DOUBLE TAKE

Obama Double Turns Heads

By David Frey, 8-28-08

	Barack Obama lookalike Gerardo Puisseaux hams it up for Miami TV with T-shirt seller Marge Paraham in downtown Denver. Puisseaux, originally from Cuba, has turned heads and gotten interviews as he walked the streets of Denver during the Democratic National Convention.

Marge Paraham wasn’t expecting Barack Obama to stop by her T-shirt stand in downtown Denver.

And he didn’t. But it sure looked like he did.

No, that wasn’t the Democratic presidential nominee mugging for the TV camera and hawking T-shirts to passersby. It was his striking likeness. Meet Gerardo Puisseaux, a Cuban immigrant who shares Obama’s striking appearance, even his charisma, but not his gift for words. Not in English, anyway. Puisseau speaks mostly Spanish.

“Everybody thinks I’m Obama,” Puisseaux says in Spanish as he takes a break from his work. His job is joking and shocking passersby on camera for Miami’s Spanish language America TeVe, which plays to a largely Cuban audience.

Before becoming a Cuban Obama impersonator, Puisseaux was a construction worker after he won a rare American visa in a lottery system to leave the island.

Puisseaux showed up at the TV station about three months ago, and producers saw his potential. Since then, he’s been appearing on the show “Pellizcame que Estoy Soñando.” That’s “Pinch me, I’m Dreaming.”

This week he’s been making the rounds at the Democratic National Convention, causing whiplash as he goes.

“The New York Times interviewed him. CNN. Everyone is saying, ‘Contact us!’” says show producer Flavia Azar.

Puisseaux cruised Denver’s 16th Street Mall this week, where he stopped by Paraham’s souvenir stand (parked beside the joint where Obama running mate Joe Biden stopped for a pulled pork sandwich on Monday. Talk about a prime location.)

“I needed to take a doubletake,” says Paraham, an Obama supporter from Toledo, Ohio who came to sell souvenirs and take in the atmosphere at the convention.

“I thought it was my honey,” she says. “I knew he’d find me.”

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