Columbia Closings   What's not in Columbia anymore

I had just turned out of Grecian Gardens on the adjacent block when I remembered about Gooney Birds and decided to get a few pictures. Of course that was after supper -- perhaps I'll add a day shot the next time I'm in the area and think about it.

I only ate at Gooney Birds once. I had a burger, and it was perfectly acceptable, but not something so incredibly good that I would pass dozens of other burger places to get over there. I don't recall much about the decor now, but at this remove, I'm wondering if the eponymous 'Gooney Birds' could have been The Gamecocks -- most years it seems as though it would fit well enough.

As do many buildings fitted out as restaurants, Gooney Birds has found new life as a Chinese Restaurant. (The other possibility would be a Lizards Thicket, but there was already one of those in the same parking lot :-)

UPDATE 3 Nov 2010 -- Here's a daylight picture, finally:

I first wrote about this former steakhouse when Crazy Buffett folded, but it now appears that the second Chinese buffet operation in the building is history as well. I'm not sure why -- it seems like a decent location with good visibility and plenty of traffic passing by and I can't think of any other Chinese buffets in the area. There's the second Eggroll Station on Sunset, but that's not a buffet.

Notice how the left side of the building still proclaims it to be a "restaurante", a bit of signage remaining from the Mexican incarnation of the place..

UPDATE 16 May 2013 -- As mentioned by commenter Andrew, this place is being knocked down:

OK, as is often the case, my memory is a bit hazy on this, but I think I recall this whole plaza as being the original site for the Cayce K-Mart, with this outbuilding, now mostly an auto-parts operation, some sort of grocery store. Anyway, it still seems to have that sort of "grocery" look in the facade.

The area in general (around the start of Airport Boulevard and Piggy Park) doesn't seem to have done well in recent years. The Magic Carpet Slide went under, Shoney's moved, the A&P closed, and the whole little plaza across the Charleston Highway from this strip has been in decline for years.

On the other hand, the last Taco Cid is still hanging in there..

I have noticed this building on Mobile Avenue (off of Airport Boulevard fairly near the airport) a number of times over the years, though I don't believe it has always had the castle-like facade.

I used to fly out of the airport fairly often (though luckily I haven't had to fly for a few years now), and it seemed to me that for a while it was something different every time I drove past. I think in the 90s it was a strip club that morphed into a night club or vice versa, and a few more things before it became The Flight Line and then Uncle Doctors.

Google gave me a pointer to the old Uncle Doctors web site, and I was able to find some zombie versions in www.archive.org from whence the logos. Apparently Uncle Doctors was a sister club to Ground Zero in Spartanburg as they shared a site. The current occupant in the building apparently does wedding receptions and catering.

I had never really noticed this office building on Devine street until I was walking around there one day and saw the "For Lease" signs. I normally think of this area of Devine as "eclectic" upscale retail, but I guess there are a number service type businesses as well. The moving firm, Mc Donnell & Associates, appears to be a law firm, and google suggests the building holds title search and investment firms. I think it would be a nice area to work in, at least lunch-wise, though working at home is nicer still..

Here's a rather interesting picture I took the other night. The moon was almost full, and I took the camera out with a tripod to get some moonlight shots. With a long enough exposure, they look very much like daylit shots except for the visible stars and the way electric lights show up.

Hope everyone had a great Thanksgiving!

Posting is going to be light to non-existent going through the Thanksgiving weekend.

Here's a little helpful food hint I picked up a couple of years ago.

Pomegranates are great, but possibly the messiest fruit I've ever dealt with. The juice spurts everywhere and stains, plus it's a pain to get the arils out from the white stuff.

It helps a good bit to fill a big pot of cold water and break open the pomegranate pieces under water. You can then thumb the arils out from the wite stuff, and, the arils will (largely) sink while the white stuff will float and can be skimmed off.

Of course I still have juice stains all over my shirt..

Here's another place I have no memory of. Notice that the 1970 Southern Bell Yellow Pages ad lists the address as "522 12th Avenue". I'm fairly sure that's wrong, since there is no 12th Avenue in West Columbia, but there is a 12th Street. Given that, I found that the storefront is in the same strip building that houses that classic Triangle City landmark, Zesto, and is now a payday loan office. I don't know why I didn't take a horizontal format shot as well as this vertical one to put the place into context better.

The illustration looks makes it look a bit upscale, but the text describing it as a breakfast and lunch buffet place seems more down to Earth. I'm not sure when the place closed. As far as I can remember, Zesto has been there forever, and it would seem odd to have two restaurants backed up together like that, but perhaps they were neighbors for a while.

My memory of The Trestles is now rather hazy, but I'm pretty sure they were along Gadsden Street, at the lower end of The Coliseum parking lots.

As the name suggests, they were elevated train tracks, but instead of crossing a river, they crossed Blossom Street. At this remove I can't recall the sequence of events, but I suppose that the current arch on Blossom Street which lets train traffic run under it was done so that the trestles could be demolished. The demolition itself was controversial. Many people considered The Trestles to be a huge eyesore in the middle of the city's new development project, The Congaree Vista. Others considered them an important Columbia landmark and a visible remider of Columbia history. I was living in Fayteville NC at the time The Trestles came down, but I came home fairly often and noticed story after story in The State about it. I came down on the side of leaving The Trestles because I hate for anything to change ever, but that side lost and a search of The State's archive suggests that demolition began 28 Janurary 1991.

Of course, the historicity aside, what I really remember about The Trestles is that is where everyone when to practice parallel parking. I'm not sure exactly why this was other than there was not a lot of traffic under the structures, but I clearly recall driving down there around 1976 to try my hand at it. (I was, and remain, so-so). I don't think the activity was officially sanctioned by anyone, but nobody seemed to have a problem with it. I'm sure today it would be an insurance issue for somebody.

UPDATE 24 November 2009: Corrected typo/thinko for "Gadsden Street".

UPDATE 10 October 2025 -- Commenter E Mathis sent this Trestles picture long ago in a message I just found again:

More shameless commerce!

My copy of the 2010 Columbia Closings Wall Calendar arrived today, and I have to say I'm pretty pleased with it. There's always a danger that something that looks good on a computer monitor isn't going to look as good printed out, but I'm happy with the transfers here.

For those of you wondering where all the shots come from, here's a bit of a table of contents:

The Cover

Janurary

February

March

April

May

June

July

August

September

October / November

December