The Brief

This story first appeared on The LA Local.

Chad Merrill said he wasn’t a soccer fan before the FIFA World Cup, but he enjoyed learning about the game from the local and international fans who came to the city for the tournament.

“To host it here was actually awesome and it was great,” said Merrill, manager at Inglewood’s 3rd and Out Sports Bar on Market Street. “We had people from everywhere, and the vibe was outstanding!”  

On top of that, Merrill estimated the bar made 25-30% more than what they’d normally make on game days. 

“We understood that we’re blocks away from SoFi Stadium, and there was nothing but positivity from the World Cup,” Merrill said.  

The sports bar’s boost in business wasn’t a one-off, either. With so much hype around the World Cup, local businesses across L.A. expected to get an economic boost from fans coming out to watch matches. The tournament was projected to generate nearly $892 million in economic impact across L.A. County, with more than $515 million in direct visitor spending on hotels, restaurants, transportation and entertainment, according to L.A.’s World Cup website.

So now that the tournament is over, how well did the businesses do?   

Restaurants and bars near SoFi Stadium said they saw packed houses during the World Cup. 

Bars and restaurants in other parts of L.A. also saw some of their busiest days of the year during key games. For a Koreatown hotel operator, though, business was actually slower than normal. Taken together, businesses said the World Cup offered a valuable preview of the opportunities — and the problems the city still must solve — as the 2028 Olympics approach.

Foot traffic from SoFi helped Inglewood businesses

The Nile Restaurant and Bar in Inglewood on July 7, 2026.

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Bella Buccino

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The LA Local

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The influx of soccer fans transformed portions of downtown Inglewood into lively gathering spots, like the Wood Cup events held on Market Street.  

Businesses along Market Street, like Merrill’s sports bar, benefited from visitors looking for food, drinks and entertainment before and after matches at nearby SoFi Stadium.

Every World Cup match felt like a cultural celebration for Saizana Evans, manager at The Nile Restaurant and Bar on Market Street.

“We tried to play music that catered to certain countries,” Evans said. “If we had Spain’s fans in here, we would play some Spanish music.” 

Evans said they partnered with sponsors like Casamigos, Don Julio and Bud Light, and estimated that sales were up 30-35% during the international soccer tournament.

“It was great. It did bring in a lot of foot traffic,” said Evans. “The World Cup was just another example of how big it can get with different countries coming over to support their team.”

Restaurants did well in Koreatown and Pico Union; hotels not so much

H Hotel manager Nojan Haddadi stands inside the Koreatown hotel on June 16, 2026.

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Hanna Kang

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The LA Local

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For restaurants in Koreatown and Pico Union, the World Cup brought a much-needed economic boost to their businesses. 

Local pupuseria Pulgarcito Family Restaurant in Pico Union saw an increase in customers and hours for workers. 

“They were waiting for this for a long time; it was a big help for us,” employee Elizabeth Aguirre said. 

Erik Avila, owner of Baja Cantina Sports Grill in Koreatown, said the World Cup helped many customers discover his business as a sports restaurant, and it was the busiest they’ve been since starting seven years ago.

“It’s the most attention we’ve ever gotten; people kept calling,” said Avila.

While soccer fans may have visited restaurants in the area, Nojan Haddadi, operations manager of the H Hotel, said he thought the World Cup would bring in more visitors. But business was slower than he expected.

“We were definitely expecting a lot more of an outcome for the World Cup being here,” Haddadi said. “But we’ve been super slow through the World Cup, and it’s been unfortunate.”

Haddadi told The LA Local he thinks the issues at MacArthur Park, which is a little over a mile away, may have deterred people from booking rooms at the H Hotel. 

“It affiliates us to that area,” said Haddadi, who also serves on the Wilshire Center-Koreatown Neighborhood Council. “If you just take a walk around the area, you can see there’s trash everywhere. The unhoused problems are tough here. It’s like a ripple effect.” 

To keep rooms filled, the 49-room boutique hotel lowered its nightly rates, which Haddadi said has significantly reduced monthly revenue.

“That could be a $30,000 to $40,000 difference at the end of the month, which is huge,” Haddadi said.

Businesses in Boyle Heights thrived during the games

Guillermo Piñon, co-owner of Distrito Catorce in Boyle Heights, said the World Cup saved his business and brought in a 200% increase in sales.

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Laura Anaya-Morga

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Boyle Heights Beat

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Guillermo Piñon, co-owner of Distrito Catorce on East 1st Street, told The LA Local the World Cup saved his business and brought in a 200% increase in sales. 

It was the best month of business the restaurant has seen since Immigration and Customs Enforcement raids picked up last June, which decreased foot traffic exponentially, Piñon said. 

The raids caused him to close the business during lunch service. But throughout the World Cup, doors were open one hour before the starting game of the day and didn’t close until the last game was over. 

“That’s more important than the financial stuff,” Piñon said. “We need the money to keep surviving, but we need each other more to grow and to just, you know, be better for each other.”

Thousands of people showed up on June 18 for the Mexico-Korea game on 1st Street, and dozens of people watched the games in their soccer jerseys, cheering loudly every time the national team scored a spectacular goal, or a “golazo.” 

Now, the smells of rotting food that sometimes waft over from the Lineage warehouse have at times deterred business. 

Still, Piñon is hopeful that the hype around soccer events and Distrito’s hospitality will keep customers coming back, especially for upcoming LAFC games.

“We really focused on giving people the best experience that we possibly could because we knew that if we did that as best as we could, we were going to have those people come back,” Piñon said.

Looking forward to 2028

With L.A. preparing to host the 2027 Super Bowl and the 2028 Olympic Games — both of which will be in or have a presence around Inglewood —  some businesses believe the World Cup served as a rehearsal for the upcoming global events. 

Business owners along Inglewood’s Market Street say they are already making plans to expand operations, improve customer service and capitalize on what they expect will be another influx of international visitors when the Olympics arrive.

“I’d like to see a lot more businesses here on Market Street,” said Evans, who said The Nile Bar is a member of the Downtown Inglewood Association and the Inglewood Chamber of Commerce. 

“We need to see things happening, businesses improving before 2028.”

Cleanup is just beginning for a contaminated industrial site in South Gate, according to U.S. Environmental Protection Agency officials who are leading the effort.

The small southeast L.A. city was built on industry — in the early 20th century it boomed with auto, chemical and other manufacturers.

That legacy also left it with three Superfund sites, areas designated by the federal government as highly contaminated with hazardous waste.

The three sites are all clustered on a large lot framed by Southern and Rayo avenues. A residential neighborhood is nearby.

“This site is less than 50 yards away from a home, so we want to make sure that we clean it to a point where we can feel confident,” said South Gate Mayor Joshua Barron.

South Gate is home to about 90,000 people, the majority of whom are Latino. The median household income is about $74,500 and the state has identified the city and surrounding communities to be disproportionately burdened by pollution and its health effects.

This site, dubbed the Southern Avenue Industrial Area, housed a screw manufacturing business for 30 years, then a carpet adhesive plant. Both businesses are now defunct and the site was designated by the federal government as a Superfund site in 2012.

The pollution at this property was compounded by pollution from companies next door.

One of the two adjacent Superfund sites was used by Cooper Drum Co., a steel drum recycling plant. A group of Cooper Drum’s former customers, including chemical manufacturers and oil companies, are paying for part of that cleanup. The other site, previously operated by an aircraft rivet and conveyor belt manufacturer, is still in the analysis and planning stages.

At the Southern Avenue site where the EPA broke ground Tuesday, analyses commissioned by the agency found widespread lead and other toxic contamination in the soil, as well as a plume of trichloroethylene, a carcinogen, in the groundwater.

Officials say the plume has not affected the deeper aquifer South Gate and other southeast L.A. cities rely on for drinking water.

In 1986, the city closed water wells contaminated by the neighboring Cooper Drum site.

EPA project manager Kelia Liang explains the cleanup effort in South Gate on Tuesday.

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Erin Stone

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LAist

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“ The water is safe to drink,” said Mike Montgomery, superfund director for the EPA. “What we're trying to do is prevent it from becoming impacted.”

EPA officials estimate soil cleanup will take about two months. Groundwater cleanup planning will start in 2027 and could take a year or more. The whole effort is estimated to cost between $45 million and $60 million, primarily through federal dollars.

The summer heat may be sweltering at the moment in Southern California, but predictions about this winter’s El Niño show it could be the strongest on record.

So the LAist newsroom wants to know: What questions do you have? (You can submit below.)

We can tell you now that El Niño is a climate pattern that happens roughly every two to seven years, and is one of the most powerful drivers of the Earth’s weather.

During an El Niño event, the central and eastern tropical Pacific Ocean off the coast of South America warms to above normal temperatures. The warm ocean adds moisture and heat to the atmosphere, influencing atmospheric circulation, temperatures and precipitation on a massive scale.

El Niño typically results in mild weather in the northern United States and wetter conditions in the southern part of the country.

In Southern California, we could start to see the effects of El Niño in the late fall or early winter. Generally, those effects include significant rain and high sea levels and the consequences that come with them, such as flooding, mudslides and coastal erosion.

Forecasters say there is a more than 90% chance of a powerful El Niño event this year, and a 70% chance that it’s record-setting.

That said, uncertainty remains around how exactly this winter’s El Niño will play out here.

So as you gear up for an El Niño winter, ask us your questions and we’ll do our best to get answers in the months ahead.

The company behind the Garden Grove hazardous waste scare earlier this year is planning to resume full operations in late September, subject to an independently monitored, court-approved safety plan.

GKN Aerospace employs 500 people at its Garden Grove facility.

What happened?

GKN Aerospace said in a news release that it had permanently decommissioned the tank that set off the hazmat scare in May and forced some 50,000 nearby residents to evacuate.

Removal of the tank is pending review and approval from state regulatory agencies, according to an emailed response from Salma Elshakre, a spokesperson for the Orange County Health Care Agency, which is overseeing the cleanup.

All of the toxic chemical, methyl methacrylate (also known as MMA), has been removed from nearby tanks as well, Elshakre said.

What about the compensation fund?

This week, the company also announced a forthcoming $100 million compensation fund for affected residents and businesses. GKN expects to release details on how to apply in the coming months.

What's next?

At least 39 lawsuits have been filed against the company in conjunction with the hazmat incident, according to a GKN webpage set up to track the fallout. The company pledged to explain the legal effect of participating in the compensation fund before it is launched.

What's the community reaction?

Garden Grove Mayor Stephanie Klopfenstein said in a statement that the city “welcome[s] this progress and will continue to expect GKN to address the broader effects on our community.”

A coalition of community groups called GKN Out of Garden Grove Coalition wants the city to shut down the GKN plant completely. The coalition plans to release a report documenting the company’s alleged history of hazardous waste failures at a news conference Tuesday at 5:30 p.m. at 11300 Stanford Ave. in Garden Grove.

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Trump administration is preparing to revoke the business and tourism visas of up to 200,000 foreigners who have applied for or are currently seeking asylum status in the United States. If it happens, the move would be the largest single mass revocation of visas in U.S. history and would likely face legal challenges.

Unless challenged or revised, the State Department is expected to announce in the coming weeks the revocation of so-called B1 and B2 visas issued between 2016 and 2026 whose holders have sought asylum or are now seeking asylum, according to State Department documents obtained by The Associated Press and two U.S. officials. The action will be taken in coordination with the Department of Homeland Security.

“We are coordinating with DHS to identify and revoke the nonimmigrant visas of foreigners who have come to the United States claiming to be short-term visitors, but then file for asylum to stay here permanently,” said State Department spokesman Tommy Pigott.

He declined to comment on the number of visas that might be revoked, saying “as the process will be ongoing, the number of revocations remains dynamic and will be done on a rolling basis.”

The revocations would not necessarily result in their immediate deportation, the officials said. Most of those with asylum cases currently pending would be recategorized but would lose their status as business or tourism travelers, according to the officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity because the revocations are not final yet.

Since President Donald Trump took office for his second term last year, his administration has steadily ramped up restrictions on visa applicants — demanding more information about their social media histories, requiring the posting of expensive bonds for the processing of visas, and outright banning the issuance of visas to citizens of certain countries.

In a social media post on Monday, Deputy Secretary of State Christopher Landau called out people who he said try to use tourist and business visas to get into the United States and then apply for asylum.

“People in the US and all over the world are fed up with bogus asylum claims,” Landau wrote on X. “Asylum isn’t supposed to be a loophole to circumvent immigration law.” Landau cited the case of a Colombian citizen who came to the U.S. in 2015 on a tourist visa and then applied for asylum.

B1 visas are generally issued for business trips and B2 visas are generally issued for tourism, family visits or medical care. It was not immediately clear from the documents or the officials how many of these visa holders are seeking or have sought asylum in the United States and would be affected by the revocations.

Current applicants for B1 and B2 visas are asked to affirm that they will not apply for asylum in the United States and prove that they intend to return to their home countries.

In the past 18 months, the State Department has revoked about 175,000 visas for people who have been convicted or accused of crimes ranging from drunken driving to rape and robbery, as well as for people who have spoken out publicly against U.S. policies, particularly in the Middle East.

The administration has also moved to crack down on so-called birth tourism, a practice the administration claims is used by foreign pregnant women to come to the United States to give birth so that their child will benefit from birthright citizenship. Trump has tried several times to end birthright citizenship, but those challenges have been rejected by courts, including the Supreme Court.

The State Department documents obtained by the AP suggest screening of current B1 and B2 visa holders began after the State Department received information about asylum requests from the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services.