Refrigerated Trailer for Rent in Columbia, SC

Fred Townsend’s paintings are delicate, in his words.

He layers oil paint petals until they’ve fully blossomed. His recent Jasper exhibit featured brilliant frogs and warm cats.

But the Columbia artist has a dark side too – he’s just taking his time before he shows it to the world.

The art he’s created in the past several years has been more realistic renditions of animals and flowers, but he’s been experimenting more with a style he’s always loved: surrealism. Now, he wants to go beyond the physical world and dive deep into his emotions, translating feelings into art.

“It’s personal things, psychological things, mental health things,” Townsend said of the art he’s been creating lately. “More how I view myself and how I view the world.”

The artist, who draws inspiration from Salvador Dali and Andrew Wyeth, would love to try his hand in welding a metal sculpture. He’s currently working on a piece called “My Personal Hell” that depicts a figure squatting down in a ring of fire.

But it’s not a total departure from the bright flora and fauna works he creates with oil paint, his medium of choice.

“I’m still gonna continue my flowers. That’s always going to be my peace,” Townsend said. “How a flower falls is really interesting.”

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The Baton Rouge, Louisiana native didn’t truly immerse himself in the art world until college. He was recruited by the University of South Carolina track and field program, where he was named Southeast Region Athlete of the Year by the United States Track Coaches Association in 2004.

He also joined the School of Visual Art and Design where he said he really began to grow as an artist. He started painting from what he saw touring through Europe for track competitions and nurtured his appreciation for oil paint.

“I’ve been trying to expand it with putting some oil pastels in the paintings,” Townsend said. “It gives me a different feeling. It doesn’t dry as fast. It gives you different layers to work with.”

He stayed in South Carolina after graduation because he didn’t love the traffic problem in his growing hometown in Louisiana. He found a community in the Palmetto State, not just in the art world but in track and field. He’s been a high school track coach at Richland School District 2 since 2005.

But lately, he has been distracted from his art because he’s been … teaching art. Townsend recently became an elementary school teacher, where keeping students in line has taken up most of his time as of late – and his head space.

Townsend’s mindset, in general, has served as a mental barrier to painting. In one sense, he needs to tap into that headspace to translate it into the art he wants to create. But that’s not what he has trouble with.

“Getting out of that space to paint is the issue,” Townsend said.

But on the days he breaks through those mental blocks, he begins his creative process by opening his windows and turning on music. He takes a sip of strong coffee and starts painting the petal of another flower.

This is an edition of Capital City Progress, a weekly column that focuses on business, growth and development news in the Columbia area. It is written by Post and Courier Columbia business reporter Hannah Wade.

COLUMBIA — The capital city's only location of PDQ, a fast-food chicken sandwich chain, will close its doors after nearly a decade.

The last day for the chicken shack, located at 4456 Devine St., will be Tuesday, Feb. 20, an employee at the restaurant confirmed to the Post and Courier. Calls to a number associated with the location's owner and to PDQ's corporate office were not answered.

It's not clear why the eatery is closing its doors.

PDQ opened along the strip of road that leads out to busy, chain retail and restaurant corridor Garners Ferry Road, in March 2014. It was the first location in the state at the time. There is a second location in Greenville.

Since opening, the area has seen a number of business change-overs. In the same area, Southern grocery chain Bi-Lo closed its "Gamecock" location, known for its use of the University of South Carolina's mascot in its signage, in February 2021.

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As PDQ leaves, the bustling area is left mostly chicken-less when it comes to fast food, aside from Dave's Hot Chicken up the road. It's unfortunate timing as the Bojangles just across the street is closed down for massive renovations.

The plan for Bojangles, which the city's Board of Zoning Appeals approved back in May 2022, is to demolish the building and replace it with another Bojangles that'll have nicer amenities and a more expanded drive-thru.

In other chicken news

Chicken Salad Chick, a national chicken salad chain, has circled an opening date for its third Columbia location.

The chain restaurant is at 4840 Forest Dr. in the Trenholm Plaza shopping center and will open its doors Feb. 27, according to a press release from the company.

For the first 100 people in line that day, the eatery will offer free chicken salad for a year, according to the release. This is the third location of the chain in the Columbia-area — joining a location on Lexington's Sunset Boulevard, which opened in 2013, and a Harbison Boulevard location that opened the following year.

“(We've) had our eyes on Trenholm Plaza for a long time. We are so glad we are finally able to expand into such a great lifestyle center alongside many wonderful shops and restaurants," co-owner Julie Beville said in the release.

The Forest Drive location will be open Mondays through Saturdays from 10:30 a.m. until 8 p.m.

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Oh, you were tired of chicken news?

In case you missed it on Friday, the temporary location of Drake's Duck-in, at 1840 Hampton St., where the restaurant has been operating for nearly a year closed Feb. 16, owner Daniel Boan confirmed to Free Times.

It's not yet clear when exactly the Main Street location will reopen, but Boan said they're preparing to open back up on Main Street soon. An official opening date will be announced at a later time.

The longtime fast-casual chicken restaurant, known for its chicken sandwiches and affordable eats, closed its 1544 Main St. location in early spring of last year as the restaurant prepared for major renovations.

Other business news you might've missed

A locally-owned soap shop, Raw Essence Natural Soaps and Bath Company, moved its operations and retail store from Two Notch Road to the Arcade Mall on Main Street, the city of Columbia announced in a press release Feb. 12.

The company offers a variety of soaps, candles, body scrubs and deodorants that are completely handmade and free of harmful chemicals. It's located at 1332 Main St. and is open Mondays through Fridays from 10 a.m. until 4 p.m. and Saturdays from 10 a.m. until 2 p.m.

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If you've been missing sandwiches on the south side of Main Street following the closure of Which Wich right across from the Statehouse, here's some good news for you.

Sub Station II, a sandwich chain with locations across the state, opened a location in the former Which Wich space at 928 Main St. Feb. 15. The chain offers traditional deli sandwiches and salads. The eatery will be open Monday to Saturday 11 a.m. until 7 p.m.

In other sandwich news, a popular eatery is coming to the Midlands.

Sully's Steamers has chosen an opening date for its upcoming Lexington location. The sandwich chain will open its doors at 5850 Sunset Blvd. on Feb. 26, according to a Facebook post from the sandwich shop.

And last, but definitely not least, officials broke ground on the Scout Motors plant Feb. 15. The $2 billion electric vehicle plant is expected to bring 4,000 jobs to Blythewood.

"It's hard to believe that a year ago a few of us were locked down in a closed-room session trying to figure out how we could be competitive for this Scout facility ... now, a year later, you look around and see all the work that's going on," state Secretary of Commerce Harry Lightsey said to a crowd of around 300 people the morning of Feb. 15.

The plant will require anywhere from 5,000 to 6,000 workers to complete the construction, the company said.

Do you know a restaurant or retail business that is opening, closing, expanding or in the works? Reach Hannah Wade at hwade@postandcourier.com. Follow her on X: @hannahwade2000.

A growing restaurant chain known for its Korean corn dogs is headed to Columbia.

Corn Dogs by Mr. Cow, which has a host of locations across the U.S., will open a spot in the Columbiana Centre mall off Harbison Boulevard, according to a recent Facebook post from Columbiana Centre. An exact opening date for the Mr. Cow location hasn’t been announced, but mall signage said it is expected in “spring 2024,” and Columbiana Centre said in a Monday reply to a commenter on social media that the corn dog spot could be open in “the next few weeks.”

Korean corn dogs have grown in popularity. Much like American corn dogs, they are often battered, deep fried and served on a stick, though K-corn dogs are typically battered in rice flour rather than cornmeal.

“Mr. Cow uses our own custom premix which contains a majority portion of rice flour, which makes our corndog very chewy and savory,” Mr. Cow notes on its website. “Also, we use freshly prepared dough for the best taste.”

The corn dogs at Mr. Cow come with a host of different toppings, coatings and fillings. For instance, you can get them filled with an all-beef hot dog frank, or with mozzarella cheese, or with a mix of a hot dog and mozzarella, or with a mix of mozzarella and cheddar cheese. They have, among other offerings, a caramel puff dog, covered in caramel and sweet barley puffs, and a spaghetti dog that’s covered in marinara sauce and Parmesan cheese.

A post on Mr. Cow’s Instagram page offers the following definition of K-corn dogs: “A culinary masterpiece that proves everything is better on a stick. It’s like a regular corn dog went to Seoul for a makeover and came back looking like a snack straight out of a K-drama.”

There are Mr. Cow locations in Hawaii, Florida, Virginia, Georgia and elsewhere.

The Columbiana Centre mall has remained an active shopping hub about 10 miles northwest of downtown Columbia, along busy Harbison Boulevard. About 30,000 cars per day travel down Harbison, while about 95,000 cars per day traverse Interstate 26 near the mall, per state Department of Transportation data.

COLUMBIA — South Carolina loggers are sounding the alarm over a burgeoning crisis facing the state’s timber industry, saying recent market disruptions are leading the more than $23 billion industry to the brink of what some contend is a catastrophic collapse.

In a March 6 hearing before the state Senate’s Fish, Game and Forestry Committee, several leaders in the state’s timber industry warned the closures of several mills in North and South Carolina have left them with no place to process their raw materials at a time they are growing more trees than ever, leaving them with cratering prices for their goods and threatening them with closure.

Last year, a paper mill in Canton, North Carolina, owned by Pactiv Evergreen closed its doors, taking with it dozens of jobs and a critical processing facility for South Carolina’s logging industry, which provided just under half of the facility’s raw material.

Months later, WestRock, another milling company, announced it would be closing down its mill in North Charleston, taking with it an additional 550,000 tons of processing capacity.

The closures have since created a bottleneck for South Carolina’s foresters who plant 1.38 trees for every tree they remove from the ground, according to industry statistics. With few options to turn to if they want to turn their trees into usable paper products, the entire industry is now unable to access the market at a time the global demand for new sources of wood product has been spiking.

“We have a grossly out of balance, supply and demand problem,” Thurston Chavis, president and CEO of Columbia-based forestry firm Milliken Advisors, told members of the Senate Fish, Game and Forestry Committee in early March.

And the state has a lot to lose: Per the state Forestry Commission, logging and its related industries ranked number one in the total number of jobs across the state, number two in overall labor income, and number three in direct economic output. For comparison, the money brought into South Carolina by forest products each year is surpassed only by sectors like tourism, which generated some $29 billion in economic activity last year.

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The drop-offs seen in the industry have been severe.

After years of revenue declines since reaching highs in 2017 and 2018, South Carolina’s forestry sector saw a 98 percent drop in real gross domestic product in the third quarter of 2023 at a time overall growth was at 28 percent — a disparity Chavis warned could cause lumber facilities to go out of business or the state’s productive forestlands converted to more profitable uses, like residential or commercial development.

“We’ve learned to grow more wood, but we’ve not learned to consume more wood,” Chavis said. “We have a finite milling capacity here and they can they can only mill so much wood, which tells us we need to find new markets for our wood.”

Federal regulations could make getting that product out even more difficult.

Last winter, the Environmental Protection Agency announced it was weighing plans to tighten air quality standards for fine particulate matter by as much as 25 percent. And paper mills are notorious polluters. In 2021, the EPA fined a Catawba-based facility with ties to New England Patriots owner Robert Kraft $1.1 million after it was found to be releasing excessive amounts of hydrogen sulfide into the air, prompting thousands of complaints.

But demand for wood products internationally has also been spiking.

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Many members of the European Union stopped trading with Russia — one of the world’s largest exporters of wood products — after its unprovoked military incursion into neighboring Ukraine in early 2022.

And the European Union as a whole recently adopted new forest management plans that, by 2030, will place a greater emphasis on forest conservation than on their ability to harvest timber. Given the region’s growing reliance on wood pellets and biomass for heat and energy, the European Union is considered one of the largest potential markets for wood products in the world.

Right now, however, the only places capable of profitably exporting wood pellets are the ports in Wilmington, North Carolina and Savannah, Georgia — places too far remote for some South Carolina producers to make it worth their while.

“It’s a growth market,”Tim Adams, a resource development manager for the South Carolina Forestry Commission, said of the EU markets. “But we really need a bulk shipping facility to get them there. Most of the pellets, or wood chips for that matter, that are shipped are shipped bulk, and not in containers. It is cost prohibitive to ship them in containers. We don’t have a bulk loading facility at the Charleston port.”

The industry is already working to address its milling capacity issues. Chavis said his company has obtained several letters of support to pursue constructing another production facility somewhere in South Carolina, though it will be nowhere near the capacity WestRock provided.

Meanwhile, Gov. Henry McMaster’s office has already announced it is weighing a $55 million appropriation in this year’s budget to purchase the shuttered facility in an effort to increase export capacity out of North Charleston, a move that will presumably help bolster the state’s timber industry.

But nothing will happen, Chavis told The Post and Courier, until the industry has a guarantee it can actually move the product it produces.

“Nobody in the right mind is going to sign an agreement without the ability to deliver the product,” Chavis said. “But then the port is not going to build anything unless you have signed contracts. So we’re in this game of Whac-a-Mole.”

For TikTok account @South_Carolina_Memes, the first taste of internet popularity came from a post about the weather. Specifically, a post about the temperature being 80 degrees in November of 2023. It was a genius move, considering the undeniable, South Carolinian urge to talk about our unpredictable weather.

“There are certain things about South Carolina that are always going to be true and always going to be relevant,” said the mind behind @South_Carolina_Memes. “If you go to California or New York, I'd say it's harder to make memes about those places, because they’re so massive and they have such big populations. But with a state like South Carolina … it's smaller, and it has things that more people can relate to.”

South Carolina-based content wasn’t always the plan. Starting out, the owner behind the account posted general memes under another name. But looking into his viewer analytics, he saw an opportunity.

“What all these people have in common is they’re from South Carolina,” he realized. (It’s believed that the TikTok algorithm tends to push smaller accounts toward viewers in the same region.) “So, if I make memes about South Carolina, all of these people would enjoy that.”

Rarely can we say exactly why something blew up on the internet, and really, I don’t like to try. But looking into even a few meme or parody accounts based out of South Carolina, clear motifs shone through — across platforms, across subject areas, across micro-moments in our internet era.

For instance, people love content they can relate to, content that feels like it’s about them. For @South_Carolina_Memes, dialing into South Carolinian experiences unlocked a specific niche of followers and a direct route to success. Today that original viral post has 400K views and the account has 19K followers.

“With my old account, I posted probably about three or four videos that went viral,” said @South_Carolina_Memes. “But with followers, I was getting nowhere … I think that a specific niche is a big part of what gets you followers.”

From chicken bog to South of the Border, “people can look at your page and say, ‘Oh, I know what this is. I know exactly what I'm going to be getting every time they post.’”

For @South_Carolina_Memes today, the world is his oyster. But it’s interesting to compare a newly popular, fledgling account on the ‘It Girl’ of today’s social media with a defunct relic of yesteryear on a somewhat dying platform.

“My tweets are the dumbest stuff I’ve ever seen,” said former niche micro micro e-celebrity @BrockObama2016.

Posting from Columbia, Brock, as we’ll call him for short, experienced peak popularity (16K followers) during what he describes as the golden age of social media, 2011-2015. It was a time when organic growth was more dependable and algorithms hadn’t yet gone off the deep end. Brock saw his biggest gains from 2014 to 2015, but stopped seeing tweets go viral in 2016.

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“I think I just ran out of little gimmicky, weird internet nerd things to say at a certain time,” he said. “And I think most people do.”

Brock also believes that after a little while in the limelight, accounts tend to get booted from a platform’s good favor.

“I felt like the algorithm would feed you when you first started getting popular … but then you would kind of age out of it after a couple of years, at least on Twitter,” he said.

While Brock focused less on cultivating a specific niche, he did naturally fall into content relatable and familiar to his audience of college kids and “other weird internet people.”

He tweeted about the nerdy (e.g. Nintendo games) and the hyper political. He stayed in step with his subgenres' trends. Occasionally, he filled his feed with real time jokes from friends, harnessing some of the best vibes you can cultivate online: being silly together.

In many ways, these two perspectives are from different worlds.

Look at a TikTok meme account today, and the online sphere feels different than 10, or even five, years ago. Twitter’s ghost still hangs around, but TikTok and Instagram reign in the era of Gen Z absurdism.

But then again, isn’t Gen Z absurdism just a resurgence of early internet humor? Aren’t audio and video trends just a new meme medium? Is this all a new face to the same old constructs?

Beyond memes of yore like Bad Luck Brian, or the 2023 phenom of a smirking Kevin James, the word meme refers to a unit of culture spread by imitation. And with imitation comes natural evolution, steady or erratic. So it’s safe to say the answer is yes and no.

Whatever a meme account’s platform or purpose, the natural motifs of internet connection — and analog, real-life connection — remain at the heart of each narrative: relevance and relatability.

I still don’t think anyone can really say what makes something popular online or what kills it, but it seems successful meme accounts continue to evolve, held up by the same cultural backbone; how about this weather, huh?

Warmer weather traditionally means that arts enthusiasts come out of self-imposed hibernation, so expect an explosion of live stage performances over the next couple of months in Columbia and the Midlands.

Here’s just a few of the shows for grown-ups coming this spring:

Workshop Theatre continues to reap the benefits of its partnership with Columbia College, producing bigger and bigger musicals in the accommodating Cottingham Theatre performance space, dipping into the college’s extensive talent pool of dancers and mining the extensive treasure trove of important 20th Century stage works that are not seen nearly enough.

Running March 8-23 is Andrew Lloyd Weber’s “CATS,” based on poems by T.S. Eliot. With over 16,000 performances in London and New York combined, and seven Tony Awards including Best Musical, this sung-through tale of anthropomorphic felines features direction by Julian Deleon, musical direction by Taylor Dively and choreography from Columbia College dance professor Erin Bailey. Expect less emphasis on fantastical make-up and more of a “grungy and industrial 90’s club scene look” with a cast filled with familiar faces (Carly Siegel, Jessica Roth, Zanna Mills, Bobby Rogers) and a host of newcomers from local colleges, along with Harrison Ayer (known in Columbia’s club scene as “DJ Party Jesus.”)

Focus then shifts to island life with “Escape to Margaritaville,” a jukebox musical based on the songs of Jimmy Buffett, running May 10-25. https://workshoptheatreofsc.com/

Town Theatre is similarly featuring modern takes on the classics, starting with “Beautiful: The Carole King Musical,” running March 8-24.

You may feel the earth move whether you’re up on a roof or on Broadway, but expect lively renditions of all of the legendary singer-songwriter’s hits, from “Natural Woman” to “One Fine Day.”

Heather Hinson in the title role leads a cast of veterans including Alex Cowsert, David LaTorre,and Jeremy Hansard, backed by a live band under Tom Beard’s musical direction. Hans Boeschen directs, with choreography from Roxanne Livingston Rich.

Then get ready to take a turn into the land of satire and spoof, as director Jamie Carr Harrington, musical director Amanda Hines Wrona and choreographer Christy Shealy Mills romp through Shakespeare’s Renaissance in the musical farce “Something Rotten,” running May 10-25. https://towntheatre.com/

With direction by Terrance Henderson and a cast that includes Katrina Garvin and Lamont Gleaton, one might think “Blues for an Alabama Sky” is a musical, but instead, Pearl Cleage’s poignant drama focuses on the social and political vibe of the 1930’s Harlem Renaissance. This timely reflection on humanity, meaning in life and the African-American experience runs March 15-30 at Trustus Theatre.

The Midlands’ longest-running professional theater then flashes back to its own roots, with Terrance McNally’s “Frankie and Johnny in the Clair de Lune,” set to run April 11-20 in the theater’s intimate Side Door venue. An early vehicle for the talents of theater founders Kay and Jim Thigpen, this revival is directed by the latter’s daughter, Erin Wilson, and features Jason Stokes and Marybeth Gorman Craig as mismatched dreamers navigating risky romantic waters.

Wonder what would have happened had Mitch and Blanche from 2020’s “Streetcar” ended up together? We may never know, but their portrayers will likely generate some heat nevertheless. The Trustus spring season concludes with “POTUS,” a ripped-from-the-headlines comedic depiction of a beleaguered Commander-in-Chief and the seven female staffers who strive to save his career. Abigail McNeely directs, and run dates are May 3-18. https://trustus.org/