Activate the D

Good morning, it’s Tuesday, April 28. You can enjoy another sunshiny day (low 70s), before the possibility of rain Wednesday.

In today’s newsletter, we unpack the latest on California’s “zone zero” regulations, Sergey Brin’s political war, and new details on an old LAPD scandal. But first, an exclusive look at how Metro plans to activate their new D Line stations.

Pickleball. Salsa classes. Weekly farmers markets. Coffee carts and a pop-up shop. 

When the rabidly-anticipated Metro D Line Extension opens next week, subway service across the city won’t be the only thing on offer at the new Wilshire stops. The stations will also be home to daily “activations” meant to draw locals and commuters, increase community engagement and safety, support local business and generally enhance the station experience. The three-month pilot program will bring dozens of activities to the new stations, which will extend the D Line west down Wilshire Boulevard all the way to Beverly Hills. The new stations will be at Wilshire/La Brea, Wilshire/Fairfax and Wilshire/La Cienega.

“It's about seeing these stations as more than a point A to point B, but seeing them as a sense of community, as a sense of safety and reinventing how people think about our stations,” said Metro CEO Stephanie Wiggins.

After years of focus on recovery from the pandemic, the transit agency is shifting “from recovery to reinvention,” Wiggins explained. 

These types of “activations” are relatively new for Metro; the agency has been experimenting with them at a handful of stations over the last couple of years, beginning with a community event at the Compton A Line station in 2022. More recently, Metro has been hosting night markets at the new A Line stations in Glendora and Pomona.

Wiggins characterized the D Line activations as being part of a broader “leap” in how Angelenos perceive their transit system — not just in terms of how quickly they can get across the city underground, but also what they can expect at stations as they move around. 

“When you activate a station, you create economic activity, a place for the community to gather, passive public safety … As a woman who has sometimes not felt safe taking the Metro, you sort of recognize what conditions on the ground do make you feel safe. And one of those is to have people around who are selling coffee, buying coffee, or doing a farmers market,” said Councilmember Katy Yaroslavsky, whose district includes the new Wilshire/La Brea and Wilshire/Fairfax stations. Yaroslavsky serves on the Metro board and has helped champion the D Line programming.

Safety — or the perception that parts of the system are dangerous — has been one of the thorniest challenges in Metro’s post-pandemic recovery, and leaders see the activities and pop-ups as a tool for creating welcoming public spaces. 

Lilly O’Brien, the Metro executive who has led this programming, invoked one of the most famous concepts in urban planning — Jane Jacob’s “eyes on the street” theory that well-used, vibrant spaces are safer.

“This is ‘eyes on our system’ in a positive way,” O’Brien said. 

What to expect at the new D Line stations 

Local businesses will have coffee carts at the Wilshire/La Brea (Crenshaw Coffee Co.) and Wilshire/Fairfax (Ella’s Coffee) stations every weekday morning from 7 a.m. to 11 a.m. A coffee vendor for the Wilshire/La Cienega station will be announced in the coming weeks. There will be a weekly farmers market on Tuesday afternoons at the Fairfax station and another farmers market on Sunday mornings at the La Brea station.

Streetwear brand The Small Shop L.A. will have a pop-up store at the La Brea station a few mornings a week. Craft Contemporary (formerly known as the Craft and Folk Art Museum) will also have a pop-up at the Fairfax station one Sunday a month with a hands-on, basket weaving activity. 

A local dance studio will offer free salsa classes on Saturday afternoons in May and June. A local pickleball club will also be setting up shop on a few different afternoons, staging temporary pickleball courts for games in station plazas. And merchants from Little Ethiopia —  which is just south of the Fairfax station — will be holding a regular marketplace with food, shopping and entertainment at the Fairfax station, along with other programming.

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As fires have become more common and catastrophic in the era of climate change, the state of California has sought policy solutions to protect communities against the flames. The concept of “zone zero” — which refers to the first five feet surrounding homes and structures in high wildfire risk parts of the state — has been at the forefront of those discussions. And L.A. has been a hotbed of opposition to proposed wildfire safety regulations designed to create more defensible space around high-risk homes through, among other things, the removal of vegetation in that zone. 

After years of wrangling, the state recently released revised zone zero rules that suggest L.A.’s garden defenders gained meaningful ground in their fight, disappointing those who’d like to see more stringent rules adopted. In our latest L.A. Material report, contributor Laura Bliss unpacks the fight over zone zero — and how it could affect L.A. homes. 

Bloomberg and The New York Times dropped big stories about Google co-founder Sergey Brin’s newly invigorated political presence that both open with similar anecdotes about Brin confronting Gov. Gavin Newsom at a crypto titan’s Marin holiday party. Brin reportedly got in the governor’s face about a proposed California billionaire tax (which Newsom has staunchly opposed) and told Newsom he was leaving the state. Brin — who has spent tens of millions of dollars trying to undercut the measure — has since moved to the Nevada side of Lake Tahoe.

Like many other bigwigs in the once-liberal bastion of Silicon Valley, Brin has been edging to the right, donating to Republican gubernatorial candidate Steve Hilton and joining President Trump’s tech council. The NYT reports that his new political engagement has “roughly coincided” with his relationship with Gerelyn Gilbert-Soto, “a Trump-loving gut-health influencer” who regularly attends Burning Man. (Brin was previously married to Nicole Shanahan, Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s 2024 running mate.)

TAX THE (VERY) RICH? The backers of the aforementioned controversial proposal to impose a one-time, 5% tax on California billionaires have collected enough signatures to qualify the measure for the November ballot, according to the labor union behind the measure. 

BLAST AND PUNISHMENT: Back in 2021, the LAPD bomb squad miscalculated the size of a planned detonation of seized fireworks, leveling part of a South L.A. block with their botched explosion. The internal affairs investigative files for the incident surfaced online as part of a broader hack, revealing that the officers involved all escaped serious discipline. The harshest punishment was 18 days off without pay for the highest-ranking member of the unit; others received less time off, the L.A. Times’ Libor Jany reports. 

THE SQIRL REDEMPTION ARC: The beloved Virgil Village cafe was brought low by a moldy jam scandal. The New Yorker’s Hannah Goldfield rehashes the controversy and delights in the restaurant’s new-ish dinner service.

For today’s peek inside our subscriber-only Discord server, @Nicole locates perhaps the most unique spelling of unique in #vanityplates:

AND FINALLY… A poem to pair with your morning coffee: “Funny” by Anna Kamieńska, translated from the Polish by Stainsław Baranczak and Claire Cavanagh.

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