Want Five Points’ cowboy in a bathtub? Yesterdays ‘stuff’ to be auctioned Saturday
When Duncan MacRae, his brother, Scottie, and partner Darrell Barnes were planning a restaurant in the unique flatiron building in Five Points, they wanted it to have a relaxed, nostalgic atmosphere that would match their classic all-American menu.
Over a few beers, they came up with the name: Yesterdays.
For the next four decades — until the restaurant closed in April — they filled up the Columbia landmark restaurant and taproom with quirky stuff they picked up, bought, salvaged or made themselves to give the joint a welcoming and laid-back vibe.
“We would go out on the weekends with pocketfuls of money,” Duncan MacRae said. They’d buy “old stuff. Anything old.”
Church pews from South Carolina and Georgia. Vintage farm tools, photos and other paraphernalia from flea markets. Even a bar MacRae said was from a former brothel in Telluride, Colorado.
“The whole idea was (to create) a relaxed family tavern,” he said. “We were Cheers, before there was a Cheers.”
On Saturday, much of that vintage stuff will go up for auction, from hand-decoupaged tables featuring old photos from Life Magazine, The State newspaper and the old Columbia Record to the two ornate bars. There are neon signs, the last call bell, handmade wooden bar planks, sandwich boards, even a giant fish tank.
And then there is, of course, the carving of the cowboy in the bathtub, which has become a symbol, not only of the Devine Street restaurant, but in a way, Five Points in general. It was “commissioned” in 1989 on a whim by Scottie MacRae from a chain saw artist in Myrtle Beach.
“I think there was alcohol involved,” Duncan MacRae said. “But what’s more relaxed than a cowboy in a bathtub with a beer?”
It is carved mostly from a single chunk of wood from a Southern live oak tree downed in Hurricane Hugo in 1989. Its face is supposed to be actor Charles Bronson.
“Out of that entire collection, the cowboy in the bathtub is the icon,” said Jeremy Wooten, of Wooten & Wooten Auctioneers, whose usual stock in trade is fine arts and antiques sold around the globe. “It’s Americana, man, Americana.”
(Bidding for the cowboy in the bathtub starts at $1,500 BTW)
Wooten said they have been “swamped” with interest in the collection, mostly from folks who have a personal connection through the years.
So far, about 700 people have signed up for the online and phone auction, which begins at 10 a.m. Saturday.
“And most people sign up the night before the auction,“ Wooten said. “So I would expect double that.”
Wooten advised that phone bidding “is the best way to get get you want.”
Yesterdays open in 1977 and had been a fixture in Columbia’s Five Points ever since. But in early April, the landmark restaurant closed its doors forever.
Over the years, the restaurant gathered its share of national recognition and celebrity guests:
▪ ESPN College GameDay highlighted the restaurant on a “Talk of the Town” segment.
▪ Actor James Caan dined at the restaurant while filming “The Program” in 1993.
▪ Author Pat Conroy’s brothers worked at the restaurant, and Conroy himself had a designated corner booth.
▪ Darius Rucker and other members of Hootie and the Blowfish hung out at Yesterdays.
▪ And University of South Carolina football star and now NFL All-Pro Jadeveon Clowney ate meals there twice a week.
But Yesterdays’ biggest claim to fame was as the birthplace of Five Points annual St. Patrick’s Day festival, which draws tens of thousands of people each year. It started in the restaurant’s parking lot, with two kegs of beer, Barnes told The State in 2018.
The new owner of the building that housed Yesterdays is Dominic Como, a New Jersey native who co-founded Village Idiot Pizza and now owns the Aqua Seal Roofing Company in Cayce. He said he plans to preserve and renovate the building, but he doesn’t know yet what it will become..
Duncan MacRae said their decision to sell the restaurant came at an opportune time, just a month before the coronavirus hit with a vengeance. “Good timing,” he said.
The long-time restaurateur predicted that the coronavirus will speed up the natural evolution that had already begun in Five Points, an urban village that for nearly a century was the commercial center for the surrounding neighborhoods .
“There are going to be fewer bars and restaurants,” he said, “and more boutique-type shops. And that’s the way it should be. That’s what Five Points was built for.”