Not the end, the beginning

I was not looking forward to writing up a pithy synopsis of the last 12 months in this final newsletter of the year. While 2024 defies a tidy recap, it's probably best summarized by what Oscar Zarate, advocacy and organizing director for building, equity, and transit at SAJE told me the week after the election: "We’re already heading up a steep hill. It just got steeper."

Since April I've been coming to you about once a week with my best attempt to explain how megaevents are already impacting Los Angeles. My original instinct was to produce a steady stream of analysis on every bad decision being made, and there's certainly been no shortage of content; my only 2025 prediction is that next year's decisions are going to be worse. But after speaking with so many people this year who are working so hard to make this place actually work, I'm seeing another way to tell LA's megaevent story. All this public introspection into why LA can't get it together is spurring its own movement: new coalitions, new demands, calls for new ways to solve our problems. And it's this collective rallying cry — not a line-item in a FIFA or IOC agreement — that will end up making life tangibly better for Angelenos, megaevents be damned.

For my 2024 parting shot, here are some of those stories I reported this year. And with them, some takeaways I hope Torched readers have gleaned from my coverage. If you've learned even one thing from this newsletter — and I hope it was this — consider becoming a paying subscriber in 2025. We're just getting started here, and we have so much work to do. 🔥

Summer is not a good time for a megaevent

But what is summer when LA faces triple the number of dangerously hot days? Is blacking out for a pineapple Dole whip dill pickle sundae worth it? Moving the fair to May undoubtably saved lives.

Hosting the Paralympics is a bigger deal than hosting the Olympics

The lawyers representing the plaintiffs in Griffin v. City of Los Angeles are intimately familiar with LA's infrastructural shortfalls. The same legal team represented the plaintiffs in Willits v. City of Los Angeles, where the United States District Court for the Central District of California ruled that LA violated ADA laws by failing to maintain smooth sidewalks and install curb ramps at intersections. In 2016, the city of LA was ordered to pay $1.4 billion over 30 years to fund a sidewalk repair program. "It’s the same laws, it’s the same standards, it’s the same requirements," says Paula Pearlman, who is one of many lawyers representing the plaintiffs of both suits. "It shouldn’t be governance through litigation, we’re looking for city leadership to move the ball forward."

The plan to update our totally '90s convention center is flawed

We could build a top-tier, world-class convention center that's more like a neighborhood, where people actually want to spend money and time — instead of going to Anaheim. Unfortunately our leaders don't have that kind of vision. And this is why everything LA builds looks 10 years old the minute the ribbon is cut.

Not enough people are talking about LA's park crisis

I was so distressed after this year's 8-point slide that I called up Guillermo Rodriguez, TPL's California state director and vice president of the Pacific region. Rodriguez, very generously, praised county-level efforts like Measure A, a parcel tax passed in 2016 that funds parks as well as a regional needs-assessment similar to TPL's analysis. But when it comes to explaining the city of LA's slipping scores, it's pretty simple, Rodriguez says: other cities are improving so much that LA's getting left behind. "They're increasing their investments in parks and open space, and really that's what's been impacting Los Angeles," he says. "It's been a little disconcerting to see LA moving in the wrong direction."

The window for legacy improvements is closing (if it hasn't already)

Now you know I always like to hear real talk from local officials. But this message, I think, is especially critical for everyone to hear right now. Time is really running out. LA cannot continue to count on Metro's megaprojects alone to manage our way to a "car-free" games. The pricey marquee investments like the D line to Westwood? Important! But as I wrote in April, they're still only going to get us part of the way there.

Sports teams aren't interested in solving their transportation problems

The bigger question is why the people organizing the "transit-first" games haven't started working with these venues now to ensure the most basic information about how to get there without a car is accurate, updated, and easy to find. Doesn't getting Angelenos into the right mindset of riding transit to sports now make their job easier as we warm up for 2028? It seems like something LA28 might have required as part of its commitment to "sustainability."

We can't expect people to ride buses in these conditions

Remember, these are some of the most transit-dependent communities in the whole city. The bus stops are populated with riders carrying giant floral parasols, their handcarts filled with groceries. And this is how we treat the people who are doing the most to make our streets lively and safe.

The Olympic wage is LA's most important 2028 legacy project

The last time LA boosted the minimum wage for hotel workers was in 2014, and hotel owners raised similar alarms about the imminent demise of LA tourism. But 10-year analysis by the Los Angeles Alliance for a New Economy shows that never happened. "Our research found that not only did the industry's dire predictions of economic decline fail to materialize, but the opposite came true," says Jessica Durrum, LAANE's deputy director, who is also directing the Olympic wage campaign. "The last time Los Angeles enacted a major wage increase in the tourism industry, we saw even more economic prosperity, with growth by every measure: more jobs, higher profits, new construction, and increased tax revenue into the city's coffers."

Every venue can be a Hollywood Bowl

When the LA Phil season ended earlier this month, the Hollywood Bowl reported that the number of visitors who used the shuttles and park-and-ride buses this year had increased to an astounding 36 percent.

We can't abandon our public pools

As part of hosting the Olympics, the organizing committee pays to teach LA's kids how to swim. It's in the paperwork signed by the city. But there's also a huge disconnect between this goal and the reality on the ground. How can you pay for lessons when the pools literally can't hold water?

LA should become one big "fan zone"

While I'm sure the stadium program was very nice, and it was lovely to see so many people in the parks, the real party Friday was in the streets. I've never seen the corridor of taco tables along Sunset so slammed. Bars were serving improvised menus out open windows, with customers seated comfortably in their camp chairs from the parade at the curb. An entrepreneurial gentleman summoned cold Modelos for sale from a giant black Department of Sanitation trash can.

More public bathrooms would solve most of LA's problems

Truly expanding bathroom access at scale might look more like what's happening in Hollywood, where Councilmember Hugo Soto-Martínez allocated city funding to renovate and open public bathrooms as part of a new visitor center in an empty Walk of Fame storefront. And even though a lot of our new transit stations don't have bathrooms — making long trips very difficult for transit-loving toddlers! — it's not too late for Metro to get serious about putting permanent public toilets on more of its properties.

Palm trees are, in fact, the worst

What is LA's shade strategy for streets currently lined with 90-year-old palm trees? How long are we going to keep planning our whole city around a bunch of dead grass? Are we finally ready to embrace our inner oak?

🏆 I was chuffed to see Torched listed as one of the top five newsletters of 2024 by one of my favorite newsletter writers, Ryan Fonseca, over at the Los Angeles Times

🗞️ If you want to read more on how I'm thinking about Torched nine months in — including how close I am to hitting my 2025 subscriber goal — I was interviewed for Lex Roman's excellent Journalists Pay Themselves, a must-read for independent journalists

✨ And a heartfelt year-end thank you to everyone for reading, sharing, replying, catching typos, coming out to party with fellow subscribers IRL, inviting me to speak, photographing 1984 concrete benches, and sending those all-important tips — I couldn't do it without you! See you back here in 2025