All in the Family for LA's Successful Men

The Golden Rulers

For Gil and Eric Garcetti politics is a noble affair.

A quick glance at Gil and Eric Garcetti’s résumés—Gil, the longtime LA County District Attorney, and Eric, the three-term LA City Council member and a frontrunner in the 2013 mayoral race—and it’s easy to envision political ambition passed from father to son, a political dynasty fertilized beginning when Eric was a child and continuing until today.

The Garcettis swear otherwise. Eric points out that he was well out of high school by 1992—first to Columbia University for a BA in political science followed by a MIA in international affairs, then as a Rhodes scholar at the University of Oxford and a student at The London School of Economics and Political Science—when Gil started his first term as district attorney. Eric’s first election to city council was in 2001, the year after his dad was defeated in his run for a third term. Hardly propitious.

If no dynastic strategy, what then did they talk about at the dinner table at the family house on the Westside? “Cases,” says Eric, Gil adding that in total he spent 32 years in the DA’s office, more than 20 of those years in unelected positions. They also spoke about duty to family and community, and the power of publicizing both. “You can’t just assume if you do the right thing everybody will know; you have to tell the story,” says Eric.

For Gil, the desire to affect change took him to the DA’s office. Among his proudest achievement as DA, he says, was “changing the whole criminal justice focus on domestic violence.” For Eric, that desire took him to the city council, and now to the run for the city’s top political post, one that is often described as a political dead end. Not that he seems to care: “It’s the most accountable, impactful job you can have.”

When asked what he would implement immediately if he were The Autocrat of LA, Eric, whose father is of Italian and Mexican descent and whose mother is of Russian, Polish, and Jewish descent, replies, “more Jewish holidays, less traffic,” before adding, “a world-class public-transportation infrastructure.” Seriously.

Riding the Wave

Philanthropy undergoes a sea change thanks to Jack and Jon Rose.

Philanthropy needn’t come from riches. A groundswell of ingenuity, innovation, and execution will do just fine. Take the deluge of difference Jack and Jon Rose have made through Jon’s nonprofit, Waves For Water, in providing access to clean H2O to 7.5 million people in 15 countries in only three years—all by digging or restoring wells and delivering portable, inexpensive filters and rain-catchment systems to places where Evian and Perrier aren’t on the menu.

Call it the new age of Aquarius, or as Jon dubs it, “social entrepreneurism,” and “guerilla humanitarianism.” Nor does giving have to hurt. “That old model of you have to drop everything and join the Peace Corp is no longer true,” says Jon, who before founding Waves For Water in 2009 was a professional surfer for 13 years, traveling the far reaches of the world in an Endless Summer quest for the next great ride. “Our whole philosophy is do what you love and help along the way,” says Jon.

That imparts a key tenant taught by his father, Jack, a surfer as well as a ski bum for 10 years “before Jon was born,” who then became a purveyor of joint adventure. “We were up and down the coast in a VW van. I grew up that way, too,” says Jack, whom his son calls “a skilled problem solver who has the ability to innovate by making things simpler.”

To wit, while sitting at his drafting table one rainy day, Jack decided to design an inexpensive apparatus to collect falling rainwater. In short order, he started RainCatcher, a nonprofit that teaches villagers in Africa and other parts of the world how to catch and filter rainwater. “I went to Africa, helped set up a system, came back to California, worked and saved for a year, then did it again,” he explains.

Coincidentally, not long after, Jon was on the surf circuit when, en route to Bali, a devastating earthquake hit Padang (the capital of West Sumatra). “It was a crash course in disaster relief; it changed everything for me,” he says. Thus was Waves For Water born, and thus did the Roses join forces completely. “We complement each other,” says Jack, who has since left RainCatcher to work with Jon full time. “I’m more internal, he’s better at external.” Besides, says Jon, “How cool is it to work with your dad?”

Raising the Bar

Twins Jonnie and Mark Houston are breathing new nightlife into LA.

“Houston, we have a problem” ran through Jonnie Houston’s mind in the mid-aughts, his thirst for novelty and genuine experience not slaked by the offerings of LA nightlife. “I got into the nightlife business because nothing existed between the big clubs and the dives,” says the impresario who would, in partnership with his twin brother, Mark, proceed to stir whimsy, fantasy, and theatricality into the cocktail of Hollywood clubs and lounges, forever upping the ante of LA’s nightlife scene.

Drawing on money they had saved through the sale of a series of cell phone stores (which the 34-year-old entrepreneurs started opening at age 19), the duo launched Piano Bar in 2008—followed in short order by La Descarga, Harvard & Stone, Pour Vous, and the newly opened No Vacancy at the Hotel Juniper. In so doing, they freed the city from the shackles of velvet ropes, the ballast of bottle service, and the yawn-inducing prospect of boring, interchangeable interiors.

Still, to state that all of the pair’s properties are unique in design is to understate egregiously. Rather, all are singular conceptual mini-worlds that draw upon physical and temporal destinations—Havana, Cuba; Belle Époque Paris—as well as on interior destinations of the imagination. There’s a misconception that the primary goal of this business is to sell liquor,” says Jonnie. “We do that, of course, but we’re selling a vibe, a culture, and entertainment as well.” Or as Mark adds: “unique social environments.”

The recipe includes curated cocktails and libations; decoration conceived by the brothers (“We flip roles on this, depending on whose concept it is,” says Jonnie); live acts ranging from three-piece bands to dancers and overhead “swingers”; to the creatively practical, such as a custom trolley car that pulls up nightly at Pour Vous, providing “a unique aspect to an outdoor patio,” says Mark. It’s a mix as varied as the Houstons’ own: LA natives who grew up in Koreatown, part German (Dad) and part Thai-Chinese (Mom).

Why, amidst fathers and sons, these two brothers? A familial answer: their father, David Houston, died last year, and the twin’s latest bar/lounge concept is an homage to him. “We wanted to create something inspired by his living room,” says Jonnie. “Everybody always had fun there.”

Moses and Revelations

The gospel according to culture vultures Ed and Cedd Moses?

No project is too big. “My dad and I have a passion for what we do, an obsession for what we do,” says Cedd Moses, one of the first and foremost urban pioneers responsible for the turnaround of Downtown. He’s speaking of a trait shared with his father, Ed, legendary Abstract Expressionist art icon, who agrees, saying, “Same disease: no discipline but pure obsession… big difference. We’re also both naturally adventurous.”

For Cedd, that spirit of adventure translated to the artistry of entrepreneurism. “As a little kid he’d put clubs together and charge the neighborhood kids a few pennies,” explains Ed, adding that by age 12 Cedd was “hitchhiking or taking the bus to various race tracks, Betfair Hollywood Park, Santa Anita Park, Del Mar—and making money.”

By high school, however, Cedd had begun taking researched risks in the equities market—the start of what would become a highly successful career as a professional money manager that ended in the late ’90s, when he put his chips on the Downtown renaissance, opening a slew of top-tier bars such as Golden Gopher, Broadway Bar, Seven Grand, and Las Perlas. “Los Angeles was an embryo of a great metropolitan city with great bone structure—it was only looking for a catalyst,” Cedd says.

For Ed, that sense of adventure means that—at 86 years old—he’s doing what he considers among the best work of his career. “His very best paintings!” echoes Cedd.

What did growing up the son of an increasingly famous artist mean? “He taught me there are no limits, no roles, that anything’s possible,” says Cedd. “It was the same with the people he surrounded himself with. Nobody knew they’d sell paintings, let alone become famous. They had big cojones, they did what they believed in, and I’ve tried to do the same Downtown.” Was this lesson imparted purposefully? Ed demurs, “Cedd was one of these perfect human beings from the onset, so was his brother Andy, and there was nothing I could tell him. I’m aggressive and confrontational by nature, but he was always cool; I’ve tried to emulate that,” he says. “People always comment on my magnificent sons, and ask, ‘Aren’t you proud?’ And I say: ‘I didn’t do anything!’”

Designs of the Times

Peter and David Koral are reinventing a California fashion classic one stitch at a time.

“Jean-etics” are interwoven into Peter and David Koral’s DNA. One of the founding partners and president of Seven For All Mankind (launched in 2000 and sold seven years later for $775 million), Peter is among the riveting, five-pocketed icons of Southern California’s clothing industry. Now he’s going to make the world change its jeans—again.

A father of the premium denim industry, a niche not only immensely profitable but uniquely identified with Los Angeles, Peter, a second-generation “garmento,” is the father of David, a former professional football player, who eventually moved into hip hospitality—becoming a partner in the Mediterranean eatery Mezze. It was in this bastion of cool that David, who started going to work with Dad at age eight, identified the holy grail of manufacturers: a void in the marketplace. “Nobody was focusing on modern and clean, and on the denim itself,” he says.

With that began a father-son convo that started several years ago and culminated with Peter coming out of retirement to form Koral Los Angeles with David and business partner Rick Crane. “I didn’t want him to come into [the clothing] business, but I guess it’s in his blood,” says Peter.

The Korals call the concept behind the brand’s core line “lived-in length,” i.e., premium Italian and Japanese denim, carefully washed to mirror what the jeans would look like if worn for discrete amounts of time ranging from one to three years (the first women’s line hit stores in August, and a men’s line is set for release in January 2013).

As far as characteristics the two share, both point to resolve. “If we’re willing to start something, we’re going to see it through,” says David. Adds Peter, “We’re passionate people when we get behind something and have a tendency to go all the way.” But aside from “my dad being more laidback than I am,” how do the two differ? “Well,” says Peter, “I’m very good-looking….”

The Reel Deals

For David and Steve Gersh, Hollywood is all in the family

The lure of the apparent is often more powerful than pressure applied by a parent—an aphorism perfectly illustrated by David and Steve Gersh. Members of one of the last still-in-the-business Hollywood dynasties (founded by David’s father, Phil, who died in 2004 at 92, and whose New York Times obituary described him as “the last of the Hollywood agents who dominated the talent business in the 1940s and ’50s”), both David and Steve came to the The Gersh Agency in their own time and of their own accord.

“I was going to be secretary of state,” says David, who after working for a congressman on Capitol Hill in the summer and during college redirected to UCLA Law, followed by four years at a large law firm, before deciding to join his father and brother (a co-owner of Gersh along with David) and become an agent for writers, directors, producers and high-end production people. (Werner Herzog is among his roster of heavyweights.)

Steve’s arrival was quicker. While still in high school, he was certain he wanted to be an agent—a sports agent. Over time, that ball’s trajectory altered, and by graduate school, he was firmly committed to the idea of catching curveballs from actors (not yet 30 years old, the talent agent counts Twilight’s Kristen Stewart among his clients).

Professional and life lessons passed down from David to Steve include a packaged deal of good sense: being good at what you do, caring about it profoundly, but always being mindful of balance. “Dad taught me that growing up, by example,” says Steve, adding that he and his father always had an easy camaraderie—playing and watching sports, traveling, and talking. Additional lessons he learned were to always operate fairly and with integrity and to never, ever take anything for granted—giving him a humility that in Hollywood is as rare as an independent low-budget film going blockbuster. “Steve’s the most un-entitled person in the business,” says David. “He goes out of his way because of the last name and has the smallest office of anybody.”

The two share the family’s long-standing interest in modern and contemporary art (Steve’s grandparents started collecting in the late ’50s, and his parents continue to do so actively.) Says David, “The family is passionate about all of the arts.” Including the art of the family.