Swim test

When Karen Bass delivered her first (of two? three?) State of the City address, the Los Angeles mayor gave her megaevent-focused remarks overlooking the Expo Center pool. Originally constructed for the 1932 Olympics, the pool — technically, the LA84 Foundation/John C. Argue Swim Stadium — and surrounding community center remains one of our most beloved legacy improvements. "What a fitting place to gather here today at Expo Center," said Bass. "This is where my grandson swims in the summer, right out there."

The shallow pool with its epic splash pad lagoon was open — it's a year-round facility — but when I peeked outside the window after the speech, the diving well and lap pool were empty. Pools are often drained to perform maintenance in the winter so I didn't think much of it. But then I started hearing from families that use the pool for competition practice — including participants of PlayLA, the youth sports program paid for by LA28 — that the pool wasn't being refilled and reopened as expected.

In 2024, the Campaign Home Team rally in Expo Park drew attention to how South LA residents would lose access to their park due to games-related activities, including a devastating summertime loss of the pool, which was then supposed to be hosting diving in 2028. "We face displacement as a result of the Olympics," said ACCE LA co-director Estuardo Mazariegos, who was heading up Campaign Home Team at the time. "We don’t want our community to be uprooted." But last year LA28 determined the pool was too narrow — wait, really? no one measured it? — and moved diving to the Rose Bowl. So LA28 pivoted, saying it would still use the pool area as a staging zone from January 2028 through August 2028, and promised to make upgrades to the pool so it conformed to competition standards for the future. But no project plans materialized.

After a few months of asking the city for an update on the empty Expo Center pool, I finally have an answer. "The pool is currently closed to address leak repairs," confirmed a Department of Recreation and Parks spokesperson. "At the same time, it has been identified for future upgrades through LA28 investment. As repairs are underway, there are ongoing discussions about whether the facility will remain closed to move directly into the upgrade phase." There's also "no timeline for the leak repairs, and at this point, there is no confirmed schedule or cost estimate for the planned upgrades." So this means, instead of South LA losing their lap pool just for the summer of 2028, it sounds like there will be no lap pool from now until then, and possibly long afterwards. When reporting on similar leaks that plague the Griffith Park pool, which will be repaired for $40 million by 2029, I foolishly said that the Expo Center pool, which had been recently renovated, wouldn't have any such problems. (But it's also not surprising as LA's park rankings plummeted another three spots; read on to the next section for more parks gore.)

As for Mazariegos, now he's running for Council District 9. And where current (and termed-out) Councilmember Curren Price praised LA28's plan, Mazariegos was not a fan. "South LA needs a pool that's open before it needs a pool that's certified," he told Torched. "The community wasn’t consulted on this deal, lost access to the lap pool that actually served residents, and got a verbal promise in return. That's the difference between negotiating for a neighborhood and negotiating around it." 🔥

More essential reads

Finally you can pay for Metro like you pay for a coffee

It’s called open loop, and it’s a huge deal

TorchedAlissa Walker

Fielding questions

“Los Angeles Stadium” until July 20, thank you very much

TorchedAlissa Walker

Parks gore

LA's park system has dropped to 93 out of 100 U.S. cities — our worst-ever rankings in the Trust for Public Lands' ParkScore index. I've tracked our plummeting score for the past decade. I reached out to Jon Christensen, adjunct assistant professor at UCLA's Institute of the Environment and Sustainability, who worked on LA's Park Needs Assessment, and offered this extremely dire outlook:

“Our dismal ranking and the tragic state of our park system in Los Angeles is entirely due to the lack of investment in parks. The Department of Recreation and Parks has essentially been flatlining since the Great Recession in 2008. Our spending on parks has not even kept up with inflation. If the city council, the mayor, and then the voters don’t approve increasing the department’s charter allocation, things will just keep getting worse. And I’m afraid parks will have to be shut down. It doesn’t have to be this way. The Park Needs Assessment identified a clear path forward for parks in Los Angeles.”

“City officials should not just heed the warning sign of our falling ParkScore, but also read TPL’s new economic analysis, “The Undeniable ROI of Parks,” which found that city parks deliver $3 in benefits for every $1 invested. That’s a good return on investment. We need to invest more in our parks — not less every year.” 🦋

LA28 announced the winners of its sustainability grants. These eight projects will get $100,000 each through the Resilience Champions Fund as part of its sustainability and impact plan, "investing in local organizations leading solutions rooted in community, driven by ingenuity, and designed to protect the future of Los Angeles." Here's a video with interviews. Hope they have a plan to both fund and maintain them, and very happy to see a schoolyard project in there! However, there's very little in here for the city of LA. I would have really liked to see LA28's sustainability fund laser-focused on LA's city parks — see above! — where LA28 is already providing youth sports lessons through 2028. LA's parks could have really benefited from these upgrades — and shouldn't local impact benefit the host city taking on all the risk? 🦋

LA megaevent czar Paul Krekorian presented updates to the ad hoc committee; listen here, or watch a very similar presentation he gave to the state earlier this month that has visuals. (IT'S 2026, WHY NO VIDEO FOR COMMITTEES?) Krekorian said a citywide accessibility plan for the games was coming and confirmed a lidar assessment of the sidewalk conditions around all venues had been completed. There's also a new case management working group to streamline temporary builds and other games-related projects for our no-build Olympics (which are exempt from CEQA). As always, the questions asked by councilmembers were revealing, and most of them were about how projects like sidewalk repairs would be prioritized. Subscribe to Torched, my friends, and you'd know two weeks ago!

Although LA28's human rights strategy was on the agenda, LA28 wasn't there, so advocates including CAST, Thai CDC, Saving Innocence, CARECEN, and the LA Worker Center Network spoke about the need for LA28 to fund anti-trafficking prevention. LA28 officials will supposedly be back to answer questions at a future meeting, but as Councilmember Katy Yaroslavsky said, if the human rights strategy costs aren't baked in to the still-not-finalized city service agreement, she's not voting for it. 🦋

Everyone was in D.C. last week asking for LA28 money. Krekorian, LA28 CEO Reynold Hoover, and Metro CEO Stephanie Wiggins all headed to Washington, and Instagram stories posted by Casey Wasserman's fiancée Jenny Chandler appear to show the LA28 chair (still, for now) meeting with Trump along with Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin and former House speaker and LA28 board member Kevin McCarthy. (They've hung out before on Marine One.) Mullin also posted a video this week confirming ICE will be at World Cup matches. Interestingly enough, the same day Wasserman met with Trump, Trump endorsed Spencer Pratt for mayor, calling him a "big MAGA person." 🦋

What Torched subscribers are reading

• “I think the security posts and the trees they want to add instead of the fence will change the image of the neighborhood, but I don’t know if they’re going to maintain it. We don’t know what’s going to happen after the World Cup.” MacArthur Park vendors are nervous as the neighborhood gets a glow-up
• Is Casey Wasserman not actually planning to sell his company? "Before he became embroiled in the Epstein files, insiders thought that Wasserman’s plan was to get through the Olympics, take a victory lap and then put his stake in the company up for sale in 2028"
• Kerstin Zilm reports for KCRW on how the Iranian diaspora in LA is divided over the country's participation in the World Cup
• Why are host cities having so much trouble raising money? FIFA's rules prohibit host committees from forming partnerships that compete with existing sponsors, writes Henry Grabar, now at The Atlantic 🦋
• World Cup or global spectacle of repression? The human rights crisis facing FIFA
• "Cracked sidewalks, to be clear, are but a symptom of a deeper, decades-long breakdown at City Hall." Steve Lopez covers the CIP at the LA Times
• I continue to be astonished by the schoolyard greening efforts at Esperanza Elementary in Westlake

Huge thanks to the Boo-Boo Bandage Brigade for inviting me to emcee their epic Spring Roll bar crawl to draw attention to downtown's infrastructural "ouchies." Thanks also to the lovely folks at Florentin, Spring Street Bar, Mignon, and Kiso for coming up with custom cocktails — still dreaming of that carrot margarita! — for a cause. The best part was going to bar to bar with staff and talking about how sidewalk and accessibility issues impact their businesses. I hope this event morphs into a Summer Roll, Fall Roll, and Winter Roll. More photos here and here.

Earlier that day, transit rider Kalayaan Mendoza won the #DLineDash, of course, with driver Rachel Reyes coming in second and cyclist Michelle Moro a very close third. I was happy to serve as part of the finish line crew. And thanks to The LA Local's Marina Peña for covering it all live!

Next up — I'm moderating a conversation on Thursday, June 4 for the CityONE speaker series with Metro's Marcel Porras, West Hollywood transportation manager Tamar Fuhrer, and Chelsea Richer, climate lead at Fehr & Peers, to talk about our mobility and infrastructure dreams for 2028. This includes dinner from longtime friends of Torched Heirloom LA and wines from the stellar folks at Tabula Rasa. I have two tickets for subscribers at the 🔥🔥-level and higher to attend — you know the drill! Email or DM me! [Update: These are gone!]