Columbia Closings   What's not in Columbia anymore

Simply Mac was an Apple reseller whose strategy was to locate in smaller areas not having an official Apple store. Once part of the Gamestop chain, the brand was spun off in 2019, just in time to run up against the pandemic. Although the stores did re-open later, the damage had been done and a messy Chapter 7 bankruptcy followed. Or at least that is one story. Other stories have other issues compounding, or even overshadowing, the damage from COVID.

Here is The State on the opening of this Trenholm Plaza location, and here is a story from Apple Insider on the bankruptcy.

(Hat tip to commenter Larry, who says this particluar store may never have re-opened)

Mr. PC has several area locations. This one was on the upper part of Harbison in a little strip housing a Jimmy Johns. Mr. PC itself was around the bottom corner on a lower level and not very visible from the street or parking lot. It was kind of an unpleasant rainy day, so I didn't get out to get any closeup pictures, but you can just about read the logo if you imagine the railings aren't there. In the event I went there with a broken no-name android tablet from one of my neices, but there was no way to get parts for something like that, and she would be better off with something more mainstream.

Computer Renaissance was a franchaised chain of refurbished computer stores. I know there was one in Agusta when I worked there, there was one in Harbison, and then there was this one, now a tattoo studio, on Hardscrabble Road when I came back to Columbia.

My memory is that I bought two computers here, both desktop systems, one to replace a box of my sister's that had suffered motherboard failure, and one for myself about which I'm blanking on what finally happened to it. Anyway, they were both fine, and the staff was helpful.

I said up top "Computer Renaissance was", and I think that's correct. There is still a web site, but it has not been updated since 2010, and is like a visit to another age. However, I was able to find from it that the staff from the Hardscrabble store have moved on to Bristeeri Technologies which seems to be located in Elgin.

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I'm not sure when this Cayce computer store closed, but Firefox says the security certificate for their web site expired in 2017 so I'm going to go with that.

I like the latticework on this brick building. I'm guessing it probably dates from the '50s or '60s.

I was not familiar with this place, but apparently this store was the only Apple authorized repair location in town.

My experience as a computer guy is that Mac stuff is great until it stops working, then it's a real pain to get working again. Granted this impression comes mainly from the software side where everything was so "easy to use" that there were never any diagnostic knobs to tweak, but there you go..

Commenter Matt reports a new Apple repair location on Taylor Street.

(Hat tip to commenter James R)

Here is the Radio Shack in the Wal Mart complex at the old Bush River Mall site.

I see this storefront has already attracted another business: Laptops For Less. It's a little odd that the Radio Shack marquee is still up there. Usually a chain which is still in some form of existence wants their logo off of former locations. And there *are* still some open stores though the present continued existence of RS as an entity is pretty tenuous at the moment.

I was unaware of Technesis on Meeting Street, but commenter Frank notes:

It is nice that the customers were taken care of in the closing.

(Hat tip to commenter Frank)

Here's another vacant storefront in Tillman's Plaza on Two Notch. I happened to glace across the street as I was at Kinko's, printing some documents and noticed it was gone.

Here's a vacant little Leesburg Plaza storefront. It's not too clear initially what it was:

So let's take that sign and equalize it:

And then flip it:

OK then -- based on phonebooks, it looks like Shell PC & Networking Solutions probably closed shop in 2010.