The Brief

Los Angeles has seen several notable restaurant closures in the past few weeks.

Hart House, the vegan fast food chain owned by comedian Kevin Hart, closed all four locations. Pink Taco, located on the Sunset Strip in West Hollywood, abruptly shuttered its doors after 12 years. Otoño, a well-reviewed Spanish-inspired restaurant in Highland Park is now closed. Acclaimed Gorilla Pies in Valley Village has gone on hiatus to “reimagine how we can better serve you.”

Eater L.A has kept a running total of this year’s closures, and it’s 75 so far. Compared to last year’s 65 eateries that closed over the entire year — it’s clear that it’s grim out there.

To get a better picture of the current situation, we reached out to three business owners: Nicole Rucker, owner of Fat & Flour in DTLA and Culver City; Chef Teresa Montaño of the now-shuttered Otoño; and Alex Koons, of Hot Tongue Pizza in Silver Lake, who made the decision last year to add meat to his vegan pizzeria menu with hopes of attracting a larger customer base. All three have been vocal regarding the hardships they’ve faced recently.

(Note: these conversations have been edited for clarity and length).

What’s the situation? 

Nicole Rucker, owner of Fat & Flour

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Alan Gastelum

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Courtesy Fat & Flour

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Nicole Rucker:

“This summer, we experienced a drop in our business that started on June 1st, which came after we had recorded high sales in 2023.

The beginning of the year, it's normally a little bit slower, and then we look to summer for when tourism comes to L.A. [But] this summer, it took a sharp drop down and just kept getting worse. In August, we saw the worst sales that we've seen since 2021.

August was worse than July, and July was worse than June. And in total, it's about a 30 to 40 percent drop. And then the heat wave that came was the nail in the coffin for a lot of people. That was brutalizing."

Teresa Montano:

“A significant part of it is just how much the cost of everything, the cost of doing business in Los Angeles, has gone up. And after COVID-19, so many things changed.

There were just these compounding factors that kept hitting us. We closed for about 15 months during COVID-19. In that time, we did a little market thing, but ultimately, dinner service was down for 15 months, which was nuts.

One of the major things that I noticed was that dining habits changed. People were still scared to come out, so they decided to change their lifestyle and start cooking at home.

The other factor is that third-party delivery apps made a killing during COVID-19 because all the restaurants were down. These parasitic apps came in and stole half the market.

A lot of people have got used to that. And that has become their dining, instead of going out to restaurants. When we reopened the first year, we had an incredible year, of course, because people were excited that we were back.

But I think after that initial pop dissipated, we were in the boat with everyone else."

Alex Koons:

Alex Koons of Hot Tongue in Silver Lake

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Miriam Brummel

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Courtesy Hot Tongue

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“It just seemed the summer was so dead. It was scary. My wife had dipped into her funds to pay for payroll multiple times.

I've been in pizza for almost 15 years, and it feels like I've had to work five times harder for everything these last couple of years.

I'm not saying the restaurant industry was easier before this, but just seeing and hearing about all the struggles, seeing Gorilla Pies close their doors, and other friends, it was just me saying, ‘If we didn't make this decision, [about adding meat] we would have been closed. There has to be a bigger play. And opening up to a bigger demographic.

I think my ego was quite big as a pizza maker. Bread has always been the defining factor that I find to be important in pizza, and it's something that I'm very good at. I thought that would be enough to get people who might not necessarily eat vegan food in the door. But it's so funny, living in a bubble or having a perspective of only your own — you don't realize that.”

What can be done? 

Nicole Rucker:

“I would like to see a small business tax plan that really takes care of small businesses. I would like to see money become available to small businesses that are not from online bank sources that charge exorbitant interest rates. Because something that changed with the pandemic is that it is more and more difficult for truly small businesses.

And by that, businesses who do under a million dollars in sales. It's very difficult for people like me to get money these days from places that aren't charging 17 to 20% interest.

But the other thing is people are scared because there's so much messaging about the economy being bad. And we're all trying to save where we can, and groceries are expensive, but if we do care about the health of small businesses within our communities, then we have to support the places that matter to us.

Because following three months of really terrible sales, that’s when you start to see doors closing. If you're lucky, you have three months of backup in the bank. That would be really great to have, but we just used it all on summer 2024. It's gone now for most people. So a lot more places are going to close before the end of the year because it's so hard to navigate."

Teresa Montaño:

Chef Teresa Montano stands inside of her now-shuttered Otoño restaurant in Highland Park

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Courtesy Otoño

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“It's really just looking at the policy and getting rid of all those old systems, lowering the prices of things and stopping gouging small businesses. We're paying the taxes and employing people, which are way too high in California. There's just so much red tape. And then you open, and there's even more. There's even more. It's just like regulation after regulation.

Thank God we dodged the junk fee bill [a bill to remove extra fees from bills that ultimately exempted restaurants]. Maybe it's a good intention, but it makes doing business harder. And small businesses are leaving California, but huge businesses are also leaving, so that should be an eye-opener to the lawmakers.”

Alex Koons:

"There is no quick fix to this problem. I bang my head against the wall daily, trying to figure out what will hit and stick.

There needs to be something more extreme than just running promotions or trying to pay for a PR agency or get people or influencers in here.

Again, pride and ego are something that I'm dealing with personally, but I don't want to live in a world where I have to have an influencer come into my establishment to tell everybody that my food is great.

And that seems like that's the world we're living in. They come in, and fundamentally nothing changes from the time they were in and the time they were before. You feel it's almost like being trapped in a way. And maybe I need to just swallow that.

But I have a fair amount of friends who haven't felt any pain. And they're doing very well. They maintain a constant flow of social media attention or being on lists and stuff, and I know how helpful that is to business, especially in Los Angeles.

I talk about cutting through the noise. It's very important to stay on people's radar. And that's a constant battle, too with Hot Tongue. So many people don't know about us in our own neighborhood, and trying to combat that, I've done everything.

We're not priced at the cheapest, but also we pride ourselves on the grain that we use, the technique that we use, the equipment that we use, how much we pay people.

It's hard to convey to a customer, to sit down and have that conversation with them a lot of times. It feels like they just want their food on time and want us not to break the bank.”

Something unusual is happening with only a few days remaining before the U.S. men's national team opens its World Cup campaign against Paraguay: Tickets for the match are not sold out.

Although numbers fluctuate regularly, FIFA's ticketing website still shows 132 tickets left to sell for a game that's set to take place in Los Angeles on Friday. Meanwhile, resale platforms such as StubHub and SeatGeek — and FIFA's own marketplace — also show thousands of tickets on sale.

The number is even higher for Canada's opening match against Bosnia Herzegovina in Toronto on the same day, with 226 tickets left in FIFA's website and a high number of tickets available in resale markets.

That's unusual for high-profile events such as the opening matches of the World Cup — traditionally among the hardest to get tickets in the tournament. This year will feature three hosts in the U.S., Canada and Mexico — but so far only Mexico's opening match against South Africa on Thursday looks to be virtually sold out.

Ticketing experts widely agree on the reason: the prices. FIFA dramatically jacked them up for the tournament — especially for high profile games. The most expensive regular seats for the U.S. opener against Paraguay are priced at $2,735 — more than the final cost for the 2022 World Cup final — while the cheapest are $1,120.

Even President Trump said he wouldn't pay those prices.

"I would certainly like to be there, but I wouldn't pay it either, to be honest with you," Trump told the New York Post in a recent interview.

The other two remaining games for the U.S. national have far fewer tickets available, given that prices are well below the ones for the opening match.

Prices have also fallen sharply

There are not only plenty of tickets left to sell — a number of them are also available below FIFA's face value. According to Ticketdata, which tracks prices across the resale platforms, the cheapest pair of tickets for the opening match for the U.S. and Canada was $951 as of Monday morning, while in FIFA's resale platform, tickets were available for as low as $690.

Other games across the 104-match tournament also still have many tickets left to sell — despite FIFA President Gianni Infantino's claim that every match is "already sold out." That's especially the case for lesser well known teams such as the Jordan against Algeria match, which still had hundreds of unsold seats in the FIFA's web site.

Demand for high-profile tickets such as Argentina and Portugal was far higher, however, with many of those games looking largely sold out.

Will the opening matches sell out?

Whether eventually the U.S. and Canada opening matches will sell out is hard to answer. Throughout the sales process, FIFA has closely guarded how many tickets it has actually sold and how many are left to sell, making it virtually impossible to gauge.

In addition, like other teams, FIFA could also sell tickets in other platforms including third-party ones such as SeatGeek, which can further obscure how many tickets are left to sell.

FIFA and organizers, however, are hoping for a surge in excitement that leads to a last-minute rush of sales for the opening matches as well as for those such as Jordan against Algeria that look far from being sold out.

Ben Shields, a senior lecturer at the MIT Sloan School of Management, says perceptions so far of the tournament have been shaped by how expensive tickets and travel has been for a tournament taking place across an entire continent.

That, he says, "does not seem to sit well with many."

But that could change.

"The hope or bet — for FIFA is that once the matches start — and the greatest players in the world compete for the most prestigious prize of them all, the sport as business lens will fade into the background and the World Cup will be seen and experienced as the enduring global institution that it is," Shields says. "We shall see."
Copyright 2026 NPR

Orange County’s top elected leaders on Tuesday are set to discuss what to do with $3.7 million recovered from the Andrew Do corruption scheme.

Do is now serving a five-year sentence in federal prison after he admitted to accepting bribes in exchange for awarding millions in tax dollars meant to feed needy seniors and people with disabilities in his district.

As part of the plea deal, Do acknowledged taking more than $800,000 in bribes through his two daughters, including a down payment on the house his youngest daughter Rhiannon Do later forfeited to resolve the criminal case. The scheme was first uncovered by LAist.

Federal officials recovered money from seized bank accounts and two properties connected to Do’s scheme — including the Tustin house his daughter bought.

The county Board of Supervisors is expected to publicly discuss plans for the recovered funds as they make decisions on the overall county budget at their meeting Tuesday. Public comment will also be taken.

What to do with the money?

Ahead of Tuesday’s discussion, Do’s successor said the funds should support residents of his former district who were deprived by Do and his alleged co-conspirators.

“For the past five years, every other district in Orange County has benefitted from the same community funds to support their cities, nonprofits, civic projects which strengthens their communities,” Supervisor Janet Nguyen wrote in a mass email to constituents last week. “However, our district went without because Do stole what belonged to our residents.”

“This money was stolen from the First District, and it must come back to the First District,” Nguyen added.

Nguyen was Do’s mentor and former boss more than a decade ago, before the two had a bitter falling out by 2016.

She encouraged residents of her district to send letters to the board and to speak during public comments.

Several county supervisors told LAist they supported a similar approach, one in which the recovered money goes to support the original intended recipients: seniors and people with disabilities in Do’s former district. Some supervisors have since advocated a broader view of how they’d want to use the money, noting that it was meant to address disruptions caused by the pandemic. Now that years have passed since the initial COVID-19 outbreak and lockdowns, some supervisors argue community needs have changed.

“We are so many years on, and the problems that money originally was to address (mostly Covid impacts) are now behind us, that I think we should have a discussion about how and where to spend it,” Supervisor Don Wagner told LAist via text message in March. “The budget is so tight and the needs so great across the county.”

Supervisor Vicente Sarmiento said he’d work toward a fair distribution of the funds to best serve residents, with a focus on current needs.

“We will definitely consider what areas of the County were harmed by Do’s scheme, but we must also remember that the funds were intended for relief efforts during the COVID-19 pandemic, a threat we are no longer facing,” he said in March. “We also need to consider addressing the current needs of residents with any dollars returned to the county.”

Millions more haven’t been recovered, at least yet

The amount of taxpayer money recovered so far is less than half of the $7.9 million Andrew Do admitted was diverted from specific meal contracts.

In a lawsuit seeking to recover funds, the county alleges the total amount lost in the scheme was even larger: $13.25 million. The county’s suit — scheduled for trial in November 2027 — covers all of the money Do gave to two nonprofits accused in the scheme, Viet America Society and Hand to Hand Relief Organization.

That leaves more than $4 million — and possibly much more — not yet recovered.

A spokesperson for the U.S. Attorney’s Office noted they have an ongoing criminal case against Do’s alleged co-conspirator Peter Pham.

“Assuming we obtain a conviction in that matter, we would expect to seek restitution,” the spokesperson, Ciaran McEvoy, said.

Pham left the country on a flight to Taiwan in late 2024 and remains a fugitive, according to McEvoy. The case against him also includes charges against another alleged co-conspirator, Thanh Huong Nguyen, who led the Hand to Hand nonprofit.

Fans of the U.S. Men’s National Soccer Team swelled the stadium at the Great Park in Irvine on Monday to watch players practice for the first time since arriving at the training facility they’ll call home for the first round of the 2026 World Cup.

“Seeing them play right now… it was really cool to see how they play and how they practice,” said Mila Ran, who came with her mother from nearby Mission Viejo.

“This whole time she’s saying, 'I want to go shoot, I want to go play,'” said Mila’s mother, Farah Ran.

They were among about 6,000 people who won free entry to the practice in a lottery that received more than 30,000 entries, according to Irvine officials.

Fans got to the venue early.

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Adolfo Guzman-Lopez

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LAist

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The team’s biggest stars — Christian Pulisic, Antonee Robinson and others — showed off their ball handling skills, honed over years of play on U.S. youth fields and overseas in professional leagues. Fans yelled, waved U.S. flags, held up homemade signs, and did the wave several times.

The U.S. Men's National Team at their only open-to-the-public practice session in Irvine.

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Adolfo Guzman-Lopez

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LAist

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After the roughly 45-minute practice, some players walked to the sidelines to take selfies with fans and sign autographs.

The players know it’s going to take more than this, however, to live up to expectations during the World Cup.

US men's national team player Tim Ream signs an autograph for a fan.

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Adolfo Guzman-Lopez

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LAist

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“To be in a position to train in front of these people today… is such a unique opportunity and one that none of us take for granted,” said backup goalie Matt Freese before the practice. “We’re working as hard as we can, as focused as we can to leave the next generation inspired."

The U.S. men’s team and their training staff will use the Great Park facility over the next several weeks as the team plays Paraguay on Friday, Australia on June 19, and Turkey on June 25 in group play at SoFi Stadium in Inglewood.

Jury selection began Monday for the trial of the man accused of igniting a fire that led to the deadly and destructive Palisades Fire, which killed 12 people and destroyed thousands of structures.

Jonathan Rinderknecht is charged with one count of destruction of property by means of fire, one count of arson affecting property used in interstate commerce and one count of setting timber afire. He could face up to 45 years in federal prison.

How we got here

Prosecutors allege Rinderknecht set brush alight near a popular hiking trail in the Santa Monica Mountains on New Year’s Day, starting the Lachman Fire. Firefighters initially thought they put out the fire, but it remained smouldering underground for several days. High winds then brought the embers to the surface, sparking the Palisades Fire, which burned more than 23,000 acres.

What prosecutors say

In a court filing in April, prosecutors allege Rinderknecht displayed “extreme anger, indignation, and frustration” because he had to spend New Year's Eve alone. After driving around for Uber, Rinderknecht hiked up a popular trail and set chaparral alight in a clearing, according to prosecutors.

“He then started calling 911 multiple times, hiked down the hill, and fled the area in his car before firefighters arrived. Defendant returned to the area after he saw fire trucks arriving and then took videos of the firefighting efforts,” prosecutors wrote.

The filing also states that Rinderknecht threatened to burn down his sister’s home.

Prosecutors are expected to argue that Rinderknecht started the smaller blaze knowing it could turn into a bigger inferno.

U.S. District Court Judge Anne Hwang has previously expressed the government’s position could confuse jurors.

What the defense says

Defense attorney Steve Haney previously told reporters that prosecutors were trying to blame Rinderknecht for a fire that started days before the Palisades Fire.

"Well what about what happened between Jan. 1 and Jan. 7?" he asked. "Jonathan wasn't out there with a fire hose putting that fire out at the Lachman location, the Fire Department was. So why are they blaming him for whatever the Fire Department didn't do?"