Ninth Street in Rain, South Ninth Street

Ninth Street in Rain, South Ninth Street

Stephen Bybee
Columbia, MO
1998

It is an effort to try and remember everything that was located on this beautiful stretch of Columbia’s Ninth Street in the late 1990s…this photograph helps.  On the far left was Billiard’s, before it moved to Broadway…next was The Music Café, followed by the restaurant with my favorite neon sign ever to grace a Columbia eating establishment, Peking.  The next address after Peking was Quinton’s, then there was a comic book and gaming store whose name escapes me, and finally on the corner of Ninth and Cherry was a clothing store called Te Shurt.  If you have been following my weekly, Friday morning posts of nocturnal Columbia photographs, you will already know that I was long fascinated with this stretch of South Ninth Street, coming back several times in different seasons and in different weather to photograph this particular block.  This image was taken on black and white film on a raw, rainy night in February or March of 1998.  It was one of those evenings where after a brief dalliance with warm weather, the meteorological powers that be seem to lose faith in the concept of spring and declare a mandatory return to winter.  A week or two later this stretch of Ninth Street was covered in snow.