Columbia Closings   What's not in Columbia anymore

Ok, this somewhat striking little building in the Dutch Square parking lot is now vacant. It was clearly a bank, and in fact the 1997 phonebook lists it as an NBSC. It must have closed some time ago though, because most of the google hits I get for 841 Dutch Square Boulevard are for Uptown Sounds.

The problem with that is that the hits all suggest that Uptown Sounds was a record store, and I don't recall that at all. Perhaps it went under before I came back to town around 2003, but I still thought I was familiar with the record stores in the area.

At any rate it's an interesting building (mainly because of the glassed bay extension on the end) though it's looking a bit frayed about the edges now -- the roof could certainly stand some paint.

UPDATE 13 November 2009: Added First Union to the post title based on the comments.

I have to admit I wasn't really aware of Frawley's Audio until it was gone. In fact, I only noticed that when I saw the going-out-of-buisness signs at Fontenay Fine Rugs & Antiques next door, walked over to take a look and saw the empty storefront.

The sign on the door says they were there for over 35 years, which is a good run for an independent store in these big-box times.

They can't hear you now..

This storefront, on Dutch Square Boulevard across from the mall, started out life as a Circuit City, or at least that was the first I noticed it. It may have been marqueed as Dixie Hi-Fi in the 1970s, before the chain adopted the Circuit City name, but I can't say for sure. This store is more or less equivalent to the first Circuit City location on Two Notch, now a bedroom store, and like that store eventually moved twice, first to Bush River Road and then to Harbison Boulevard.

I lost track of the building after Circuit City departed, but I'm pretty sure there were tenants after it and before Alltel Wireless. I'm not sure when Alltel moved in, but when Verizon bought Alltel in a deal sealed 9 Januray 2009, the writing was on the wall for this store, and as you can see from the window placard, all Alltel customers are being directed to Verizon on Columbiana Drive.

We'll see how it all settles out. In the meantime, I'm keeping my rotary dial phones and landline..

UPDATE 6 November 2009: Added "Bellsouth Mobility" to the post title based on the comments.

Happy Halloween!

I guess there won't be any "Naughty Nurses" getting their costumes here this year though -- The "fantasy" has fled.

I don't know what this building was built for, but clearly it predates Fantasy Lingerie. I don't know how long Fantasy was there, though I think it was at least five or so years. The general area seems to be rather blighted with Maurice's next door recently closing, and lots of other empty storefronts nearby.

At one time, before it became a Big K-Mart, the left side of the K-Mart on Jackson Boulevard was a separate storefront. Looking at these pictures, there appears to be no trace of the division left, and I can't recall any indication inside the store either, but it was definitely the case.

There were at least two stores in that location. The first one I recall was Big Star grocery. Big Star was the discount arm of Colonial, and the Big Star remained open long after the Forest Drive Colonial, where we did most of our grocery shopping, closed. That meant that for certain Colonial items, like Farm-Charm cheese, we would drive out to Big Star rather than going to the closer Trenholm Plaza stores. Actually, I suppose it was mostly my doing as I was (and still am to some extent) a very picky eater, and sometimes my mother would get what I wanted just to make things easier on herself (I'm sure it wasn't above me to complain that a grilled cheese sandwich was made with the wrong kind of cheese..).

Wikipedia says that Big Star left the South Carolina market in 1988, selling its stores to Harris Teeter. I think this store closed earlier than that, and I don't think it was ever a Harris Teeter, but I could be wrong.

At any rate, some time after Big Star left, the storefront became an Old America store. I never went in one of these stores, but they were some sort of craft store and seemed to have a policy of co-locating with K-Mart, or at least the North Augusta K-Mart also had an Old America (though in that case the K-Mart left before Old America folded). In Columbia, K-Mart is still there, and Old America folded, probably in 1999.

I'm getting the 4410 street address from an old online listing for Old America, apparently that address no longer exists with the K-Mart expansion, and the whole storefront is now 4400. I don't think there was another store after Old America and before K-Mart took the whole space.

This Big Lots store on US-1 in between I-26 and the flea market, was clearly once a grocery store, but I don't know what kind. The design has that certain late 1970s "We have lost our collective minds" look

I know that this was a Big Lots as early as May 2001 because I stopped there on my way to the airport to pick up a camera I didn't care what happened to. What I ended up with was worse than the average drugstore disposable of today, and I ended up with a bunch of mostly awful pictures.

I can't pinpoint the date any closer than that -- I used to ride out to the flea market fairly often in the early 1980s, but what always caught my eye in this strip was the Fat Boy burger place, and the grocery didn't really register.

UPDATE 26 October 2009: Consensus is that it was a Winn-Dixie, so I have updated the post title to that from "Grocery Store" (and updated the closing date from '1980s' to '1990s').

UPDATE 11 March 2011: Updated closing date based on information from commenter Andrew.

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.

I can see the appeal of hitting the open road while keeping your home with you though I don't ever expect to do it. My non-beach travel tends to be more hotel oriented, and I like sitting at 3pm in a new restaurant with a pizza and a book more than sitting at a travelling kitchen table..

I have no information about what happened to this RV store on the I-26 frontage out towards Harbison, but if I had to guess, I'd bet the one-two whammy of $3.50 gas closely followed by the current recession did them in. I don't know what kind of milage an RV gets, but I'll bet it's like the old joke of "If you think you can afford a boat, try standing in a cold shower tearing up $100 bills first" (minus the shower part).

UPDATE 26 October 2009: Added "Choice Rental Car Saless" to the title based ont he comments.

The first car we bought from Dick Dyer Toyota (or perhaps back then it was Dyer & Beck, with their catchy faux-asian "Dyer & Beck impor-ted-cars" jingle) was a 1980 Corolla station wagon, which I still have, and my main car is from there as well. The nice thing about Dick Dyer from my perspective, aside from the fact that they generaly seem to know what they are doing when they fix a car, was that I could walk home from there after dropping off a car, or I generally could -- I tried the hour walk in August once and nearly expired..

They have built a large new store on I-77 in Blythewood, which I have yet to visit. I believe the body shop (which I have used after taking out Bambi on I-20 once..) remains on Two Notch along with a pre-owned and scooter operation. That is all on the top part of the lot. The last time I drove by, it appeared the bottom half of the lot was for sale. I wish them well in their new digs, but it's another blow to the Two Notch corridor.

UPDATE 22 January 2021: This is now the home of Nuttall Tire:

Also adding map icon and updating tags.

The Tasty Bake Shop provided "Artistry in Pastry" for many years on Forest Drive at Pinehurst Road, and apparently in a satellite operation I had been unaware of in Silver's 5 & 10 Cent Store. Silver's sounds vaguely familar, but I can't recall right now where it was. Certainly it wasn't somewhere we went regularly. In fact, I don't ever recall being in the Forest Drive location of Tasty Bake either. I was certainly aware of it, as we drove by all the time, but my mother took off work from when we were born until we were in high school, so she would always make any cakes we needed, either from scratch or Duncan Hines..

Tasty Bake however seems to have a loyal following of folks who remember how awesome it was as it has come up here in the comments a good number of times, making me wish I had stopped by on my own. It seems to have been fairly low-key at least in its Yellow Pages presence. The two ads here are from the 1957 and 1958 Southern Bell phonebooks and were the only "picture" ads that I saw. After that, Tasty Bake went to a small text box with no graphics.

I believe Tasty Bake was open until the lot was bought by CVS and the store torn down to build the pharmacy that sits there now, but I think that all happened while I was living out of town, so I'm a bit unsure on the timing.