Columbia Closings   What's not in Columbia anymore

I don't have much more to say about this Blockbuster (on Two Notch near Polo Road) closing that I didn't already say at the recent Decker Blockbuster closing, other than that this one is taking its own sweet time to wind things down. It seems like its been in "closeout sale" status for over a month now. (I say "now", I haven't driven by in a couple weeks, so it may in fact be gone at this point).

Meanwhile, I suspect we will see more Blockbuster closings here this year:

Blockbuster CFO Thomas Casey said closures of underperforming stores is supported by the fact that just 35% of Blockbuster stores generate about 80% of pre-tax earnings.

Speaking Jan. 12 at an investor event in New York, Casey said about 25% of a closed store’s revenue is transferred to other area Blockbuster locations. Blockbuster currently operates about 3,600 stores, with plans to shrink that number to 3,200 stores this year, while expanding Blockbuster Express kiosk operations.

“We’re pleased with the performance of our store-closing program,” Casey said.

UPDATE 5 October 2020: Changing the post title name from "Blockbuster" to "Blockbuster Video". Updating tags. Adding map icon.

I've never been great at video games, though I used to go to arcades pretty often. Galaga is my favorite, and the one I was/am best at, though that "best" was no great shakes on an absolute scale. I never did make the transiton from arcade games to computer/console/online games and so have never been in a store like Game Crazy. As far as I can tell from googling around, the chain has not declared bankruptcy or made the news for massive store closings, so I guess this closing can be chalked up to local conditions probably exacerbated by the recession in general. Now if they could only put some place you could get coffee and a snack in that little strip..

(Hat tip to commenter Jason)

UPDATE 28 Oct 2010 -- This place is nearly ready to re-open as a GameStop (In fact if they made the opening date promised on their sign, they are open now):

I noticed this empty storefront in Cedar Terrace a while back while taking pictures for a closing on the adjacent Fred's. These sort of addresses are a bit of a problem to google because there isn't a standard representation. Is it "6420P Garners Ferry Road", "6420 Garners Ferry Road Suite P", "6420 Garners Ferry Road #P", or something else? Given that I have no personal memory at all as to what may have been here, I tried googling all of those.

It appears that the place was World Gym at one time, and then on 11 December 2007 there was a zoning hearing to zone the place for a bingo parlor. From the structure of the zoning minutes, that was expected to be approved, so I'll guess it did happen.

I also expect that the bingo operation followed the gym, because if you look at the back wall in these pictures, the last place in there had a smoking section and a concession stand, which would be pretty odd for a gym.

I always enjoyed pottery as a kid. There was just something about the feel and even smell of wet clay, and making something real rather than just a representation like a drawing or painting. In fact, the only time I was on Mr. Knozit, I was making a pot in the background while one of the Richland County Threnholm Park pottery teachers explained the county classes for kids in the foreground. Of course I never got actually good at it or even progressed up to the potters wheel, but it was fun.

Apparently Two Peas In A Pot on Saint Andrews Road was one of those "you paint / we fire" places a number of which, like build your own teddy-bear places, sprung up several years ago. I never went to one, but I can easily see how it would be a fun evening.

Their web site says they closed Thanksgiving, and it looks like the space is currently available. For some reason getting my oil changed took an hour longer than it should have and I got to the place after sunset. The parking lot was quite a bit busier than I expected -- apparently everybody suddenly had the desire to order take-out pizza..

(Hat tip to commenter Jonathan)

I have noticed this building on Mobile Avenue (off of Airport Boulevard fairly near the airport) a number of times over the years, though I don't believe it has always had the castle-like facade.

I used to fly out of the airport fairly often (though luckily I haven't had to fly for a few years now), and it seemed to me that for a while it was something different every time I drove past. I think in the 90s it was a strip club that morphed into a night club or vice versa, and a few more things before it became The Flight Line and then Uncle Doctors.

Google gave me a pointer to the old Uncle Doctors web site, and I was able to find some zombie versions in www.archive.org from whence the logos. Apparently Uncle Doctors was a sister club to Ground Zero in Spartanburg as they shared a site. The current occupant in the building apparently does wedding receptions and catering.

This Blockbuster Video Rental on Decker Boulevard, across from the old Decker Mall has has the going-out-of-business signs up for a few weeks now.

I stopped in about two weeks ago, and it seemed that they were continuing to do a normal rental business on some titles while selling out the rest of the store to the walls. I thought the prices were good, but not great, and picked up a couple of DVDs.

As I drove by today, I saw them carting off the sign, so as of now, Decker has lost yet another business. As with Hollywood Video, I guess Redbox, Netflix and the Internet have done a real number on their business model. Lately they have been trying to adopt the Netflix model while leveraging their store network ("Bring your DVDs back to the store for immediate credit!") but so far it doesn't seem to be working.

UPDATE 7 Jan 2010: Here is the store at night after being totally cleaned out:

UPDATE 12 Jan 2010: Added another picture.

UPDATE 30 August 2011 -- work is underway to turn this location into The Chabad/Aleph House:

UPDATE 5 October 2020: This place is now Chabad Of South Carolina though I don't have a picture yet. Also updating post tags and adding map icon.

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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I have written about Hollywood Video here, here, and here, and things have not gotten any better for the chain since then.

Although I believe this West Columbia store was closed in the first wave several years ago, searching news.google.com for "Hollywood Video" continues to bring up rafts of new store closings, many from this month (October 2009). Apparently the parent company, Movie Gallery is also closing 200 Game Crazy stores which are often co-located with Hollywood Video as well.

I don't know anything about the gaming market, but it seems to me the retail DVD rental store market is probably not going to improve -- in fact I expect the reverse. A DVD is just a 4.7 gigabyte storage medium. Even now, you can download that much overnight with a good cable connection and it's only going to get "worse" (for stores) as broadband continues to speed up and video compression continues to improve. Add in Netflix, and a beauty store is probably a better long-term prospect.

This building off of Saint Andrews Road is now an "Ultra Lounge". I'm not sure what it was built as, but I first recall noticing it in the 1980s, when it was a strip club, the name of which I can't remember. After that, it was for a number of years the original site of The Comedy House, now on Decker Boulevard in the old Winn-Dixie building. I think it may have been something after the strip-club and before The Comedy House and after The Comedy House and before Pure, but I'm not sure.

I saw a number of comedy shows there including one guy who made me laugh so hard it hurt, but whose name (or act) I cannot now recall at all. I'm not sure what happened to The Comedy House as it was non-existent for a long while after closing shop here. Normally if a place is moving just as a normal course of business, they will do it as quickly as possible to keep a revenue stream active, but I think it took over a year in this case.

UPDATE 15 October 2009: Added a bunch of extra names to the post title based on the comments.

UPDATE 29 March 2023: Adding map icon. Also this building has been razed. Click on the address tag for details.