Columbia Closings   What's not in Columbia anymore

This building, overlooking I-77 predates that road, and was originally Galaxy World video arcade.

I did a closing for Harbison Edwin Watts a few weeks ago, leading me to think the chain itself is in trouble. A bit of googling finds that this is, in fact, the case:

Edwin Watts filed for bankruptcy protection in November and later sold its assets to Hilco Merchant Resources and an affiliate of Worldwide Golf Shops for $40.8 million. Worldwide Golf Shops also owns Van's Golf Shops, Roger Dunn Golf Shops, the Golf Mart and other golf retailers.

Under terms of the sale, the new owners said they planned to close 42 underperforming stores. The other 48 locations, including the Tampa Bay area's other stores in Brandon and Palm Harbor, will continue to operate under the Edwin Watts name.

(Hat tip to commenter Andrew)

While I was stuck in traffic Wednesday afternoon on Two Notch at I-77, I noticed that Golf Headquarters, in the old Galaxy World building, is gone, or has been bought out.

The signs for Edwin Watts Golf are still quite temporary looking, and I'm pretty sure I drove that stretch in daylight quite recently, so I'm calling early this month as the changeover date. It continues to amaze me how much commercial activity is centered around the most boring game in the world -- (with apologies to my college roommate..)

UPDATE 7 January 2013: Fix street address from 7813 to 7814. Add pictures.

As I wrote in my post on Robo's Video Ardade, nothing says "80s" like an arcade. But perhaps an even better example than Robos is the arcade which was at Two Notch & I-77 (although actually I-77 wasn't completed to that point at the time).

This arcade was a spec-built freestanding building located a good ways from any customer base, or foot-traffic. Robos was across the street from the University, other arcades were in malls, this one was meant to be a destination in itself, and it worked for a while...

I remember that in the summers while I was in grad school, I would drive out to Bell Camp (to be the subject of its own post someday) for an afternoon swim and drive home via Two Notch with my hair still drying in the breeze from the car window to make a stop at the arcade. I recall that the set of games skewed a bit from my favorites, but I still found enough I could play that I could drop a few dollars and spend an hour or so.

Soon after that, the arcade phenomenon crashed and arcades all over town closed down. My memory is that the next occupant of this building was some sort of carpet store, and that there may have been another before its current tenant, a golf center. I do know people who like golf, but I'd still rather visit an arcade.

UPDATE 16 July 2010: Finally updated the post title from "Video Arcade" to "Galaxy World", and added the full street address.

UPDATE 7 January 2014: Fix street address from 7813 to 7184.