Someone put a piano in a tunnel under downtown Columbia ... because why not?
The damp, chilly, gray, graffitied tunnel beneath Assembly Street was missing ... something.
Something ... melodic. Something ... plinky.
A piano!
Some brave crusader recently took it upon themselves to fill the void.
Last week, a Reddit user claimed credit for sneaking an upright wooden piano (rather dusty) and bench into the tunnel that runs between the old University of South Carolina law school on Main Street and the new USC business school on Assembly Street.
Its presence is as random as the graffiti splayed all along the tunnel walls, with spray-painted missives ranging from “Fire Muschamp” to “God owes me money” to “Love wins.” Messages on either side of the piano — which does play, despite several broken keys — read “Eat the rich” and “Change is good.”
Above the piano, someone painted a colorful, detailed mural proclaiming “We the people.”
The new tunnel ornament likely hasn’t caught much attention, with USC students on winter break.
Ten days after it first appeared, the piano still sits alone in the empty tunnel. A university spokesman was not previously aware of its existence.
“It’s a mystery how it got there. It looks like a nice addition to the tunnel, though,” USC spokesman Jeff Stensland said.
This story was originally published December 31, 2020 at 1:18 PM.
