The Brief

As downtown Los Angeles became the epicenter of resistance against federal immigration sweeps in the region — and subsequently fell under a weeklong curfew — resident Teresa Y. Hillery fielded phone calls from concerned family members asking if she was OK and whether she needed to leave the area.

“I’m thinking, what are you guys talking about?” said Hillery, who has lived in South Park for 20 years.

From her vantage point in South Park, Hillery said you wouldn’t really know anything was going on.

While the protests were mostly contained to a couple of blocks around City Hall and a federal detention center in downtown L.A., the curfew that Mayor Karen Bass instituted to curb vandalism and violence affected the entire neighborhood of more than 90,000 people.

From 8 p.m. to 6 a.m., the curfew zone extended east to west from the 5 Freeway to the 110 Freeway; and from north to south from the 10 Freeway to where the 110 and 5 freeways merge. The area was off limits to almost everyone except for emergency personnel, residents and people who work there.

Joseph Cohen May, who lives near the 7th Street Metro Center station, said the curfew was heavy handed.

“Putting aside whether the curfew was really necessary at all, it definitely felt unnecessarily wide of an area, and it didn’t feel like it didn’t need to be as long as it was,” he told LAist.

Hillery, the South Park resident, said she appreciated that there was a resident exemption, but said other strategies, like blocking off some streets around the hotspots, would have been more helpful.

“I think it gets lost on a lot of people that people live downtown,” Hillery said.

Bass announced that she was ending the curfew on June 17, saying it was “largely successful in protecting stores, restaurants, businesses and residential communities from bad actors who do not care about the immigrant community.”

Between June 7, a few days before Bass put the curfew in place, and June 16, LAPD said it made more than 570 arrests “related to protest activity.”

Survey finds most residents wanted curfew to end

The Downtown Los Angeles Residents Association conducted a poll Sunday of more than 350 residents and business owners and employees in the neighborhood. Most of the respondents said they wanted the curfew to end entirely or see a phased roll back.

“Ending the curfew sends a strong signal to the world that the city and people of downtown Los Angeles can live safely and in peace,” a resident of Historic Core said, according to results of the survey that the residents association shared with LAist.

One of the respondents’ chief concerns regarding the curfew was the effect it was having on the local economy and small businesses.

How businesses handled the curfew

LAPD officers block a street in front of Los Angeles City Hall as curfew goes into effect in downtown Los Angeles, on June 12, 2025.

(

Patrick T. Fallon

/

AFP

)

To comply with the curfew, several downtown restaurants modified hours. That wasn’t enough to recuperate business, though, according to Courtney Kaplan, managing partner at Camélia, a restaurant in the Arts District.

“An 8 p.m. curfew really cuts into prime time for the restaurant,” Kaplan said.

Kaplan estimates the restaurant has seen 60% to 70% less activity than it usually sees each day of the week.

In the future, if there’s another curfew in downtown, Kaplan said “clear communication” would help with planning.

“We’re finding out these details at the same time that everyone else in the public is,” Kaplan said. “We’re having to just kind of look at the city webpage and refresh it.”

In a statement to LAist, the Mayor’s Office said it used several channels, including social media and emergency alerts, to communicate the curfew, and notifications were transmitted in “multiple languages.”

Nolan Marshall III, the CEO of the Social District, said the curfew, in addition to the fear that the immigration sweeps have instilled in some workers, has been “incredibly hard” for the South Park businesses his organization represents.

“ Certainly we need to be intentional about protecting certain businesses in downtown from looting, but if the curfew causes as much damage in terms of loss of sales to those businesses that are impacted by the curfew, we really gotta be intentional about trying to balance those two things,” Marshall said.

Mayor’s response to business impacts

The Mayor’s Office said more than 300 people have RSVP’d for the informational sessions.

Bass spoke with business owners in Little Tokyo on Wednesday.

“I talked to the business owners, including the restaurant that I go to frequently, when I talked to them, business is still slow, but it's getting back,” Bass said according to a transcript her office provided of her remarks. “One of the restaurants I was at, they had a very busy lunch hour, and so that's a good sign.”

Last week, the mayor’s office began hosting webinars for affected businesses in downtown L.A. that are looking for help with accessing legal services, “know-your-rights” information and staffing support.

LAX officials are considering a proposal Tuesday to increase the fees rideshare companies are charged to access the airport.

Currently, rideshare companies like Uber and Lyft generally pass a $4 to $5 airport fee along to their customers. You might see this listed as a line item on your receipt as an “LAX Airport Surcharge.”

But the Los Angeles World Airports Board of Commissioners could vote to increase that fee by as much as $2 to $8 depending on where the rideshare picks you up or drops you off.

The idea behind the proposal is to encourage the use of the long-awaited, much-delayed and over-budget Automated People Mover once it opens and decrease congestion in the central terminal area, the area of the airport that’s also known as the horseshoe.

David Reich, a deputy executive director for the city agency that manages the airport, told LAist that if the proposal is approved, LAX doesn’t plan on increasing the fee until after the Automated People Mover opens, which could be later this year.

The proposed increases

When the Automated People Mover opens, there will be new curb space for drop-off and pick-up. Known as the “ground transport center,” this new curb space will be a 4-minute trip from the terminal area via the Automated People Mover, according to Reich.

LAX-it will shut down as a rideshare and taxi lot once the train opens, Reich said.

If the proposal is approved, getting an Uber or Lyft to and from the ground transport center will come with a $6 airport fee.

Even once the Automated People Mover opens, you will still be able to get rides directly to and from the curbs along the horseshoe, but they will come with a $12 fee.

The proposed increases would also apply to taxi and limousine services, which currently operate under a slightly different fee structure than rideshare companies.

The increased fees are expected to generate as much as $100 million in the first year the Automated People Mover is usable, according to a report to the board.

Why the different fees for the different locations?

In a report to the board, Reich said the Automated People Mover represents a "significant investment” that aims to “fundamentally reshape how vehicles move through the airport.”

The idea behind having a higher fee for direct access to the curbs along the horseshoe is to encourage “use of new, high-capacity infrastructure” and preserve central terminal access for trips “that most require it.”

Uber is trying to fight the increases

Uber is trying to mobilize the public to fight the proposed fee increases.

“Raising the LAX rideshare fee from $5 to $12 at the curb would punish travelers, working families, and seniors who depend on affordable, reliable transportation,” Danielle Lam, the head of local California policy for Uber, said in a statement.

On Monday, Uber sent an email to passengers who recently used the rideshare service, urging them to write to city officials to “stop this massive fee hike.”

Lyft has not responded to a request for comment.

Ten state lawmakers who are members of the L.A. County delegation sent a letter on Monday to the board expressing their “strong opposition” to the proposed increases.

“Many Angelenos rely on a mix of options, including rideshare services and friends or family dropping off loved ones,” the legislators wrote in the letter. “Managing congestion cannot realistically rely on steep fee increases for certain transportation options.”

Eight of the 10 legislators who signed the letter have received campaign contributions from Uber or Lyft, according to an LAist analysis of state campaign contribution data.

Other ways to access the airport

Now is probably a good time to remind folks that there are other ways to get to the airport that don’t involve rideshares, taxis or even lifts from families and friends.

The FlyAway bus offers regularly scheduled rides from the airport to Union Station in downtown L.A. and Van Nuys. You can see the schedules here. 

Last year, the countywide transportation agency unveiled the LAX/Metro Transit center, which is accessible from the C and K rail lines and several bus routes. For now, an LAX shuttle is bringing travelers from the station to the airport. It will be one of the stops on the Automated People Mover once it opens.

The Newport Beach City Council is considering demolishing part of its quirky, beloved sculpture garden in Civic Center Park to make way for a new police station.

The city has been trying to figure out how to replace its aging police headquarters for years. It bought a property in 2022 with that intent. But an ad hoc City Council committee decided, controversially, it might be better to instead build a new station on the parkland next to city hall.

What’s so great about the sculpture garden?

The sculpture garden is a “museum without walls” treasured by art and nature lovers alike. It houses the quirky and once-controversial “Bunnyhenge,” included on the popular Atlas Obscura travel guide. Opponents of putting a new police headquarters on park grounds say it would compromise the environment, and decimate the sculpture garden.

What do supporters of the new station idea say?

Supporters say the current police station, built in 1973, is long overdue for an upgrade, and that the police force needs more space for things like servers to store digital evidence. The council ad hoc committee that studied the issue says the Civic Center parkland makes the most sense for a new building because the city already owns the land, and it would consolidate the city’s main services in one place.

Is it a done deal?

Far from it. The City Council is holding a study session Tuesday to present the plan publicly and gather input. If the council decides to go forward, the next step would be to hire a consultant to design the building and get started on an environmental impact report.

Here’s how to learn more and weigh in:

A new exhibit in L.A. — Vehicles of Expression: The Craft of the Skateboard — arrives this weekend, highlighting the cultural impact, history and artistry of handmade skateboards.

It’s the latest exhibit at Craft in America Center, a museum and library that highlights handcrafted artwork.

Todd Huber, skateboard historian and founder of the Skateboarding Hall of Fame, said before 1962, it wasn’t possible to buy a skateboard in a store.

“Skateboarding started as a craft,” Huber said on AirTalk, LAst 89.3’s daily news program. “Somewhere in the 50s until 1962, if you wanted to sidewalk surf, as they called it, you had to make your own out of roller skates.”

What to expect

Emily Zaiden, the director and lead curator of the Craft in America Center based in Los Angeles, told LAist’s AirTalk the exhibit was tricky to curate.

“What we wanted to do was focus on both the history and then expand into how this has been an object that people have interpreted in so many different ways since the very beginning,” Zaiden said.

Artists who craft skateboards not only think of design, but also of the features that give riders the ability to do tricks, such as wheelies and kickflips.

“The ways that people have constructed boards, engineered boards, design boards … people are really renegade, which I think is really the spirit of skateboarding overall,” Zaiden said. “This very independent, out-of-the-box approach and making boards that allow them to do all kinds of wacky tricks and do all kinds of things that no one imagined possible physically with their body, but through the object of the board.”

Know before you go

The exhibit at Craft in America Center opens to the public on Saturday. Admission is free. The museum is open from noon to 6 p.m., Tuesday through Saturday.