Columbia Closings   What’s not in Columbia anymore

While Very's hangs on in this little strip mall on Two Notch near Columbia Mall, very little else does. I believe this suite to the left of Very's may have been a hydroponics store in the fairly recent past, but most recently it was an Internet Sweepstakes operation. I saw enough of them in Florida last year that I finally got curious and checked one out -- As far as gambling goes, it is even more boring than bingo. You pay some money, get a certain number of sweepstakes entries and just hit the button on the machine until all your stake is gone. Apparently here in SC, the memory of the Video Poker era is still strong enough that the powers that be put the quietus on the whole nascent Internet Sweepstakes industry pretty quickly, before most of these places really got into operation.

Of course there's still always Publisher's Clearing House. I think I'm pretty much a shoe-in this time -- I just got a letter informing me that I am guaranteed to be a winner if my entry is selected..

As I was driving Two Notch last night I noticed the roadside sign announcing the imminent closing of this fashion and hair braiding operation in the Arcadia Lakes Shopping Center. Looks like they are having a pretty good sale.

This Chinese buffet next to Big Lots on Two Notch had been a fixture for many years, and I expected that it would be for many more. I can't think of anything that changed in the area recently, but in the event, apparently not.

I've done a number of closings on various Quiznos around town as you can see if you check the Alphabetical Closings list. This one is just east of the Brickyard Shopping Center, and in fact has stoplight access to Two Notch from there if you go around the back way. I don't have a lot to say about Quiznos. As I observed in another post, I ate at one once and it was OK, though nothing that drove me to seek out another.

(Hat tip to commenter kholler)

I noticed a few weeks ago that the Express Check Advance adjacent to Tom's Wines & Spirits had taken their marquee down. I thought that the place might be vacant for a while, but just a few days later I saw a new sign for a Moneygram location which is apparently already up and running.

This long little strip mall on Two Notch between the mall and Arcadia Lakes Drive has had more than its share of little storefront finance offices. I know of at least three, though they probably did not all operate at the same time. This one seems to have closed up shop about a year after its suite-mate, Cash N Go moved out.

I still miss when this Two Notch lot was Dick Dyer Toyota and I could drop my car off and walk home. Since then, they've tried a couple of concepts there. I think at one point it was a scooter store, then they had the Mitsubishi & Suzuki lot. I'm not sure how to characterize what happend to that dealership. The sign says it "moved" to Love Automotive, but I'm guessing a change in franchaise went with that. At any rate it now appears that the Dick Dyer Body Shop will be moving from the bottom corner of the lot into the main building.

Facebook is a weird animal. I get a lot of hits from there, but unlike a normal website, I can't check to see what people are saying when they link here becuase you have to be a facebook member to access almost anything. Likewise there's a lot of content on Facebook that's probably interesting to ColumbiaClosings readers, but in general it is not accessible outside of Facebook and never gets indexed by google. The exception is that for some reason or another, content often leaks out of foreign language Facebook subsidiaries.

A case in point is this posting which leaked through the Korean site:

Pat Seay Garvin다음 장소에 게시Georgetown Wooden Boat Show (Georgetown, SC)
2010년 10월 10일 오후 2:22 ·

Looking for any old SEAYCRAFT wooden boats made at 3132 Two Notch Rd. in Columbia, SC in the 50's. My uncle Tom Seay owned a boat shop and made several models of wooden powerboats. My father worked for him when I was little, and I remember those boats well. Would love to see an original still alive.

It's an unlikely little storefront for a boatwright, but I suppose they may have had the whole building at the time, and probably a back lot.

Long after that, during the era when the other part of the building was Mr. B's, 3132 was
Diamond's Liquor Store.

Despite the fact that they broadened their business model to full car care many years ago, I still think of Midas as a muffler place. In fact, the last time I needed a muffler, I got it at the Decker store, and as far as I can tell, they did a good job.

This store, on Two Notch near The Village At Sandhill closed sometime late in 2012. I think I noticed it in December, and kept trying to get back out there during full daylight, which I never quite managed.

The sign, Moved to Decker Blvd is a bit disingenuous as the Decker store has been there (at Fashion Place, more or less) for a number of years, so it's more of a consolidation than an actual move.

Dave's is a longtime Two Notch fixture not far past Covenant Road as you head into the city. I had noticed it often over the years, but it hit me lately that I couldn't recall seeing anyone there over the last few months when I would drive home from downtown at night, and indeed it does seem to be closed.

This review makes it sound like a pleasant low-key kind of place -- rather old school in fact, with live music by a "Drifters" alum.