Shop for White House Gear and take the President Home for Fun and Profit

This fun and popular shop is located on Channelside Drive in the Channelside Bay Plaza. The plaza, where The Greater Tampa Chamber of Commerce is located, features restaurants, bars, Joffrey's Coffee, shops and a theater complex with IMAX. It is at the cruise port and beside the Florida Aquarium. White House Gear and American Classics opened here in 2002, and is full of gifts and souvenirs of Washington, D.C., the White House, Air Force One, the presidential retreat at Camp David, the U.S. Capitol Building, all the military branches and other patriotic merchandise. White House Gear has also carried authentic-looking apparel with FBI, Secret Service and Air Force One logos. Shoppers of every age and political persuasion, veterans and discerning shoppers looking for cuff links and even official White House Christmas ornaments are in luck. This store has it all. From time-to-time they have carried talking presidential dolls that can entertain the kids and upset all the family, friends and neighbors. You can buy golf shirts, polos, belts, cigars, mugs and hats. Even White House china, insignia ties, coins, golf clubs, White House doll houses, and models of Air Force One and Marine One helicopters for the kids (or big guys who like 1/24 scale, highly-detailed presidential limousines from past administrations.) They have life size, cardboard cut-outs of President Obama. If you have always dreamed of having him join you in the kitchen as you make coffee...or whatever, he is dying to leave the shop and breathe again. (That 's your president in the window on the left staring out at passersby.) If you can't get to Washington, this store has everything you'd expect to find at shops right outside the museums and government building in DC. If you're inventive and creative, and can't make the trek to our nation's capital, buy the Obama cut-out figure and start your own "Have your photo taken with the President" business in your hometown. Exactly like you'd find on all the tourist-jammed sidewalks in Washington. Think of the pride - and revenue -you'll experience from finally being the entrepreneur you've always dreamed of becoming.

How long will it last: The chalk just keeps on keeping on.

The front page of the Wednesday, November 5, 2008 issue of TBT*Tampa Bay Times, the daily that has gained a wide readership on both sides of the bay, is reproduced on the sidewalk at Hyde Park Village. The chalk art reproduction is still visible after several weeks of foot prints, weather and lots of dog paws that have crisscrossed its surface a thousand times. The artwork was created during the inaugural Chalk Walk, a public festival of drawings created in late March by about 25 individuals, families and groups. The Tampa Bay Business Committee for the Arts played host and several other companies joined together to sponsor the events for the hundreds of artists and Chalk Walkers. Some of the finished works were huge and others not so big but they all showed great imagination, design and color. Tampa's future was their theme and it was interpreted in a wide number of ways by adults and children. Tampa's skyline, mass transit systems and beautiful people were favorite elements of many of the designs. Sidewalks in front of village restaurants, shops and around the fountain of Hyde Park Village were used liberally as canvases. As the days have gone by most of the works have disappeared, but this one remains. Public chalk art by it very nature smears, smudges and literally blows away. (Think of the Florentine artists working on the touristy streets by the Ponte Vecchio.) What we need are more chalk artists, more frequently.