room with a kitchen on the end, and some tiny side rooms. I peeked in one years ago and there was a wonderful, poster-sized b&w photo in an old frame showing the club in its heyday, with dozens of stylish ladies wearing their best hats and pearls at long banquet tables, taken in the 1940s I'd guess. I tried hard to track down who to ask about getting my hands on it but never could figure out who to talk to.

The Woman's Club of Columbia is still around and very active. They now meet here:

http://www.gfwc-sc.org/headquarters.htm

Columbia City Council records show that they were given permission and "encouragement" to put up a plaque explaining the history of the old Blossom St. place. It hasn't happened yet. The building has been nominated to go on the federal List of National Historic Places, but I don't think that has happened yet either. It's currently owned by USC and valued at $700,00 but I'm sure the acre and a half lot is worth a lot more than that. And the huge oak trees are priceless.

UPDATE 8 November 2009: Added '1940' to post title.

The last time I was in Doc's Gumbo Grille would have been 11 May 2007. In fact, that was only the second time I had been there, the first being for another Qs show. I can't say I was as enthusiastic about the food as some folks. It may have just been that I was ordering the "we have to have this or some guy in a group will always veto us" menu items instead of the gumbo, but I thought the food was average. That said, I wasn't there for the food, and the place was a pretty good venue. In particular, the acoustics were much improved over the last place I had seen the Qs, the New Brookland Tavern, and the staff was friendly. It's definitely a shame to see another local music venue close. (Not that I see shows these days, or really regularly any days..)

Eva has the story of the closing in The Free Times, and it appears the biggest blow to the place was the SCE&G lunch crowd's recent departure from downtown. I hope that doesn't have any other knock-on effects in the Vista.

As usual with anything on the west side of a street, these pictures are not great as I never get out early enough to have the sun behind me. Unfortunately, I also missed the neon sign being lit. The last time I saw it on, I was driving somewhere and couldn't stop to take the picture.

UPDATE 3 November 2009: Added "Kinch's" to the post title based on the comments.

UPDATE 4 November 2009: Added "Shealy's Sandwiches" based on Badger's comment and looking in the 1970 Yellow Pages

UPDATE 9 April 2010: For whatever reason, someone turned on the sign the night of the 6th, so I got some pictures of it lit up and have added them at the front of the pictures.

UPDATE 14 April 2010 -- Here's the new Doc's location at 3830 Rosewood Drive:

UPDATE 15 May 2011 -- The follow-on operation on Assembly, is now open (and has been since at least mid 2010):

Also, the Doc's on Rosewood went under after the move.

Well, The South Carolina State Fair was fun as usual. My only regret is that I did not get to ride the bumper-cars this year since I would have been the only one on the floor at the time I went by, and what's the fun of that? Oh, and I didn't manage to score a free yardstick anywhere this year.

Other than that, you've got your french fries, Italian sausage, fried mushrooms, cinimon rolls, performing sealions, elephants, rides, art and lots and lots of neon. What's not to like?

You can pretty much stop here if you don't like lots of photos, that's about all that's after the jump. I'm a little disappointed in how my Panasonic Lumix DMC-LX3 handled the neon. Last year my deceased Kodak DX3600 tried its little heart out to make sense of the low light conditions it was never built for, and I think actually got better saturation on the neon than the Lumix, even though the Lumix is a much better camera. On the other hand, I just locked the Lumix F-stop at 2.2 and let it do whatever it wanted with the shutter, there's probably a better neon setting somewhere. (The thing has the most driest, most snoozeworthy manual of nearly anything I've seen). Interestingly, whereas usually the JPGs I get by manually processing the camera raw files are more pleasing than the ones the camera creates, the opposite was true here. Anyway, even if the average quality wasn't as pleasing, I still think I got some very nice shots. So if you like that kind of thing, and have a while to download, hit the "MORE" link.

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The Wade Hampton Hotel was a fixture across from The Capitol when I was growing up, although I don't believe I ever set foot inside. The place had a "I was built in the 1940s" look which is enhanced by the marquee shown in one picture identifying the place rather antiquely as Hotel Wade Hampton rather than The Wade Hampton Hotel.

There was a restaurant inside the hotel called Maxim's which I have an ad for somewhere that I have not got around to scanning. It was to the effect that 5 Million Frenchmen are going to the wrong Maxim's!.

By the 70s, the hotel was on a downward slide as national chains built newer properties in more convienient locations as downtown lost its pull and the Interstates came through. By the time I started college at USC in 1980, the hotel had gone under and was being leased by the University as dormitory space much in much the same fashion as Benedict's ill-fated leasing of the old Quality Inn. I don't know if similar safety considerations in the aging building brought that situation to an end or if USC just built sufficient new space (I think Bates came online about that time), but at any rate the arrangement was terminated, and nothing took its place, so the building was finally demolished in the early 80s. I think it was an early morning implosion, which I missed since I am not a morning person, but I could be wrong.

The hotel's place on the block was taken by the AT&T building (or whatever it is called now) and a new building just going up. (Was there something else there in between WH and the crooked looking glass building?)

The views from the Capitol steps are interesting. I had totally forgotten that there was parking in front of the Capitol. Also, the Colonial Life / American Sentinel / WOLO building is really hanging in there isn't it?

Finally google turns up this. This is largely a nostalgia site but lest the retro-spectacle lenses get too rosy, there's a lot to be said for the present as well.

UPDATE 8 Sept 2010: Added Wade Hampton matchbook scan.

UPDATE 25 October 2021: Add full street address to post title. Update tags. Change expired link to wayback machine link. Add map icon.

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