Columbia Closings   What's not in Columbia anymore

I already posted about the closing of the Two Notch Goody's, and the problems the whole chain was and is having, but I thought it was interesting that the building for the Bower Parkway Goody's, which apparently closed at the same time, has already been re-purposed. Granted these "giant book sale" things usually only last for a couple of weeks or months (though one at the old Waccamaw Pottery mall lasted for a few years), but it's something and it starts today, so you if you head out now, you can get 80% off some out of date computer manuals, and cookbooks by people you never heard of.

UPDATE 18 July 2009: Not its a "liquidation sale" for the next month or so. The sort of $5 entrance fee affair you used to see at Jamil Temple sometimes:

UPDATE 25 May 2010: Change post title to reflect full official name of the store and full street address.

UPDATE 22 Sep 2010 -- Now it's a Halloween store:

UPDATE 24 September 2011 -- It's to be a Stein Mart:

UPDATE 31 October 2011 -- Looks like Stein Mart is open:

UPDATE 10 May 2017 -- Actually I have been confusing 1120 & 1130 Bower Parkway. Goody's, the Haloween popup store and the Giant Book Sale store were all in 1130, most recently occupied by H H Gregg. 1120 where Stein Mart was is a different storefront.

Columbia has had trouble getting & keeping national brand Mexican restaurants. Garcias, Don Pablo's, and Cucos have all come and gone while Chevy's, Rio Bravo, On The Border and Chi-Chi's never made it here.

El Chico is the only one I can think of that has been here and stayed here, and I like it a good bit. I'll say, in fact, that once you add the crushed hot peppers, their salsa is the best in town, and chips & salsa are about 60% of what I grade a mexican meal on. (I also think that it's a very American story that an Indian family comes to America to open a restaurant -- a Mexican restaurant.)

I was disappointed last week when I made it to that side of town just in time (I thought) to scoot in before closing, and found the place shuttered due to a fire. I called this week to see if they were back and was told that it will be until about the end of the month (I think I was quoted a date of 27 Oct) before they will be open again.

UPDATE 7 Feb 09: I should mention that El Chico is now open again (and has been for a while).

UPDATE 24 July 2010 -- Not a good sign: The hours have been cut to close at 9pm Sun-Thur and 10pm Fri/Sat.

UPDATE 4 January 2012 -- As mentioned in the comments, El Chico has had another fire and is currently closed again. From the look-see I took just before Christmas, it does not seem to have been an especially bad fire, so I would not expect them to be closed for long:

UPDATE 14 March 2013 -- After a long while with no apparent activity, cleanup has started at El Chico, so it appears that they definitely will re-open:

UPDATE 18 September 2013 -- Still no sign of any rehabilition work at the place:

UPDATE 22 October 2013 -- As reported by several people, the end has come for El Chico and they will not be reopening:

UPDATE 27 January 2016 -- It looks like we are finally getting near to an opening date for Persis Biryani Indo-Mexican Grill:

UPDATE 4 May 2016 -- As mentioned in the comments, now open as Persis Biryani Indian Grill:

This former residence on Broad River Road about a mile North of I-20 was for many years George's Book Exchange (I might not be recalling the name exactly right though "George's" was certainly in it). The Dutch Square area used to be pretty rich in book stores. Inside the mall itself, there was Walden's (which was still there last time I checked, though not in the original location) and some sort of mainly greeting card store which was down the internal hill from Waldens and on the other side of the walkway. It had several paperback racks with a different mix of books than Waldens. Across Dutch Square Boulevard from the Mall there was Cookesbury, which at the time seemed more general interest than the Christian focus it now has, and down on Bush River Road, somewhere past K-Mart and before I-26, was the Book Exchange which is now in Boozer.

Unlike all those, George's was not in walking distance of Dutch Square, but once I started driving, it was easy to check out when I was in the general area. Also, unlike all those, it must be admited that George's had a lot of R and X rated material. The professor I had for the Science Fiction elective I took at USC actually called the place "Scummy George's", but I don't think that's wholly fair. He had all sorts of books, and the mainstream books were not just a front for the adult stuff. (And some of the adult stuff seemed to be "collectible" issues of Playboy etc).

In my particular area of interest, the store always had a good bit of SF, including from time to time issues of the old SF pulps from the 50s & 60s. I remember picking up several old issues of Galaxy and Worlds of If there as well as lots of SF books. As far as I can recall, there was ever only one person at a time working the store (it wasn't large). I can't remember if it was always the same guy, but I'm sure that at least sometime it had to be the eponymous George.

Eventually, I stopped going to used book stores very often. I guess I got rather spoiled by having a real job, and knowing that if I wanted a book, I could just buy it new. Then came Amazon, and now I can find $0.01 copies of lots of used books if I want them. There's still a lot to be said for going to a used book store and stumbling over something you weren't looking for, but I nonetheless do it much less now than then. At some point after I tapered off (and was living in Aiken anyway), George's closed. I don't know if George retired, passed away, moved or just found it wasn't profitable anymore. Whatever the reason, the building now houses a barber shop. Of course if it's like most barber shops, the magazines in there now aren't any newer than George's collectibles..

I changed my mind about getting on I-77 today, and turned onto Old Forest Drive at the Wal Mart meaning to hop over to Percival. As I did so, I noticed that Liquids Gentlemen's Club was closed.

I don't know what this building was originally (you can see where some windows have been bricked over), but when I was first aware of it, it was The Carriage House. I may be wrong, but I think this was the first (and for a good while only) strip club in Forest Acres, though the town boundries are kind of odd, so I'm not absolutely sure it is now, or was then in the city limits. The building abuts what was once a viable strip mall at the corner of Forest Drive & Percival Road and which had some sort of convience store, a barber shop and a few other stores which I have long forgotten. It also had a Putt-Putt course about which I posted earlier.

After The Carriage House folded, Liquids moved in (though there may have been a gap). Although the location isn't great, I suspect that it already being zoned for a strip club was a big factor. Either The State or The Free Times did a profile on the owner. I can't recall his name, but he was somehow connected with the Columbia Rap scene, either as a performer or a promoter. I don't know if that business took off and he dropped the club, if they were closed down for some violation or other, or if it just wasn't profitable. Whatever the case, Liquids has dried up.

UPDATE 2 June 2010: Added the full street address to the post title. Also did some googling and found out that the Liquids was granted a liquor license on 22 Feb 2006, but that it was revoked on 14 Feb 2007 for violations of the conditions under which is was issued -- I suspect that had a good deal to do with the club closing. Also, oddly, the first link states that the building was planned to be demolished in 2007 for a hospital, something I never heard of (and which obviously didn't happen).

UPDATE 13 Oct 2010 -- Apparently The Carriage House was a legit restaurant before it went topless. Here's an ad from the 1975-1976 Southern Bell directory:

UPDATE 11 Feb 2011 -- the place continues to deteriorate to the point that there is now a warning letter from the sherrif on the door:

UPDATE 4 April 2012 -- The building continues to degrade, but on some days it's prettier than on others:

UPDATE 1 March 2018 -- This building was razed long ago to build the back parking lot for the new Panera/Petco plaza, but here are some pictures from 16 July 2011:

Well, it's official!

Please see my original post on Red Wing Rollerway which I have updated today with lots of new pictures, including interior shots. (If you have any thoughts, leave them there -- in fact, I think I'll turn comments off on this "heads-up" post).

The Paperback Exchange was on of my favorite places downtown in the 70s and 80s. It was not fancy, in fact it was a dump. My memory says that it was a little one story building on the East side of Assembly. The address was very easy to memorize, and is now occupied either by the former AT&T building or a the parking garage, I'm not sure which, so I'm including pictures of both.

The place had big glass windows on either side of a central door, and there was a wide wooden display shelf behind each window. I don't know what the building housed originally, but by the time The Paperback Exchange occupied it, this area was strewn with old magazines and comics yellowing in the afternoon sun.

The place was definitely a bit seedy, and porn was a good part of their stock in trade, along with men's "adventure" magazines like, um Argosy, Soldier of Fortune and the like. (Looking back, I'm a little surprised my mom would drop me off there sometimes while she shopped. Of course, she would have first look at whatever I bought...) There were never many customers when I was there, and I've wondered over the years if perhaps the place was a front of some sort though I never saw any indication of that at the time.

All that aside, what I went for was the Science Fiction rack (and later in the 80s, used comics). This was more or less in the center of the store and was, I believe, two double-sided wooden rack units. The books were in no particular order, but they did seem to turn over with fair regularity, and the place always seemed to have quite a few Ace Doubles. This was an interesting concept that Ace books pioneered in the 50s and 60s (though it lasted into the 70s) where the company would publish two books (often novellas by today's length standards) under the same cover, but upside-down to each other. Each book would have it's own front cover and there was (necessarily) no "back" cover. The books might be by the same author (Jack Vance: The Houses of Iszm with Jack Vance: The Son of the Tree for example) or different authors (Jaunita Coulson: The Singing Stones with E. C. Tubb Derai for another). Although I did not know this at the time, Donald A. Wollheim, who later founded DAW Books was the SF editor at Ace during a large part of this time, and since his tastes were often congruent with mine, I liked a lot of those old Ace Doubles. Anyway, I got a bit distracted there -- my point was going to be that at the time, at The Paperback Exchange, those doubles weren't yet collectible, they were just old and over the years I added many to my shelves.

The end came with development. As I said, I'm not sure exactly which of these two building occupies exactly the "1234" address, but between the two of them, they took out the entire contents of the first block of Assembly. I'm not saying The Paperback Exchange was any architectural treasure either, but in my opinion the AT&T building, at least, should not have been built there as it overshadows the Capitol... As far as I could tell, The Paperback Exchange never relocated to any other spot after it was evicted -- there were several other such operations in town at the time and perhaps they didn't have the margin to reestablish and compete. At any rate, I still have all those Ace Doubles.

I picked up a Free Times at lunch today, and see that the vote for the 2008 "Best of Columbia" is on. If you've enjoyed any of these posts over the past year, why not keep columbiaclosings.com in mind when you vote for Best Local Web Site or Blog? (Don't worry, you can still read this site even if you vote for someone else :-).

Ballots are in this week's paper, or online at www.free-times.com at the "crown" logo.

I have bowled, I believe, four times. The first time, I had beginner's luck, the other times -- not so much. I have the impression that this alley, on Broad River Road not too far from Briarsgate, has changed hands a couple of times over the years I've been driving by it, an impression reinforced by the repainted look of the No Loitering sign. I'm pretty sure it was a going concern until fairly recently -- the plants inside are still OK, right?

As with many places, I have no idea what happened here. It seems to me that bowling used to be a good bit more popular when I was a kid -- it was often on TV on weekends, and you could send in cereal box-tops for free admission to alleys, but given that there are so many channels now it could just be that I don't run across it as much (and I don't eat cereal anymore either..). I believe that the Robert Putnam's Bowling Alone used the decline of bowling teams as a metaphor for what he thought was wrong with American society in the 90s, but I don't believe that was meant to imply the sport as a whole was on the way out, just the social/team aspect of it. I didn't notice any for sale signs on the property, so I'm not sure what the outlook for it is.

UPDATE 6 October 2017 -- It appears that something is happening here. The notices (from 2015) seem to be to the effect that the owners either need to do some minimal repairs (the building was apparently open to anyone wanting in) or tear it down. I'm not sure if that's what the dumpsters are all about or if there is actually something going in there. The cross painted on the side made me think perhaps a church was taking possession, but there is still a realty sign at the road front, so probably not..

UPDATE 5 February 2019 -- As reported in the comments, now Immunotek:

I like to take pictures in the afternoon, because it seems to me the light is best then (leaving aside the fact that I rarely get my act together before 1 or 2pm anyway if I don't have to..), and so since I happened to be out in the Intersection Center area one Saturday afternoon recently, I decided to walk the whole place and take a bunch of pictures. I think I've already used some, and others will show up from time to time.

This former Chinese restaurant really caught my eye because of the life-sized cut-out figure still affixed to the front wall. I wouldn't call it fine art, but someone put a good bit of work into it once upon a time and it's a shame that it will probably go under the wrecking ball sooner or later. I was going to get a lot closer to the building and do my standard trying to look into the doors etc, but as I turned the corner, I saw a Highway Patrol car sitting beside the next defunct business. I believe there was a major drunk driving crackdown on at the time, and I suppose they were watching Broad River for people they could pull. I know I wasn't doing anything wrong, and I know the Highway Patrol could care less about most non-car related shenanigans, but it made me a bit nervous, so I made sure to flourish the camera very ostentatiously, and tried to look very much like I was not "casing the joint"...

I don't know what happened to Chung King. I think a lot of Chinese restaurants are family run and operate on a shoestring. Perhaps the place put the kids through college and it was time for mom & pop to retire. Perhaps being in a dying strip mall meant there was too little drive by traffic. To me it seems like the place has been closed forever, so I'm saying 1990s in the tag line, but apparently it was open recently enough that one of the online restaurant sites thought it was worth entering in their database -- something that does not give me a great deal of confidence in the rest of their listings!

UPDATE 22 January 2020: Add map icon, update tags.

I only ate at The Santorini Grill once, about two or three years ago, I guess. I believe that the place had just been written up either in The State or The Free Times, and had gotten a pretty good review. After that, I meant to get out there several times, but the location, on Hardscrabble Road, just made it very difficult to do from Forest Acres. You had to take either I-20 or Two Notch to Clemson Road, and then go through a bunch of lights and it was just too much to make it a habbit. That said, the time I did get there, it was quite good. Their now-zombie site has a partial menu (it seems to be missing the "Greek" and "Dessert" pages):

I can't quite recall what I had, but it was probably either Spanakopita if I was going "Greek", or Lasagna.

I know I had trouble getting out there, but given how much the area has grown in the last few years, I would have thought that the place could have made it on the population that lives out there now. I don't know what happened -- perhaps Santorini was simply too upscale.

I see that it will become a pizza place. I wish them luck, but there was a "fancy" pizza place in the previous block of Hardscrabble (where Computer Renaissance is) and it lasted only a few months before going under (the space is some sort of Asian place now).

I like the Santorini building quite a bit. It's a nice structure, and I am partial to Lantana. It's a bit disappointing to see it from the rear and realize the nice smooth top lines are provided by false walls, but you really do need all that stuff on top of a restaurant, so there's not much else you can do. This final picture is from their zombie web-site. Normally I don't do that, but I guess in this case it's pretty moot. I include it because I like neon, and didn't get a chance to take any of my own pictures with the place lit up.

Thanks to commenter "Elizabeth" for the heads up that this place was gone!

UPDATE 9 June 2009: Well, apparently the North East Pizza Palace idea didn't pan out -- It's now another San Jose