[LINK] "Lipstick on a Pig"

[rfmcdonald]

Torontoist's David Topping reports that on the rivalry shared by two neighbouring east-end Toronto businesses, drawn on their use of "Obama" in their businesses' names.

When it launched early last month, the Obama Café, at 1226 Danforth Avenue, was the city's first Obama-themed business. But it wouldn't be alone for long: just a few doors down, at 1236 Danforth, an internet shop formerly known as the United Internet Café got a new red, white, and blue sign of its own, and a new name, just in time for the American president's trip to Ottawa: Obama Cybernet Ltd. (or, if you go by their website, which advertises that "yes we can help!" with your computer needs, the Obama Cybernet Café).

[. . .]

The Obama Cybernet Café, a few dozen feet away, is run by Amveson Fitsumbrahn. Though it was created after Debass's Obama Café, Fitsbumbrahn told Torontoist that he's had the idea for nine months, and that on the Danforth his nickname is "Obama"; "no-one even knows my real name." Though he couldn't vote in the American election himself, according to Fitsumbrahn he helped coordinate some twelve hundred volunteers over the internet for the Obama campaign.

But that's not really cutting it for Debass, who thinks that Fitsumbrahn's trying to capitalize on his business' fast-found popularity. "He's bringing a lot of confusion with his name," Debass says; when he saw Fitsumbrahn changing the sign right as his own café started swarming with media, "I said, 'what's going on with this guy?!'" It's the proximity that irks Debass most: another Obama café "right beside me," he says, "is unacceptable." "He cannot do that....it doesn't work like that in Canada." Debass got his lawyer to write a letter to Fitsumbrahn, and now the whole thing is "under litigation." Even though he wants Fitsumbrahn's store name changed "by any means necessary," Debass still prefers to think that it's all a "misunderstanding"; both men reiterated to Torontoist that they're from the same community, and neither seems too interested in a fight.</blockquote.