St. Petersburg

By EMILY SISELL
USFSP Student Reporter

ST. PETERSBURG – As a young teen in Colombia, Leo Gomez dodged the authorities to paint graffiti on the sides of railroad cars.

Now, as a U.S. citizen, he makes a living doing commission-based art in St. Petersburg.

His latest creation was a 135-foot-long mural titled “Sunshine on my Mind” on the side of the Ice House of St. Petersburg at 1955 Third Ave. S.

Gomez found artistic inspiration from hip-hop culture in the ‘90s. On his website, he describes himself as “a hand lettering artist, muralist, and all around lover of hand craft art.”

He says he is passionate about “keeping the sign craft alive, transforming boring walls into inspiring spaces and boosting engagement with bright and colorful designs.”

His clients, he says, have included Starbucks, Publix, the Body Electric Yoga Co., the Hollander Hotel and the Love Food Central café.

This was the first year that Gomez, 28, participated as one of 16 artists in the annual SHINE St. Petersburg Mural Festival in October.

The event was the fifth annual campaign to cover some of St. Petersburg’s drab buildings with inspiring street art. It is part of an explosion in so-called public art around the country in recent years.

As the years have gone by, Gomez found himself wanting to create larger pieces. That led to this year’s SHINE festival and his biggest paid painting yet.

Gomez said he had complete artistic freedom to create his colorful mural.

The festival started with three rainy days so Gomez had to put his brush down. And when sunny days returned, he ran into a different problem when his lift stopped working temporarily.

He spent the remainder of that day working on areas he could reach from the ground.

Despite the challenges, Gomez still finished on Oct. 26 as expected.

Difficulties like this make it worthwhile in the end, he said. “The most happiness is brought when I see how people react to my art.”

He has always lived with the determination to get his art on the streets.

“Fear is just a thing in our minds,” said Gomez. “It’s something we create ourselves, and if other people can do it, so can you.”

By LEANNA DOOLITTLE
USFSP Student Reporter

ST. PETERSBURG – What do Legos, Jack Kerouac, and virtual reality have in common?

Not much, unless you attended Nerd Nite on Oct. 23 at the Iberian Rooster at 425 Central Ave..

The event, which is billed as “a TED talk with beer,” is all about creating a space for anyone brave enough to go on stage and talk unabashedly for 20 minutes about their passion.

One speaker is by day an artist and muralist and by night an avid fan of Kerouac.

James Hartzell’s admiration for Kerouac started in high school and has gotten stronger over time. He is the secretary of the Friends of Kerouac House Foundation, a group working to make Kerouac’s last house at 5169 10th Ave. N in St. Petersburg a historical monument.

His dedication to preserving Kerouac’s legacy in St. Petersburg has even played out in his art.

During the 2016 SHINE festival, Hartzell painted a mural of Kerouac on the side of the Flamingo Sports Bar, the place where Kerouac “notoriously drank himself to death” in 1969, said Hartzell.

Although Kerouac’s wild lifestyle was interesting, Hartzell was drawn to the way he connected with people.

“Everyone was given equal importance in his novels. It didn’t matter if you were a field hand in Mexico, or a jazz musician, or a vagabond like him.”

By connecting the routes of all the places that Kerouac lived, Hartzell said, we can bring those communities together.

“Appealing to the west coast crowd in San Francisco to the east coast crowd here in St. Pete, … we want to build bridges, we don’t want to wall people out,” said Hartzell.

Another speaker, Tod Stephens, brought his Oculus Go headset and described how he uses 3D technology to create films displayed through virtual reality.

He went through the process of creating, editing, and displaying a film called “Fractal Immersion,” which he created using 360 camera technology.

According to the Nerd Nite facebook page, fractals are “colorful patterns driven by mathematical formulas.”

After Stephens’ presentation, the audience took turns with the Oculus Go headset, immersing themselves in the geometric world of his film.

Stephens’ goals are to use live, interactive, 360 videos to help the SPCA promote dog adoptions, and to have his fractal film displayed at the Tribeca Film Festival.

The last speaker was Scott Fitchet. His presentation was about creating small scale dioramas of solar power technologies, making the large and complex process easier to understand.

By using Legos to describe the intricate systems of solar power, Fitchet hopes to educate people of all ages. “Adults aren’t going to save the world, so I’m going to teach this stuff to little kids,” he said.

After going to Nicaragua to learn how to install solar panels, Fitchet figured out how to break down the process into four basic components – solar panels, charge controllers, battery banks, and outlets.

According to Fitchet, once you know how all these things work together, installing solar panels is less daunting and easier to understand.

At the end of the presentation, Fitchet pulled up a picture of the actor Kevin James as his character on “King of Queens.”

“You’re not going have a sitcom on CBS where a bumbling idiot with a heart of gold is going to show you how to install solar panels.” said Fitchet “This guy (James) drives around and he spits carbon monoxide into the atmosphere. So you need to be the person who does this, you need to be the bumbling idiot in your sitcom.”

Nerd Nite was founded in Boston in 2003 by a biology graduate student named Chris Balakrishnan. Since then it has become a worldwide event.

People from Washington, D.C., to Melbourne, Australia, can get connected and engaged with people in their communities to talk about their passions and to geek out.

Vikki Nelson and Matt Gamel, audience members at the Oct. 23 event, have gone to Nerd Nites in Phoenix, Miami and now St. Petersburg.

“It’s a date night; we hit one wherever we go,” said Gamel.

The St. Petersburg event was hosted by Nerd Night bosses Brandi Askin, Caryn Nesmith and Gerni Oster.

It was Oster’s idea to bring Nerd Nite to St. Petersburg, said Nesmith.

“St. Petersburg is always looking for cool things to do. Every bar has a thing they use to attract people, and there are cool bars here. It’s not as busy here so you can find a venue,” said Oster.

Although you don’t have to be a professional in your field of choice, “we want people who are passionate and knowledgeable, something that is based in fact, someone who knows how to research something; there should be some rigor.” said Askins

“It is kinda fun to put those people together. People who are experts in their field and people that are just into something,” added Nesmith.

For these three women, their favorite part of Nerd Nite is planning the event and sharing it with the community.

”It starts to be the same people that come and you start to know everybody,” said Nesmith. “I think it was really fun to be here together and start to have that community around us.”

Askin added, “It is fun and community and education and social change. The discussions that people have, where they get excited about new ideas can lead to new things in their lives, it feels like an important purpose.”

Nerd Nite at the Iberian Rooster happens at 6:45 p.m. on the fourth Wednesday of every month.

By LEANNA DOOLITTLE
USFSP Student Reporter

ST. PETERSBURG – Miguel and Holly have been together since 2008.

They aren’t dating. They are the radio hosts of Hot 101.5’s “Miguel and Holly Show” in the all-important 6 to 9 a.m. slot.

Joined by Scott Tavlin (or “Scotty with the Body,” as he’s known on-air), Miguel Fuller and Holly O’Connor get up every morning to fill the radios of daily commuters with music and entertainment.

WPOI “Hot 101.5” is a so-called CHR station (contemporary hits radio) that targets people in the important 18-to-34 demographic. It is owned by the Cox Media Group chain.

Fuller, 34, grew up in Atlanta and got a bachelor’s in broadcast from Georgia Southern University in 2007

O’Connor, 37, is from Ohio. She got a bachelor’s in communications from Ohio Northern University in 2004.

The two started together in 2008 in Panama City Beach, then went to Play 98.7 in Tampa Bay. When the station abruptly switched formats, they returned to Panama City Beach before settling in St. Petersburg in March 2015.

Their show is upbeat, transitioning between Top 40 chart hits like Lizzo’s “Good as Hell” or Camila Cabello’s “Senorita.” With the addition of weather forecasts, local traffic updates, giveaways and zany segments, it seems like the show, and its hosts, are going a mile a minute.

That’s the magic of radio.

Headphones on and headphones off is a constant repetition occurring behind the scenes of the “Miguel and Holly Show.”

After O’Connor announces a giveaway for Cabello tickets, Fuller chooses a song and the headphones come off. Fuller begins to edit a segment for later in the show, while Tavlin starts taking the multitude of calls coming in for the tickets.

“You’re caller No. 1; please call back again … You’re caller No. 2; please call back again …” is Tavlin’s answer to each phone call until he finally reaches No. 20.

The call is transferred to the speaker so Fuller and O’Connor can let her know she’s won.

The call, the winner’s excitement, and Fuller and O’Connor’s congratulations are recorded. The headphones go back on and the pre-recorded conversation is played over the air as if it were live.

This happens again during the show’s “Blown Off” segment. Someone calls in after going on a few dates and thinking it’s going well until their date suddenly stops responding.

The broken-hearted calls Fuller and O’Connor, who then call the heartbreaker, questioning what went wrong, while the heartbroken keeps quiet on the line.

Sometimes it ends well, sometimes it ends poorly. But it is entertaining either way.

It sounds like the calls are happening live at 7:30 a.m. In reality, they were recorded the day before.

It’s not all pre-recorded, however. Fuller announced the recipe to his famous mac and cheese on air, and O’Connor talked about her daughter’s lucky Brussels sprout.

Those live sessions are intermingled with on-the-spot edited or pre-recorded segments.

Knowing what’s happening and when it’s happening, at the show’s fast pace could get confusing, but Fuller and O’Connor are in sync.

“We’ve stayed with each other since 2008, which doesn’t happen all the time,” said O’Connor. “It’s really good when you can (stay together) because we just know each other and that helps with our radio purposes. But it is also nice because you have someone who’s got your back in the business.”

They say the thing that has kept them motivated is being able to connect with people and make their mornings a little better.

“Anything that entertains people and makes them feel like they are not alone, has sort of been a hallmark of why we’ve continued to do this,” said Fuller. “You realize that there is so much good that comes just from helping people start their day off.”

By LIZ STOCKBRIDGE
USFSP Student Reporter

ST. PETERSBURG – As a newspaper journalist for a quarter century, Katherine Snow Smith covered business news, wrote a column about parenting and edited a slick magazine for affluent readers.

She also fell into President Barack Obama’s lap at a White House Christmas party for journalists in 2009.

In November 2018, however, Smith left journalism to join B2 Communications, a public relations agency in St. Petersburg.

It was hard to leave the Tampa Bay Times, her workplace since 1994, because there were “so many bright, funny, and smart people of all ages and all backgrounds with a very communal cause to get the paper out,” said Smith, 51.

But newspaper journalism today is beset with financial challenges and an uncertain future, and B2 seemed to offer fresh opportunities and stability.

Smith says she has found many similarities between journalism and public relations, but some noteworthy differences as well.

As the senior content strategist at B2, Smith spends her days pitching stories, dealing with the news media, planning conferences, and writing blog posts, case studies and newsletters for other colleagues’ clients.

Whether she is e-mailing, texting or calling clients left and right, Smith stays busy. B2’s clients include SPCA Tampa Bay, Valley Bank and the Community Foundation of Tampa Bay.

One of the benefits of PR work is that “you do get to establish a relationship; you’re allowed to form a friendship with your sources and your clients,” Smith said. “As a reporter, you could have friendships, but you couldn’t be on their side in reporting stories.”

Smith found that writing PR releases is quite comparable to writing newspaper stories.

“It’s a lot of interviewing, getting the stories, finding the hook or what makes it interesting,” Smith said. “Sometimes the client doesn’t know what the compelling thing is.”

Smith grew up in Raleigh, North Carolina, where her father was a newspaper editor and columnist and her mother taught speech communication to college students.

She earned a bachelor’s in journalism at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and started her career covering three tiny towns in South Carolina.

There, Smith met fellow journalist Adam C. Smith, who became her husband for 24 years and father of their three children.

He was a reporter at the St. Petersburg Times, so she moved to Florida and worked at the Tampa Bay Business Journal, then shifted to the Times to cover business in Pasco County.

When the first of her three children were born, she left the paper’s staff, but for 10 years she wrote a column about parenting called “Rookie Mom.”

Smith’s work does not stop at raising children and representing clients.

After taking a memoir writing class at Eckerd College, Smith was inspired to try a different style of writing.

A collection of essays about her humorous experiences, Rules for the Southern Rulebreaker: Missteps and Lessons Learned, is scheduled for publication next July.

The awkward encounter with Obama came in 2009, when she accompanied her husband – by then the Times’ political editor – to a White House Christmas Party.

Smith dressed for the occasion of meeting the president of the United States but broke the Southern rule about wearing sensible shoes.

She wore high heels.

“An epidural could not have lessened the severe pain from my toes to my spine as I hobbled through the most elegant night of my life,” Smith said.

When it came time for Smith and her husband to pose for a picture with the president and the first lady, things went south – including Smith.

“Just as we smiled for our big moment, my left foot twisted, my knee gave way, I fell against the 44th president of the United States, then headed backward,” Smith said.

Her heels were her misstep, her fall a lesson learned that became one essay in her forthcoming book.

To read more about Smith’s missteps, readers can pre-order her book on Amazon here: https://www.amazon.com/Rules-Southern-Rule-Breaker-Missteps-ebook/dp/B07VKSC2Y1/ref=sr_1_1?keywords=rules+for+the+southern+rule+breaker&qid=157 3087033&sr=8-1

By DECKER LAVELY
USFSP Student Reporter

ST. PETERSBURG – Carey Schafer’s graduate research finds her waist deep in Florida waters, covered in mud and battling mosquitoes.

But you won’t find her only in the field or the laboratory. She’s also out in the community connecting people to science.

Schafer, 25, studies geological oceanography in the master’s program at the USF College of Marine Science in St. Petersburg. She was born in the suburbs of Kansas City, far from the ocean, but grew up loving science and wanting to be a marine biologist.

“As a kid, I was really curious, always asking questions, and when I had a good science teacher that was the best thing,” Schafer said.

Once she got to college, she gravitated more toward earth science and earned a bachelor’s degree in environmental science from Tulane University in New Orleans. There, she conducted research on how rivers are impacted by wildfires and had an internship with NASA, studying air quality.

She learned about the USF College of Marine Science during an American Geophysical Union conference she attended for her internship. She learned the college would allow her to explore her interests in both earth and marine science.

“The College of Marine Science was just a great program with… a great community when I came and visited,” she said.

Today, her research focuses on how mangroves store and cycle carbon. The scientific community knows how much carbon mangroves can store, Schafer said, but not necessarily how long.

“Is protecting mangroves really important for mitigating increased carbon dioxide emissions? Or are they storing carbon for a short amount of time and releasing it as carbon dioxide, or is it being washed away into the ocean?” Schafer said.

“I’m trying to get at how long the carbon is being stored there and is it stable? Especially along the Florida coastline we need to know if mangroves are going to continue to be stable into the future.”

Ten Thousand Islands in southwest Florida is the site for most of Schafer’s field work. She goes out into the water with a group from the Florida Fish and Wildlife Research Institute.

“I take sediment cores, and we carry them all out with us and bring them back to the lab and analyze all of them,” Schafer said.

Recently, she was awarded the St. Petersburg Downtown Partnership Fellowship in Coastal Science for 2019-2020 to finance her tuition and research. Last year she was awarded the Paul Getting Endowed Memorial Fellowship in Marine Science.

Though Schafer enjoys her mangrove research, outreach is one of her biggest passions.

“With research it’s great; you’re piecing together a puzzle and trying to find the answer,” Schafer said. “But outreach is where I want to go with my career.”

She helped found the St. Petersburg chapter of Taste of Science, an organization that teaches community members about science by connecting them with professionals.

“We bring professors, researchers, anyone who is involved in science to areas in St. Petersburg – whether that’s a coffee shop, brewery or community center – and have them give talks and interact with people in the community,” Schafer said. “We are making science seem less intimidating and making scientists seem more like (regular) people, which they are.”

Her outreach extends to the Saturday Morning Market in downtown St. Petersburg.

Schafer established a partnership between the market and the College of Marine Science. Once a semester, the college has a booth to teach community members about scientific issues.

For the past two years, Schafer has also been a part of the Oceanography Camp for Girls, a three-week summer program established in 1991 that encourages girls to pursue science careers by exploring different scientific topics.

“Being a woman in STEM, I want to make sure we are funneling more girls into the science pipeline,” Schafer said. “I really love that Oceanography Camp for Girls is free, and because of that you open it up to girls from every socioeconomic status. Anyone can participate, which I think is great.”

Schafer helped lead labs and field trips for the camp. During one trip to Fort De Soto Park, she was able to develop curriculums and teach the girls about mangroves.

“The thing I love about outreach is that not everyone gets to experience science and those experiences can be so life changing.”

In the future, Schafer hopes to develop more programs like the camp for girls around the country and work in science policy.

“If we, as a scientific community, take the time to start educating people on why science matters and how they should seek out information and start critically thinking, then that will start to be reflected in the political realm,” she said.

By TAYLOR TEW
USFSP Student Reporter

ST. PETERSBURG – The world’s best pineapple can be found at the Saturday Morning Market in downtown St. Petersburg.

That’s according to Dean Moustafa, a finance student at USF St. Petersburg who runs Rudy’s Fresh Market, a produce vendor that occupies a nook on the east side of the weekly market.

Rudy’s serves fresh juice and produce as well as homemade hummus.

The market, which is open from 9 a.m. to 2 p.m. from October through May, bills itself as the largest outdoor market in the Southeast.

On a typical Saturday, an estimated 10,000 visitors fill the parking lot of Al Lang Stadium at the corner of First Street S and First Avenue to listen to live music and shop for crafts and food like Moustafa’s pineapple.

“This is not just any kind of pineapple; this is the world’s best pineapple!” he chants as each new group of people walks by.

On a table at Moustafa’s stand, there is a cardboard box with the words “College Funds” written in black sharpie and dollar bills poking out. A sign leaning against a table reads, “The World’s Best Pineapple, 2 for 7.”

Moustafa, 24, has worked the Saturday Morning market since he was 6. His parents, Mohamed Elsayed and Mono Khalifa, were among the first vendors when the market began in 2002.

Rudy’s used to be associated with a brick-and-mortar location on Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Street N in St. Petersburg, but it is now closed because of illness in the family.

Moustafa said that his favorite part about working the market is meeting new people and the sense of community it brings. His least favorite part is getting up at 2 a.m. to prepare for the market.

“It takes the whole crew; we hire a few people but it’s a family operation,” said Moustafa.

On a recent Saturday, Moustafa had a steady line of customers and spoke to each one as he sliced their fruit for them.

A few people hovered nearby, recording the scene with their phones as he skinned and cored each pineapple. It was obvious he’d done the 20-second routine countless times.

“How many times have you cut yourself?” asked customer Barbara Bailey.

“A few times. If you don’t make a mistake, you can never learn,” said Moustafa.

Moustafa will soon earn his finance degree from the university. Then Rudy’s will go up for sale, he said, or they’ll find a way to keep it in the family.

What makes it the world’s best pineapple?

Simple, he said. It’s because it’s served by him.

By KAMRYN ELLIOTT
USFSP Student Reporter

ST. PETERSBURG – In a biological excursion spanning five and half weeks, a group of 16 students spent last summer exploring various ecosystems.

Shark tagging, alligator identification and bird surveying, to name a few.

These students came from five Florida universities and traveled through the state for a marine field studies course that was sponsored by the Florida Institute of Oceanography.

The Institute, which is based at USF St. Petersburg, is an agency of the state university system.

The course is a collaborative effort among the University of North Florida, University of West Florida, Florida Gulf Coast University, Florida Atlantic University, and USF St. Petersburg.

Each university had a specific ecosystem for the week. UNF covered diverse beach systems and the Atlantic. UWF covered wetlands; FGCU, estuaries and seagrasses; and FAU, coral, algae and fish. At USFSP the focus was open ocean, with study on Weatherbird II, a research vessel.

“It’s a rigorous course with around 40 hours per week and it is very competitive,” said Dr. Heather Judkins, an invertebrate zoologist and associate professor in the Department of Biology at USF St. Petersburg.

Students need to fill out an application with an essay and their transcripts to be considered. Preference is given to juniors and seniors, but it is open to underclassmen as well.

Each university is delegated a certain number of student slots. If empty slots are left over, they are divided among the schools and students are selected from a waitlist.

“I was actually part of the second draft of students competing for an empty spot,” said Abby Blackburn, a student at USFSP studying biology with a concentration in marine biology and a minor in chemistry and geographic information systems.

The course is highly competitive for a reason. Each week the students were tasked with collecting samples using marine science techniques and surveying and identifying land and sea life. There were also tests.

“Our main professor for the week would come up with a way to teach us, so sometimes that would be an actual test or other times it would be identifying everything in a room,” said Blackburn.

Students were split into four groups for a final project that covered certain topics: salinity/dissolved oxygen, total suspended solids, nitrates/chlorophyll a, and micro plastics. The groups took the samples together but produced their final projects separately.

On the final day, the groups presented their projects to the professors from each university and donors from the Florida Institute of Oceanography.

There were many professors since students were at a different location each week. Teacher assistants and a graduate assistant are also present.

“We have a graduate assistant that attends the course and this person can come from any one of the universities – whoever is best fit for the role will get it,” said Judkins.

The graduate assistant this summer was Amanda Schaaf, who took the course when she was a student and was a teacher’s assistant during the course in 2018.

“She bought us food when there weren’t cafeterias nearby, was in charge of room assignments, helped us find locations, drove some of us to where we needed to go for the day if travel was required, and helped with field research. We were lucky to have her,” said Blackburn.

The students had five intensive weeks and gained a lot of knowledge from the experience.

They credit the course as well as the institutions.

“It strengthened my resolve to do marine work and made me realize how much I wanted to do field work,” said Dennis Deeken, a senior who will graduate this month with a biology major and a concentration in marine biology.

“It’s great for networking and honing in on what you want to do with your degree,” said Blackburn.

Judkins said students have reached out and credited the course because it helped them after graduation.

Deeken stressed the course is a wonderful opportunity for ambitious students.

“One of the professors mentioned that there’s really nothing like this in the nation where you have five universities working with a scientific institution to create a college course,” he said.

For more information on the course visit https://marinefieldstudies2019.blogspot.com.

By ASHLEY CAMPBELL
USFSP Student Reporter

ST. PETERSBURG – In the dog-eat-dog world of local television news, there is another important layer of competition: Which station can get a story published online the fastest?

“We’re all fighting for that piece of pie,” said Chelsea Tatham, 28, a digital producer at 10News WTSP.

Tatham is one of seven digital producers in a newsroom where 150 staffers broadcast five and a half hours of newscasts per day, Monday through Friday, while also seeking a high profile on the web and social media.

In the 10News newsroom on Gandy Boulevard in northeast St. Petersburg, TVs mounted on the walls and every personal computer display current trending topics for stories.

They refresh every few minutes, so the staff can follow trends and track how often readers are clicking on the station’s stories.

Staff members have double monitors to help them multitask, whether it’s watching a trend, writing a story or editing a piece while adding information that is just arriving.

The entire newsroom stays connected with a work group chat. Frequent messaging means stories can be edited quickly, and communication about breaking news can be updated quickly and collectively.

A small black box on Tatham’s desk emits noise that sounds like a police scanner. Called the “squawk box,” it transmits voices and information that CBS News headquarters in New York sends to its more than 200 affiliate stations.

The information coming through the box is like a “needle in a haystack,” said Tatham. The station’s staff never knows what could lead to a potential story.

Tatham got her start in print journalism. At USF St. Petersburg, she was the creative director and then managing editor of The Crow’s Nest, the campus weekly. After graduating she worked at the Tampa Bay Times for almost four years.

When she was laid off, 10News hired her as a digital producer.

The digital producers are responsible for the station’s online content, and what is most important to them is online engagement, said Tatham. They are able to see the average time people spend on the 10News website and what stories get the most clicks.

Digital producers can use a program that analyzes headline options to indicate which proposed headline would get the most engagement.

They also schedule social media posts to share news to the public even faster. Social media is what draws the most engagement from readers, said Tatham.

A new Facebook post goes out every 25 minutes.

IGTV scripts are written, filmed, and produced daily for Instagram.

And every news article automatically gets published on Twitter.

When breaking news hits, the entire staff works collectively to get the story published accurately and quickly, Tatham said. Breaking news may be published within minutes.

“You get whiplash sometimes,” she said.

In her newsroom, there aren’t any assigned editors. Everyone there edits everyone else’s stories, she said. In order to get the stories published faster, whoever is available to edit jumps in.

Although broadcast and digital journalism differ from the print journalism she started in, some elements are the same, Tatham said.

Every story at 10News is supposed to adhere to Associated Press style, reflect independent reporting and be supported by at least two credible sources, she said.

Story and photos by
JULIA SEVERANCE
USFSP Student Reporter

Just about every day for three years, Douglas Danger Rothwell – Doug for short – has cheerfully greeted the people who come to Whim So Doodle to shop and take art classes.

It is a tough job, and Doug acknowledges on the store’s website that he sometimes lies on his back – just to “make sure that everything is clear from the floor to the ceiling.”

Doug is a 5-year-old English white lab who belongs to the daughter of Whim So Doodle owner Jill Orobello.

Sadly, he does not know that he will be out of a job on Dec. 31.

That’s the day Whim So Doodle, an iconic arts and crafts store at 237 Second Ave. S, will close after 27 years.

The building that houses the store has been sold, Orobello said. She is searching for warehouse-type space where she can continue holding arts classes, but the store itself will not continue.

“Whim So Doodle really has become a family,” said Orobello, 58.

It began in 1992, three years after the Orobello family moved from Cincinnati to St. Petersburg when Peter Orobello, a surgeon who specialized in ear, nose and throat problems in children, was recruited to work at All Children’s Hospital.

Jill Orobello is a registered nurse, but she became a stay-at-home mom to care for her first son, who suffered from an auto immune disorder, and the couple’s other five children.

She said she started her business to create a safe and encouraging space for her family. It helped sustain them when her son died in 2000 at age 14 and her husband – a marathoner – died after a heart attack on an early morning run in 2015.

The store, first called Whim Sew Doodle, focused on counted cross-stitch, needlepoint, sewing and smocking.

It grew into a broader art store and twice changed locations as Orobello brought in rubber stamps, paint, memory keeping products and paper supplies while building a customer base and staff.

The staff includes Orobello’s daughter, Tayler Rothwell, who started working in the store when she was 14. She is the store’s marketing director, teaches a monthly brush calligraphy class and brings Doug, her dog, to work each day.

Over time, Orobello said, the close-knit environment in the store led to the mission statement on the back of the classroom wall: “Come as strangers but leave as family.”

Karen Dos Passos, a longtime costumer of Whim So Doodle, took her first class there in 2013. She has taken most of the classes offered by Whim So Doodle, but the art journaling class has been the most meaningful.

“Watching someone else grow in their art is just as important to me as seeing myself grow,” said Dos Passos.

As Whim So Doodle prepares to close, Orobello is marking down prices on her inventory and saying goodbye to longtime customers.

Meanwhile, the affable Doug maintains his post near the door, awaiting scratches and treats.