City of Columbia, Columbia SC

Food Truck Friday and Blood Drive!
2025-03-21 10:00 - 15:00 (America/New_York) | 2300 Bull Street (REI Co-op parking lot at BullStreet, corner of Bull and Colonial), 2300 Bull Street, Columbia, SC, 29201, United States
On Friday, March 21, 2025, the Office of Business Opportunities will partner with The Blood Connection to host a mobile blood drive unit alongside the food trucks that set up every Friday in the REI Co-op parking lot.
With the convenience of a mobile blood drive unit next to the food trucks, it’s a perfect opportunity to take a lunch break, treat yourself to delicious food, and possibly save 3 lives by donating blood!
Help encourage people to come out to the Blood Drive & Food Truck Friday, and become a lifesaver (and enjoy some amazing food while they’re at it)! This is a great opportunity to bring the community together while supporting a vital cause.

Food Truck Friday!
2025-03-28 11:00 - 15:00 | 2300 Bull Street (REI Co-op parking lot at BullStreet, corner of Bull and Colonial), 2300 Bull Street, Columbia, SC, 29201, United States
Each Friday from 11:00 am – 3:00 pm, join us in the REI Co-op parking lot on Bull Street to enjoy lunch from a variety of food trucks!
Check out the line up for February’s food trucks:
March 7, 2025:

Lunch Box
Mamas Taste of the World
Moma Kno’z Butter Bites
Wise’s Fish & Fries

March 14, 2025:

Brown Bag Deli
Diamond’s Smokehouse BBQ
Fishers of Men
Kurt’s Kitchen

March 21, 2025: The Blood Connection Mobile Blood Drive Unit will be parked alongside the food trucks, so come out, grab lunch, and give blood to help save a life!

Fresh Pours & Mo’
Smoke It Up
Snacks & Things
Tacos Oink Oink

March 28, 2025:

Diamond’s Smokehouse BBQ
Kurt’s Kitchen
Lunch Box
Purposely Made Sweets

Food Truck Friday!
2025-04-04 11:00 - 15:00, 2025-04-11 11:00 - 15:00 | 2300 Bull Street (REI Co-op parking lot at BullStreet, corner of Bull and Colonial), 2300 Bull Street, Columbia, SC, 29201, United States
Each Friday from 11:00 am – 3:00 pm, join us in the REI Co-op parking lot on Bull Street to enjoy lunch from a variety of food trucks!
Check out the line up for February’s food trucks:
April 4, 2025:

Diamond’s Smokehouse
Guy’s Hotdogs
Kurt’s Kitchen
Snacks & Things

April 11, 2025:

Cindy’s Cakes & Catering
Fishers of Men
Lobster Dogs
Maurice’s Catering

April 18, 2025: HOLIDAY (No FTF)
April 25, 2025: CD BLOCK PARTY!

Brown Bag Deli
Guy’s Hotdogs
Mamas Taste of the World
Tacos Oink Oink
Petite Sweets Bakeshop

Turtle Sculpture Unveiling!
2025-04-12 10:00 - 15:00 | Stormwater Studios, 413 Pendleton Street, Columbia, SC, 29201, United States
The City of Columbia’s Columbia Streams Art public art program will unveil ten new turtle sculptures painted and decorated by local artists during the Artista Vista arts festival on Saturday, April 12 from 10:00 am until 3:00 pm. The turtle sculptures will be on public display at Stormwater Studios at 413 Pendleton Street and also at the Artista Vista Live Art Mart at 516 Senate Street.
Further, the ten turtle sculptures are displayed with artist attribution in a digital gallery located on the City of Columbia website at https://mayor.columbiasc.gov/columbia-streams-art-turtle-scultpures/.
Artista Vista is a three-day local arts festival held by the Vista Guild showcasing local artists and their works at sites throughout Columbia’s Vista business district. For more information visit https://www.vistacolumbia.com/special-events/artista-vista.
To date, the Columbia Streams Art program has generated 36 leaping trout sculptures painted by local artists and art students exhibited at the Columbia Museum of Art, a growing series of Urban Canvas travelling tapestries placed throughout the City, 24 community mini libraries, funding for the Soda City Poetry festival, a creative planning forum for artists with Mayor Rickenmann and One Columbia Executive Director Xavier Blake, direct artist funding through a series of micro-grants, and more.

Food Truck Friday and Community Development Block Party!
2025-04-25 12:00 - 15:00 | 2300 Bull Street (REI Co-op parking lot at BullStreet, corner of Bull and Colonial), 2300 Bull Street, Columbia, SC, 29201, United States
Community Development is inviting the public for the CD block party. Join us as we celebrate 50 years of service by checking out informational booths provided by our City of Columbia departments and enjoy local food vendors with the Office of Business Opportunities Food Truck Friday. Food Vouchers will be provided to participants while supplies last!
Food Truck Vendors

Brown Bag Deli
Guy’s Hotdogs
Mamas Taste of the World
Tacos Oink Oink
Petite Sweets Bakeshop

Food Truck Friday!
2025-05-02 11:00 - 15:00, 2025-05-09 11:00 - 15:00, 2025-05-16 11:00 - 15:00, 2025-05-23 11:00 - 15:00, 2025-05-30 11:00 - 15:00 | 2300 Bull Street (REI Co-op parking lot at BullStreet, corner of Bull and Colonial), 2300 Bull Street, Columbia, SC, 29201, United States
Each Friday from 11:00 am – 3:00 pm, join us in the REI Co-op parking lot on Bull Street to enjoy lunch from a variety of food trucks!
Check out the line up for February’s food trucks:
May 2, 2025:

Kurt’s Kitchen
Smok’in Pot
Snacks & Things
Wise-Lemonade

May 9, 2025:

Lunch Box
Mahjal’s Filipino
Mamas Taste of the World
Petite Sweets Bakeshop

May 16, 2025:

Lobster Dogs
Smoke It Up
Wise’s Fish & Fries

May 30, 2025:

Brown Bag Deli
La Dolce Vita Pizza
Mahjal’s Filipino
The Haute Dog Lady

Sistercare Saturday
2025-09-13 10:00 - 12:00 | Boyd Plaza, 1515 Main Street, Columbia, SC, 29201, United States
Join us at Boyd Plaza from 10am – 12pm to participate in Sistercare Saturday!
Help us support Sistercare, an organization dedicated to Sistercare, an organization dedicated to reducing the occurrence and impact of domestic violence through direct services, prevention, and empowerment.
We will be raising funds for Sistercare through raffles, games, and a dunk tank! Stay tuned to find out who will be participating in this year’s dunk tank.
Sistercare Saturdays are a part of the Mayor’s Campaign Against Domestic Violence. This year’s campaign will culminate in the 2025 Mayor’s Walk Against Domestic Violence, taking place on October 25 at Page Ellington Park. Visit here for more information: https://publicrelations.columbiasc.gov/mayors-walk-against-domestic-violence-2025/

10th Annual PARK(ing) Day
2025-09-19 10:00 - 15:00 | Main Street
PARK(ing) Day is an annual open-source global event where citizens, artists and activists collaborate to temporarily transform on-street parking spaces into “PARK(ing)” spaces: temporary public places. The mission of PARK(ing) Day is to call attention to the need for more urban open space, to generate critical debate around how public space is created and allocated, and to improve the quality of urban human habitat…at least until the meter runs out!
We are excited to announce that the City of Columbia, in partnership with the South Carolina Chapter of the American Society for Landscape Architects and One Columbia for Arts and Culture, is again helping to facilitate PARK(ing) Day, a national event that takes place on Friday, September 19, 2025. This event is about reclaiming on-street parking spaces as public space for people, for one day out of the year (10:00 a.m.- 3:00 p.m.). Participants design and install temporary elements that can include seating, art, games, plants, etc. to encourage people to interact in the public right-of-way.
This is our tenth year temporarily transforming Downtown Columbia.
This year, the PARK(ing) Day theme builds on the recent Downtown Columbia Strategic Plan and Guidelines and we’re asking you to think more about how you’d like to plan your public realm to create more engaging and attractive public spaces in Columbia. You can use the plan’s big ideas for inspiration, or design your own perfect daydream for Columbia. The creativity is up to you!

What is the public realm? It’s that part of our urban fabric that is made up of publicly owned places and spaces that belong to and are accessible by everyone; our streets, plazas, sidewalks, trails, parks, open spaces, and more. The pedestrian realm, which encompasses the open space between a building’s face and the curb, is host to any number of streetscape elements that help contribute to a pleasant, walkable city. How would you populate the pedestrian realm? The possibilities are endless.
We want you to BRING it.
Can you believe it’s been a decade since our first PARK(ing) Day in Downtown Columbia? We are so excited to celebrate with you and to see how you build on the many creative parks we’ve seen these past nine inspiring years of tactical urbanism!
PARK(ing) Day is all about collaborative creativity.
PARK(ing) Day is about designing open space that not only attracts but also engages the community through the physical design of the space itself. Your park can be a nice place to sit and read. It can be a place for a sculpture. It can be an outdoor art gallery. It can be a botanical garden. It can foster community dialogue. It can be a picnic area. It just takes a bit of imagination and an application.
How to Par(k)ticipate:

Find out more, and get the application at columbiacompass.org/parklets
Plan your park and remember this year’s theme is a broad one. We’re asking you to think about how you’d Plan Your Public Realm as part of your design!
Get the necessary insurance, or if you are an artist or with an arts organization, contact One Columbia (info@onecolumbiasc.com or 803-254-5008) for support
Reserve your space(s) – parking space reservations are first come, first served! https://bit.ly/2025Meters

Submit the full application by 5:00 p.m. on Friday, August 29, 2025 (you’ll receive a link to submit the full application after you reserve your spaces)
There WILL be prizes.
This year, we’re holding our fifth annual PARK(ing) Day Design Contest, and up for grabs are a People’s Choice Award and a juried Best Design Award. Winners get bragging rights, as well as some fun, locally-sourced, prizes. It’s our tenth year of PARK(ing) Day and we know the competition will be steep, so we’re working to pull together some extra special prizes this year, too!
To learn more about PARK(ing) Day in Columbia, visit https://columbiacompass.org/parklets. If you have questions regarding PARK(ing) Day, contact Planning and Development Services Department at 803-545-3222 or via email at parkingday@columbiasc.gov. For information on the international PARK(ing) Day movement and to access resources, check out https://www.asla.org/parkingday2024.aspx .

Finlay Fridays - Live in the Park - The Reggie Sullivan Band
2026-02-20 18:00 - 21:00 | Finlay Park, 930 Laurel Street, Columbia, SC, 29201, United States
Start your weekend at Finlay Park with live music from The Reggie Sullivan Band!

Finlay Fridays - Live in the Park - Jon Rooks Band
2026-02-27 18:00 - 21:00 | Finlay Park, 930 Laurel Street, Columbia, SC, 29201, United States
Start your weekend with a live concert at Finlay Park! This Friday will feature the Jon Rooks Band

Finlay Fridays - Live in the Park - Opus & The Frequencies
2026-03-06 18:00 - 21:00 | Finlay Park, 930 Laurel Street, Columbia, SC, 29201, United States
Start your weekend with a live concert at Finlay Park! This Friday will feature Opus & The Frequencies

Finlay Fridays - Live in the Park - St. Pats Pre-Party with Slim Pickens
2026-03-13 18:00 - 21:00 | Finlay Park, 930 Laurel Street, Columbia, SC, 29201, United States
Start your weekend with a live concert at Finlay Park! This Friday will feature Slim Pickens for the St. Pat’s Pre-Party

Finlay Fridays - Live in the Park - Jazz in the Park with ColaJazz
2026-03-20 18:00 - 21:00 | Finlay Park, 930 Laurel Street, Columbia, SC, 29201, United States
Start your weekend with a live concert at Finlay Park! This Friday will feature Jazz in the Park with ColaJazz

Finlay Fridays - Live in the Park - DemBoyzGood
2026-03-27 18:00 - 21:00 | Finlay Park, 930 Laurel Street, Columbia, SC, 29201, United States
Start your weekend with a live concert at Finlay Park! This Friday will feature DemBoyzGood
