Los Angeles • It was dicey being Jewish in a Russia that was tolerant of pogroms, and then came the threat of conscription into the 1904-05 Russo-Japanese War, so one of Mayor Eric Garcetti’s great-grandfathers headed west to America. Another Garcetti great-grandfather married a Mexican woman who, fleeing revolutionary ferment there, headed north to America. Which is why Garcetti, a fourth-generation resident of the world’s most polyglot city, is as American as a kosher burrito, a delicacy available at Mexikosher on Pico Boulevard.
Trim, natty — colorful socks are, alas, fashionable — and with the polish of one born to public attention (his father, Gil, was LA’s district attorney who prosecuted O.