Mote's Store / Frink Street Tavern / Frink Street Pub, 904 Frink Street: 2007 11 comments
The champagne of bottle beer -- is that like The Cadillac of Fords? It just seems an odd comparison..
Obviously this building in Cayce at the corner of Frink & Ferguson Streets has been there a long time, and has probably been many things. The only two I can turn up in google however are Frink Street Tavern and Frink Street Pub, and in fact I'm not entirely sure those are two separate businesses instead of a variant name or mis-listing. If the are two separate operations, then Frink Street Tavern came first with Frink Street Pub opening and closing in 2007.
I say that because the myspace page given on the street sign still exists (after correcting the backward-slash vs forward-slash typo), and proudly proclaims an opening date of 25 February 2007 (while still looking for bartenders and "Kareoke" performers on 18 February..), giving this description:
We are a local pub located at 904 frink street cayce south carolina ...We have pool tables , golden tee , silver strike bowling and many other games ...we have the lowest price drinks anywhere , most beer is only a buck most liqour is only 2 bucks .....we do Kareoke ... live music ,juke boxes ,and like to have a good ole time ...We play country music , classic rock, and other good music ,we are open monday thru saturday from 2pm until ...and available for private party rentals on sundays .....Please stop by and enjoy an ice cold beer and get to know us ...you will have a great time !!!!!!!!! call us at 803-791-5875
However, the place is not listed in my Feb07-Feb08 or Feb08-Feb09 phonebooks, so I surmise that it did not make it through the year.
The various real estate listings all make clear that at this point this particular "track" of land is being sold with the building as more of a afterthought than an asset.
UPDATE 6 February 2012: Added Mote's Store to the post title based on the comments (which you should read). Apparently it was a little-bit-of-everything type old-time store.
UPDATE 25 November 2012 -- Looks like somebody has bought the property and is doing some work:
11 Responses to 'Mote's Store / Frink Street Tavern / Frink Street Pub, 904 Frink Street: 2007'
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tonkatoy
15 Jun 11 at 6:31 am
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Would love to know who owns this building I really like the Miller High life sign would like to buy it
ccured
21 Sep 11 at 2:46 pm
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Beats me, ccured, but I did go by there last week and the front doors were open and lights were on inside.
tonkatoy
22 Sep 11 at 6:36 am
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The place in the top picture, bookended by the sad remains of the signs, was Motes store back in the '50s. The same Miller High Life ("the Champagne of Bottled Beers") sign hung outside at the time, and read Motes at the bottom. The sign was lighted from inside by fluorescent tubes, most of which were working most of the time. Can't believe that pole holding the sign hadn't rusted through decades ago.
The store was on the right, past the casket company, as you headed out of town on Frink St. If you passed the fertilizer factory on the left, you'd gone too far.
The shaded front porch was added sometime later. In the 50s, you walked up the concrete steps into the front door. On sunny summer afternoons, you had to be careful to not place your hand against the concrete walls in front, because they faced south and caught the sun. Growing up in the 1950s South, we knew about stuff like that.
Motes sold beer, bread, and misc staples such as cans of pork and beans, vienna sausages, canned sardines, and saltine crackers. A few coolers of soft drinks (in glass bottles with non-twist off caps), including the non-major brands like RC, Nehi, Orange Crush, White Rock, and later Fanta. This was a decade or so before we saw chains of convenience stores popping up everywhere. If you lived in Cayce and wanted something in the evening after the nearby IGA had closed, you went to Motes.
Motes also had a vacuum tube tester, so folks could attempt to repair their own radios and TVs. [[[ NOTE for the under-55 readers: Consumer electronics were larger and less reliable back then. Almost everything electronic -- radios, TVs, and record players -- had vacuum tubes in the circuits. When transistors began replacing vacuum tubes, radios became much smaller, more portable. But they were enough of an oddity that we referred to them as "transistor radios." All other electronics still had tubes.]]] Motes did a pretty good business in selling replacement vacuum tubes. And a very good business in beer.
At the right end of the building, under the Miller sign, there used to be a pay phone booth adjacent to the building. I remember once, may have been early '60s, someone broke into the pay phone coin box one night and stole the money. Southern Bell put up with nothing that allowed people to steal money, so they replaced the coin box the next day. That night, someone again broke into the coin box and stole the money. Southern Bell responded by replacing the entire phone with a super-duper phone that couldn't be broken into. That night -- the third night in a row -- the pay phone thieves, foiled at getting into the phone, stole the entire phone booth! Turned out that it was held down by four large bolts, one at each corner. The crooks unscrewed the the huge nuts and hauled away the entire booth, phone, money and all. Southern Bell didn't replace it for a while. This was one of those oddball news stories that stuck with me, everyone in my school (including the teachers) was talking about it. I always wondered how they hauled away an entire phone booth and what they did with it.
Don't know when Motes closed.
Sid
6 Feb 12 at 11:58 am
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Thanks Sid!
I've added "Mote's Store" to the post title.
ted
6 Feb 12 at 12:42 pm
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Sid, what was that building across the street? Looks like a warehouse or something.
tonkatoy
6 Feb 12 at 1:39 pm
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tonkatoy, if you mean the thing beyond the trees behind the Frink St Pub sign, isn't that the casket company?
Sid
6 Feb 12 at 2:20 pm
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No, across the street. SW corner of Foreman Street and Frink.
tonkatoy
6 Feb 12 at 2:47 pm
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White building w/four vertical stripes: http://www.bing.com/maps/#JnE9LjkwNCUyYmZyaW5rJTJic3RyZWV0JTJiY2F5Y2UlMjUyYyUyYnNjJTdlc3N0LjAlN2VwZy4xJmJiPTUzLjEzMDk2NzQzNjk4NSU3ZS00Ny4yMDc0NjYxMjQ1JTdlOS40NjY0MjQzNDc5Njc4NCU3ZS0xMTQuNzk1MzU2NzQ5NQ==
tonkatoy
6 Feb 12 at 2:49 pm
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Don't recall that building off the top of my head. Would have to drive down that way to see it.
Sid
6 Feb 12 at 3:16 pm
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So, Sid. Walk us down what used to be downtown Cayce. I didn't move there until 1995, and the downtown was pretty much all boarded up then. That convenience store was open and there was a dry cleaner to the north and a metal detector shop to the south and that was it.
tonkatoy
7 Feb 12 at 7:30 am
I don't think they ever opened up, but I could be wrong. That place has been vacant since at least 1998.