Columbia Closings   What's not in Columbia anymore

Eat Boogie's Grill

That was the memorable exhortation that adorned the west wall of this vanished Gervais Street "soul food" restaurant when I was in middle and high school.

In fact, the place was so well known from that slogan, that I thought I would be able to find out more about it than I did. Here is the meager information I was able to come up with from old phonebooks:

Boogie's Grill apparently started in 1966, first showing up in the January 1967 Southern Bell phonebook at 509 Childs Street, a place I had never heard of, but which is in a neighboorhood west of Bluff Road.

Sometime in 1972 they moved to the iconic 2124 Gervais Street location, listing there in the December 1972 phonebook.

By 1977, they were back in the same Bluff Road area, listing at 1717 Zion Avenue in the January 1978 book.

As far as I can tell, they never bought a yellow pages ad, and in fact, dropped out of the yellow pages entirely after leaving Gervais Street.

2124 is on the block of Gervais betwen Harden and Pine Streets. There is currently no building at that address -- I think it must have been at one of the curb cuts between Holman's Barber Shop and the next building up (which looks as though I should probably do a closing on it). This surprised me a little bit, as I had been sure, before looking it up, that it was further down Gervais towards Millwood.

Surely someone out there has a picture of Boogie's and the west wall sign?

And to drift the subject a bit, how about that mural of the USS Enterprise blasting phasers down at a planet that adorned the west wall of a nearby building on the other side of Gervais Street?

I held off doing this closing for a bit, as I wasn't absolutely certain Logan Raye at the corner of Gervais & Gadsden was actually closed. The phone is still connected, there's no sign on the door, and all the products still seem to be shelved. However, the web site does hint strongly, and the door was locked during normal hours, so I'm afraid it's so.

I'm not that familiar with hair salons, or how long one stays inside, but it does strike me there is very little parking here. When I stopped to take these pictures, I had to feed a meter. I wonder if that may have had an impact..

(Hat tip to commenter Michael)

On the whole, Scriven's Alley doesn't sound like my kind of place, though I could have perhaps found some pasta I liked. The opportunity to grill your own food does sound pretty intriguing though. In the end however, it may have perhaps proved fatal to the business as the place burned down and was never rebuilt. I'm thinking that the Scriven's building was where that narrow vacancy right at the corner is rather than on the Hertz site. As I recall, it was a two story brick structure.

I had the impression that it was a pretty well thought of place, and I've always wondered why they never re-opened. I would expect most any building to have fire insurance, but perhaps they were down long enough for all the staff to disperse and the cash reserves to deplete.

I've noticed this car care operation on the corner of Gervais and Barnwell Streets a number of times over the years, though I never stopped in. In particular I believe I used to drive by on my way to the dentist, and other times I would just wonder at the way businesses sometimes cluster, as Master was catty-cornered to an almost identical Firestone operation and just a few blocks from a Goodyear.

I really like the Jasper Transmissions plaque -- It has that late 50s, early 60s design esthetic that is really nicer than what you generally see now.

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Here's a non-descript little warehouse on Gervais Street between Millwood and Harden that I couldn't ever recall seeing before when I noticed the big for-sale sign out front.

Apparently it was a flower staging area for local florists. The 2009-2010 county property assessments list the owner as "METRO COLUMBIA FLORIST / DELIVERY COOPERATIVE INC" while the "Delivery Pool" language comes from this listing of local florists. LoopNet says the building dates from 1970 while the county link says 1987. To me it looks a bit more 70s-ish than 80s-ish.

It's rather interesting how every-other letter has fallen off of the start of "FLORIST", rendering is as "F O I". I take the "L" as having been part of "POOL" though the spacing looks pretty tight for that.

UPDATE 8 March 2011 -- Hmm. It's been painted, the old logo letters have been taken down, the for-sale sign is off in the corner and the door is open:

UPDATE 13 April 2011 -- It's to be "Detail & Body Works By Frank". Picture a little blurry..

UPDATE 23 December 2011 -- Now open:

I never made it to The Sly Fox which is a shame, because they had "poutaine" on the menu -- something I've wanted to try ever since hearing of it. My understanding is that it is basically french-fries covered with cheese-curds and gravy. The menu on The Sly Fox's web site (already off-line) specified that it was "squeaky" cheese curds too. According to what I've heard about cheese curds, they only squeak when there are fresh, basically only on the first day after, um, curding. This makes me wonder where they could have been getting the curds, as I'm not aware of any local cheese makers, and have never seen cheese curds for sale in Columbia.

Commenter Barb reports The Sly Fox was closed as of 4 Jan. I went by a couple of times this week, and there seemed to be a crew carting stuff out of the place. As you can see, the interior is pretty bare now, and the sign on the east side is down (though the one on the west is still up). The place is pretty much right across the street from Damon's and Paul's, so there is a good bit of vacant restaurant space in the area now.

(Hat tip to commenter Barb)

UPDATE 26 Jan 2011 -- Based on the comments I have added Scott Brothers & Palmetto's. Here is the Feb 97-Feb 98 Bellsouth Yellow Pages ad for Scott Brothers:

UPDATE 27 Jan 2011 -- It turns out I had some pictures of the MacDougall's incarnation as well:

Things move really fast sometimes. I had first written about this little space fronting on Gervais Street just across from the Capitol and above The Whig in a closing for Holey Dough Cafe. By the time I got around to taking pictures of it, all the Holey Dough identity was gone, and the place was in full operation as a sub shop, Jumpin' Jacks Giant Jersey Subs.

The first I knew that that place was gone was when commenter Midnight Rambler mentioned that the next operation (which I had never heard of) had closed!

All I can say about the Gervais Street Deli is that a) it had wi-fi and b) It was, technically, not on Gervais Street...

(Hat tip to commenter Midnight Rambler)

I first wrote about this building back in 2008 when I did a closing for the Greenbax Redemption Center.

Commenter Chief Dan George pointed out recently that one of the follow-on operations in the building Columbia Paint & Decorating closed shop sometime in 2010.

Painting is one of my all-time least favorite activities (only actually scraping the old paint before painting is worse..) so I can't say much about the place, only that it seems to have been a Benjamin Moore paint dealer. (Which, it must be said has a much less cool logo than Sherwin Williams).

The place is currently for rent, and we'll see what ends up there next.

(Hat tip to commenter Chief Dan George).

UPDATE 17 September 2011 -- It's now Cricket Newman Designs:

OK, I need some help with this one. The only things I know about this building are that it seems (there is no address on it) to be at 2250 Gervais Street, it was built in 1945 and is 280 square feet...

Just from the looks of it, I would say that it started life as a walk-up, window-service, restaurant. I know that over the years, I've seen a number of different operations there, but at this point, I can't bring any of them to mind.

In particular, I can't figure out why it seems to have a cairn out front: