{"id":1956,"date":"2010-05-07T01:54:29","date_gmt":"2010-05-07T06:54:29","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/columbiaclosings.com\/wordpress\/?p=1956"},"modified":"2012-06-04T00:25:44","modified_gmt":"2012-06-04T05:25:44","slug":"the-book-dispensary-1601a-broad-river-road-may-2010-moved","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/columbiaclosings.com\/wordpress\/?p=1956","title":{"rendered":"The Book Dispensary, 1601A Broad River Road: May 2010 (moved)"},"content":{"rendered":"

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I was saddened yesterday when I heard that The Book Dispensary<\/i> at Boozer Shopping Center had closed. As it turns out, like Mark Twain, reports of its death have been exaggerated. (OK, I suppose this is no longer the case for Mark Twain..).<\/p>\n

In fact, Columbia's Book Dispensaries<\/i> have always been a bit peripatetic. The one in the Northeast has had three locations that I can think of, Two fairly close to each other on Two Notch Road, with one stint in the former Winn-Dixie<\/a> plaza on Decker Boulevard.<\/p>\n

I don't think the one near the VA in the Big Lots<\/i> plaza ever moved before closing, but this one will now have had at three locations. My memory is that it started at Boardwalk Plaza<\/i>. Boardwalk Plaza was on Bush River Road, somewhere between the K Mart<\/a> and I-26. The place was called Boardwalk<\/i> Plaza because all the stores were connected via a raised wooden deck rather than sidewalks. Looking back on it, I think that may be because they were basically in trailers rather than real buildings set on the ground. I could be wrong about that, but whatever the configuration, the plaza was entirely gone by the 1980s, though I can't identify exactly which buildings replaced it.<\/p>\n

After leaving Boardwalk<\/i>, the Dispensary<\/i> moved to this location in Boozer. As you can see from the pictures, it is actually a fairly large space, indeed larger than I remember though that's not too surprising since the book shelves would have always broken up the view.<\/p>\n

As I mentioned in Have Your Say<\/a>, I used to spend a lot of time in this store (and the first Two Notch location). I would go through the entire science-fiction section book by book, running triage on the books I wanted vs the books I could afford. I would always check out the humor section as well, looking for old books of cartoons, and the juvenile section looking for original series Tom Swift<\/i> books (though these were becoming collector's items during that period with the prices climbing accordingly).<\/p>\n

You can also trade in old books at the Dispensary<\/i> for store credit, but in general I never could bring myself to part with much of anything, even books I regarded as real stinkers.<\/p>\n

I'm afraid my patronage of the Dispensary<\/i> dropped way off in the late 80s. There were a number of factors, some specific to me, some general. Firstly, I moved out of town. Secondly, I got a real job, and could generally afford to buy any new book I wanted (within reason). Thirdly and perhaps most importantly, there was the Internet. Whereas I used to spend hours going through the shelves at used bookstores and the cutout bins at record stores, now I can find almost any book ever published with a few mouse clicks. There's still the possibility of seeing a book I didn't know beforehand that I wanted at a store, but it's no longer the norm...<\/p>\n

Anyway, I wish them luck at the new location, and will try to get over there and check it out at some point.<\/p>\n

(Hat tips to commenters Tom & Thomas)<\/p>\n

UPDATE 7 May 2010<\/b>: Well, The State<\/a> says that the new location is consolidating the Boozer and<\/b> Two Noch stores, with the Two Notch store already having been closed. I did not know that! I guess it really has been a while since I've been in a BD.<\/p>\n

UPDATE 4 June 2012<\/b> -- Here (finally!) are some shots of the new location at 710 Gracern Road (parallel to I-126):<\/p>\n

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I was saddened yesterday when I heard that The Book Dispensary at Boozer Shopping Center had closed. As it turns out, like Mark Twain, reports of its death have been exaggerated. (OK, I suppose this is no longer the case for Mark Twain..). In fact, Columbia's Book Dispensaries have always been a bit peripatetic. The […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[155,26,154,45,4],"class_list":["post-1956","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","tag-boardwalk-plaza","tag-books","tag-boozer-shopping-center","tag-broad-river-road","tag-stores"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/columbiaclosings.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1956","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/columbiaclosings.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/columbiaclosings.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/columbiaclosings.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/columbiaclosings.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1956"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/columbiaclosings.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1956\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/columbiaclosings.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1956"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/columbiaclosings.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1956"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/columbiaclosings.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1956"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}