Columbia Closings   What's not in Columbia anymore

I have to embed the video in an odd way because if I put it on youtube, I get copyright strikes because of the DJ music! Anyway, lots of focus issues, but it is what it is...

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This decrepit trailer is on the south side of US-76 (the right side if you are heading to the beach) somewhere in the area of Marion not too far past the intersection with US-301. I found it on Google Maps, and set the map icon below with lat/lon coordinates. I never stopped here when it was in business, which it has not been for some years now, but always wondered what services they offered.

Normally, in this sort of situation, I might get up on the deck and try to get some pictures of the interior, but there was no way I was going to have anything to do with *that* deck. It does appear that people have probably been going in from the back, so I suppose it is all stripped.

Looking at Google Streetview suggests that this trailer replaced a small building hosting a fireworks stand around 2008, and shut down sometime after 2012.

The question of what replaced this location is not entirely clear. It could be here:

here:

or even here:

The first option has a similar "I" logo, but the second location has the "gator" character from the sign in the trailer parking lot. The third option looks a bit more upscale.

Columbia's only TGI Fridays closed back in 2013, with the building to bite the dust sometime this year probably, but the Grand Strand continued to have several locations.

I ate at this one back in January of 2024, and it was fine: A decent burger & fries an hour after most other places were closed. I did notice that it wasn't actually open as late as I expected from a Fridays, and that the customers were pretty sparse, but in general it seemed in good order, and I was surprised to see the signage down on my last visit.

This continues the trend of Inlet Square losing national chain restaurants, some thing that has included Hooters, Applebee's & J. Peters & Spinnaker's. In the case of all of those except the last, local operations have moved in after the chains shut, so we will have to see what happens here. I do know that some sort of redevelopment for Inlet Square is supposedly in the cards (of course that has been the case before with nothing materializing..)

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When the Myrtle Beach Pavilion closed on 30 September 2006, it ripped the beating heart of out the city, and Myrtle Beach has never recovered. The site, once a people magnet, sat vacant for several years but was finally leased by Burroughs & Chapin to this zipline operation. I understand the difference between a property bringing in no money vs some money, but as a draw, from a civic standpoint it was not really a replacement.

In January of 2024, B & C declined to renew the lease, and the attraction shut down, with the pieces now being disassembled and the lot cleared. The story, as reported by The Sun News, doesn't make complete sense. The main mystery is why the zipline operator wanted to stay on when he claims the operation was never profitable. A subsidiary mystery is why B & C chose now:

He confirmed that the lease for Myrtle Beach Zipline Adventures contained language that allowed Burroughs & Chapin to remove the zip line if the company ever chose to build something else on the former Pavilion land.

That would imply that something new is in the works for the site, but aside from that bit of leading language, there are no details.

The only zip I have been on was The Canyons in Florida, which I quite enjoyed, so I thought I might get around to this one some year, but in the event I guess not.

Here is WPDE on the teardown, and here is WBTW.

Finally, here is a promotional video for the site:

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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 always wanted to play this old-school mini-golf course in Surfside, across from the old Wild Water & Wheels, but in the event we usually ended up at one closer to Pawleys. Still, you really haven't had the beach golf experience unless you've played a course with an octopus!

The course was opened in 1989, making it a 34 year run. However, it sounds like the current plan is (or at least was) to build two new courses in the space, so we'll have to see what happens. As of December of 2023, the place had been razed down to the ground.

Here is a story about it from WPDE, and also one from WBTW

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Sol was the follow-on in this space (which was built as a Sam's Corner hotdog place) to the idiosyncratically named Joe Loves Lobster Rolls.

It was a rather upscale Mexican place, the kind where they don't have the items you expect, and you don't get free chips & salsa. In the event, I only ate there once, with my college roommate & his wife after we had taken in an evening at Nights Of A Thousand Candles. The only thing I saw on the menu that appealed to me was the Chile Rellenos, which were fine, but on the whole for that type of concept, I prefer Luna in Murrells Inlet.

One thing I did notice driving by in the years after that, was that the hours of the place were rather unusual, and they tended to take the winter completely off. The Sun News has the story on the closing. The given reason is that the rent in this spot is too high, which seems odd as it is a building which has had trouble holding restaurants, and it is a bit off the beaten path. At any rate, the owner hopes to re-open somewhere on the Grand Strand.

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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