So many people are sending me these viral posts saying 16,500 to 17,000 people canceled their World Cup tickets in protest of U.S. policies. There's no actual evidence this happened, but even if it did, this would be 0.000034% of ticket requests and would surely not warrant a FIFA emergency meeting

FIFA says 500 million ticket requests over a month-long window; LA28 says it received 1.5 million ticket requests in a day. My story on ticket sales for both megaevents and how boycotts of the 1984 games hold a lesson for our current * waves hands * situation

Memo is back.

FIFA hosting a World Cup under controversial times and places with controversial and straight up authoritarians is just par for the course for FIFA. I hate that the American media calls it "weird" when it's pretty normal for them

Lmfao. This city, man. Just nonstop stupidity

Read @awalkerinla.bsky.social on the politics & perils of trying to buy tickets to the LA2028 Olympics & 2026 men's World Cup in LA. The lede alone is pure 🔥!

Wow, that's quite the lede!

I wrote about our very weird megaevent week: both FIFA and LA28 are trying to sell tickets to international sporting events hosted by an authoritarian government that's actively banning/invading/brutalizing participating countries

One common error in an otherwise great story by @noahmgoldberg.bsky.social: the Tesla Diner is in LA, not West Hollywood, and would be subject to the proposed city of LA tax. You can tell it's in LA because of the grotesque above-ground power lines that vanish a block away at the WeHo border

The kickoff event for the Overpaid CEO Tax initiative was at the Tesla Diner, of course 😉

New: meet ELITE, the Palantir app ICE is using to find neighborhoods to raid. Map interface; officers search for immigrants; click person to bring up individual dossier. This is clearest link between what Palantir is building and ICE's activities on the ground yet www.404media.co/elite-the-pa...

Looks like Metro D Line extension section 1 opening could be delayed. Was announced to be February/March 2026. No date announced, but sounds like maybe ~April now?

Apparently the looping is a feature not a bug 🫠

Today's the first day to register to buy LA28 tickets. People who live in Southern California (and OKC lol) will get presale access in April. I've been in a waiting room since 7 a.m. Let me know if you get through and what your experience is like! tickets.LA28.org

Long Beach will also host Ireland's hospitality house in 2028, Richardson announced in his state of the city address, noting that they're the first city to host three countries: Ireland, and the previously announced Greece and Denmark — which, um, could definitely get awkward

Mayor Rex Richardson is announcing that Long Beach will host one of the official FIFA-endorsed fan zones for the World Cup. As far as I know, the other fan zone locations have not yet been named. We know the official fan *festival* — basically the biggest fan zone — will be at Expo Park

Catch up on how the process of reforming LA's founding Charter is going (or isn't) — and how you can help! Our video of this teach-in is at: bit.ly/FRLA126 (slides at: bit.ly/FRLA126S).

"This isn't just geopolitics. It's a looming stress-test for sporting institutions that pride themselves on neutrality, yet repeatedly find themselves forced to take political positions when international law and conflict collide with global competition"

LA's council passed this motion which will request that LA28 present how, exactly, the organizing committee is working with federal law enforcement including "guardrails the City can enact to ensure that the City's most vulnerable communities are protected." Unfortunately, it's just that, a request

I'm a fan of the LA Pod, so I almost asked my colleague Mariel for her autograph after she spent an hour talking to @awalkerinla.bsky.social and @mikebonin.bsky.social

Two important lessons for city officials: Even "privately funded" stadium deals can end up costing public money, and you never really know the full public cost until all the court paperwork has settled.

Bus math update for 2028! At tomorrow's Metro meeting, the board will revise the estimated number of extra buses needed from 2,700 buses to 1,747 — *and* of those 1,747 buses, over half have been secured. A lot of agencies across the country are sending us their old CNG buses (thanks CATA!)

Our founder Mariel Garza joined Alissa Walker and Mike Bonin for the latest LA Podcast episode to talk fire failures and the New York Post coming to Los Angeles. Give it a listen! (And thanks to @awalkerinla.bsky.social and @mikebonin.bsky.social.)

Got a response 17 days later (17 days later!!!) that my 311 request was closed because my items weren't "in an accessible public area." So I went to see if the bin and trash were indeed gone and... they were still there

“Billionaires are not above the law" I say as I slowly hand over my entire city to billionaires

"Kroenke’s companies now claim the city refuses to reimburse them for $400 million they spent on public roads, sewers and other infrastructure, as well as police and fire protection." “We have every right to use public land for what we want to do,” said Inglewood Mayor James Butts 😂😭😮‍💨

“You can read a million books about the end of capitalism, but then you see that, and it’s like, oh they’re right,” he said, “A billion dollars just wasted, six years later just sitting there. It’s kind of hard-core.”

I think the graffiti ghost towers are an artistic triumph, I hope they live forever, and I'm so thrilled that this art piece exists (and close to me at least for now).

🫡

Artist Sayre Gomez made a sculpture of the Graffiti Ghost Towers and this story about why he felt he had to document LA’s “source of civic embarrassment and angst” as our megaevents put the city on the world stage is the best thing you’ll read today 🎁🔗

A year after the Palisades fire, L.A. Mayor Karen Bass is fighting dense new housing near transit that would make the city more climate-friendly, claiming it would cost too much. Meanwhile, she's happy to toss more money at the Olympics: www.torched.la/burn-scars/ via @awalkerinla.bsky.social

One of the best stories written in the wake of last year's fires was by @sammyroth.bsky.social, titled: “Los Angeles is a climate disaster. The fires will change nothing.” Glad to see him follow up with this very correct assessment that absolutely nothing has changed

All of us at the end of this holiday season

An excerpt from my latest, on the one year anniversary of the fires, now up at torched.la

Woke up and had to check again to make sure it was real. WE! KILLED! THE MONORAIL!!!

monorail is dead. modified alt 5 is the route - it has alt 6's routing in the valley, although i was under the impression that it would have alt 6's routing on the westside too, so will try to get to the bottom of that.

WE WON BITCHES

THIS: "LA could have spent the year planning brand-new communities" "surrounded by parks that could combat extreme heat and act as firebreaks, closer to jobs and footsteps to transit" and "saving the city billions of dollars. We didn't." Also, "The city's TAP card-thin argument" - perfect, Alissa.

We could have built thousands of units of athlete housing that became affordable housing the day after the games ended

Here it is: LA's proposed ordinance to broadly exempt Olympic and Paralympic projects from the city's planning and zoning requirements. This will be making its way through council in the upcoming weeks

On the anniversary of the fires, I spent some time in Amir's Garden, named for Amir Dialameh, an Iranian immigrant who lugged plants atop a ridge to rehabilitate a burn scar after a fire swept through Griffith Park in 1971. It was a reminder that we're all tenders of this fire-prone landscape

The LA wildfires were the most costly disaster at $61.2B 😥 ... and remember that direct costs are only a fraction (likely around 10%) of the total costs of any extreme event.

After the US admin cancelled the $B Climate + Weather Disaster dataset, @climatecentral.org hired the scientists who ran it and set it back up. Now the 2025 numbers are in: it's 3rd highest year on record and highest year w/o land-falling hurricanes. More: www.climatecentral.org/climate-serv...

LAX should add a fee once the APM opens — make the new intermodal facility, that includes curbside dropoff, free and charge a fee to any vehicle entering the horseshoe. Better than building the LAX-pressway. @awalkerinla.bsky.social

School has been cancelled tomorrow and Friday across the city of Minneapolis, because our federal government has made it unsafe for children here.

@chrislhayes.bsky.social: “A 37-year-old American citizen, the mother of a young child is dead tonight. She was shot in the face by an agent of the federal government, and that government has spent the day telling despicable lies about her.”