Columbia Closings   What’s not in Columbia anymore

I happened to notice this vacant building driving down Bluff Road today (how it got behind the wheel, I'll never know..)

A bit of googling says that it was the location for RSC Equipment Rental for those times when you draw Fork Lift from the what to bring to the party list. Google suggests, and the fact that the RSC site now redirects to United Rentals seems to confirm that RSC merged with United, which is located a whole number down the street at 1500 Bluff Road.

I noticed this defunct strip club on Bluff Road the other day, on the west side of the road just south of the I-77 exit.

According to what I can find, it has been several clubs, the last of which Diamonds was in business as recently as 2009, but from the state of the building, nobody has done any maintenance since then. (Though it is still in better shape than Liquids).

The names raise some interesting questions. For instance, there was a Diamonds on Berryhill Road. Is there a connection? And: If this was Pleasers 2, where was Pleasers 1?

It is next door to a building even more decrepit about which I will try to find something out so I can eventually do a closing for it as well.

UPDATE 29 October 2012: Commenter tonkatoy says that back in the 70s, this was The Cricket Club. Bit of a sticky wicket, that!

Update 5 November 2012: Well one of the questions above is answered. Commenter BMJae says that the club was named Pleasers and then was closed due to fire, taking the name Pleasers 2 upon reopening after repair and remodel. I have added the name Pleasers to the post title.

(Folks coming in from the link at the CarnivalWarehouse.com forum, you may be interested in my pictures from previous South Carolina State Fairs -- Ted)

Well, as always, the South Carolina State Fair was a good time, with lots of beautiful art, greasy food, neon in motion and oddball retail. If you've read one of these posts before, don't expect anything particularly new this year; it's pretty much the same sights I usually enjoy capturing. I didn't submit anything for the art exhibition this year, so no pictures of the pre-Fair ceremony.

I've got a couple of videos I'll add later as soon as I can get them uploaded to youtube. In the meantime, enjoy!

UPDATE 27 October: First video (cablecars) is uploaded above.

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OK, you know the drill by now if you've followed my State Fair posts from previous years: I like what I like, and I like to take pictures of it, so there's nothing new or astounding here, just old friends like the Buxom Beer Girl, The Cotton Candy Stands and the ducklings, but I enjoyed being out and about amongst the neon and greasy delights as usual. I took the tripod, but really couldn't get into setting it up to try for HDRs this year, so I just got one, which is not as good as those from last year (2010). I did take a few videos this year, in particular the one above (which has some issues with light spikes, but is quite watchable) and one below the jump.

Meet your party at the (Time Warner) rocket!

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This is a country store in the city.

I really have no idea when this place closed. Looking inside the back add-on section, it appears to have been in disrepair for a while. On the other hand, the ice company has not taken the ice lockers back yet. I wish SC would put dates on the "A" restaurant ratings stickers! Honestly, if you told me the place had closed in 1953 or that it was still open some days, I would probably believe either.

This Richland County conservation report PDF says the place was built in the 1920s and

There are nine commercial buildings in the Olympia village. Most of these date from the early twentieth century and are similar to Nix's Olympia Grocery, a one- story, gable-front building with a brick facade and stepped parapet. These small commercial buildings were community-gathering spots and supplied operatives with a place to socialize and purchase needed items.

You can see that at some point the Nix's appelation was dropped and the place became simply Olympia Grocery. The sign itself was apparently supplied by Coke, something once exceedingly common (with the Coke advertisement often as big or biger than the store name), but not seen now on new stores.

The first time I went to take pictures of the place, it was a nice sunny afternoon, but in the event, I couldn't get near Nix's since the laundry down the road was burning, and the street was blocked off by fire engines. By the time I got back out that way, it was the rather grey day you see here. (And the laundry looks like it may be salveagable)

UPDATE 28 March 2011 -- Well, it's gone:

There were two problems with my ever visiting Biscuit House on Bluff Road behind the stadium: A) It was way on the other side of town and B) That whole waking up before absolutely necessary breakfast thing.

Of course, lots of other people don't have those problems, and the Biscuit House apparently developed quite a reputation over the years. In fact, there was a spate of newspaper articles when its closing was announced, and even a video documentary.

In the end, the problem was the same as for the Farmers' Market: USC bought up all the land for football parking. The good news is that apparently the Biscuit House recipies will live on in franchaised kiosks in local convenience stores.

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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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