How does the Ashtabula mall still exist!?

A facebook note originally from Thursday, June 11, 2009 at 3:32pm

Today I drove by the Ashtabula Mall. Rather, the Ashtabula assortment of stores collectively in one small area (it's truly not a mall). I noticed that the "mall" now has a brand new sign with this huge LED screen on it. Believe me, I would like to see things look nicer around this area, but can anyone tell me where they got the money to install such a sign? I'm sure it wasn't cheap. If you walk through the inside of the "mall," it's like walking through a ghost town. Vacant stores are probably more common than stores actually open for business- it's pretty depressing. I don't get it, more and more businesses are shutting down and leaving, yet they have managed to scrape up the funds renovate the interior, build indoor play areas for kids, install flat screen TVs, and now there's a huge LED sign on the outside. That's all well and good, but where's the money for these things coming from? Can I see the budget anywhere? Does anyone know? I don't know much about budgeting, but just from observation I'm pretty sure that those weren't very wise investments... at least not all of them at once. I will be truly and honestly surprised if the place is still around 10 years down the road. Malls are dying across the country, so we must really be screwed here in the rust belt. Even malls in well to do areas that have all of their stores open and flourishing are having problems not going bankrupt (like Beachwood) so how is it that the Ashtabula "mall" is still kickin'? Again, I don't know all of the politics behind this thing or how close to "dying" it truly is (though I'm convinced it is on its last leg), but if I ran the Ashtabula "mall," I think I'd rather go out gracefully than go out with deeper holes in my pockets.

Here's the old sign. It really wasn't that bad, no? Also, you should know we really care about our ejumacation here, so we decided to have "family LITERCY day."

Oh, and then there's this (along with lots of other things) that just push me over the edge. I found this a few minutes ago while searching for images of the Ashtabula "mall." I'm not sure what exactly these pictures were for, but at Ohio State, they had someone representing each of the 88 counties of Ohio. The representative from each county had to wear a shirt with the county name on it. But notice how they spelled Ashtabula:

A-S-H-T-U-B-L-A.

I feel bad for the girl that had to wear this misspelled shirt. She probably facepalmed herself upon seeing it, just like me.

At first I thought, "Well hey, maybe they couldn't fit Ashtabula on the shirt." Wrong. Not only does spelling it "Ashtubla" not make much sense because the B and U are misplaced, but whoever made the shirts spelled other counties with more confusing pronunciations and even more letters correct way. Example:

I used to hate everyone from Tuscarawas county because they got more snow days than us. THEY AREN'T EVEN IN THE SNOW BELT! WHAT THE HELL!

Tuscara-WUSSIES.