Columbia Closings   What's not in Columbia anymore

Apparently the company is still around, but it appears that the Irmo location has closed up shop. Looking at the site, some of the homes are quite nice, though I think you really need a good setting and a big piece of property to make it work -- there's the old story about Abe Lincoln's father moving whenever the neighbors got close enough that he could see their chimney smoke.

LoopNet has a nice aerial view of the property

I last wrote about Heroes & Dragons in 2016 when they moved from their standalone building further down Bush River Road back to Boozer Shopping Center (where they had been before, in the Manifest wing).

Now they have moved again, this time much further down Bush River Road, almost at I-20 in fact, and are, I believe in the old Power One / Sissy's Furniture building:

I've bought a number of things at the various locations over the years; I'll have to get by the new store as well.

(Hat tip to commenter Nobody)

UPDATE 7 June 2019 -- The new location:

I was going the wrong way to get into the parking lot when I noticed this Broad River Road Jiffy Lube was closed, so these pictures are shot from a distance and against the sun, but the building looks exactly as you would expect.

This location is directly across the Intersection Center entrance from the Church's Chicken which recently closed and re-opened.

I've been to Jiffy Lube (though not this one) a number of times with no problem, but recently I have found I like the faster places like Express for simple oil changes.

The State says this store opened in January of 2016, giving it just a three year run. The company states they gave it a

thoughtful review process

which I take to mean it was losing money hand-over-fist given they could not have paid off the initial investment in that period and would, I suspect, have stayed if there were a reasonable prospect of doing so in the near term.

Given how long it has taken to re-purpose other buildings on Broad River Road, I see this building as an empty white elephant for years to come.

(Hat tip to commenter Dustin)

It appears that the Broad River Road Lizard's Thicket is the latest location of the chain to undergo renovations. I noticed that it was closed coming up Dutch Square Boulevard this last weekend.

I'm not entirely sure, but I think the Sunset Boulevard location may be the next closest.

Although I go into Dollar General with some frequency, I don't believe I have been in a Family Dollar since 2015. Of course that's mostly because there is a DG in Ravenwood. At any rate, as I recall it, this one on Broad River Road across from the new mini-Wal-Mart was fairly new. I can only speculate that having the Wal-Mart there was not good for it.

I used to be obsessive about many things, well, I guess I still am though the things have changed over the years. One of them was records in general, and record stores. Since I spent most of my teenage years broke, after I discovered rock music in 1975 or so, I was all about the "cut-outs" and used records. At garage sales, I would flip through every album, at record stores, or even Woolworth's and Kmart I would look at *every* LP in the cut-out bin.

If I recall correctly, I first visited Manifest when it was on Main Street somewhere near Jefferson Square (though on the other side of the street). Two items I recall in particular buying there, were a The Nails album with one version (there are at least 3) of 88 Lines About 44 Women (nsfw), and Songs Of The Spires by The Gleaming Spires.

By the time the moved to Boozer Shopping Center, I was living out of town and listening almost exclusively to CDs (more accurately, to tapes of CDs in my car). In its way, this was sort of a Golden Age, because I had a job (and spending money), and used CDs, if they would play at all, sounded just as good as new CDs. When I was in town, I spent many hours flipping through all the "used" bins, as well as buying some of the more interesting "import" CDs which usually only turned up at Manifest or Sounds Familiar in Myrtle Beach.

The Golden Age didn't really last too long. By the end of the 20th Century, it was clear that the future of music was digital, and unclear where record stores fit into that future. In the event, it turns out that they more or less don't. Carl Singmaster, the founder of Manifest sold the store in 2004, and as I recall there was a closing scare at that time, or not long after.

Also, at some point, the name of the store changed from Manifest Records & Tapes (or at least that's the way I recall it) to the current name of Manifest CDs & DVDs. Unfortuneately, the bottom dropped out of the DVD market not many years after CDs crashed and burned, and that puts us here in the twilight of an era.

UPDATE 5 February 2019 -- Now closed:

Well this one is a shame. Pizzera Opa was the new name for Zorba's Express which was here in the Publix plaza for many years, and was the follow-on restaurant for the crew from The Parthenon in Five Points. The Parthenon was my favorite pizza in town, and when I was living in Aiken, I would come back to Columbia on weekends and take my father to The Parthenon Saturnday evenings.

When I discovered Zorba's Express, the pizza was just as good as ever, and the manager, who remembered me from the Five Points days, would always come out and say hi. Unfortunately, the new location was just too far out for me to visit more than a handful of times; I wish it would have been more, and I wish them well.

(Hat tip to commenter IrmoJeff)

UPDATE 30 September 2021: To be Puerto Rican restaurant A Fuego:

UPDATE 15 March 2022: Updating tags.

UPDATE 20 November 2023: Fix typo.

I was driving down the Old Bush River Road section of Bush River Road the other weekend, coming from Lexington into Irmo, and I noticed that Century Glass has moved their Bush River location to the other river road at 4059 Broad River Road. I believe they may still be using this building for non-customer space though as it is still listed in the phonebook, and Google Street View from March 2017 shows the moving sign already up.

Well, I find this a bit surprising: I go by Boozer Shopping Center fairly frequently, but somehow I entirely missed a new restaurant in there until it had already closed.

It appears that down-home/soul-food joint Hungry Moments started sometime around April 2016, and lasted at least until March of 2017, when the last Yelp review appears. The reviews are mixed, but it seems if you hit it at the right time, you could get a good old-fashioned Southern meal.

I also apparently missed the previous tenant in this slot, Generations Bakery & Catering.

UPDATE 20 October 2018: Added picture of Boozer marquee.