Garcetti puts himself on VP list (sorta), pays off bet over Mets

Two items in the news today about Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti. First, a long, glowing profile by Yahoo Politics calls Garcetti the possible future of the Democratic Party and allows him to sort-of nominate himself as a possible vice presidential candidate. The most useful thing about the story, by Andrew Romano, is a tour of the furnishings in the mayor's office at City Hall. There's also talk of Hillary Clinton and the VP sweepstakes. Sample:

I hadn’t mentioned the 2016 vice-presidential sweepstakes, but Garcetti began to talk about it anyway.

“I went through this with a friend recently,” he said. “I’m like, ‘Who would you put on a shortlist of five Democrats — off the top of your head — who should be vice president, for Hillary or whomever?’ And there aren’t, like, two or three superstars who jump out right away.”

Garcetti shook his head. “I mean, I’ve been on a number of panels,” he said, “and people have been like, ‘They should vet you!’”

I couldn’t tell whether he considered the idea intriguing, or ridiculous, or both.

The correct answer, at least for now, is both.

On one hand, Garcetti is almost a parody of what red-state residents picture when they hear the word “Democrat”: fancy degree, fancy shoes, fancy house, fancy paintings; electric car, jazz piano, Jewish, Latino, Hollywood. In junior high, Garcetti belonged to a breakdancing crew, and he still knows how to pop and lock. He doesn’t just maintain his own nonmayoral Instagram account, to which he obsessively posts artsy images of Southland sunsets and architecture (followers: 81,000); these images are also the subject of an ongoing solo exhibition, “#MAYOR_OF_INSTAGRAM,” at a gallery downtown. He is enough of a hipster to have to deny that he is a hipster. He once jammed with Moby.

“My wife and I grow almost all our own food,” Garcetti told Paper magazine in a profile that likened him to a character “straight out of an episode of Portlandia.” “Chickens are in our near future.”

Also today, Garcetti's office has posted on Facebook a video of him paying off a bet with New York Mayor Bill DeBlasio over the Dodgers and Mets playoff series. Garcetti goes to the set (here) of "Brooklyn Nine-Nine" and acts as a fumble-fingered member of the stage crew. The angle? He's wearing a Mets jersey so he's jinxed.