D day

Driving just got even dumber, Los Angeles. On Friday, the D line extension made its very first run from Union Station to the intersection of La Cienega and Wilshire in 21 minutes, a trip impossible to make in a personal vehicle during rush-hour traffic. Instead, you can do what it felt like everyone in the city was doing this weekend: zipping below the cars to emerge, wide-eyed and iPhone-snapping, into three stunning new subway stations deposited like tiny jewel boxes along Wilshire. This is only phase one; by the end of next year, a total of six new stations will be open all the way to Westwood, just in time for UCLA to host 2028’s Olympians and Paralympians. And yes, to answer your most pertinent logistical question: there is now a subway station in Beverly Hills — and a second one will open adjacent to Rodeo Drive next year.

Earlier Friday morning, the VIPs got to ride a special train into the Fairfax station bringing what Julia Wick described as high school reunion energy — from certain angles it looks like Antonio Villaraigosa, Eric Garcetti, and Karen Bass are attempting some kind of mayoral cheerleader pyramid — but many only stayed long enough for the photo op. The true leaders were back underground with the people the moment the subway opened for service at 12:30 p.m. But as they shuffled between local news hits, I did I hear some of Metro’s infamously car-brained board members wondering out loud if they might, in fact, be able to use this very train to get to their afternoon meetings. This, plus this week’s completely coincidental arrival of the last oil shipment from the Middle East, was proof to me that the opening of these three new stations had already started to truly rewire the region.

The ribbon cutting was held atop the parking garage of the Petersen Automotive Museum, but don't despair too much about this; as I wrote when the Petersen opened, this was simply marking another milestone towards the moment when all cars will only be found in museums. Endlessly charming emcee Jerry O'Connell — he was in another movie about a train... what were they doing in that one again... oh well, can't remember — talked about riding the 20 bus to Southwestern Law School before he dropped out. He told me he would have taken the D from his home that morning if it had already been operating. Ed Begley Jr. arrived by 217 bus, of course, and Metro superfan Kenny Uong delivered a heartfelt speech introducing CEO Stephanie Wiggins, who I spotted later in the day wearing her Ride the D shirt as she walked into All Season Brewing to a chorus of jubilant Metro employees chanting "Ride the D! Ride the D!"

And the shirts. The shirts. I tried, at various times, to estimate many passengers were wearing Metro's most internationally famous merch. Always at least 5 percent; sometimes closer to 15 percent. And... they're still wearing them! As I took the train downtown Saturday just before a Dodger game I saw just as many people wearing Ride the D shirts as I saw dressed in Dodgers attire.

During the opening, a heavily Instagrammed banner unfurled out a window above the La Brea station reading "Send D pics" — to where? not even a hashtag? — but as I moved back and forth between the three new stations for three hours, I realized the day was impossible to capture in static photos. This was LA at its most kinetic: crowded platforms, packed train cars, jammed bike racks. For my last trip between stations I opted for a Metro Bike from one of the three new bike share hubs. Rolling into Fairfax where Gary Baseman, dressed as a short order cook, was standing outside the Googie-glorious Johnie's, finally reopened as both an art space and actual diner with lines around the block, I had a thought: are these new stations going to be big enough for a city that's finally been set in motion? 🔥

Art party

LA28 finally announced (some) details for the Cultural Olympiad. With no previous mention of the required concurrent arts festival anywhere on its website — aside from the 2024 announcement of chair Maria Arena Bell, who departed last year — LA28 put out a press release this week promising free public performances region-wide and a "digital calendar and mapping tool of events" that would outlast the games. Attendees of a splashy event at Disney Hall's Blue Ribbon Garden on Thursday found the long-awaited launch thin on specifics. "This is the big announcement?" one cultural leader wondered. LA28 chair (still, for now!) Casey Wasserman was there and delivered remarks alongside CEO Reynold Hoover and new Cultural Olympiad SVP Dwayne Jones — a recent leadership shift Torched reported first. Three LA28 board members are now leading a new arts steering committee: Maria Hummer-Tuttle, Marc Stern, and Gene Sykes. Executive director Nora Halpern told Reuters her team has met with 300 cultural institutions to plan programming. While the city and county released a detailed strategic arts plan, LA28 is still lagging with just about two years to go. 🦋

There's still no real human rights strategy for the World Cup, anti-trafficking advocates continue to warn, with only few weeks to go. A document posted by LA's World Cup host committee on May 1 has "no analysis of documented human rights risks, no prevention strategy, no operational planning, and no commitments of resources," reads a statement from the Sunita Jain Anti-Trafficking Initiative. Despite FIFA's requirements that every host city must have a human rights plan in place ahead of next month, most have not released a plan — and none have dedicated funding in place for prevention and outreach efforts.

How are we going to evacuate tourists in an emergency again? Attending this week's UCLA Urban Firestorms: Risk and Resilience summit was eye-opening, to say the least. In his keynote, Alex Hall, director of UCLA’s Institute of the Environment and Sustainability, talked about the urgent need to name severe wind events the way we name hurricanes in order to convey danger and risk. That kind of interagency regional coordination, plus a focus on multilingual emergency alert messaging, should have been key to have in place ahead of our megaevent era. One research paper on car-free evacuation presented Thursday — which Torched has shared before — used a survey conducted through the Transit app to ask riders how they moved around the city during the 2025 fires. Most ended up getting rides from other people, which can't be the plan when millions of tourists are here without vehicle access.

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What Torched subscribers are reading, D line edition

• "First eyed six decades ago," the D line is finally here
• Metro Art's incredible video tours of all the new artists and artworks along the D line extension
• "POV: you're the first to ride the D from Western to La Cienega"
• "2026 will be forever known as the Year of LA Transit Progress." Eli Lipmen on "Metro's OMG moment"
• The LA Times has 19 adventures along the D line extension, but "don’t you ever wish you could explore one of LA's most vibrant boulevards without a car?" is 720 erasure!
• I also despise this framing
• Engineered to give me angina: "Los Angeles is finally going underground"
• Similarly engineered to give me angina: "Is Los Angeles finally ready to take the subway?" asks the New Yorker, ignoring the coëxistence of buses
• Much better, from The Guardian's Ryan Fonseca: "For decades, Angelenos accepted this time-eating crawl as fate. But this week, traversing this bustling corridor reached another level – about 50 to 70 feet underground to be precise. How about Union Station to Beverly Hills in 21 minutes?"
• Here are my Instagram photos and Bluesky thread from the opening 🦋

Let's get rolling

As we wait to put the P in CIP, advocates are still trying to draw attention to the deplorable state of our sidewalks, particularly in downtown. Come to Spring Roll, a "bar crawl with a purpose," visiting three DTLA bars to raise money for the important work of the Boo-Boo Bandage Brigade, which I wrote about last year. That's Tuesday, May 19 — here's a flyer to share — and I'll be the roving emcee!