Home team advantage

AVOID CONGESTION ON JUNE 12 USE TRANSIT. The signs flashed ominously above Los Angeles freeways last week. Despite having "car-free Olympics" bored into our brains, we hadn't seen such strong language emanating from our local officials anticipating the first LA match of the World Cup. They didn't even hold a "traffic nightmare is upon us" press conference like they did before the first game of the 2024 World Series. So when I saw the sign on the 5 on Wednesday, I actually started getting nervous. Was Caltrans prepping for a carmageddon that the rest of us hadn't been warned about?

On Friday, perhaps because of the LA Story-esque feeling that the city itself was trying to communicate with us via SigAlert, Angelenos seemed to get the message. We used transit.

Late last night, Metro reported that 18,541 riders took its dedicated shuttles to SoFi on June 12. FIFA reported a SoFi crowd of 70,492. That could mean 26 percent of the people in that sold-out stadium used the shuttles. (And it doesn't even include the people who got there other car-free ways, like the K line, for example.) These aren't quite Hollywood Bowl-level numbers. But they're pretty damn great for SoFi — and pretty damn great for LA.

Metro has ridership numbers out for the first World Cup match at SoFi. The dedicated shuttles — aka Games Enhanced Transit Service (GETS) — carried 18,541 riders to the stadium. FIFA reported attendance was 70,492. Did at least 1 out of 4 fans take Metro's dedicated shuttles to SoFi?

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— Alissa Walker (@awalkerinla.bsky.social) June 13, 2026 at 9:55 PM

My Friday morning visit to one of the shuttle spots at the North Hollywood B line station revealed a tight operation. (I'll be riding a shuttle to another match to get the full experience, so stay tuned.) Despite some confusion about Metro's park-and-ride policies — be sure you read them very, very carefully, especially if you're going to a Dodger game — the only real drama was created by LA's iron-clad law that prohibits public agencies from actually talking to each other. Two exasperated Metro staffers leafing through stacks of plans that carefully mapped out the corrals had arrived that morning to discover the city had started a construction project on the curb where they'd planned to load passengers, so the whole operation had to be shifted a block. Vendors began their prep work as well, carefully laying out game-day wares in a plaza kiosk. Above it all, U.S. jersey balloons booped each other in the air like soccer players bumping their swelling chests.

I headed down to the B line with a couple already headed to SoFi who were excited to take the train. They didn't know they could skip the TAP card dispenser, so I had the great honor of telling them they could pay with their credit or debit card. Then I rolled that way, too; from the B to the E to the K to the Downtown Inglewood station. We were still over four hours from kickoff and my K line car was filled with game-goers who were also game to make the 30-minute walk to SoFi. No sign of that bus-rapid transit system replacing the spiked people mover, but plenty of pedicabs, golf carts, plus the 212 bus as a makeshift shuttle as needed. But there were still so many cars. I watched as a Waymo lunged into an intersection where a traffic officer was having a hard enough time getting the human drivers to stop.

Under typical circumstances the walk to SoFi is suboptimal at best. This Friday, however, instead of counting Inglewood's digital billboards to pass the time, I wandered a Market Street that had been transformed for the Wood Cup, a Metro-sponsored block party plus station activation at the K (more on that soon). Market is one of those good-bones streets with handsome buildings, mature trees, and beefy curb extensions. The legendary Miracle Theater was screening the game, its lobby lined with historic Inglewood photos. FIFA sponsor Adidas set up a green-and-yellow soccer pitch in the street with the tagline YOU GOT THIS emblazoned next to an adjacent Kingsrowe pop-up. (And snipers on top of the building; our reality for the next two years.) The South Side Symphony was captivating crowds from the mainstage. It all seemed like a huge missed opportunity that the city wasn't doing something like this every single match of the tournament — if not every SoFi home game.

Despite an extra-large security perimeter that reached nearly to the edge of the SoFi parking lot, the stadium-adjacent culture of the Kroenke-Ballmer Sportsplex™ remained intact. Vendors produced bacon-wrapped hot dogs and Modelo tall boys from beneath rainbow umbrellas that provided the only scraps of shade as fans queued up another 45 minutes just to get inside the gates. "It's good," one hustling salesperson said when I inquired about business, as she made her way down the line hawking clear bags with one allotted factory-sealed water bottle. Adding to the sense that we were all on the same team, both U.S. jerseys and Paraguay jerseys featured red and white stripes; our very own Where's Waldo?, FIFA edition.

Inside, SoFi's stadium workers — who just one week ago had voted to authorize a strike — wore "Kick ICE out" buttons under a freshly ratified contract with an unprecedented clause retaining the right to strike if they felt at any time that their safety was threatened by ICE activity. But there were no reports of ICE near the stadium. And Donald Trump didn't come either. On the first day of the biggest sporting event in his presidency — one that he'd bragged about bringing back to the U.S. — he was busy staging an entirely separate sporting event for his birthday on his front lawn. (Is it a sport? I admit this is not my area of expertise.)

As I headed back east, the bustling E line was extra busy shuffling passengers simultaneously to the fan festival in Expo Park, where Metro saw fare taps at the nearby Expo/USC station increase by 598 percent (!) compared to a typical Friday. Stepping under the Coliseum's peristyle is always awe-inspiring, but I found cramming this supposedly public viewing party into yet another stadium experience to be a less-than-ideal situation. No shade on the blistering field forced attendees to hunker down in the brand activations — or perhaps that was the point! — which made it feel more like a sports-themed mall than a civic space. But if you go by today, be sure to ask LA host committee sponsor Archer how they got their "air taxi" to the stadium.

In the next few weeks the fan zones will disperse across the region — and I'm going to try to see them all, as per my World Cup guide! — but I found myself craving the more serendipitous encounters. Grooving through Inglewood's downtown, walking West Hollywood to Pride House, biking down Sunset, where smoke billowed from sidewalk taco stands prepping for USMNT-Paraguay as if it was a Dodger game — each was an open invitation to shared conviviality. On Saturday night, I ducked into the nearest bar to see if I might be able to catch the Knicks winning in five and saw one of the best examples of what's possible. The space was packed with soccer fans inside — they're playing every match — but the Red Lion is one of a handful of LA bars that kept its pandemic-era outdoor dining intact. On a night where they previously might have had to turn people away, the space was filled with hundreds of additional screaming fans clustered breathlessly around two screens in what will never, ever be a parking lot again.

On Friday, after baking in SoFi's parking crater for hours, I realized I wanted to literally touch grass. I rolled into the Autry Museum's watch party just in time to see dozens of American flag-waving soccer-obsessed kids lose their mind — GOOOOOOOAL! — while golfers, unbothered, wrapped up their nine holes on the municipal course behind the screen. Getting there was the best part: I used the beautiful new bike lanes in Griffith Park — we're still doing those car-free games, right? — and was able to thank the people who made them possible: the staff of councilmember-turned-mayoral candidate Nithya Raman, who sported a U.S. jersey and a grin, even after a particularly bruising charter reform hearing at City Hall. The World Cup opening weekend showed us LA can have it all: the hyperbranded immersive overstimulation, the laid-back neighborhood street festival, the lively beer garden, the picnic in a transit-accessible urban wilderness. As I rode home, the chirp of the California tree frogs gave way to the chatter of still-crowded sidewalks. This party was nowhere near over. 🔥

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