SoCal girls with a thing for Obama

DENVER — Imagine 520 perfectly aligned “Obama ‘08” campaign stickers plastered to a 1990 Volvo station wagon and you get the “Obama Wagon.” It is parked on the Civic Center lawn in the middle of Denver, and usually you can see two girls sitting next to it, laughing.

Samantha Woods, 24, and her sister, Annie, 20, drove the wagon here from Southern California, with no air conditioning, hoping to get Sen. Barack Obama to sign the steering wheel. The sisters, who are not affiliated with the campaign, make gas money by selling homemade stenciled Obama T-shirts.

“It took me two days to do the whole car,” said Samantha, a graduate of the San Francisco Art Institute. Annie, a former student at the New York Film Academy, is making a documentary about their experience.

With its 520 stickers, the sisters’ unique car is attention-grabbing, and during the road trip, people certainly noticed it.

“People definitely have a tendency to stare, especially when we were driving through Nevada and Arizona,” she said. “We got yelled at by a trucker yesterday.”

So it’s more likely that they will drive through the swing states on their continuing journey, she said. In the meantime, they keep a blog about their trip at www.obamamobileusa.com.

“It’s all about grassroots, and we’re just going across the country trying to spread the message of change,” Samantha said. “You don’t have to come from money to make a difference, and we’re trying to show that.”


Nick Brennan is a senior staff writer and attended the Democratic National Convention in Denver. E-mail him at nbrennan@nyunews.com.