{"id":22621,"date":"2023-12-06T22:38:50","date_gmt":"2023-12-07T03:38:50","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/columbiaclosings.com\/wordpress\/?p=22621"},"modified":"2025-02-11T22:30:17","modified_gmt":"2025-02-12T03:30:17","slug":"village-idiot-pizza-4517-forest-drive-december-2023","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/columbiaclosings.com\/wordpress\/?p=22621","title":{"rendered":"Village Idiot Pizza, 4517 Forest Drive: December 2023"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"..\/pix\/09\/08\/paulies01.jpg\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"..\/pix\/09\/08\/paulies01_tn.jpg\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"..\/pix\/23\/12\/p1920646.jpg\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"..\/pix\/23\/12\/p1920646_tn.jpg\" title=\"p1920646_tn.jpg\" alt=\"p1920646_tn.jpg\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p><i>Village Idiot<\/i> is the follow-on operation in this storefront to <a href=\"http:\/\/columbiaclosings.com\/wordpress\/?p=499\">Paulie's Pizzeria<\/a>, which succumbed in 2009 to a kind of \"If we have ingredients today, maybe we'll make pizza\" syndrome.  I never found the space a good sit-down restaurant in that incarnation, and since I never really warmed to <i>Village Idiot<\/i> in <a href=\"http:\/\/columbiaclosings.com\/wordpress\/?tag=five-points\">Five Points<\/a>, I never tried this location.<\/p>\n<p>The chain remains ongoing, but with the sale of this strip-mall, and the end of their lease coming up, they decided not to continue in this location.<\/p>\n<p><i>The State<\/i> has the story <a href=\"https:\/\/www.thestate.com\/news\/local\/article282645788.html\">here<\/a>, as does the <i>Free Times<\/i> <a href=\"https:\/\/www.postandcourier.com\/free-times\/food\/feature\/village-idiot-in-forest-acres-to-close-by-end-of-year\/article_12b25c64-92bb-11ee-b7c2-a36fe8128d99.html\">here<\/a>.  I'll note that <i>The State<\/i> describes <a href=\"http:\/\/columbiaclosings.com\/wordpress\/?tag=forest-acres\">Forest Acres<\/a> as <i>ritzy<\/i>, which is not a word I'd ever associated with our little community before.<\/p>\n<p>The closing date is not firmed up yet, but will be by the end of the year.<\/p>\n<p>(Hat tip to commenter Larry)<\/p>\n<p><b>UPDATE 11 February 2025<\/b> -- Now <i>Morelia Gourmet Paletas<\/b>.  Paletas are apparently some sort of popsicle:<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"..\/pix\/25\/02\/p2030215.jpg\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"..\/pix\/25\/02\/p2030215_tn.jpg\" title=\"p2030215_tn.jpg\" alt=\"p2030215_tn.jpg\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.google.com\/maps\/place\/4517+Forest+Dr,+Columbia,+SC+29206\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/columbiaclosings.com\/pix\/misc\/world_map_icon.png\"><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Village Idiot is the follow-on operation in this storefront to Paulie's Pizzeria, which succumbed in 2009 to a kind of \"If we have ingredients today, maybe we'll make pizza\" syndrome. I never found the space a good sit-down restaurant in that incarnation, and since I never really warmed to Village Idiot in Five Points, I [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1707],"tags":[1765,269,96,1766,27,3],"class_list":["post-22621","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-closing","tag-4517-forest-drive","tag-forest-acres","tag-forest-drive","tag-forest-village","tag-pizza","tag-restaurants"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/columbiaclosings.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22621","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=22621"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/columbiaclosings.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22621\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/columbiaclosings.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=22621"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/columbiaclosings.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=22621"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/columbiaclosings.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=22621"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}