Columbia Closings   What's not in Columbia anymore

In my recent closing on the Lexington Monkey Joe's, I mentioned that I thought the Northeast location was still open. Well, I was wrong about that, and commenter Andrew set me straight, pointing out that commenter Miz Terry raised the issue of the Northeast closure right here, and that commenter badger had confirmed it.

Somehow I completely forgot those comments..

At any rate, the Northeast Monkey Joe's was on Newland Road, which is off of Clemson just south of I-20 (near the big flag car dealership). Although the building is now Awaken Church, you can look at it and immediately tell who the first tenant was.

(Hat tip to commenter Miz Terry)

I think we're all Bozos on this bus.

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Celtic band Cu Dubh.

So, I thought at first I had made a big mistake heading up to the Carolina Renaissance Festival last weekend. It was a cold and rainy Halloween when I hit the road, and I awoke Saturday to find out that Snowpocalypse had hit the Midlands while I was gone and that it was cold, rainy, wet and miserable in Huntersville.

Fortunately, although I had to use the wipers driving out to the festival grounds, but the time I got there, it had stopped raining and was just cold and miserable. Obviously the crowds were thin, but the performers gave it a good go and the sun finally did peek out during the late afternoon giving them (and me) some relief. Sunday, however was gorgeous, and all these pictures date from then.

It seemed to me that a good portion of the performers were back from last year, but there were some new faces as well. As before, everybody had a very polished and entertaining line of patter and were quick to improv as circumstances demanded. There are plenty of kid centric and family friendly shows as well as more ribald "loose cannon" performances for those of us a bit longer in the tooth.

The festival continues on weekends through 23 November and it's a great way to spend a (hopefully sunny!) Fall afternoon.

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Well, what do you want me to say? It was the State Fair, and if you've followed these posts for a while, you know the kind of thing I like to take pictures of at the fair, so there won't be any surprises here.

Some changes that started last year seem to have stuck. In particular, the sand sculpture is still in the Ruff Building rather than the Ellison Building and the gray market videos and TELEVAC 8600 are still gone:

The pictures are from 12 October, which was an overcast day, though the temperature was nice. As the evening wore on, it started to spit rain a bit, and in fact more than a bit at times. That affected the skyride video this year. I was afraid it would really start coming down, so I took the video going west to east, rather than hoofing it back to the east and going the other way. That means that we're travelling away from the most visually interesting parts. I think the rain was also futzing with the autofocus of the camera a bit from time to time.

Many more pictures after the break.

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I know we came to Workshop several times when I was a kid, but as I recall I only went under my own steam three times, once for Noises Off, once for The Foreigner and once for A Funny Thing Happened On The Way To The Forum. You can see a trend there -- light comedies all. In each case, I thought the show was very well staged and acted, and thoroughly enjoyed myself.

Well, to reverse the opening theme to Forum, "Comedy tomorrow, tragedy tonight", as the venerable Workshop building has been torn down (along with other structures on the block) so the property can become part of the USC law school. For the nonce, Workshop is presenting at 701 Whaley while building a new home.

Here's a WLTX story on the demolition.

Interestingly, on FreeBSD Firefox, their web page renders as Orkshop Theatre, though it looks all right on Windows..

(Hat tip to commenter CayceKid)

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What A Field Day For The Heat

If you're the Beach Boys 50th Anniversary Reunion Tour with Brian Wilson to keep Mike Love in check, Mike Love to keep Brian Wilson on an even keel and the second most important catalog in rock history, you can open with the howitzers, drop back to hand grenades and finish with tactical nukes. Otherwise, you'd probably best stick with the standard rock act strategy of opening with small arms, dropping back to firecrackers and closing with the big guns -- which Crosby, Stills & Nash more or less did at the Township on Wednesday night.

The trio kicked the show off with "Carry On", and the signature tight (detractors say "painful") harmonies were spot on in a pretty decent sound mix:

They then moved fairly quickly to "Marakesh Express"

and "Just A Song Before I Go"

Inasmuch as there was a front man for the group, David Crosby took the role. He alluded briefly to his famously self destructive ways back in the day, and did most of the commentary and introductions. He seemed a bit froggy when speaking, but nailed all of his leads, sometimes with vocals of surprising power. Stephen Stills was vocally in worse shape. I don't know if it was due to being 69 years old, or if he just blew out his voice over the course of the tour, but it was very noticable on his solo leads -- not enough to spoil the enjoyment, but definitely there. Somehow his harmonies were still pure though. Graham Nash was the most retiring presence on stage, and didn't seem to have a lot to say.

During the "firecracker" portion of the show, CSN did several new tunes, both as a group and as three solo artists. I thought the best of these was a lament for the Tibetian monks who have set themselves on fire protesting Chinese rule of that mountain land.

The way they approached the solo and new material was a bit odd as often the two who were not involved with a song would leave the stage. It was certainly a reminder that CSN is as much three people showing up together as it is an organic group. While it gave each man a time to shine, I would have preferred the solo songs to be presented in group arrangements as was done very effectively with Still's famous ode to carnal convenience:

And with the exploration of Stills's previous membership in Buffalo Springfield:

The show closed with a meditation on education:

Big guns conspicuously silent: "Suite: Judy Blue Eyes", "Ohio", "Woodstock" and Neil Young.

Certainly a great show.

(Would have posted this last night, but was having a terrible time getting the video uploaded. I will swap out the low-res for high when I finally get it transferred).

My sister mentioned to me tonight that the only channel that *always* came in clear at her house, channel 47, was gone, and that the CW network it had carried had moved to channel 63.

Wikipedia confirms the move of the CW as of 17 March 2014, but says that WZRB is still carrying ION (which started on 10 Feburary 2014). However, my sister says she's getting nothing on channel 47, and the station website is "under construction", so I'm not sure what's going on there.

The station started out as a UPN affiliate, and seems to have had an interesting and somewhat fraught history according to that same Wikipedia article.

(Hat tip to my sister)

*Something* is going on..

UPATE 22 March 2014: RIP Rock 93.5!

WMFX And WARQ Morph Into Columbia's Rock Station, Fox 102.3, OM/PD Dave Stewart Resigns.

After 22 Years WARQ Columbia (93.5) Leaves Rock/Alternative

I really can't remember the Columbia East Theaters. I think their heyday was when I was living in Fayetteville, and when I came home during that period, I had plenty of go-to theaters closer than these. Various commenters have described how they started out as a twin theater, later expanded to a quad-plex and ended life as a $0.99 cent venue.

Commenter Dennis mentions that the building pre-existed the theaters and was once The New South Music Hall, a live music club.

Currently the building, and surrounding defunct shopping plaza, is part of the Word Of God Ministries, a church which has also rehabilitated the old Intersection Center / Sam Solomon plaza on Diamond Lane.

7351 Garners Ferry Road is an approximate address, taken from a listing for former plaza business The Talk Of The Town Hair Gallery.

(Hat tip to commenter Brent Carter)

It's not clear to me how a play area could be "out of order". I suspect its more like the area didn't get enough traffic to make paying to keep it clean worthwhile.

(Hat tip to commenter Matt)