Columbia Closings   What's not in Columbia anymore

Beltline Auto Brokers certainly wasn't the first operation in this sort of sprawling building on Beltline just past the old Kim's Beauty, but it is the most recent.

Interestingly, I am not able to locate a listing in the phonebooks I have at home to say when it closed. Also interestingly, surprisingly few businesses have "Beltline" in their name.

I noticed a sign on the door of Palmetto Carpet Co. near the intersection of Beltline and Devine the other day, and stopped to check it out. Unfortunately I did it rather poorly as I somehow failed to get a closeup of the door sign itself, and my memory fails on some of the details.

The gist was that Palmetto has joined forces with another flooring company and has moved to a consolidated location, the where of which escapes me...

UPDATE 9 December 2013 -- Here's the sign I mentioned. The new address is 4884-G Sunset Boulevard:

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According to their phone ad, PAL Travel has been around since 1976. Since this year's phonebook came out (February 2012), they have elected to consolidate with the AAA Folks at 4526 Forest Drive. You may recall that address as it was very nearly totally destroyed by fire a while back, the results of which you can see at the link.

It's been open again for a while now and all is well:

Here's another Columbia area Burger King getting a facelift.

This King used to be a regular Sunday lunch destination for our family. I particularly recall going there during the odd "Buy a burger, get a Neiman" promotion BK had during the 1970s. The location on the corner of Two Notch and Toronto gave the store a "sneak up" route which consisted of turning onto Dubard from Beltline and then onto Toronto, a route we kids always insisted our parents follow. Or I did, at least. Later we "moved up" to Quincy's for Sunday dinner, and I have hardly set foot in a Burger King in years.

UPDATE 15 January 2013 -- As of the evening of 14 January, this place was open again:

This is another former Shoney's which has been converted into a Lizard's Thicket.

I'm a little hazy about the time period, but it was still open in the 1976 phonebook, and closed in the 1985 one, so I'm going with "1970s".

Our preferred Shoney's location was the Two Notch one, but we did go to this one from time to time. For most of that period, it was still Big Boy affiliated, and we always got the "Big Boy & Dolly" promotional comics, and if we were lucky, the "Hot Fudge Cake". Mmm!

UPDATE 10 September 2020: Update tags, add map icon.

Well, this one is a shame as I used to go in here all the time back when I was shooting film, and always found the staff friendly and helpful. (I'm sure they would have told me to never shoot against the sun as I had to in the front-on daytime picture!)

Of course, I found that after I went digital, I went in there much less often, and I think that applied to many other shutterbugs as well.

I would still go in to use the nice large format printer if I wanted to have something framed, but generally that was only a couple of pictures a year, which is not enough to offset the loss of the film business.

UPDATE 26 Feb 2013 -- As reported by commenter Justin, this place is to become an Ace Hardware (though it seems a bit small to me):

This thrift shop was at the corner of Beltline and Edison Street just down form the former Kim's Beauty & Variety.

I'm not sure exactly when it closed, but long enough ago that the building is now up for sale.

Here's another payday loan operation. This one was almost at the corner of Beltline and Devine, next to the Maurice's location. I don't know exactly when it closed, but since it is still listed in this year's phonebook (February 2012), I am going to say early this year.

As a special added bonus, simply because I like the sign, here is a shot of one of their neighbors:

I'm afraid I'm well past prom age, so I wasn't really aware of this little formal-wear shop in the plaza which houses the Forest Acres location of D's Wings until I saw the storefront empty the other night.

Dazzles is listed in this year's (February 2012) phonebook, so the closing seems to be fairly recent. I wonder if the economy is cutting into prom spending -- it certainly has affected everything else.

UPDATE 21 May 2012: Commenter Larry notes that Dazzles has moved to Boozer Shopping Center, so I have added "moved" to the post title.

UPDATE 2 June 2012 -- Here is their new Boozer Shopping Center location: