Where to Eat and Sleep in Doylestown

Gene, a dedicated Obama volunteer from CT put together a restuarant, entertainment and lodging guide for volunteers coming to the Doylestown office to help out. Since I can't seem to be able to attach a Word Doc to this blog posting, I have pasted Gene's restaurant selections below.
Thanks for the effort, Gene!!!
Enjoy everyone,
Grant

Obama Volunteer’s guide to Doylestown
Local Information

Parking

Free parking at Bucks County garage, located only a few steps north, 3 levels, good security

Movie Theatre
County Theatre 20 E. State St.
First-run movies, Bucks County Film Festival

Doylestown has great food at very reasonable prices:
Restaurants close by
Breakfast
Bucks County Coffee 22 N. Main (215) 345-0795
Opens early; coffee, lattes, mochas, light food, WiFi service

Lilly’s Gourmet 1 W. Court St (215) 230-7883
Opens 8:30, Breakfast, wraps, panini, wraps.

Starbucks 10 N. Main St.
It’s Starbucks Coffee & Wifi

Bagel Barrel 60 W. State St. (215) 348-8280
Weekdays 6-3, Sat.& Sun. 7-2; bagels, eat in or to go.

Chambers19 19 N. Main St. (215) 348-1940
Sunday Breakfast Buffet, 9Am-1PM, Belgian waffles made to order

McGlinchey’s 19 E. State St. (215) 772-1098
Mon.-Sat., 8-2, Sun. 8-10, breakfast and lunch, Menu $5-$8

Sandwiches
Primo Hoagies 6 East Court St. (215) 340-7701
Hoagies, cutlet combos, Sandwiches from $5; stand-up counter, mostly takeout

Pennsylvania Soup & Seafood House 22 S. Main St. (215) 230-9490
Mon. 11-6 ,Tue, 11-8 ,Wed and Thur, 11-9 Fri. & Sat, 12-3:30 Sun. 12 different soups $2.50 -$7;
6 sandwiches $8.50 to $10.50

Basically Burgers 12 W. State St. (215) 345-8500
Open 11-9, The name says it all. Menu $1.50-$9

Lunch and Dinner
Café Allessio 24 N. Main St. (215) 340-1188
Mon-Sat. 10-10, Sun 11-9; Italian specialties, fusion (Italian and Japanese), sushi,
Open-air dining. BYOB, Wine & Spirits, 19 W. Court St. Diagonally across street.

Chambers 19, Bistro and Bar 19 N. Main St. (215) 348-1942
Mon.-Thur., 11-10, Fri-Sat ,11-11, Sun 9-9; http://www.chambers19.com/. Extensive menu, entrees $10-$23 ,
lunch specials from $7 Salads, pasta, Nuevo American entrees. Open air dining
Sunday breakfast buffet, 9-1, $10 adults, $5 children 10 and under.

Lilly’s Gourmet 1 W. Court St. (215) 230-7883
http://www.lillysgourmet.com/ Mon.-Fri., 8:30-4; Sat. 10-4, Breakfast, wraps, panini, salads

Smoken’ Lils 9 W. Court St. (215) 348-5170
http://www.lillysgourmet.com/ Mon.-Thur.,11-7, Fri.-Sat.11-9; Southern BBQ, pulled pork, smoked brisket, ribs;
sandwiches from $6.50, platters from $9.95.

Domani Star 57 W. Court St. (215) 230-9100
Brunch Sun., 9-1; dinner Sat. 5-10, Sun. 4-9; Cucina Itliano, BYOB, entrees $19-$28

Siam Cuisine at Black Walnut 80 W. Court St. (215) 348-0708
Wed.-Sun., 11:30-9:30; Thai cuisine; entrees $15-$27

Madam Butterfly 34 W. State St. (215) 345-4488
Lunch Mon.-Thur., 11:30-2:30; dinner, Mon.- Sat.’ 4:30-10:30; Sun. 12:30-9:30,
Japanese lunch specials $10-$14, dinner entrees $16-$25, sushi and sashimi 2 pieces, $5-$7

Cross Culture 62 W. State St. (215) 489-9101
http://www.crosssulturecuisine.com/ 11:30 Am- 10:00 PM, Indian Cuisine BYOB Entrees $17-$25

Paganini Trattoria 81 W. State St. (215) 348-5922
Lunch 11:30-2:30, Dinner 3-10 Sat. Open 11:45-9:00 Sun. Traditional Italian Cuisine , full bar
Lunch specials $9-12 Entrees $24-27

Paganini Café & Pizza 72 W. State St. (215) 348-9600
Open daily 11:30-10, Salads, wraps, Pizza, Gelato, nice wine selection, espresso

Liquor Store
Wines & Spirits 19 W. Court St.
Full selection of spirits and moderate priced wines.

Lodging
Doylestown Inn 18 W. State St. (215) 345-6610
Luxury Inn, food & drink, Weekend rates $195-$220

Courthouse Inn 625 N. Main St. (215) 345-6722
Good basic motel, friendly staff, rates from $75 Continental breakfast included.


After Canvassing for Barack Obama
visit historic Doylestown's restaurants.

Thanks for your efforts on behalf of Obama.

This guide was prepared by an Obama volunteer, not by the Obama campaign , and it is not endorsing any particular establishment. I hope it makes your visit more enjoyable.

As reported in the WSJ....

....McCain Doesn't Look Competitive in Pennsylvania

This headline appeared in Friday's WSJ and featured our very own Doylestown office.
Here is the article's intro--
The Barack Obama campaign occupies a storefront on N. Main Street across from the county courthouse. A stream of people filters through to pick up buttons or leaflets. The bulletin board lists a dozen staffers in this office and another in Bristol.
Now try to find a John McCain outpost in Bucks County. Armed with an address, you'd get an unmarked, low, stand-alone office building on a four-lane state highway 15 minutes' drive from here. On the front door a small sign directs visitors to the McCain campaign around the corner and down the stairs to the basement. Two volunteers man phones, McCain posters or signs aren't readily available. Three paid staffers direct the Republican's campaign from a single office in this critical battleground.
For the rest of the story, go to http://online.wsj.com/article/SB122480892803665099.html

This article reinforces what I talked about yesterday. The Obama team is all over Bucks County and PA. McCain...not so much :)

A Test of Wills

Good morning. As mentioned yesterday, McCain and Obama were both scheduled to be in PA yesterday in what appears to be shaping up as the MAIN battleground of the election.
One candidate braved the winter-like conditions and rallied a crowd of 9,000 enthusiastic supporters in nearby Chester. The other candidate sent out a press release at 10:30am saying that as a result of inclement weather, he was cancelling his appearance and going on to his next stop in another state.

Hummm...let's see....which candidate do you think stayed and which candidate baled on his constituents in this battleground state?

For more pictures from yesterday's rally, go to http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/10/28/obamas-day-in-the-rain-ph_n_138677.html

Obama: 100 McCain: 1

Good morning: Wow! The campaign's are really serious about PA! Obama will be in Chester, PA, about an hour south of Doylestown, at noon today. And McCain-Palin will be in nearby Quakertown at 12:15pm. The weather here is miserable, so it is will be interesting to see what kind of turnout each candidate draws.
Several people have asked how the McCain ground game compares to Obama's activities in Bucks County. Here is a little insight. The Obama office is averaging about 50 walk-in volunteers a day during the week and 200-300 over the weekend. This is in addition to the 6-7 paid staffers and the 6-7 full time volunteers that are in the office every day.
So how does this compare with McCain?
Well, one of our people went over to the McCain campaign office in Warminster last week to get tickets for today's McCain-Palin rally. What he found was very revealing. First of all, the office is in a basement that is only accessible from the rear of the building, which is kind of depressing. Second, when our person visited the office, he found 2 paid staffers and 2 volunteers in the office. FOUR people. That was it! In addition, so far we have seen no evidence of any canvassing by McCain people in our area or 'turf', as Obama-ites refer to their area. And no local phone banking that we know of. (It all appears to be remote.)
A numerical rating of the two campaigns ground games would look something like this: Obama--100, McCain--1

Back in Doylestown for the final push

Hi all: Happy Halloween from Obama-Biden land.

I had to leave the campaign for a few days to host my nieces Allison (age13) and Christine (10), who flew out from Indiana for a long weekend on LI.

There have been several changes since I left the office last Wednesday. The big push now is to lock in volunteers to help us execute the aggressive GOTV plan set for Nov1-4. We have signed up literally hundreds of volunteers for the effort. The next task is to plan how to effectively deploy all these volunteers for the final four days. To do that, a dozen or more staging areas have been set-up around the County to take the pressure off the N. Main St. office. I have been assigned to an office in the Buckingham area, 10 minutes NE of the main campaign office. I will be stationed there Nov 1-4. Seven more days to go. Should be exciting!

Grant

GOTV

Good morning. I went back to NYC for a couple of days and am now back in Doylestown. Yesterday was GOTV day. The first couple of times that I saw web references to GOTV, I thought it was a political web video channel and did a Goggle search to find it. No luck. After two weeks with the Campaign I am now smarter. Turns out GOTV stands for, you guessed it, Get Out The Vote, duh.
Anyway, Obama offices across PA (and presumably across the country) are gearing up for a massive GOTV effort. Last night, the GOTV show came to Doylestown. Expecting a large crowd, the meeting was scheduled at the Bucks County Courthouse, across from the Campaign office. The meeting was scheduled for 7:30pm. The goal was to finish up by 8:30pm so everyone could get home to a.) watch the Phillies or b.) watch the last debate. At 7:45pm, people were still streaming into the meeting room, with no end in sight. Soon the meeting room was standing room only, so staffers made a quick adjustment, sending a large group back to the Campaign office, where we ended up conducting a second GOTV training session.
The purpose of the two meetings was to communicate the GOTV strategy for the last 4 days of the campaign. Without boring you with all the details, it is an AWESOME plan. The goal is to touch every declared OBAMA supporter in the entire County multiple times over the last 4 days to make sure every single voter knows how and where to vote, the hours polls are open, etc. In total between 100 and 150 volunteers learned what we need to do to deliver Bucks County to Barack Obama on November 4th.
McCain has no idea how much energy and passion there is for Obama in PA!!

Preparing for the Onslaught

Good morning: today is Saturday, which means hordes of volunteers will be descending on the office. Around 10AM or so the buses will begin arriving from NYC for two days of door-to-door canvassing in Doylestown and the surrounding towns in middle and upper Bucks County.
We have spent the last two days preparing for the onslaught. Dozens of info packets with canvassing instructions, policy positions, and Google maps have been created for the visitors.

The main goal of the canvassing is to determine who the Obama and McCain supporters are and who is undecided. A key strategy is to try and persuade the undecideds to move toward Barack.

The canvassers could not have asked for a better day: sunny and in the 60s.

I am off to welcome our visitors. Check in tomorrow for some photos of the day.

Grant

Obama Doylestown PA office goes Global

The big excitement at the office yesterday was the arrival of TF1, a major French TV station. They came to the office to do a segment on Obama Campaign volunteers. They interviewed several of us to understand what motivates us to volunteer our time for a political campaign. In particular, they found it fascinating that a person would leave his/her home and family and move into a home of complete strangers. The Producer told me that this would never happen in France. They were so fascinated by this, in fact, that they asked me to take them home so they could see meet the couple who opened up their house to me. So the three Frenchmen and I schlepped the 5 miles out of town to the farm where I am staying and the film crew videod Debbie and me talking at the kitchen counter. It was all very exciting.
If all goes according to plan, TF1 will be airing a 2-minute segment on the Doylestown office 3-4 days from now. As soon as the video is up on TF1's web site, I will add the link here.
That's all for now.
Grant

How a Campaign Office Works

Here is a little insight into how a typical campaign oiffice works. A typical Obama campaign office, that is. :)
The Doylestown office is located in the middle of town on the first floor of a rented house, across from the County Courthouse, in case you are in the neighborhood. :)
The office is run by of a core group of paid 'staffers' who are complemented by a small group of full-time volunteers and a revolving group of part-time volunteers.
A large percentage of the money contributed to the Obama Campaign is used to 'staff' the ground game acrosss the country. The Doylestown office has 6-7 paid 'staffers' and five full time volunteers, including Neil, a former ad agency CFO, Marv, a successful book author and granddad, Gene, a sailor from CT, Rob, a recent law school graduate and me.
The paid staffers and full-time volunteers work together to recruit and train a steady stream of part-time volunteers who show up at the office every day.
The most important task of the office is to engage voters. We do this via telephone and door-to-door canvassing. There is a ton of data collecting and inputting as well. Every voter contact results in a data entry task.
All in all, the operation is very impressive. It is amazing to witness what a group of wildly disparate people can do when they are united by a common cause.
Got to go now. Rob, the recent law school grad, just told me that a French film crew is going to be in the office this morning to film a day in the life of an Obama Campaign office for French TV.
See ya,
Grant

The Town Hall Debate

Good morning: After a busy day in the Doylestown office yesterday, I went to my home-away- from-home to watch the debate with Deb and Roberto, who have very generously opened up their home to me during my stay in PA. As you might expect, Deb and Roberto are enthusiastic Obama fans, which made for a most enjoyable debate.

At about the 15 minute mark we all agreed that Obama was doing a terrific job connecting with middle class voters, while McCain clearly was not.
The more I hear and see McCain and Obama together the more I am convinced that this election is a choice between the future and the past. I do not believe the majority of Americans understand McCain's historic references, which renders much of what he has to say meaningless to younger Americans. At the conclusion of the debate, we were all more postive than ever that Obama is the right choice for these difficult days.

Now it is on to the blogs to see how the 'experts' called the debate.
Grant

I am working for Obama in Doylestown, PA

Hi all: after attending Camp Obama in Manhattan in late September I was assigned to work for Obama in Doylestown, PA, which is where I am now. I plan to stay here until the morning of November 5th.

For the past week the focus has been on voter registration. In PA, that ended today, Oct 6th.

Moving forward the focus is on voter contact through phone and canvassing.

Then, towards the end, everyone will focus on the GOTV effort.

Every weekend, bus loads of NYers descend on the area to provide volunteer muscle to the local efforts.

If you would like to join us one weekend, please give me a call and I will provide you with the details.

Grant