Columbia Closings   What's not in Columbia anymore

This location, now a Gamecock memorabilia store, and apparently starting life as a college hang-out called The Twilight Lounge at one time housed one of the most controversial businesses in Columbia: Chippendolls, a nude dance club.

I'm not sure exactly when the place started. There is a very long and extremely dry 1995 legal opinion on Chippendolls's application for an ABC permit which suggests that the establishment became a strip club around 1988. I was living out of town for most of the period of the Chippendolls controversy, but my memory is that the club had the standard grumbles from the neighbors while it was a topless club, but was operating mostly below the radar of the city establishment as a whole.

That changed when the club decided to go from topless dancing to fully nude dancing. Apparently those few square inches of cloth made a big difference and trying to close the club became quite a local cause celebre for a while -- I believe there were a number of zoning efforts made to shut it down. Either one of them finally succeeded, or the club ran into trouble of its own making, as these places often do. For whatever reason, it has been gone for many years now. In fact, I was a bit surprised to see the 1995 date on the ABC action. If you had asked me, I would have said it hadn't lasted that long. The city continues to have a number of strip clubs, but I don't believe any dare to go bare now.

UPDATE 25 Aug 2009: Added The Twilight Lounge to the post title.

UPDATE 12 May 2010: Added the 1998 Bellsouth Yellow Pages ad for Chippendolls

UPDATE 10 June 2011: Changed the closing date in the post title to "12 September 1997" based on commenter Michelle's info. (Which made me relook at the phonebook mentioned above -- It's actually the Feb-97 through Feb-98 (ie mostly 1997) phonebook.

OK, perhaps it is a cheat to do a closing on an annual event, and doing this many pictures is certainly way into overkill territory, but I do like the Fair, and I really like neon! Some of the night pictures came out really well, some are just so-so -- the closing-cam is a circa 2001 model that is definitely not meant for anything like night available-light photography but the results are interesting (to me at any rate).

Signs of the times, I suppose, but I didn't see the video game tent anywere back in the midway this year. This may be an artifact of the new(ish) operator. I think in the old days it was Deggler, then Conklin and now American Amusements or something like that. Also, no freakshow of any kind. The had kinder-gentler freak shows (ie, no actual "freaks": "Zoma, the jungle boy!") as late as the 1980s. And I think it's been many years since there was one, but it just occurred to me this year that I hadn't seen the Bingo tent either.

These first shots are from 22 September when I took two photos down to the Cantey building to enter them in the art show. (I thought there were better than some of the stuff that got included, but in the event, both were "juried out" of the show -- oh well!). At this point basically nothing is set up except the permanent buildings (and the sky ride).

The day shots were actually taken on 19 October, after the night shots, but it seems more normal to include them here first since 'day' precedes 'night'.

These night shots were taken on 10 October from about 9pm to about closing time at 11pm. The handwriting computer has been there for my entire life (as far as I can remember anyway!) I don't think they even make the pretense that it's a 'real' computer anymore, (in the beginning, it did look very futuristic and impressive).

These final shots come from Monday 20 October when I went back to the Cantey building to pick up the photos. Almost the entire midway was already gone -- those guys work fast!

UPDATE 14 July 2009: If you enjoyed this post, you can buy products printed with some of these images at the Columbia Closings web store.

For many years, The Keg O'Nails or perhaps a Keg O'Nails sat down at the other end of Rosewood, in the Jim Casey Fireworks lot near Midlands Tech. I add the perhaps clause because there was a good deal of hoo-ha surrounding the "move" to the current location across from the Dairy Bar. I forget most if not all of the details now, but it was something like two people thought they had the right to the name "Keg O'Nails", and one wanted to leave it where it was and the other wanted to move it. I imagine that this is the reason for the word "Original" in the name of the current restaurant much as Bill Pinkney had to bill his band as "The Original Drifters" rather than simply "The Drifters". The hole in this theory is that the (apparently now also closed) restaurant that stayed at Jim Casey's was called The French Quarter rather than The Keg O'Nails.

At any rate, I never ate at the old location and only once at the new. I had a burger, and it was quite good -- nice if you happened to be in the area, but for me not worth driving over to Rosewood as a destination. There is no signage of any kind on the place indicating why it closed, or even that it is closed (though the doors being locked and the lack of staff is rather a giveaway there).

Thanks to commenters "Justin" & "O'Reilly" for the heads up!

UPDATE 16 April 2012 -- It's now an Ole Timey Meat Market:

UPDATE 25 April 2012: Added the full street addres to the post title.

I had noticed for a couple of years that this Taco Bell was gone, and kind of wondered what happened. The location seems pretty good, with easy access from both Garners Ferry and Rosewood, and the chain is in no trouble, so it piqued my curiosity a bit, though never until recently at a time when I both had my camera and could stop.

In the event, my question actually was answered by a sign that explained exactly what had transpired. It still seems a little curious in that I think there is enough distance between this and the new location that the market could have supported both stores.

Obviously no name-brand restaurant is going to take up residence in a building that is clearly a former Taco Bell, but I think the site would be nice for a local restaurant. It doesn't fit into the concept of a fast-food chain like TB, but Gills Creek runs along the edge of the property, and I think you could build a very nice creekside deck there for spring and fall al-fresco dining.

UPDATE 20 December 2009: Changed the address from "Garners Ferry Road" to "4716 Devine Street".

UPDATE 9 May 2012 -- After a prolonged zoning battle with the city (or it *seemed* long anyway) this place is finally open again, as an "Adult Superstore":

(Also resized all pictures to 600 pixels wide, which I guess I wasn't doing consistently back when this was first posted).