An unknown local lawmaker just a few months ago, leftist Zohran Mamdani has burst onto New York’s political scene and is closing in on becoming the first Muslim mayor of America’s most populous city.Since his surprise victory in the Democratic Party primary in June, New Yorkers have become used to seeing his bearded, smiling face on television — and on badges proudly worn by his young supporters. The 34-year-old election frontrunner was born in Uganda to a family of Indian origin and has lived in the United States since he was seven, becoming a naturalized US citizen in 2018. He is the son of filmmaker Mira Nair (“Monsoon Wedding,” “Salaam Bombay!”) and Mahmood Mamdani, a professor and respected Africa expert — leading some of his detractors to call him a “nepo baby.” He followed a path trodden by other youngsters from elite liberal families, attending the elite Bronx High School of Science followed by Bowdoin College in Maine, a university seen as a bastion of progressive thought.Under the alias “Young Cardamom,” he ventured into the world of rap in 2015, influenced by hip-hop outfit “Das Racist” made up of two members of Indian origin who played with references and tropes from the subcontinent.Mamdani’s attempt to break into the competitive world of professional music did not last, with the performer-turned-politician calling himself a second-rate artist. He was bitten by the politics bug when he learned that rapper Heems (Himanshu Suri) was supporting a candidate for city council — and joined that campaign as an activist.Mamdani went on to become a foreclosure prevention counselor, helping financially struggling homeowners avoid losing their homes. He was elected in 2018 as a lawmaker from Queens, a melting pot of predominantly poor and migrant communities, representing the area in the New York State Assembly. – ‘Disaffected voters’ -The self-proclaimed socialist, who has been re-elected three times, forged an image that has become his trademark — a progressive Muslim just as comfortable at a Pride march as he is at an Eid banquet.He has put the goal of making the city affordable for everyone who are not wealthy, the majority of its approximately 8.5 million residents, at the heart of his campaign. He has promised more rent control, free day care and buses, and city-run neighborhood grocery stores. Mamdani is also a long-standing supporter of the Palestinian cause, although his positions on Israel — which he has called an “apartheid regime” while branding the war in Gaza a “genocide” — have drawn the ire of some in the Jewish community. In recent months he has made a point of vocally denouncing antisemitism. Mamdani has attracted scorn from President Donald Trump, who calls him a “little communist” but — like the president — he is something of an establishment “outsider,” according to Costas Panagopoulos, a political science professor at Northeastern University. “He has managed to galvanize support from disaffected voters and others in New York City who are dissatisfied with the status quo and with an establishment that they perceive to be overlooking their needs and policy preferences,” he said.Mamdani, a keen soccer and cricket fan, recently married US illustrator Rama Duwaji, and put his experience of activism to work in a strategically coordinated canvassing and leafleting campaign that he has paired with a massive and often humorous use of social media. “He really is a kind of an hybrid of a great 1970s campaign and a great 2025 campaign,” said Lincoln Mitchell, a Columbia University professor.

In a cobbler’s workshop in Los Angeles, the footprints of Hollywood history are stacked floor to ceiling, watched over by a man who says his profession is dying.Yellowing boxes hold the lasts — foot-shaped molds — used to create footwear for everyone who was anyone in America’s entertainment capital for more than half a century.Elizabeth Taylor lies toe-to-toe with Peter Fonda, Tom Jones and Harrison Ford.In another stack sit the lasts for Sharon Stone, Liza Minnelli and Goldie Hawn.Action heroes Sylvester Stallone and Arnold Schwarzeneggar are also present.”There’s a bit of everybody here,” says shoemaker Chris Francis, the custodian of the famous feet molds.Francis came into the collection a few years after the 2008 death of Pasquale Di Fabrizio, an Italian cobbler known in Los Angeles as the “shoemaker to the stars.””Di Fabrizio made for everyone, from the casino owners to the actors, the performers in Vegas, Broadway, Hollywood, for film — just anybody you could think of who was performing from the 1960s until 2008.”Some of the aging boxes contain autographs or dedications from the A-listers.Others, like those of Sarah Jessica Parker or “Sound of Music” songstress Julie Andrews, hold drawings from television or film productions.- ‘Something that nobody else had’ – Hollywood was once the ideal place for a shoemaker, says Francis, with its voracious creative industry that churned out a constant stream of people who needed to make themselves stand out from the crowd.”Celebrities would brag about how much they paid for a pair of shoes, and they would want something that nobody else had,” he said, pulling down a box containing the lasts of Adam West, the actor who played Batman in the original 1960s TV series.Francis began his own couture journey making clothes, and was given his first gig after being discovered stitching a leather jacket on a park bench.”Here in LA, it is easy to be in the right time in the right place,” he laughed.But it was footwear that he really wanted to create, and began practicing in his kitchen at home.”They were sort of crude at first; I was just teaching myself how to do it,” he said.In search of someone to teach him the art, Francis traipsed around Los Angeles looking for an internship.”These guys are all old Armenian, Russian guys. They’re all from like the old world — guys from like Iran, Syria.”They wouldn’t talk, or they didn’t speak very good English. So you just have to watch and learn, and then just learn by making over and over and over again.”And if you don’t pay attention, it can all go wrong, he said.”There’s no forgiveness in a shoe. If you miss a step, if you cut a corner, then the next 20 steps after that might suffer. So everything has to be on point the whole time.”- Mass production -But in a changing world, such meticulous craftsmanship is not always rewarded.Where Burt Reynolds or Robert De Niro might once have been happy to shell out thousands of dollars for a pair of handmade shoes, the whole industry has been turned on its head.”I’m finding more and more celebrities wanting shoes for free, which is just killing shoemakers like me,” said Francis.With his aging rockstar looks, Francis says in darker moments he wishes he had taken the advice of some of the old cobblers who taught him the trade.”They told me to go join a band,” he said.”When I first started, (one man) said: ‘Why in the world do you want to be a shoemaker? They can buy shoes for $20 these days.'”Francis, 48, says some of the old-time shoemakers have given up trying to create footwear from scratch, and now just fix the mass-produced shoes that have put them out of business.”As a profession, it’s extremely difficult to survive,” he says.