Boiled PNUTS Y’all!

Photos and words by Sean Rayford

All photos made in Columbia, SC in August and September of 2025.

Boiled PNUTS Y’all started as a joke when Mike Pope asked himself, “What does a grimy rock and roll band from the south sell for merch?”

It was here that Happiness Bomb, the Columbia band known for performances with puppetry—started selling boiled peanuts at shows.

Feedback was overwhelmingly positive.

Mike graduated from college, took up substitute teaching and after a single day—he was over that.

“So, I just sat on the side of the road sold boiled peanuts.”

But Mike had a secret weapon in the boiled peanut world—his wife and partner, Era Elizabeth.

“I had no teeth, and the women in the nursery would take the boiled peanuts out of the shell and mash them with their fingers and then put them into my mouth. Because I couldn't chew them on my own,” she says about her long relationship with boiled peanuts.

Era was the quality control, slinging peanuts in her blue hair, complimenting Mike’s Chicken Man-influenced folk art peanut cart.

“As soon as Mike said he was gonna boil some peanuts, I was like, hell yes. Let's get this on the road. Let's get this show going.”

The couple peddled peanuts across town and eventually took up residence at the local weekly market on Main St. “We started doing the Soda City Market, and that was the backbone. We brought like, 20 bags of peanuts the first day. Like, yeah, oh, it was a catastrophe,” says Mike.

They sold out that day and came back the next week with twice as many. The growth continued and Boiled PNUTS Y’all became the couple’s bread and butter. As Soda City Market underwent rapid growth, Mike and Era rode the wave.

“It felt like as we grew, the market grew, and it just really turned into almost like a festival every week. It's really fun,” says Mike.

For Era, boiled peanuts harmonize the community.

“Boiled peanuts are like the food that unites all the people. It doesn't matter where you're from, or you know who you are. Everybody loves a boiled peanut. I think that's really cool that we get to connect with all different kinds of people doing this.”

Olivia Rae’, a customer since the Happiness Bomb puppet days, and a fellow vendor at Soda City, says these boiled peanuts were a game changer.

“These are just proper. As far as the texture goes. They're not slimy. I feel like in the past, I'd only had convenience store boiled peanuts, and they were fucking slimy and too salty. You know, these are not too salty. You don't even notice it and they’re the right texture. They're just perfect."

In 2020, the pandemic disrupted the market and their business. They pivoted to delivery.

And then there was the Valencia red skin peanut shortage. The favored peanut for those boiling them, the Valencia represents 1% of peanut harvests and is grown in New Mexico and Texas. The variety often has more than three kernels with relatively sweet flavor.

Be warned. Boiled peanuts at gas stations are often Jumbo Virginias.

Era started acupuncture school in the midst of the shortage, and they moved to western North Carolina—where folks don’t know about boiled peanuts. Apparently, interest in the official state snack wanes west of Greenville.

But in recent years, Boiled PNUTS Y’all faded into the capital city’s past when they moved out of town. But during the last two months you may have noticed the Boiled Nut Y’all reunion.

With Era graduated from school and with Valencia peanuts back on the market, they’re trekking from western North Carolina to Columbia most weekends. You don’t have to look hard.

Distinguishing Boiled PNUTS Y’all on first encounter is Mike and Era’s embrace of the arts. After all, the business was born in the local arts scene.

“It's obviously very folk art, and I'm a punk. It all comes out of that for me,” says Mike, about the cart and signage, “Because I get to be like a 90s punk kid that got ostracized for being an outsider. And, like, kicked out of the south. Essentially, I wasn't allowed to have southern culture, and now I'm selling southern culture to everybody, and they're literally eating it up.”

The most common place to catch Era and Mike is on Saturdays at Soda City Market. They’ve been across from the Columbia Museum of Art on Hampton St.

Come before noon. On the first weekend of September, Mike and Era could barely keep up with customers. Like those first weeks, they are still selling out.