“The Danny.” Does that sound like a rejected Seinfeld plot line in which Elaine’s boyfriend tries and fails to get people to call him by a clumsy new nickname? A boy for whom the pipes the pipes are calling, from glen to glen and down the mountainside? Or the section of Danforth Ave. between Donlands and Woodbine subway stations?According to new city street signs and the local business improvement area group, the answer is the last of those — rebranding a neighbourhood real estate agents (and Google) have called “Woodbine-Lumsden” and “Coxwell-Greenwood,” that the Star recently called “Danforth East,” and that just a few years ago people proposed calling “Little Ethiopia.” “In a world of the mass-produced, the bland and the me-too chains, we are all looking for things that are real and authentic,” says the intro at thedanny.ca, the newly relaunched website of the Danforth-Mosaic Business Improvement Area. “We’re The Danny, and we’re the real thing.”Huh. “Authenticity.” If you can fake that, you’ve got it made. That seems to be the gist of the online complaints from local residents, who took to a Facebook group in hundreds of dismissive comments. “Never heard anyone in my whole life call it The Danny,” wrote one that was echoed dozens of times. I lived there for a bit, and never heard anyone use “The Danny” in that time, though since then I have once or twice heard former east-end cab drivers call it that with a laugh. Still, to many who live there, the name is the opposite of “real and authentic.” It’s contrived. And maybe not as cool-sounding as it wants to be, besides. “Annoying,” “juvenile” and “trashy” are words locals used to describe it. “Like a marketing agency trying too hard to be hip.” That’s what ...
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