Columbia Closings   What's not in Columbia anymore

This isn't quite the post I thought I would be making. Here's the thing: I remember a local restaurant that was on this side of Rosewood Drive for many, many years. It was on my "someday" list though I didn't get to it and it was torn down after I moved out of town. The only anecdote I can remember about it right now was that in the late 80s, or maybe the 90s, USC had a famous football coach (whose name I can't remember, let's call him Freddie) commit to come coach the Gamecocks. The whole town was in a commotion, and this restaurant put up on their signboard: Freddie heard about our food!.

Then, of course, the Chicken Curse struck, and he reneged on the deal and decided not to come to Carolina -- leaving the restaurant flat-footed for a couple of days with a very ironic sign.

Anyway, I was pretty sure this was the spot, but the only thing I can see before the old building was torn down to put up the Eckerd's which became Rite Aid is a pool hall called Charlie's which tried several times (apparently with success in the end to get a liquor license).

UPDATE 7 Dec 2010: Updated post title to Charlie's Cue & Cushion based on the coments.

UPDATE 10 August 2020: I have not noted it previously, but this Rite Aid closed as all the others did, and is now a Walgreens. Also added map icon, added Rite Aid to the title, updated tags.

Commenter Bill Chisolm has this to say about Eden's Foods:

Anybody old enough to remember the old Edens Food Stores in Columbia and around S.C. They sold out to Winn-Dixie around 1955. I worked for them as did my father.
Several of the old buildings are still standing, among these are the ones on Rosewood Drive, North Main Street, Devine St, Harden St. and I am sure there are others. They were the place to shop for groceries in Columbia during their hey day

Being born late in 1960, I had never heard of the place, but the city directory for 1953 does list eight locations for the store, with this building being one of them. I would say it has been remodeled several times, but it does seem about the right shape and size for an older grocery.

Apparently the company was run by a local family as the city directory also lists

J. Drake Edens President-Treasurer
Joe Edens, Executive Vice President-Assistant Treasurer
J. Drake Edens, Jr., Vice President

I wonder if there is any connection there with Edens & Avant property management?

According to the still extant web site, Art Shack Gallery Cafe started out as a gallery-only in 2005 and added a cafe in 2007. I'm afraid I was pretty much completely unaware that it existed (until I went to take the second picture above in conjunction with the closing for The Daily Grind) and so never ate there.

According to commenter Mike D it was closed as of 19 October 2010, giving it a five year run. Not bad in today's restaurant climate.

(Hat tip to commenter Mike D)

UPDATE 29 Jan 2019: Added two more pictures, map link.

These nine pictures are attempts at HDR. I took a tripod, and set the closing-cam to do 3 exposure brackets (1 "under exposed", 1 "over exposed" and 1 "correctly exposed"). I still have had trouble getting anything reasonable looking out of Qtpfsgui though other folks certainly have. There are just too many knobs and levers for me, at least for now. I did find another free program called Picturenaut, which actually produces nice results with the default settings. The downside is it only runs on Windows.

All the night pictures were taken on 15 October and the day pictures on 24 October. As usual, the fair remains an evergreen experience and if you missed it this year, you should try to catch it in 2011.

Lots and lots of other pictures after the jump. Be warned!

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Because 1928 Rosewood Drive was the site of Chippendolls, which is one of the more popular posts here, I always notice the buliding when I drive by.

The other day, it seemed to me that something was different, and it finally hit me that I was pretty sure that Gamecock Stop had occupied the whole building at one point. Looking back at my photos for Chippendolls (like the first one above) I confirmed that, as does this Loopnet posting.

Google also turned up an entry for S & S Art Supply in the "B" part of the building. Apparently that came and moved before I even noticed Gamecock Stop vacating that part of the building. This blog post says they opened on 8 Aug 2009, and apparently sometime this year they moved to 1633 Main Street.

This distinctive building is on Beltline between Rosewood and Devine Street. I don't know if they were the original tenant, but for many years it was an office supply store. I never went there myself, as I was living out of town for most of the time between when I started using "office equipment" (essentially printers in my case) and when I started buying supplies online. I'm pretty sure my sister did find a ribbon for the antique Brother "Diablo 630 compatible!" daisy-wheel printer I set her up with. Those things had a really unique machine-gun type staccato sound they made as the wheel spun and the solenoid hammerd the letters onto the page. I found the fan-fold paper feed almost impossible to adjust correctly such that it wouldn't gradually mangle the paper..

Anyway, the place was in the 1998 phonebook, but I believe Dollar General has been there pretty much for most of this century.

When a "massage salon" is open until 3AM, one suspects that the massages offered are very thorough. Certainly the late 70s (this ad is from the 1977 Southern Bell phonebook) seem to have been sort of a peak for such. Since then, this building on the south side or Rosewood just west of Pizza Man (and which was pretty clearly originally built as a home) has been a number of things. In particular I recall a record store, which a 1998 zoning board meeting characterizes as selling mostly religious CDs, and at present (though currently it is for sale at $325,000) it houses a recording studio which seems to have a number of telephone sidelines, so -- to reuse a bad joke, you can still reach out and touch someone.

The Daily Grind was one of probably hundreds of coffee-shops of that name across the country. Not that it was part of a chain -- it just seems to be a mildly clever name for a coffee-shop. I only stopped there once. As I recall, it opened when the concept of espresso drinks was pretty new, at least for those of us not in New York or the Pacific Northwest. (If you'll recall, in the terrible Bruce Willis movie Hudson Hawk they had to explain to the audience what a cappucino was). Certainly it was long before Columbia got a Starbucks. Frankly, I can't remember being either pleased or displeased at the coffee, and Rosewood was enough out of my Columbia haunts (which I was only hitting on weekends anyway as I was out of town at that point) that I just never got back. I'm not sure when the place closed. It's listed in the 1998 Bellsouth phonebook, so I'm saying early 2000s.

Compusouth I wasn't aware of at all. I have never had any luck getting parts at these small computer storefronts. They can fix your PC or sell you one, but if you want an EIDE controller or whatever, you'll have more luck at Office Depot. (I really miss CompUSA in Augusta which was very good for parts, Best Buy -- not so much). Again, I don't know when it closed, but as they haven't gotten around to taking down the sign yet, I'm saying late 2000s.

The place is currently a lacrosse equipment store. I didn't even know we had lacrosse players in Columbia..

I was looking for the place where The Copper Door was on Rosewood Drive last weekend. As far as I can tell, if I have the right address, it no longer exists. However, I did notice while I was in the area this vacant storefront for Southern Pottery. As it turns out, they are not gone, but have moved to Devine Street. Their web site tells the story. I always liked the smell and feel of raw clay, and enjoyed my pottery class at Trenholm Park (though, frankly, I was never any good at it). It's nice to see someone is still teaching pottery and that we have actual "potters" amongst us muggles in Columbia.