The Brief

This story first appeared in The LA Local.

For Koreatown resident George Chan, the appeal of public transit in Los Angeles is simple: avoiding the daily grind of driving.

“I don’t like cars, so I’m all for having more public transportation,” said Chan, who lives near Olympic Boulevard and Hobart Street and uses transit about twice a week to get to work in Culver City. “I feel like that’s one of the things L.A. really lacks, a working public transportation system. You go to any other major city and you’re able to take a train anywhere, but here you can’t.”

Even if it takes longer, he said, public transit offers something driving doesn’t.

“I don’t have to sit in traffic. I don’t have to deal with drivers at all,” he said. “I feel pretty comfortable on the train and bus, so it’s not a big deal for me.”

That’s why Chan is looking forward to the opening of the first phase of the Metro D Line extension on May 8, which Koreatown residents like him say will make it easier to reach some of Los Angeles’ most visited cultural hubs without sitting in traffic.

Where things stand

The project, more than a decade in the making, will add three new underground stations along Wilshire Boulevard at La Brea, Fairfax and La Cienega, closing an important gap between Downtown Los Angeles and the Mid-Wilshire area.

From Koreatown, the new stops will put destinations like the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, the Academy Museum of Motion Pictures and the La Brea Tar Pits within roughly a 15- to 20-minute ride from Union Station, offering a faster alternative to driving along one of the city’s most congested corridors. 

Another view of the Wilshire/La Brea Station.

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Courtesy Metro Art

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Los Angeles County Metropolitan Transportation Authority

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Metro projects the new stations will add roughly 16,200 daily riders and increase foot traffic for local businesses. The opening comes more than three years behind its original 2023 timeline and about $700 million over budget, with this part of the project now reaching around $3.51 billion. 

The project is part of Metro’s “Twenty-Eight by ’28” push to finish major transit expansions before the 2028 Olympics and Paralympics.

For Chan, that could mean easier trips west, whether that’s grabbing brunch near Miracle Mile or visiting museums that currently require multiple transfers.

How residents are feeling

Other residents said the expansion is also expected to reshape how often they use transit, particularly for trips that currently require driving. Davis Read, a Koreatown resident who is a part of the Wilshire Center Koreatown neighborhood council, says he uses Metro about once a week now, but that will likely change once he gets more access to the museums by La Brea. 

“I’m also excited to be able to go to Beverly Hills, where a lot of my medical appointments are,” Read said. “That’s something that was usually like a half-hour drive.”

But while many welcome the expansion, residents say the city still has work to do — especially when it comes to building housing people can actually afford, shortening timelines for major transit projects and improving bus infrastructure.

Sherin Varghese, a Koreatown resident and organizer with Ktown for All, said buses remain essential for many in the neighborhood.

“A lot of our neighbors, housed and unhoused, don’t have cars,” she said. “Building out infrastructure that isn’t car-forward is generally a good move.”

At the same time, she noted that buses, which often serve lower-income riders, have historically been deprioritized.

“I’m really excited about the trains,” Varghese said. “But I also want us to continue investing in bus infrastructure, like dedicated bus lanes that don’t get closed off that aren’t just for rush hour.”

Wilshire/La Brea Metro station remains closed off to the public as of April 14.

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Marina Peña

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For Varghese, who relies on transit regularly, the D Line will open up parts of the city that currently feel out of reach.

“I’m going to be able to take the D straight to LACMA or to the Academy Museum to see a movie,” she said. “It opens up a huge amount of access to the west side.”

Metro's overall plan

The D Line extension is part of Metro’s broader plan to connect Downtown Los Angeles to Westwood through a nine-mile subway, with future phases expected to open in 2027. Additional stations will include Beverly Drive, Century City, Westwood/UCLA and Westwood/VA Hospital.

Another major project — the K Line Northern Extension — would further expand that network by linking South L.A. to West Hollywood. But with funding not expected until 2041 and an opening still years after that, between 2047 and 2049, many residents say the timeline highlights a broader frustration.

After last-minute negotiations between Mayor Karen Bass and local leaders, Metro’s board voted unanimously in late March to approve the route. The planned underground extension would tie into four major rail lines and is projected to carry up to 100,000 riders daily

“There’s a repeated trend in which these great public projects are having to conform around the needs of wealthy home ownership groups. I think that’s frustrating,” Read said. “I think at this point, we should be pressuring our elected leaders to act quicker on the Metro.”

He pointed to the K Line extension as one example, where opposition from a group of homeowners in Mid-City, particularly in affluent Black neighborhoods like Lafayette Square, raised concerns about construction, safety and property values, contributing to delays.

“That’s the most important stitch in the Metro system — it would be a game changer,” Read said. “A two-seat ride to LAX from Koreatown or downtown would make a huge difference. Right now, it takes about three lines and can take just as long as driving in traffic.”

The Wilshire/Fairfax station where the D line and K line would meet is expected to add 33,000 riders, according to Metro.

Residents ask: Why'd it take this long

Varghese, who has lived in Koreatown for 15 years, said her frustration is less about the current timeline and more about missed opportunities in the past.

“I wish we had started this 50 years ago,” she said. “But I’m glad it’s happening now.”

Alongside transit improvements, residents also raised concerns about what new development around stations will look like, particularly whether it will include housing that current residents can afford.

“A lot of the housing is built for upscale renters,” he said. “If they built low-income or cheaper housing, that would be great, but that’s not what’s happening.”

Read said transit and housing need to be planned together.

“If we don’t act drastically to construct new housing, we’re never going to dig ourselves out of this crisis,” he said.

Varghese echoed that concern, pointing to what she sees as a gap between policy goals and what’s actually being built.

“We need to build housing that people can actually afford now,” she said. “We need to be affecting the supply directly and not hoping that housing eventually trickles down in terms of pricing.”

The post ‘I wish we had started this 50 years ago’: Koreatown is ready for Metro’s D Line appeared first on LA Local.

A sign on the front door says “Beekeeper owned,” and inside the Hive & Hanger store in Burbank, the layout is a mix of vintage clothes, antique jewelry and something rather unexpected: a pop-up Bee Museum.

The owner is Carrie Diazzz, a vintage maven turned urban apiarist. She admits with a smile  two extra Zs at the end of her real last name are a homage to her beloved bees.

When the store opened in 2020, it was originally all-vintage. “I was not looking to change careers,” she said, but after taking a two-hour beekeeping experience course, she was hooked.

Hive & Hangar in Burbank doubles as a bee museum.

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James Bartlett

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“I don’t like dirt, and I don't like bugs. I'm a heels and lipstick, nails, kind of person,” she said. “There's just something magical about the honeybee. The more you know, the more you want to know.”

That prompted her to pursue a bee master certification at UC Davis. She collaborated with Elina Niño at the university’s Bee Lab to curate information and research to bring her pop-up Bee Museum to life almost a year ago.

A crash course in bees

The Burbank Bee Museum.

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There’s a Bee 101 explainer by the front door, which shows the differences between bees and wasps, and fun touches like pop songs containing the word “Honey,” and a list of Noteworthy Beekeepers including Aristotle, Benjamin Franklin, Leo Tolstoy, Emily Dickinson, Angelina Jolie and Sherlock Holmes.

One long-standing myth is that honeybees are stingers. “People always ask me how often I get stung, but I don’t wear gloves, and I don’t use smoke, and it very rarely happens. And honeybees die after they sting, as opposed to wasps, who can sting repeatedly,” she said.

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Most arresting is a floor-to-ceiling collage series of framed model fruits, vegetables, nuts and berries, all of which the honeybee has a role in pollinating. Beside that is an exhibit on pesticides, one of the insect's biggest threats. Pieces of dried honeycomb are everywhere.

Diazzz has also been hosting school trips for the Boys & Girls Clubs. “I might be the only beekeeper they will ever meet,” she noted. The point is to give bees the respect they deserve. “Did you know that it takes 12 honeybees their entire lives to make one teaspoon of honey?”

Rescuing hives across Southern California

The Bee Museum serves up not just honey, but bee knowledge.

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James Bartlett

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There are no live bees in the store, but Diazzz has her own hives in Burbank.

“They are from rescues: I cut the hive out from a wall,” she explained. She takes care of hives from San Diego to Bel Air, with many in the San Fernando Valley, and a couple with a view of the Hollywood Sign. Her caretaking quests have taken her on skyscraper roofs, at apartment buildings and in parking lots.

Almost a year ago, she began her studies as a honey sommelier at the American Honey Tasting Society in Connecticut, where she learned about the science and experience of honey. Her future includes going off to Bologna, Italy, the world honey hub, for the final round of studies and tests at the Albo Nazionale degli Esperti in Analisi Sensoriale del Miele or the National Register of Experts in Sensory Analysis of Honey.

Carrie Diazzz, owner of the store and the museum, sells small jars of honey sourced locally and from her own hives.

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“Nectar and honey are not the same thing,” she explained. “Nectar is the liquid sticky substance that bees collect from flowering plants and take back to the hive. They transform it into honey by dehydrating the moisture out of the nectar, and capping it over with wax.”

Diazzz recently held her first informal tasting experience at The Bee Museum, and has small batches of various local honeys for sale: cactus, sage, and honey from her own hives. “I usually leave the honey alone, and only take any extra they have made to sell,” she said, because bees use the honey as sustenance. Her favorite? “A toss-up between dandelion and sunflower. Orange blossom is delicious too, but very sweet.”

Maybe you, like me, are a daily puzzle player. Maybe you like a Wordle, or a crossword, or one of the other entries from the New York Times puzzle empire.

But maybe you're looking for something else.

So, with a tip of the hat to the people on Bluesky who helped me discover a bunch of games I love in the last month or two, I'm sharing a few games that I'm particularly enjoying these days — ones that are not NYT word games. (No disrespect to my original love, Spelling Bee.)

There are more, of course: the spelling bee game Beeswax, the word game Smush, the vexing Anthropeum, the movie games Framed and Cinematrix. Truthfully, I have more games in the "daily games" folder on my phone than I could ever actually play daily. But given a choice between puzzling and doomscrolling, I'll take the puzzles every time.

MapTap

Any idea where Regina is? Do your best in MapTap's daily geography game.

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MapTap is a very simple game. You are shown a 3D globe that you can rotate with your finger, but there are no lines dividing countries or territories. So you are just looking at the unmarked terrain of the world, and you are challenged to tap as close as you can to a particular named location. Maybe "London, England, U.K." You tap. It shows you the distance between where you tapped and where the place really is. You get more points the closer you are. There are five questions in each daily round.

This game can be genuinely humbling, because without those familiar borders showing, it can be difficult to even locate places you are very familiar with. (Without state and national boundaries, it always takes me a minute to precisely find even a place I myself have lived.) But what I love about MapTap is that as I do it, over and over, I actually get better at world geography, which is worthwhile and enriching.

TimeGuessr

Look carefully: What's your best guess for where and when this photo was taken? TimeGuessr makes you a detective.

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Screenshot by NPR

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In the same family as MapTap is TimeGuessr, where each day's challenge is made up of five puzzles that each start with a photo. Your task is to choose, on a timeline, what year the photo was taken, and to choose, on a map of the world, where it was taken. Sometimes, the photos are of historically meaningful events, like the aftermath of a battle or a natural disaster. Sometimes, they are photographs of ordinary people going about their lives.

The trick with TimeGuessr is detective work. Some hints are straightforward: a sign in the window of a store that might tip off the location (if you can figure out what language it's written in), a license plate, something along those lines. But sometimes, the clues are more subtle. What are the people in the photo wearing? What do the cars look like? How is everybody wearing their hair? It's a fascinating exercise in putting together clues, and again, you can actually increase your knowledge of the world while you play.

The Loop

Everything is connected (somehow) in The Loop, which is a perfect first-thing-when-you-wake-up game.

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The Loop is my favorite early-morning game, perfect for when I'm only partially awake. It offers you 12 simple illustrations that you have to arrange in a circle so that each illustration connects in some way to the ones on either side of it.

So, for instance, in one round I played, a square-root symbol connected on one side to a carpenter's square (because square/square), which then connected to a picture of a toolbox (because a carpenter's square is a tool). On the other side, the square-root symbol connected to a carrot (because it's a root vegetable), and then the carrot to an icicle (because they're the same shape). It can be fun to crack all the different ways that the images connect to each other, but the game design also offers so many chances to get it right that there's a huge amount of grace for making mistakes. That, of course, is why it's perfect for being half-awake.

Clues by Sam

It's up to you to figure out who's innocent and who's guilty in Clues by Sam.

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Screenshot by NPR

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Clues by Sam is a logic puzzle. It presents you with a grid — four across and five down — of people, each represented by a name, an emoji and an occupation. Your job is to figure out which of those people are innocent and which are criminals. (There is no set number; there could be lots of criminals or only a couple.) Your opening clue might say, "Michael is one of three criminals in row 2." Then you click on Michael and mark him as a criminal, and when you're right, that gets you another clue, and so on.

Like most of these games, this one is enjoyable largely because it's simple, but its diabolical twist is that you can't guess. If you try to label Jane innocent, for instance, and she eventually will be, but the game hasn't given you enough information yet to actually know that, then that answer is wrong and is rejected. You are only allowed to deduce from the clues you have, because it is genuinely the journey and not the destination. Note that Clues by Sam gets harder each day from Monday through Sunday, so if you're a beginner, give it a whirl early in the week to get the hang of it.

Catfishing

Catfishing asks you to figure out the title of a Wikipedia page from its categories — which is harder than it sounds.

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Screenshot by NPR

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Without a doubt, the hardest game I play regularly. In this game, you get a list of at least some of the categories that a particular Wikipedia page belongs to, and you have to try to figure out what page it is. There are ten questions; my average score is about four, and the highest I've ever gotten is eight.

For example, if you know a page is filed under "20th century musicians," and "21st century musicians," and "American folk musicians," and "people born in Minnesota," you might start to zero in on Bob Dylan. But be warned: Many of the answers are far more obscure than that, and it's very common for me to give up and reveal the answer, only to learn that I never stood a chance, because I've never heard of the person (or event, or phenomenon) at all. It doesn't matter how many ways you classify certain medieval rulers or political conflicts of 19th century Iowa; I may never get there.

This piece also appeared in NPR's Pop Culture Happy Hour newsletter. Sign up for the newsletter so you don't miss the next one, plus get weekly recommendations about what's making us happy.

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Copyright 2026 NPR

This story first appeared on The LA Local.

A week after 45-year-old Raz Chowdhury was moved off the streets into interim housing through an Inside Safe operation, he was found dead in his hotel room.

Chowdhury had spent years living on the streets of Koreatown, moving between encampments along Sixth Street and Wilshire Boulevard and Manhattan Place.

Sherin Varghese first met him three or four years ago. Chowdhury would reach out to Varghese, a volunteer with Ktown for All, an advocacy group that provides direct aid for people experiencing homelessness in Koreatown. He would ask her for tents, tarps, clothes and other supplies. More often than not, she said, they weren’t for him.

“He would always go above and beyond to take care of the people around him,” Varghese said at a vigil for Chowdhury on Saturday, Aug. 29.

Once, after Chowdhury lost his phone during a sanitation sweep, he searched for Varghese online and found her work number. He called to ask if she could bring tents and tarps for him and other people whose belongings were lost in the sweep.

“He was resourceful, he was reliable, and he was so thoughtful about the way that he talked about how all of this affected him and affected his friends,” Varghese said.

On June 25, Chowdhury was among 31 people moved into housing during an Inside Safe operation at Wilshire Boulevard and Manhattan Place, according to Mayor Karen Bass’ office.

A week later he was dead.

What happened after Inside Safe

According to Ktown for All, Chowdhury died at the Mayfair Hotel in Westlake, which is used for interim housing.

A spokesperson for the Los Angeles County Department of Medical Examiner said the case is still under investigation and Chowdhury died at a hotel in the 1200 block of West 7th Street on July 2. His cause of death is listed as deferred and the case is under investigation by the Los Angeles Police Department’s Rampart Division.

The Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority, which oversees the Mayfair, would not say if Chowdhury was a resident when he died. An agency spokesperson said they cannot confirm an individual’s enrollment in a LAHSA-contracted program without a written release from next of kin.

LAHSA’s latest Inside Safe report shows that 6,406 people had entered interim housing through the program as of July 31. About 1,750 people remained in interim housing, including 289 at the Mayfair. Meanwhile, 1,802 people, or more than one in four who entered the program, had returned to homelessness. Another 126 people, or about 2%, were listed as deceased.

Bass’ office said it does not disclose the locations where an individual is placed following an Inside Safe operation.

Once someone is connected to interim housing, ongoing services and case management are handled by a LAHSA-contracted service provider, mayor spokesperson Jieun Kim said.

Remembering Chowdhury

The people who knew Chowdhury gathered last week to remember him at the site of the encampment where he had lived at Wilshire Boulevard and Manhattan Place.

A little more than two dozen people attended the memorial, where they placed flowers at the base of a small tribute to him.

Planters now line the sidewalk where the tents once were. Several people cried as they shared memories of Chowdhury, who they said spent years looking out for others living on the streets of Koreatown.

Cynthia Zhang, who has volunteered with Ktown for All for about four to five years, remembers visiting an encampment where Chowdhury was staying after the Los Angeles fires. Newly displaced people there told her they felt safer with that community than they did at shelters.

“I think Raz was really instrumental in helping create that kind of space,” Zhang said at the vigil.

The last time Zhang saw Chowdhury, he had moved again and did not have a lot of his stuff. But he had a new puppy named T-Rex and seemed to be in good spirits.

“He had a really lovely smile,” Zhang said. “I just remember him skateboarding around … all these little things, maybe because I didn’t see him every day, it really does feel like I’ll be walking around and I’ll see him in one of our old spots.”

David Strugar, another longtime Ktown for All volunteer, said Chowdhury was often the person volunteers went to when they wanted to know how people in the area were doing.

“I would always point him out and say, ‘That’s the mayor of this area,’ because wherever he was, he was just the center of it, and he took care of people,” Strugar said.

Chowdhury would tell volunteers who needed what and help distribute supplies, Strugar said.

A few weeks before he died, Varghese said, she and Chowdhury were looking for places where he could stay outside a 41.18 zone, where the city restricts sitting, lying, sleeping and storing personal property in certain public rights-of-way under specified circumstances.

Then Inside Safe moved him indoors.

“I hoped that he’d be one of its success stories, but a week later, he was gone,” Varghese said. “The program is called Inside Safe, but for Raz and 125 others, it wasn’t that. And it was never going to be Inside Safe, and it was never going to be easy to be inside alone for someone who had so much to give and always surrounded himself with people to take care of.”

The last time Strugar saw Chowdhury, he had his dog T-Rex with him. Ktown for All volunteers don’t know where T-Rex is now.

Chowdhury believed he had the right to community and companionship, Strugar said.

“And there are so many people who have so much and won’t give anything,” Strugar said. “And Raz kept having everything taken away from him, and he still ended up being the person to give.”

He added, “I just keep expecting to walk around the corner and see him, and I’m angry that I won’t.”

Southern Californians who’ve long shopped at Daiso, Miniso, Uniqlo or 99 Ranch Market may not be surprised to see the Asian-rooted chains expand across the country.

But that growth is now showing up in the numbers.

The National Retail Federation’s Hot 25 Retailers list ranks retailers by U.S. sales growth from 2024 to 2025. Miniso tops the list, with sales up nearly 53%.

The Chinese chain of gift shops opened its first U.S. store in Pasadena’s Old Town more than nine years ago and is now aiming to grow its American footprint to nearly 500 stores this year.

“If you can make it in Southern California, that's great,” said David Marcotte, senior vice president of global retail and technology at Kantar and an author of the NRF list.

A 99 Ranch market opened in 2023 in Eastvale.

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Gina Ferazzi

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Marcotte says succeeding in California’s highly competitive retail market can teach chains lessons that translate elsewhere.

“The stone-cold reason is quality. The second one is experience,” he said. “Those are the two things that when shoppers go into any retailer, they’re looking for.”

Daiso ranks third, with growth of nearly 26%, while another Japanese company, Fast Retailing — the parent company of Uniqlo — comes in sixth.

99 Ranch Market, an American supermarket chain founded in Orange County that specializes in Asian groceries, comes in 15th.

Marcotte says Southern California has been a logical landing spot for these companies because of its proximity to Asia. But Marcotte says it can also be an unforgiving place to launch because of the competition, and he often encourages the clients he advises to consider smaller markets.

“I said if you open in Southern California, open one store, get it right,” Marcotte said. “If you get it wrong, you're dead. You'll never recover. You'll have to leave the country and come back in.”

The supermarket industry is particularly tough to break into because customers here, he says, have plenty of alternatives if the quality, selection or experience falls short.

He also emphasizes a retailer in California focused on Asian goods will see more success serving Chinese, Filipino and other Asian customers rather than designing around a particular ethnic group.

“That type of diversity of Asian customers that you have to address in the same store is what really proves to be the difference for an Asian retailer in the California market,” Marcotte said.

That’s part of the business model for 99 Ranch, which was founded by a Taiwanese immigrant who opened the first location in Westminster's Little Saigon in 1984.