Columbia Closings   What's not in Columbia anymore

I wrote about this building when it had closed as a Goody's and was about to open as a book remainder store.

I finally did get there during the holiday season, and found that I was able to pick up some Disney Princess and other kids books and knick-nacks for Christmas at pretty reasonable prices. I don't have the patience I used to have to comb over every book in this type of store for the odd bargain, but I did pick up a couple of books for myself as well. At the time, the staff wasn't sure how long the store would be open, but hoped it would go into the new year, and I believe it did and a few months beyond that, making a pretty good run for this type of thing. The building is empty again now which can't be great for the area, especially with the empty Circuit City across the road.

UPDATE 15 February 2017 -- Added some pictures of the place in operation.

I've written before about Capitol News Stand on Main Street and Capitol News Stand on Saint Andrews Road, but this branch was on the other side of town behind the Two Notch Road K-Mart on O'Neil Court.

My memory is that the building (which now houses a fitness center) was somewhat smaller than the Main Street space. It definitely had fewer paperbacks and foreign magazines. I believe that it was the last branch that Capitol established, and I would say it started sometime in the 80s and I had the feeling that it never really established itself. The location can't have helped -- everything that goes into O'Neil Court fails, and it was somwhat lacking in a raison-d'etre. Downtown had the best selection, so if you really wanted a news-stand type thing, that's where you would look, and Waldenbooks in Columbia Mall was just a few blocks away, so if you wanted a book, that's probably where you would look first. It did have the advantage of convienience over Walden's -- you could park close by and dash in if you just wanted a newspaper where as Walden's had no outside entrance.

I forget exactly when the place closed. It certainly pre-deceased the Main Street location by a good number of years, but I think it outlasted the Hampton Street and Saint Andrews Road Locations.

I can't quite recall which storefront in the now largely defunct Capitol Centre plaza behind Columbia Mall housed Aliens & Alibis, but it was one of the ones pictured here.

Aliens & Alibis was the right store at the wrong time. It was a book store which as the name suggested, concentrated on science fiction and mysteries, something I would have been all over in the 70s or 80s. In the event, I think I went there twice. They had some nicely offbeat SF and mystery books -- things like art books of classic pulp covers and small press editions of classic authors -- stuff that wouldn't show up at Waldenbooks.

Unfortunately, they started not in the 70s or 80s, but in the 00s, and the market had completely changed. First, Waldenbooks and The Happy Bookseller were no longer the main in-town competition. Both of those stores were relatively small spaces and simply couldn't stock obscure genre books in depth. That wasn't true, though, for big-box booksellers like Barnes & Noble or Books-A-Million. Second, there was The Internet and the Amazon.com juggernaut. Now virtually any obscure small-press reprint or obscure new book by your favorite (though bottom list) author was available with a mouse click and suddenly the only thing a store like Aliens & Alibis had going for it was the serendipity factor -- going in and seeing something you didn't know existed, and that just wasn't enough, especially in the face of Amazon's improving "you might like this" technology, and internet discussion groups. I saw the same thing happen to Atlanta's Science Fiction and Mystery shop several years earlier, and was actually a bit surprised to see a Columbia operation try the same thing.

I believe that after the shop left Capitol Centre, it went to Garners Ferry and then became a web operation which is probably the only way to do it now, and good luck to them.

Browz-A-Bit was the "second" book store in the old Dutch Square, with Waldenbooks definitely being the "first". I'm a little hazy on the exact location of the store, but it was on the Bush River Road side of the mall, and I think was a bit up the "hill" from Woolworth's.

In the early 70s my mother would often drop me off at the mall while she and my sister went off to do something different. I guess I would have been around 12 or 13, old enough to have stayed home alone, but I always liked the Dutch Square experience. At the time, I had a weekly allowance of $0.60, and could earn $3.00 mowing the lawn, so I would have a few dollars in my pocket to hit the bookstores.

Sometimes I would walk down to the old Book Dispensary location in Boardwalk Plaza on Bush River Road, but mostly I would hit Waldenbooks and Browz-A-Bit. While Walden's had the "legitimate" book trade cornered, with hardbacks (which I would never be able to afford), some depth in stock and the current New York Times bestsellers, Browz-A-Bit tended more towards "men's adventure" (Doc Savage, The Destroyer, Nick Carter etc), TV tie-ins, the sensational (they seemed to be big on "Edgar Cayce: The Sleeping Phrophet!") and the non-book: Hallmark cards, little gifts, the Weekly World News etc..

While I can still remember very well some of the exact books I bought at Walden's during those days, I can't do that for Browz-A-Bit. I feel sure I would have gotten some Doc Savage books there (and if you only saw the cheesy 70s movie, you should seek out the original pulp adventures, the best of which are cracking good yarns).

If I recall correctly, the store was set up with two rows of wire books racks on the left side of the shop with the greeting cards and knick-knacks on the right side of the store and tabloids by the cash register, which was in the middle-front of the store.

I'm not really sure when or why Browz-A-Bit closed, but I think it was in the 80s, well before the big box bookstores came to Harbison (or indeed to Columbia at all). Maybe it would have helped to have called it Buy-A-Bit instead..

I wrote about the closing of Capitol Newsstand on Main Street. That was always the flagship and the final store to go, but at one time Capitol had three other branches that I know of. There was another one downtown on the south side of one of the streets parallelling Taylor Street, there was one in Dentsville on O'Neil Court, and this one, now Aladdin on Saint Andrews Road. I may have the order wrong, but I think this one closed after the second downtown store and before O'Neil Court.

I didn't get to Saint Andrews Road that often, but on my few visits to this store, I got the impression that the selection of magazines was smaller, even discounting the foreign language ones the Main Street location had, and that the timely appearance of new paperbacks was less reliable. That could just be an artifact of my irregular observations though. I'm not sure why the store closed, certainly parking and panhandling were not the issues they were on Main Street. I suspect however, that with the opening of Books-A-Million and Barnes & Noble on Harbison Boulevard, the market this store served dropped markedly.

UPDATE 21 November 2020: Added full street address to post title and put the name Saint Andrews Newsstand in parentheses as it seems to have been the name used on the plaza marquee. I changed the closing date from "1990s" to "Late 1990s" as I found a listing in the 1998 phonebook. Also updated tags and added a map icon.

(Pictures 30 September 2008 & 1 November 2008)

The Happy Bookseller opened in another world than ours, a world called 1974. In some ways, it was a world very like our own, but in other ways it was very different. You might, were you to find your deLorean transported there, be able to find your way around town with very little trouble -- Although buildings have come and gone since then, the major thoroughfares and landmarks of today's Columbia largely existed. What you would have trouble navigating would be the media landscape. Columbia had three commercial television stations: WIS (channel 10) for NBC, WOLO (channel 25) for ABC and WLTX (channel 19) for CBS. Of the three, only WIS occupied a coveted spot in the VHF range and only WIS had good reception throughout the Columbia metro area. The other two UHF stations (and the fledgling ETV network station WRLK on channel 35) worked best if you put tinfoil on the rabbit ears and stood in just the right spot in the room. Few people had cable, and those who did only got a few extra "trash" stations like WTBS out of Atlanta -- there were no CNN, BRAVO or MTV. Nobody had a computer at home. The ARPANET barely existed and few dreamed it would become The Internet, or what that might mean.

Printed media was a different world as well. Dutch Square had been open a few years, and there was a Waldenbooks there which focused on paperbacks and bestsellers. Capitol Newsstand on Main Street was mainly magazines with a modest number of new paperbacks; there was a small specialty bookstore in Trenholm Plaza and the various locations of The Richland County Public Library and that was about it for Columbia and books.

Richland Mall at the time was still an open-air promenade anchored by J. B. White, Woolworth's, The Redwood Cafeteria and grocery stores. The Happy Bookseller started in Richland Mall on the far side of the promenade (the side away from Beltline Boulevard), and if I recall correctly, just a bit Whites-ward of Woolworths; that is you would come out of Woolworths, cross to the other side and head just a bit towards Whites to get to The Happy Bookseller. Along the way, you would pass some of the concrete animals which gave the mall a homey touch -- I remember a grinning turtle in particular.

When the ill-conceived "upgrade" to Richland Mall started (the process that has left us with the largely empty "Midtown at Forest Acres" [though I refuse to call it that]), The Happy Bookseller found itself priced out of a home and made the move down Forest Drive, towards Trenholm Plaza, to the spot it occupied until yesterday. The new location was quite a bit larger than the original store, and the staff took advantage of it by increasing their stocking depth. I recall that when I was in grad school, I even found a copy of Doug Comer's XINU book on operating system construction -- a pretty obscure computer science topic for a general interest store.

I don't know where the name of the store came from for sure -- I've always assumed it was playing off the bestselling (and notorious) 1971 book called The Happy Hooker, drawing an amusing contrast between two very different paths to happiness, but I could be completely wrong about that. At that time, it was certainly a name that caught your attention, though that was hardly the only thing the store had going for it. In particular, despite it's initially rather cramped quarters, Rhett Jackson decided to make The Happy Bookseller a real general interest bookstore in a way the others in town largely weren't. You could certainly get paperbacks and bestsellers at The Happy Bookseller, but they tried to have a bit more depth than that. I know that I really had only a limited appreciation of that in the beginning, given that I was 13, but over the years I would notice that the store always had a slightly different mix in science-fiction and humor, the two sections I perused most, and later that they were quicker than the chains to pick up on the fact that (some) graphic novels weren't just well-bound comic books and when I became interested in history, I found much more depth there than anywhere but the main library.

Jackson and the store were interested in bringing literature to Columbia and in promoting Columbia literature as well. An author I know had a number of signings for her books there though she has never been approached by one of the big-box stores like Barnes & Noble, even though she is with a well-regarded national publisher, has been well reviewed and sells a respectable number of books. They simply don't devote resources to local authors unless a directive comes down from corporate.

So, after lasting 34 years and being widely beloved, why did The Happy Bookseller close. Well, look in the mirror -- I know I have. Apart from retirements, tragedies, and the like, stores generally close when they aren't making money, and they don't make money when people don't shop there. I was amused when I was working in Augusta and Macy's pulled out of Augusta Mall. When the plan was announced, some of the locals started a petition saying how much they loved Macy's and how it should stay. My thought was that while someone in Macy's mailroom might appreciate their petition, what would keep the store in town was enough people buying stuff there that they made money. And it's the same, I'm afraid, for The Happy Bookseller.

Remember that different world of 1974? Well, we're not living there anymore, for better and for worse. Just on the local retail level, Columbia has four big-box bookstores that have more floorspace than The Happy Bookseller could ever dream of. They can get volume deals from publishers that a local store can't, and even when they are indifferently run (and not all of them are) they can stock in depth in a way a small store simply can't due to the laws of physics and the inability of more than one object to occupy the same space at the same time. And that's just local retail. I haven't even mentioned The Internet yet.

I recall that once, after my father stopped driving, he was looking for a particular book and wanted me to take him to The Happy Bookseller. I don't recall what it was, probably something about opera or English literature, but as it happened, they did not have a copy. That's understandable, I think it was fairly obscure. Anyway, we were in the stacks looking where it would be, and I suggested we drive over to Books-a-Million and see if they had it. He said he would rather have The Happy Bookseller order it. I argued that might take a while, and it's possible we could find it that same day. He looked at me, and said with one of his old fashioned turns of phrase Yes, but I would rather give this store my trade.

In the end, that's what not enough of us did -- give this store our trade. I include myself. I enjoyed browsing the store, and if I saw something I liked, I would buy it. But.. If I discovered I needed a technical book, or found an interesting sounding book mentioned in an online forum I was much more likely to point my browser at Amazon.com than drive to The Happy Bookseller even though it was only a few miles away. That's disintermediation, and it's been even worse for music stores. Given my general night-owl nature, I was also much more likely to find myself in a big-box store at 10pm wandering around drinking coffee and buying books I saw there rather than remembering what they were and getting them at The Happy Bookseller. So, as we shopped online, or shopped elsewhere The Happy Bookseller did what it could. They tried a coffee bar, which didn't last too long, and then a lunch counter which did a bit better, but at the end of the day, the numbers just weren't there to continue and so at the end of the day, they couldn't.

So, thanks folks, for helping us out of that 1974 media wasteland. I know that in the end the future didn't turn out as any of us expected, but it was a great ride!

UPDATE 9 October 2020: Adding full street address to the post title. Updating tags and adding map icon.

The same day I was driving down Main Street and noticed Lourie's closing, I saw a For Sale sign on the Capitol Newsstand building. Running a google on The State, I saw that, sure enough, it was closed for good.

I'm actually a good bit sadder about Capitol's passing than Lourie's, since it played a much larger part in my life. There was a time when downtown was a good place for books. There was the Paperback Exchange at 1234 Assembly Street (an easy address to remember, though the building has been long torn down), a fairly large selection at Belk's, and above all Capitol Newsstand.

You have to remember that the Columbia market for books was radically different in the 60s and 70s. There was an independant bookshop (Chapter Five?) in Trenholm Plaza, Waldenbooks at Dutch Square, The Happy Bookseller at Richland Mall, and that was about it. There was no amazon.com, of course, and when a new book by a favorite author would be coming out was a total mystery. The Trenholm store had a very limited selection; Waldens and The Happy Bookseller were better, but each had its own idiosyncrasies about what they would stock. Capitol Newsstand seemed to be better about getting in new paperbacks each month on a regular basis, and displaying them prominently on a "just arrived" table.

In particular there was a science fiction series I was following called Perry Rhodan. The series is produced in Germany and is perhaps the longest ongoing series of any kind now -- the issue numbers are way into the thousands. In the 70s, Ace books got the US rights and would translate two issues a month, and they would hardly ever show up anywere in town except at Capitol Newsstand. (If they did show up elsewhere, they would be months old, and out of order). Every month, I would talk my father into stopping by Capitol "on your way home" (it wasn't really on the way) and he would invariably find the new ones -- I never missed an issue until Ace lost the rights. (Another company tried reintroducing the series to the US in the 90s, but the translators were a lot worse and it read like something translated from German).

Capitol also had the largest collection of magazines in Columbia, and newspapers from all over the country and the world. When you walked in, the comic books would be in the front right, the new paperbacks table would be in the middle just past the counter, the left back would have the shelved science fiction paperbacks and magazines (it was pretty much the only place in town you could find the magazines). The right wall midway back would have the magazines your mother didn't want you to look at, and the right rear would have all the foreign language magazines like "Paris Match"

Capitol once had a thriving set of outlets. There was the main store, another one downtown (somewhere near Kress, I think), one on St. Andrews Road, and one on O'Neil Court. I think the second downtown one closed first, I'm not sure whether the O'Neil or St. Andrews one was next, but they are both gone as well. The Main Street location actually was closed for a while a few years ago and there was some speculation about its future. When it came back, it felt like a shadow of its old self to me.

Why did it close? Well the owner cites health reasons in The State story, but I suspect that was just the final straw on the camel's back. The market has changed radically since the 70s. For one thing, the big box chains have come to town. A Barnes & Nobel or Books-A-Million store has many more books than Capitiol could ever stock, and they get the new books as regularly and display them as well as Capitol used to. Likewise, a big box store has so many magazines that Capitol didn't have an edge there either, and as for out-of-town papers -- well, if I, for some reason, want to see what The Cleveland Plain Dealer had to say about something, I'll check their web-site. Add to all those factors the location, which has metered parking, and not much of that and the mid-level possibility that you will be pan-handled on the way to the store or back to your car, and it's just a place that doesn't make economic sense anymore. I suspect that this didn't help either.

Still in its day, it was a Capitol idea.

UPDATE 4 May 2010: Added full street address to post title.

UPDATE 26 Jan 2011 -- It's now a botique-looking place called Uptown:

UPDATE 24 February 2013: I have added as the first picture on this post one taken by commenter Thomas in 1997. It shows the old-school Capitol Newsstand in operation. (And Capitol Restaurant too!). Note the missing building (at one time a theater, I believe) that was between those two spots, with longtime fixture Know So Servicemen's Center. Thanks!