Columbia Closings   What's not in Columbia anymore

I took my annual jaunt up to the Charlotte Heroes Convention last Saturday, and couldn't resist a few clouds shots.

Parking is pretty easy considering what you might expect, and it's just a short walk to the convention center.

As you might expect there was a predictable, though certainly not unwelcome theme to this year's costumes.

A bit of a palate cleanser..

Love the "what the hey?" on the guy..

Some steampunk (note the vacuum tubes..)

Whosoever holds this hammer...

By the all-seeing Eye of Agamotto!

I thought I thaw a puddy tat

These are not the cosplayers you are looking for..

The Huntress, and I'm drawing a blank. (UPDATE: Black Canary, I think)

No idea, but I wouldn't cross him.

Cassie Kane, Batwoman (the "Bombshells" continuity version)

Storm...

...and Stormette

Harley Quinn

Never count the classics out

Swag

Walt Kelly's Fairy Tales

"Invisible Monster" remains the scariest Saturday morning cartoon ever..

Henry Kuttner, maybe best known for The Twonky

Girl Power

Planet Stories knew what covers would sell. (And published some decent "planetary adventure". Here's a Poul Anderson I haven't read)

Jack Williamson headed west on a covered wagon as a child, and was writing until 2006.

C. S. Forester better known for "Horatio Hornblower" and The African Queen (though, frankly, the movie is better).

Never heard of Wilcox, but again, a great cover..

Amy Chu, most recently writing Red Sonja.

Looked like an interesting coming-of-age story

No idea, but the guy was such a go-getter cold salesman that I said "Why not?"

Really noticed Randall's art on "The Bitter Earth" back in the day. His first visit to Heroes Con.

Pirate, um, booty.

The TV series is one of the funniest cartoons on today. I highly recommend "Girls Night Out" & "Pyramid Scheme". You just have to basically forget that the characters are drawn from Wolfman & Perez's classic 80s run of "Teen Titans" and go with the stupidity. Thought maybe a signed comic of her favorite show would actually get my niece to read something. We'll see..

WMBFNews.com, Myrtle Beach/Florence SC, Weather

"Last Ride" at the Myrtle Beach Pavilion

Well, another little bit of my childhood gone. After the tear-down of the minature golf place in Litchfield (probably sometime around 1970) this was the next Southernmost minature golf course on the strand, and where we played most often when I was a teen. Somehow at the time, I thought the theme was pre-historic instead of "jungle" and I considered the natives at the right-front part of the course to be cavemen (or women -- there was one statue of a woman who seemed to alternate between topless and fur bikini depending on how recently she had been painted..).

Looking at the size of the lot now that it has been cleared and leveled, it's amazing that a full 18 hole course was there, along with ponds, statues, switchbacks, hills and trees. It's possible I may have some shots of the place in operation that will turn up some day, but in the meantime, you can check out the Facebook Page.

Time to cue up Big Yellow Taxi

Speaking of Myrtle Beach megastructures, one of the most iconic was knocked down last fall: The Hard Rock Cafe pyramid at Broadway At The Beach.

There are tons of articles about this online. Here's one about time time capsule, here's one about the final days, and here's one about the demolition. I've seen it claimed in more than one of them that nothing was wrong with the pyramid, but you have to wonder: to abandon such a well known landmark just seems odd if there were no pressing issue.

In the event, I only ate there once, probably a year or so after it opened, and to be frank, I remember very little about it -- just that I thought it was overpriced for a pretty standard burger given that sitting close to Joan Jett's pants or whatever didn't do much for me. Sort of like Planet Hollywood in that respect I guess.

The new location a few doors down opened on 7 October 2016, but I have not seen it yet.

While not one of the coast's great storms, Hurricane Matthew did damage enough. Our yard was under several feet of water apparently, though nothing was damaged aside from a trash caddy floating away. Other places, apparently at random, got it worse. One of the was Myrtle Beach's Palace Theater at Broadway at the Beach.

I never went to the Palace, thought I thought I was one time. Somehow or other, I convinced myself that this big theater must be the House of Blues, and that's where I headed when I had a ticket for the 1996 Beach Boys appearance there (Carl Wilson's last tour). In the event, when I got there I saw the name obviously did not match, and had to drive a further 10 miles or so. Fortunately I was running early.

I also ended up on their email list somehow, possibly from seeing a show at the other big theater in North Myrtle Beach, so I would get all the notices about the Christmas shows with the Rockettes.

I guessing that business must have been off from the peak years, otherwise they would have repaired and gone on (I do wonder about insurance, you would expect them to have it, at least for wind, and flood was not an issue here..), but that was not to be, as The Sun News recently reported.

The previous year or so has not been kind to big structures in Myrtle Beach.

(Hat tip to commenter Bobby)
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The last time I saw The Beach Boys was on the now legendary 2012 50th Anniversary Reunion Tour in Atlanta. Since then, Mike Love and Bruce Johnston have been leading the "Beach Boys" flagged tour with the permission if not the participation of the other members, and Friday they brought the show to the North Charleston Performing Arts Center, a fairly intimate venue with great sound (in marked contrast to some of the outdoor venues I've seen them in over the years).

I got there about 40 minutes early and decided to have a concession stand hot-pretzel and beer while waiting: $13.50. Talk about your captive customers!

The shows started before the band came on with a video presentation with bits of Beach Boys' history and footage of performances from the last 50 years. Then the band came out and started into a back-to-back presentation of the surfing songs including "Surfin' Safari", "Catch a Wave", "Hawaii", & "Surfin' USA". The touring band is (at least for this venue) eight people. Mike & Bruce, of course, Jeff Foskett who has been with various band permutations since the 80s on guitar and falsetto, John Cowsill (from the 60s group "The Cowsills") on drums, Scott Totten on guitar and vocals, a Brian (not Wilson, obviously) whose last name I did not catch on bass and an energetic sax player whose name I did not catch at all as well as a second keyboard player.

I thought the sound was a little thin at the beginning on "Surfin' Safari", but they either made adjustments or everyone warmed up because things were much more solid after that. Mike did the MC duties and seems to be slipping into the role of "Elder Statesman" fairly well, something you might not have expected from the younger Love. His speaking voice had a bit of quaver, and at times you could hear his age in the leads, but on the whole he came over very well, including a long segment of "Do It Again" where he was completely unsupported by any other vocals for whole verses.

One of the criticisms Mike has gotten over the years is of running a greatest hits show rather than displaying the breadth of the Beach Boys catalog. In fairness, I think he knows what a festival audience wants, but in this venue he definitely showcased some of the lesser known gems including "Farmer's Daughter", "Kiss Me Baby", "Good To My Baby", "Surf City" & "The Warmth Of The Sun".

Although surprisingly Mike did not mention his recent memoir, the weight of history was definitely part of the show. One device, used several times, was having historical footage play behind the band while they performed a song. It was somewhat eerie at times to see current Mike singing in front of young Mike, closely in sync and often making the same gestures. That had to have taken a lot of practice. The band also paid tribute to the late Carl & Dennis Wilson by singing backup to historical leads: Carl on "God Only Knows" and Dennis on "Do You Wanna Dance?". This led into a segment where Mike touched on his Eastern beliefs about what goes on and what remains and introduced a well received new song "Pisces Brothers" that was largely a tribute to his late friend George Harrison.

Bruce got two notable leads during the show. One was, of course, his often covered and much loved "Disney Girls" while the other was "You're So Good To Me" during which he altered the original phrasing quite a bit, which was unexpected but largely worked, I thought. Speaking of which, I also noticed that Mike had written a number of new lyrics to "Getcha Back".

After a brief pro-forma walk-off, the band was back for an encore to close with two of their biggest crowd-pleasers Barbara Ann & Fun, Fun Fun (I can't put the version I recorded last night here, because it was very much a sing-along -- and I can't sing). I do have a few more videos to upload, so check this space again..

I got my ticket just after the North Charleston show was announced. Shortly after that, they also announced a show for 29 January 2017 at the Koger Center in Columbia. Folks, these guys are in their 70s: I highly recommend you go to the Columbia show if at all you can, because a) It's a great show & b) You may not have another chance.

What with all the chatter lately about Sears and Kmart I thought I would *finally* get up these shots of the former Kmart at Inlet Square in Murrells Inlet. Part of the delay was I thought I had some other shots with the closing signage up somewhere, but if I did, I can't find them.

Anyway, this store opened, in the 80s as I recall, with great fanfare as it was the first Kmart anywhere to be attached to a mall, all the others up until that point being freestanding. That meant it was a bit of a square peg in a round hole in some ways: for instance, you could not take your shopping carts from Kmart into the rest of the mall (other than directly to and from the entrances).

The experiment apparently worked (for a while) as a similar attached store later opened at Briarcliff Mall (now Myrtle Beach Mall) though it too is now gone.

Here is a contemporary WBTW story on the store closing. It's particularly interesting as it gives the viewpoint of another merchant in the mall, who is saying essentially "Well, it's hurting me, but at least we still have Penny's, Belk and the theaters", the first and last of which have both now also closed..

I believe there is now a Planet Fitness in this space, I will try to get some shots next time I drive by (hopefully in the daytime).

Where's Waldo?

As it turns out, the answer to this perennial question is "On US-301 just south of Starke". In fact, when I found this closed Cafe Risque this summer, I believed I was in Starke, and not this particular Alachua County metropolis of 1015 souls.

In the event, I had driven by the vacant building on the east side of the road, when the partial sign I had seen percolated to the front of my brain, and I turned around to get some pictures.

I had written about Cafe Risque before, when I noticed I was no longer seeing the I-95 billboards around Darien Georgia. Doing a little more googling this time, I see that the Cafe Risque story is a bit stranger than I might have thought: the whole chain grew out of a family restaurant empire called "Skeeter's Breakfast House". Apparently that legacy led to Cafe Risque's key insight: You could run strip clubs without alcohol if you put them in out of the way places and had decent food. Certainly, the regulatory hurdles are lower that way. Of course, it's questionable if that model still works as most of the places have closed in recent years (apparently one both opened and closed in Dunn after I left the Fayetteville area) though some of that may be due to the death of the man who was the chain's driving force as referenced at the first link above. As of this posting, it appears that the location on I-75 in Micanopy Florida is the only one left as described in this (somewhat NSFW) article in Gainesville Scene.

Well, Don Pablo's continues to dwindle away to nothing. As I wrote here, I used to like to go to the Columbia Mall location. Then when that closed, I was working in Augusta and used to like to go to that location. Then that closed, and I would hit the Charleston location from time to time, then that closed and I would stop by the Charlotte location once or twice a year, then that closed, and I would try to go to the Arlington location when I was in DC on business (hard if I had no car..), then that job evaporated and I would stop by the Atlanta location once a year or so, then that closed and I would hit the Greenville location when I had a leisurely weekend, then that closed, but I figured I could still hit the Orlando location on one of my periodic runs through Florida..

Well, no more. Orlando closed in October after the chain filed for Chapter 11 on 4 October 2016, as I found well after the fact.

It wasn't a total loss, driving down International, I had seen another Mexican place, Chuy's, so I backed up to there and had an excellent chile relleno, probably the best one I've had since I was in San Antonio.

Oh, and I don't think I know of a good way to be fired

but this *definitely* is not it.

This year the annual Brookgreen Gardens Nights of 1000 Candles festival is set up a little differently in that you need to buy your tickets online in advance. This was done to prevent overcrowding and expedite the often rather tedious entrance process. It worked well, but I think they may have perhaps shot themselves a bit in the foot income-wise because it did seem to to reduce the crowd a good bit from previous years. At any rate, I chose 2 December this year, and the night was quite comfortable, not as cold as some years where I could barely feel the camera buttons through the frostbite, nor as warm as one or two years when I didn't need a jacket at all.

There's always a bit that's different or new every year, but this year the changes were fairly modest: I think the only one that really comes to mind is a new field of staked candles on the green space in front of Pegasus. The vintage christmas display did have some new roller coasters on the Lionel display, and they really zipped along!

The festival is running weekends through 18 December, so if you have some spare time, and are in, or can get to, the area, I highly recommend it.

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