Wedding DJ at Jake’s in Columbia, SC

The Space

Before it was Jake’s, this Five Points building had already lived two lives. It opened as Riley’s Department Store, where, according to local history, women lined up around the block during the 1959 pantyhose craze, and it later became Rockafellas’, a live music venue that hosted the Red Hot Chili Peppers, Soundgarden, Green Day, Dave Matthews Band, and Hootie & the Blowfish before an eviction notice was read from the stage during a live show and the club closed in 1998.

What stands there now is a neighborhood bar and grill with an indoor bar area and a back patio built for outdoor seating, dog-friendly enough that Yappy Hour runs Tuesday and Thursday evenings. The patio includes its own stage, a direct callback to the building’s music-venue history, and live music still shows up on select nights, especially Wednesdays during the college semester nearby.

Capacity & Layout

Jake’s holds 400 to 450 people, a capacity toward the larger, more casual end of the venues on this list, closer to a bar built for a crowd than a seated dinner room. That scale suits an event built around music and standing room rather than round tables, and the split between the indoor bar and the outdoor patio gives a private event two distinct zones to work with over the course of a night.

The patio’s stage means sound and entertainment already have a natural home outdoors, separate from the indoor bar area with its televisions, so a private event can keep dancing and music on the patio while the indoor space handles drinks and conversation, or the other way around depending on the weather and the size of the group that night.

Amenities

The bar runs a full, rotating craft beer selection alongside its bar food menu, and the outdoor patio comes set up with tables and televisions in addition to the stage. Street parking is available around Five Points, with a small nearby lot as a backup, typical for a dense neighborhood built more around walking than driving to any one spot.

Because the space still operates as a working bar with its own hours, Tuesday through Saturday from 5pm to 2am and Sunday from 8pm to 2am, closed Mondays, a private event here is happening inside an active, established local spot rather than a venue built purely for private rentals, which gives it a lived-in, neighborhood feel that is hard to manufacture elsewhere.

Location & Getting There

Jake’s sits in the Five Points neighborhood, just a few minutes from the University of South Carolina, a location that puts it in the middle of Columbia’s densest walkable district for bars and restaurants. That proximity to campus is part of why the room still fills for live music on Wednesday nights during the school year and beyond.

Indoors, the bar’s hard floors and open layout, built up over decades as a music venue before it was a restaurant, carry sound well for a DJ working the room, while the patio’s own stage gives an outdoor option with a more open, casual feel, useful for a reception that wants the party to move outside once dinner is done for the night.