Columbia Closings   What's not in Columbia anymore

The Chapel has been scheduled for a move for a good while now, as storm damage must be repaired, but ongoing weddings delayed the event until after New Years.

The Chapel was very little above high water even during normal tides. During spring or storm tides, the situation was worse, but initially the plan was not to raise it at all, as the permits would only allow for fixing the pilings at the existing height. My understanding is that this changed late in the game, so perhaps when the building is moved back, it will sit at a slightly more secure level.

Ship's Pub was the follow on to Sam's Corner in this Pawleys Island/Litchfield location. I never ate there but I would notice the building driving by, and it seems to me it closed last fall, and that I saw a truck carting stuff off in November.

Now it is open again, this time as Joe Loves Lobster Rolls, which is rather interesting as lobster is not normally associated with the South Carolina coast.

UPDATE 23 February 2018: Added top picture from 17 January 2016 of the place open.

For a new Pawleys Island Wall Calendar?

Calendars make great Christmas presents!: Everybody uses time..

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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Calendar leaves anyway..

The final leaf falls in 41 days, so better stock up now for 2017!

And how better to spend the winter months than looking at images from SC's Island Paradise?

Or more succinctly, the new calendars are ready:

Choose a new design for the coming year, or pick one of the nine classic designs still available.

This old building had been a number of things over the years, most of which I cannot at all recall, but I think at one time it was a "reproduction" furniture store, and at another time an arts & crafts store.

In fact, it was in that later incarnation that was the only time I went inside, and then only by mistake. I believe it was in the 90s, and the south strand did not yet have a lot of options for coffee. Certainly there was nothing like today's environment where every McDonalds has decent specialty coffee (and excellent regular coffee). I don't believe that Latte Litchfield had yet opened, (though the Chocolate & Coffee House in the Litchfield Exchange a mile or so north had). At any rate, to get back to the story, I was driving back to the Island and saw a sign on this building advertising Cappuccino, and thinking a late afternoon caffeine fix sounded pretty good, I turned in.

Well, as it happened, I had misread the situation, thinking that the whole building was one business, when in fact it was two. The arts and crafts store was in main front part, while the cafe operation was in the attachment to the rear, and was closed for the day, something of which I was unaware. In fact, the arts and crafts operation was closing too as it was, I think, 6pm, and as I stepped inside, the guy was turning off the lights.

He promptly turned them back on, showing rows of items I had no interest in buying (not that it was bad stuff, but I was just looking for coffee) and starting a speil about local craftsmen. In the end, I felt bad enough about causing him to re-open when he was obviously ready to leave for the day, especially when I had caused him to do so through my mistake, that I ended up buying a hand painted sheet-metal lizard magnet to make myself feel a little better about putting him to the trouble and hopefully to make him feel I had hadn't totally wasted his time. The lizard actually turned out to be a cheery little piece that is still on our refrigerator.

Both the craft store and the cafe closed fairly shortly thereafter, but as you can see from these pictures, both spaces were reoccupied, and lizards continued to be associated with the property.

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When I was on the Island after Matthew, I found things in surprisingly good shape, at least since my refence point was Hurricane Hugo. The Island lost only one house during the storm, and that from fire.

However, there was obviously a good bit of storm damage, and I noticed that this house, which somehow had never struck my notice before, was in sad shape. Since it sat almost directly across the street from the Pawleys Island Chapel, I was not surprised to learn today that it was named Chapel View. I learned that because my sister brought to my attention this tweet from the Pawleys Island Police Department, showing the demolition of the house. The last picture above comes from this tweet, which I think is OK to directly post here since it was taken by a public agency.

There is a bit more information on the house at this SCIWAY post: Apparently it was owned by an artist from Virginia.

I believe this is the first house on the Island to be demolished since Wagon Wheel abuting the town park in 2010, though there is another house near the North Causeway that seems to go underwater quite often and I am not quite sure how it is still standing.

(Hat tip to my sister)

UPATE 19 March 2019: There are now extensive comments from the last owner about the house on the SC Picture Project page

4 December this year was one of the warmer iterations of Brookgreen Gardens Nights of 1000 Candles, and by that, I mean that I could feel the buttons on my camera without my hands going numb.

As usual, the Gardens were beautifully lit, and there were entertainment tents with jazz, vocal ensembles and rock sounds of the season and wandering bagpipers. My impression is that they are getting a little bolder in color choices for the lights though of course the hundreds of candles, floading candles and luminaries remain.

The festival runs for two more weekends, on 10-12 December and 17-20 December and if you have a chance, I highly reccommend you go.

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