Columbia Closings   What's not in Columbia anymore

I've always enjoyed the Carolina Renaissance Festival in Huntersville, but for one reason or another I have not been able to get there since 2016, so when I saw that there was a charity Ren Faire in Socastee, I thought I would check it out.

It was a nice sunny day, and the place was drawing a decent size crowd. They have a good number of craft booths, concessions and the usual Ren Faire players including kind-friendly fairies, bawdy ballad vocal groups, fire eaters & jugglers. It is nowhere near the size of the NC encampment, so you only need an hour or two to take it in, but it was a fun way to spend a Fall afternoon, and if you will be in the area next weekend, I suggest you check it out.

(Very fuzzy for some reason)

Well, the South Carolina State Fair has come and gone again. There was good weather this year, along with a couple of new features, lots of returning ones, and a few unwelcome omissions.

The new features that come to mind were a glassblowing exhibition in the side-court where the Steel Building used to be, a hall of counties in the building adjacent to that court and a new ticketing system.

For the first several years after tearing down the Steel Building, they didn't seem quite sure what to do with the space: One or two years it was dinosaurs, and after that I believe something else that is slipping my mind, but for the last few years it has settled into a sort of antique/frontier craft and artifact mode. The glassblower was from Augusta, I believe and made a decorative pumpkin while we watched. Glassblowing is always a bit like magic, and obviously takes a lot of skill and practice. There was also a working Tinsmith in the area, but I missed that showtime.

The Hall Of Counties I like in concept, but in execution it wasn't particularly compelling. It was nice to see a placard and pictures for every one of the South Carolina counties, but it was a bit dry. Maybe some videos would have spiced it up a bit. I was surprised at how few people some counties have (Only 8000 in Allendale!).

The midway ticketing system is now a card which the ride operators can read with a phone app, and which you can buy and refill at kiosks near the gates. Personally I don't like it, as you have to keep a mental count of how many "tickets" you have left rather than just being able to look. There seems to be a bit of ticket inflation going on as well with the new system as, for instance, the Sky Ride, which I believe in the past has been something like four tickets is now fifteen of the virtual tickets!

The returning features are all Fair staples, to include The Art Exhibition, The Cooking Contest winners, The Baby Duck Slide, Student Art, Prize Flowers, Fruits & Vegetables, and of course greasy food and rides...

The omissions include the sand sculpture and water fountains. I did not see the sculpture in any of the usual places, so I asked at the information booth, and the lady there said they did not have it this year, that everyone was asking, and everyone was sad about it. She offered the hope it would be back next year, so we'll see. I don't know what was going on with the water fountains, but almost every one in the grounds was turned off and flagged. A paranoid person might think it a plot to get us to buy overpriced bottles of water, but the ones at the bathroom in the new building at the south gate *were* active, so I don't know what was going on.

Anyway, as usual a fun experience. Hope you all were able to visit and had a good time!

The pictures are a bit of a mess as I started gathering them two different times, and am fairly sure there are a good number of duplicates, but you can just scroll right on by those...

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Red Carpet was the follow-on in this space to used car dealership Capital City Rides, and opened in June of 2023. I noticed recently that the place was up for sale, and it appears the event center closed around August of 2024. You can see their grand-opening video, and their services here.

There are a number of vacant buildings in this stretch of Broad River, so we will have to see what happens here. The building does seem to be in better shape than some of the other nearby vacancies.

I had meant to go by the Festival on Saturday when I would have had some time to walk around, but in the event forgot about it completely somehow, and ended up dropping by Sunday afternoon. By that time all the Galaktoboureko was gone, but I did snag some Baklava & Kataifi to take home. There looked to be a pretty good crowd, and the weather was great, in fact unusually warm for late September!

Those of you with long memories may recall that I did posts for Amelia Con in 2014 & 2016. After that, the organizers of that convention decided there was not really the support in the area to go up against other local events. They moved the second instantiation from September to February, got a bigger space, and applied a lot of lessons learned, and I found the second Amelia Con noticably better than the first. However it was apparently not viable enough to do again, and there was never a third.

Amelia Coastal Con is a new show, and as far as I know, has no connection to Amelia Con. However, it was held in the same venue, the town recreation center, where Amelia Con started. As you may know, I require very little urging to go to Florida in February.

I found the show to be smaller than even the initial Amelia Con, a bit less organized (not surprising for a first year), and focused much more on Anime than comics Comics were already not a large part of Amelia Con, but there was no comic content or merchandise at Amelia Coastal Con. That's fine, people are interested in different things. Perhaps a bit surprisingly, there was an old school Trek presence with Neutral Zone Studios, perhaps because they are basically local, having a fully fledged Star Trek filming venue in nearby Kingsland Georgia.

The main space of the Recreation Center was occupied by vendors and gaming tables while the Stage was curtained off and used for presentations. There were also vendors and exhibitions on the ball field behind the center, and food trucks in the parking lot.

New since my last visit (to the Recreation Center, not the town) was a marsh trail, a small bit of which I walked, and which was very nice in February. How it would be in July is yet to be seen.

I bought a few figurines, saw a presentation on cosplay and a Star Trek fan film from Neutral Zone Studios which was really quite good for a non-professional effort (see below), and watched the cosplay contest, which was largely kids this go-round.

Anway, it was a nice way to spend a winter weekend, and from their Facebook, it sounds like they are planning to do it again next year (though there are no details).

I got a late start to this year's Nights Of A Thousand Candles because a) I'm slack, and b) It was raining a bit earlier, but on getting there, found it dry, and the warmest of any of the years I have been there. There have been a number of years that it has been so cold I could barely take pictures since I couldn't feel the camera buttons, but this year I hardly needed a sweater, and the new "S'mores" pits were actually a bit too hot.

The basic theme of candles & lights in trees remains the same, but there are always a few new setups, this year's lighted bottles, for instance to keep things fresh, and I always highly enjoy it. The festival continues through New Years, and if you have a chance to check it out, you really should.

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Well the State Fair has come and gone. No big surprises this year. The retro swing ride at the intersection of the central way and the North Midway corridor is still gone. I guess it won't be coming back. Somehow the baby duck slide survived another year, and we had some new greasy goodness with doughnut-burgers and Wisconsin fried cheese curds. Aprt from the sky ride, the Bumper Cars were the only place I spent my tickets this year, and there's (somewhat badly focused) video of that below. Those issues (really time for a new camera) are apparent in the skyway video above as well, but I think it gets the spirit of things.

As for the rest, if you've followed these posts, you know what I like, and I liked the same things this year. It's always nice to be out and about on the grounds after sundown!

Next year is coming..

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Looking at the Alphabetical Closings, I see I did not do a post for the 2022 Heroes Convention, though I'm sure I went, as I did last month.

The older I get, the harder it is to get up to Charlotte at a reasonable time, so by the time I got to the convention center, I really only had time to walk the convention floor without attending any panels or events. In fact, I didn't really have time to do the whole floor as well as I wanted to. I tried to make a plan to sweep back and forth and hit every booth, but as I got to the final stages, they called time on the day's session.

My impression is that it was not as crowded as it has been in some past years (not counting the Holiday Inn on Woodlawn years!), and there were somewhat fewer elaborate cosplay attendees.

I'm pretty disconnected from the current era of comics, but I always make it a point to pick up something from the writers & artists who put themselves out there. I got a YA indie novel for my niece, which she won't read, I'm sure, and the below swag which hopefully I will.

When I first became aware of this spot, it was a photography studio, and apparently maintained the grounds to have nice settings for photo shoots. I was going to do a closing on it at one point, but somehow never made it happen. I believe that after the photography studio, there was at least one other business on the site before StoneBridge Gardens.

It's a shame they closed before Spring really took hold, as the grounds were quite beautiful in March.

Here is the LoopNet listing where the place was being song as a "Specialty Property". Some nice shots there.

(Hat tip to commenter Gypsie)

I guess you could say PMJ has a gimmick, but it's a pretty good one, and expertly executed. They brought their retro stylings of modern tunes to Myrtle Beach Easter Weekend, and it was a fun way to start off the holiday.

The only thing I don't like about the House Of Blues as a venue, is the lack of seats, so I sprung a bit extra to get a table stool this time around. Still not exactly comfortable, but better than being on my feet for two hours. There were times when the house sound was a bit mushy, but the band was sharp, the singers delivered the goods, and the tap-dancer was unbelievably energetic -- I recommend you catch them next time around.

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