Mall juju blog.

Colorful leaves, silly Halloween lawn decorations: the stuff of suburban October. One house along my walk has a platoon of illuminated bed-sheet ghosts, goofball pumpkins, glowing skulls (those are cool) and a round-eyed, bald-headed space alien from central casting. That last one’s a Halloween novelty, at least for now.

I did some research this week about the Randall Park Mall in suburban Cleveland, which recently traded hands. In the course of that research, I came across an article by a writer (curiously) named Andrew Putz, who wrote about the mall in the Cleveland Scene in December 1999, when Magic Johnson showed up for the opening of a cinema that bears his name. The piece included a little mall history:

“Randall has also been plagued by some curious bad luck over the years. The Club, for instance, the ubiquitous anti-car-theft device, was invented by Aurora (Ohio)'s Charles Johnson after his father-in-law's car was stolen -- at Randall Park Mall.

“Then there's the mall's strange history with holiday icons. In 1991, North Randall police were called to investigate an altercation involving the Easter Bunny and one of his helpers. The rabbit, apparently unhappy with the pace of a picture-taking episode, approached his helper and ‘bumped her with his head and hit [her] with his ears.’ The helper, in turn, shoved the bunny, who was also accosted by the helper's boyfriend.

“A year later, Randall Park's freaky holiday juju reared its ugly head once again when a local woman sued Holiday Mall Productions, which ran the Santa operation at the mall, claiming that one of St. Nick's helpers attacked her after a heated exchange over her child's picture.”