Latest news with #DepartmentofRecreationandParks
Yahoo
5 days ago
- Sport
- Yahoo
PlayLA Launches Summer Season of Youth Sports, Inspiring Olympic Spirit Across Los Angeles
LOS ANGELES, June 05, 2025--(BUSINESS WIRE)--This summer, PlayLA Youth & Adaptive Youth Sports Program, the City of Los Angeles Department of Recreation and Parks signature youth sports program, is engaging families with a new season of inclusive, low-cost sports activities designed to uplift the next generation of athletes. Backed by a historic $160 million investment from the LA28 Olympic and Paralympic Games Organizing Committee and the International Olympic Committee (IOC), PlayLA is a movement celebrating the Olympic and Paralympic spirit in every neighborhood. Now through summer's end, families can explore dozens of PlayLA activities at more than 120 recreation centers and pools across Los Angeles. Youth ages 3 - 17 can play Olympic and Paralympic sports like swimming, skateboarding, flag football and more for as low as $10 per season. Scholarships are available for eligible families. Registration is open for programming across the city. Learn more at "PlayLA is a community-powered pipeline to LA28," said Veronica Polanco, Chief Innovation Officer at the Department of Recreation and Parks. "When our young people have access to sports and adaptive recreation close to home, we're not only promoting healthier lives, we are planting seeds for a lifelong connection to the Olympic values of excellence, respect and friendship." This momentum will build toward PlayLA Day on July 14, a citywide celebration, hosted by The Friends of the Coliseum, marking exactly three years until the LA28 Opening Ceremonies. Families are invited to enjoy free sports clinics, meet local athletes and take part in community fun that showcases the power of youth sports in shaping a brighter, more equitable future. PlayLA is not just preparing kids for the Games, it's helping them build important skills such as leadership, teamwork and discipline to succeed across various areas of their lives. As the countdown to the LA28 Olympic and Paralympic Games continues, PlayLA stands as a living legacy providing real-time impact while creating a more inclusive and active Los Angeles. The program offers young Angelenos of all backgrounds and abilities the opportunity to gain confidence, build community and discover their passions through play. About PlayLA Youth and Adaptive Youth Sports Program: The City of Los Angeles Department of Recreation and Parks PlayLA Youth & Adaptive Youth Sports Program is a city-wide initiative that provides access to quality sports programming for youth of all abilities between the ages of 3 - 17. Made possible by an investment from the LA28 Olympic and Paralympic Games Organizing Committee and the International Olympic Committee (IOC), PlayLA is the single largest commitment to youth sports development in California and serves as a legacy before, during and after the LA28 Olympic and Paralympic Games. Learn more at and stay connected for updates and announcements on Instagram at @ and @lacityparks. View source version on Contacts Press Contact:Melissa Gonzalo, 323-868-2687, mgonzalo@ Error in retrieving data Sign in to access your portfolio Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data
Business Wire
5 days ago
- Sport
- Business Wire
PlayLA Launches Summer Season of Youth Sports, Inspiring Olympic Spirit Across Los Angeles
LOS ANGELES--(BUSINESS WIRE)--This summer, PlayLA Youth & Adaptive Youth Sports Program, the City of Los Angeles Department of Recreation and Parks signature youth sports program, is engaging families with a new season of inclusive, low-cost sports activities designed to uplift the next generation of athletes. Backed by a historic $160 million investment from the LA28 Olympic and Paralympic Games Organizing Committee and the International Olympic Committee (IOC), PlayLA is a movement celebrating the Olympic and Paralympic spirit in every neighborhood. PlayLA, a movement celebrating the Olympic and Paralympic spirit in every neighborhood, is engaging families with a new season of inclusive, low-cost sports activities. Share Now through summer's end, families can explore dozens of PlayLA activities at more than 120 recreation centers and pools across Los Angeles. Youth ages 3 - 17 can play Olympic and Paralympic sports like swimming, skateboarding, flag football and more for as low as $10 per season. Scholarships are available for eligible families. Registration is open for programming across the city. Learn more at 'PlayLA is a community-powered pipeline to LA28,' said Veronica Polanco, Chief Innovation Officer at the Department of Recreation and Parks. 'When our young people have access to sports and adaptive recreation close to home, we're not only promoting healthier lives, we are planting seeds for a lifelong connection to the Olympic values of excellence, respect and friendship.' This momentum will build toward PlayLA Day on July 14, a citywide celebration, hosted by The Friends of the Coliseum, marking exactly three years until the LA28 Opening Ceremonies. Families are invited to enjoy free sports clinics, meet local athletes and take part in community fun that showcases the power of youth sports in shaping a brighter, more equitable future. PlayLA is not just preparing kids for the Games, it's helping them build important skills such as leadership, teamwork and discipline to succeed across various areas of their lives. As the countdown to the LA28 Olympic and Paralympic Games continues, PlayLA stands as a living legacy providing real-time impact while creating a more inclusive and active Los Angeles. The program offers young Angelenos of all backgrounds and abilities the opportunity to gain confidence, build community and discover their passions through play. About PlayLA Youth and Adaptive Youth Sports Program: The City of Los Angeles Department of Recreation and Parks PlayLA Youth & Adaptive Youth Sports Program is a city-wide initiative that provides access to quality sports programming for youth of all abilities between the ages of 3 - 17. Made possible by an investment from the LA28 Olympic and Paralympic Games Organizing Committee and the International Olympic Committee (IOC), PlayLA is the single largest commitment to youth sports development in California and serves as a legacy before, during and after the LA28 Olympic and Paralympic Games. Learn more at and stay connected for updates and announcements on Instagram at @ and @lacityparks.
Yahoo
19-03-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
L.A. touts success at blocking tee time brokers from city golf courses
For years, it was an open secret: Brokers scooped up tee times at public golf courses across Los Angeles and sold prime slots online, profiting from taxpayer-owned recreation. Golfers complained about the extreme difficulty, bordering on impossibility, of playing on pristine and affordable municipal courses like those in Griffith Park and Rancho Park. The problem burst into public view last spring when evidence of the brokering hit social media. The Times interviewed two brokers who shared how they sold coveted tee times. Amid the uproar, L.A.'s Department of Recreation and Parks introduced a pilot program to curb the profiteers. Golfers have to pay $10 per person to reserve a tee time, which is forfeited if a reservation is canceled. Nearly 10 months later, the fee — initially met with skepticism and annoyance — has proved a success, according to golfers and parks officials as well as reservation data shared with The Times. 'I didn't think charging a $10 fee would make a difference, but it certainly did,' said Reggie Kenner, 77, of Manhattan Beach, who also golfs on Los Angeles County's network of courses, which instituted a similar fee shortly after the city. 'Now, you can occasionally get on at a decent time on courses you could never book before.' "It's still hard, but that's natural because a lot of players like golfing on the weekend,' said Jongseo Joseph Lee, president of the SoCal Dream Golf Club, who golfs twice a month on city courses. Lee, who performed extensive research on brokers and helped submit complaints to parks officials well before the public furor, was a plaintiff in an unsuccessful class-action suit against the city over bureaucrats' alleged failure to stop tee time brokering. "I can say it's way better than recent years," he added. Betty Brix, who plays thrice weekly on city courses and is chair of the Golf Advisory Committee, which provides recommendations and oversight for the Department of Recreation and Parks staffers who manage L.A.'s 12 golf courses, said the situation has "improved immensely." "I'm able to get a tee time every time I attempt to get it," she said. The parks department signaled victory in the fight against brokers but stopped short of declaring the practice has been fully eliminated. 'The process used by tee time brokers to book, advertise, resell, and rebook tee times has been drastically reduced,' spokesperson Romondo Locke said in a statement. Under the previous system, golfers paid nothing to secure a reservation. Each morning at 6 a.m., tee times opened up for nine days ahead. Within seconds, the best times, like 8 a.m. on a Saturday at Rancho Park on the Westside, were gone. A network of brokers — many of them in the Korean community — gobbled up several prime slots and then peddled them on social media, especially on the Korean app KakaoTalk. They sold the tee times for up to $40 each, according to pricing sheets posted on social media. After golf professional and social media influencer Dave Fink publicized the tee time black market to his more than 200,000 Instagram followers last March, #FreeTheTee became a rallying cry and a call for public accountability. Read more: Brokers are buying up precious tee times at L.A. city golf courses. Golfers are desperate and outraged One broker, Ted Kim, told The Times that he used several computers to score tee times at L.A. city golf courses and other public courses across Southern California, making a couple thousand dollars a month selling them. But he denied violating any laws, and he did not respond to recent messages seeking comment. Brokers would book reservations under a golfer's player card, as Kim acknowledged, or they would transfer tee times by doing orchestrated hand-offs: canceling a reservation at an odd hour, then rebooking it under a customer's name. Kevin Fitzgerald, former chair of the Golf Advisory Committee, said data reviewed by parks officials appeared to confirm the hand-off scheme. Fitzgerald said cancellations would occur at obscure times, like 2:48 a.m. 'All of a sudden, there would be a rebook in three seconds, which isn't possible without it being coordinated,' he said. 'At the low traffic hours, you'd expect it would take some time to rebook and not disappear in a matter of seconds.' Under the program instituted in May, golfers pay the $10 fee — essentially a deposit — for each person on a reservation. The individual who reserves the group must be present on the day of play. The $40 deposit for a foursome then applies to the total admission price, or greens fee, at the course, with a cancellation forfeiting the fee. Green fees typically run about $32 to $50 per person but are discounted for seniors and juniors and for less popular times. From May to October 2024 — the first six months of the pilot program — the number of tee times booked and then canceled dropped by nearly 95% compared with the same period in 2023, from 339,732 to 17,739. On the reservation platform, nearly 400 golfers had profiles with more than 60 cancellations, which plummeted to 13 golfers after the fee. 'Because there weren't any repercussions in place to tee time cancellations, they were able to hoard all available time slots and sell them through third-party outlets,' said Locke, the Department of Recreation and Parks spokesperson. Read more: 'I am angry': Golfers demand that L.A. officials stop booming black market in tee times Fitzgerald, the former Golf Advisory Committee chair, said that when the pilot program started last spring, he "got a lot of calls saying, 'This is outrageous and won't help.'' 'But within a month, the calls were completely the opposite,' he continued. 'I heard the following: I don't like paying the deposit, but I secured a tee time on the Wilson course at 10:30 on a Saturday for the first time in six years. So something good is happening.'' Golfers also described the downsides of the $10 fee. If something comes up that causes a golfer to miss a tee time, they lose the money. Others say the fee-splitting among golfers is cumbersome. And if the person who reserved the foursome isn't present, the other golfers aren't allowed to play. "I probably book less tee times now, just because I don't want to be charged," said Luis León, a golfer and content creator. At first, slots were more available, he said, "but that didn't seem to last, as it's still nearly impossible to get good times at places like Rancho Park and Griffith Park." 'It would be unfair to say this is completely smooth and there are no burdens associated with this,' Fitzgerald said. There is still residual frustration over how the city dealt with the brokering problem. Lee, who filed the class-action suit, had accused the city of being sluggish in instituting simple reforms that would preserve the integrity of public golf courses. The suit also alleged that a city parks staffer had accepted money from one of the brokers, suggesting that corruption was a factor in the tee time scheme. In a statement, the Recreation and Parks Department said it "has no indication or reason to believe that any city employee has engaged in that type of improper activity." Nevertheless, the parks department acknowledged that it had not launched a "formal investigation" into tee time brokering — despite promising to do so. "Given the positive outcome of the pilot program, a formal investigation was not required," Locke said in the statement. Brix and Fitzgerald, the current and former chairs of the Golf Advisory Committee, asserted there was no evidence of misconduct by parks staffers. "That was the most discouraging part of it," Brix said of the allegations of misconduct, adding that some staffers received death threats over tee time brokering. "All they are trying to do is provide a good experience for L.A. City golf." Time on L.A. city golf courses remains in record demand. In 2024, more than 1 million rounds were played on the city's 12 courses — a 28% increase from 2019. Revenue from golfing subsidizes some other city parks programs. Recently, the Golf Advisory Committee recommended that the city make the pilot program permanent but adjust its structure to allow reservation fees of 'up to' $10. This would give parks officials more latitude to set lower reservation fees for less desirable time slots, such as 4 p.m. 'I don't think the system is completely fixed, because I don't think anything is ever completely fixed,' Brix said, 'but I think it's well on its way to being as good as can be for the big system we have.' Sign up for Essential California for news, features and recommendations from the L.A. Times and beyond in your inbox six days a week. This story originally appeared in Los Angeles Times.
Los Angeles Times
19-03-2025
- Business
- Los Angeles Times
L.A. touts success at blocking tee time brokers from city golf courses
For years, it was an open secret: Brokers scooped up tee times at public golf courses across Los Angeles and sold prime slots online, profiting from taxpayer-owned recreation. Golfers complained about the extreme difficulty, bordering on impossibility, of playing on pristine and affordable municipal courses like those in Griffith Park and Rancho Park. The problem burst into public view last spring when evidence of the brokering hit social media. The Times interviewed two brokers who shared how they sold coveted tee times. Amid the uproar, L.A.'s Department of Recreation and Parks introduced a pilot program to curb the profiteers. Golfers have to pay $10 per person to reserve a tee time, which is forfeited if a reservation is canceled. Nearly 10 months later, the fee — initially met with skepticism and annoyance — has proved a success, according to golfers and parks officials as well as reservation data shared with The Times. 'I didn't think charging a $10 fee would make a difference, but it certainly did,' said Reggie Kenner, 77, of Manhattan Beach, who also golfs on Los Angeles County's network of courses, which instituted a similar fee shortly after the city. 'Now, you can occasionally get on at a decent time on courses you could never book before.' 'It's still hard, but that's natural because a lot of players like golfing on the weekend,' said Jongseo Joseph Lee, president of the SoCal Dream Golf Club, who golfs twice a month on city courses. Lee, who performed extensive research on brokers and helped submit complaints to parks officials well before the public furor, was a plaintiff in an unsuccessful class-action suit against the city over bureaucrats' alleged failure to stop tee time brokering. 'I can say it's way better than recent years,' he added. Betty Brix, who plays thrice weekly on city courses and is chair of the Golf Advisory Committee, which provides recommendations and oversight for the Department of Recreation and Parks staffers who manage L.A.'s 12 golf courses, said the situation has 'improved immensely.' 'I'm able to get a tee time every time I attempt to get it,' she said. The parks department signaled victory in the fight against brokers but stopped short of declaring the practice has been fully eliminated. 'The process used by tee time brokers to book, advertise, resell, and rebook tee times has been drastically reduced,' spokesperson Romondo Locke said in a statement. Under the previous system, golfers paid nothing to secure a reservation. Each morning at 6 a.m., tee times opened up for nine days ahead. Within seconds, the best times, like 8 a.m. on a Saturday at Rancho Park on the Westside, were gone. A network of brokers — many of them in the Korean community — gobbled up several prime slots and then peddled them on social media, especially on the Korean app KakaoTalk. They sold the tee times for up to $40 each, according to pricing sheets posted on social media. After golf professional and social media influencer Dave Fink publicized the tee time black market to his more than 200,000 Instagram followers last March, #FreeTheTee became a rallying cry and a call for public accountability. One broker, Ted Kim, told The Times that he used several computers to score tee times at L.A. city golf courses and other public courses across Southern California, making a couple thousand dollars a month selling them. But he denied violating any laws, and he did not respond to recent messages seeking comment. Brokers would book reservations under a golfer's player card, as Kim acknowledged, or they would transfer tee times by doing orchestrated hand-offs: canceling a reservation at an odd hour, then rebooking it under a customer's name. Kevin Fitzgerald, former chair of the Golf Advisory Committee, said data reviewed by parks officials appeared to confirm the hand-off scheme. Fitzgerald said cancellations would occur at obscure times, like 2:48 a.m. 'All of a sudden, there would be a rebook in three seconds, which isn't possible without it being coordinated,' he said. 'At the low traffic hours, you'd expect it would take some time to rebook and not disappear in a matter of seconds.' Under the program instituted in May, golfers pay the $10 fee — essentially a deposit — for each person on a reservation. The individual who reserves the group must be present on the day of play. The $40 deposit for a foursome then applies to the total admission price, or greens fee, at the course, with a cancellation forfeiting the fee. Green fees typically run about $32 to $50 per person but are discounted for seniors and juniors and for less popular times. From May to October 2024 — the first six months of the pilot program — the number of tee times booked and then canceled dropped by nearly 95% compared with the same period in 2023, from 339,732 to 17,739. On the reservation platform, nearly 400 golfers had profiles with more than 60 cancellations, which plummeted to 13 golfers after the fee. 'Because there weren't any repercussions in place to tee time cancellations, they were able to hoard all available time slots and sell them through third-party outlets,' said Locke, the Department of Recreation and Parks spokesperson. Fitzgerald, the former Golf Advisory Committee chair, said that when the pilot program started last spring, he 'got a lot of calls saying, 'This is outrageous and won't help.'' 'But within a month, the calls were completely the opposite,' he continued. 'I heard the following: I don't like paying the deposit, but I secured a tee time on the Wilson course at 10:30 on a Saturday for the first time in six years. So something good is happening.'' Golfers also described the downsides of the $10 fee. If something comes up that causes a golfer to miss a tee time, they lose the money. Others say the fee-splitting among golfers is cumbersome. And if the person who reserved the foursome isn't present, the other golfers aren't allowed to play. 'I probably book less tee times now, just because I don't want to be charged,' said Luis León, a golfer and content creator. At first, slots were more available, he said, 'but that didn't seem to last, as it's still nearly impossible to get good times at places like Rancho Park and Griffith Park.' 'It would be unfair to say this is completely smooth and there are no burdens associated with this,' Fitzgerald said. There is still residual frustration over how the city dealt with the brokering problem. Lee, who filed the class-action suit, had accused the city of being sluggish in instituting simple reforms that would preserve the integrity of public golf courses. The suit also alleged that a city parks staffer had accepted money from one of the brokers, suggesting that corruption was a factor in the tee time scheme. In a statement, the Recreation and Parks Department said it 'has no indication or reason to believe that any city employee has engaged in that type of improper activity.' Nevertheless, the parks department acknowledged that it had not launched a 'formal investigation' into tee time brokering — despite promising to do so. 'Given the positive outcome of the pilot program, a formal investigation was not required,' Locke said in the statement. Brix and Fitzgerald, the current and former chairs of the Golf Advisory Committee, asserted there was no evidence of misconduct by parks staffers. 'That was the most discouraging part of it,' Brix said of the allegations of misconduct, adding that some staffers received death threats over tee time brokering. 'All they are trying to do is provide a good experience for L.A. City golf.' Time on L.A. city golf courses remains in record demand. In 2024, more than 1 million rounds were played on the city's 12 courses — a 28% increase from 2019. Revenue from golfing subsidizes some other city parks programs. Recently, the Golf Advisory Committee recommended that the city make the pilot program permanent but adjust its structure to allow reservation fees of 'up to' $10. This would give parks officials more latitude to set lower reservation fees for less desirable time slots, such as 4 p.m. 'I don't think the system is completely fixed, because I don't think anything is ever completely fixed,' Brix said, 'but I think it's well on its way to being as good as can be for the big system we have.'
Yahoo
25-02-2025
- Yahoo
The city sent his home for the last 5 years down a flood channel along with many others
A team of Los Angeles workers watched while waters from the Arroyo Seco flood channel carried away Alejandro Diaz's belongings as he broke down his home of the last five years Monday morning. "It's an injustice," Diaz, 29, said in Spanish with tears streaking down his face. "The city doesn't care about anything other than destroying our lives even though we don't bother anyone. In all my time here none of us have bothered anyone." After sunrise, the city went to work clearing an encampment along the parkway between the 110 Freeway and the flood channel that's existed there since the beginning of the pandemic. The shelters were dismantled by city workers and scraped off the flood channel floor with pitchforks, shovels and bulldozers while those who lived in them watched. Diaz's home in the channel went viral last year, with news stories highlighting his skills in adding windows, bamboo fencing and a garden framed in bright yellow siding. But last week, people living along the channel received paper notices warning them that their personal property could not be stored in a city park and would be removed during a scheduled cleaning, which the city typically does 72 hours after a warning is posted. The shelters sat on the opposite side of the flood channel from the Arroyo Seco Bike Path and a park. The city targeted the shelters for cleanup because they are in a high-risk fire area, officials said. The cleanup was done by the city's Department of Recreation and Parks while Councilmember Eunisses Hernandez deployed outreach teams with LAHSA to contact the residents ahead of Monday's event. Like many others living next to the flood channel, Diaz worked in construction, but could not find steady work. He occasionally found jobs as a day laborer in the parking lot of a local Home Depot, but said that he keeps to himself as much as possible. He is among tens of thousands of people experiencing homelessness in Los Angeles County. The number of unhoused people in the county in 2024 dropped for the first time in five years but 2025 totals have not been released because the count was delayed due to the recent fires. As cleanup crews operated Monday, Diaz kicked down his fence, smashed out the windows and rolled large boulders from his garden down into the flood channel. His girlfriend, Wendy, watched with their dog, Papi, a mixed-breed German Shepherd. In a fit of frustration, the Guatemalan-born immigrant punched a dog house until his knuckles bled and cried when he thought about all the work he put into his slice of land that he had called home for the last five years. "They don't know what they're doing to him," Wendy said. Diaz asked that somebody take a picture of his home before and after the cleanup to show that he was here. "I bet they won't clean any of it the right way," he said as he hugged his dog. Wendy and Papi stood by him later when he cried again. Ahead of Monday's sweep, volunteer advocate Elizabeth Gustafson with the group Northeast Neighborhood Outreach sent a letter asking the city to reconsider, saying housing is limited and the people living along the flood channel work together to maintain their homes. "Not only are sweeps disruptive to the unhoused people who have created community, mutual support, and neighborliness along the Arroyo against all odds, they are also an obscene waste of city resources, and they accomplish nothing," Gustafson wrote. "Angelenos are facing a staggering housing crisis, and it makes little sense to destroy homes and communities that have carved out a shred of stability amidst an untenable situation." At another shelter, Los Angeles Police officers joined park rangers pushing their way into Cesar Augusto's home. Officers knocked on his door and then forced their way inside as his puppy, Salome, barked at them. Officers told Augusto to clear out as cleaning crews began to dismantle the piles of items he gathered, including tools and cookware. Augusto, 44, arrived in Los Angeles roughly 20 years ago from Guatemala. He struggled to find steady work as a house painter after his employer died several years ago. "There's no shame in what they're doing," he said about the city's cleaning operation. "God is always watching. He knows what happens." Augusto's girlfriend sat nearby with their pup. They did not know where they would go next and watched as the treads of a bulldozer flatten their belongings. A park ranger tried to shout questions to Augusto about his belongings over the roar of heavy machinery. "Do you want any of it?" the ranger yelled. "I'm giving you plenty of time." Lorena Amador, 51, was woken up to workers ripping down one of her shelter walls and telling her she had to leave, she said. Her goal for the day was to salvage her bedding and jackets and a park ranger was helping her out by holding some of her bags while she moved up and down the channel walls by rope. As a bulldozer approached her shelter, she moved to the flood channel to wash her hair. The Arroyo Seco was an ideal alternative to living on the city streets, she said. "We all know each other and we all got along," she said. Sign up for Essential California for news, features and recommendations from the L.A. Times and beyond in your inbox six days a week. This story originally appeared in Los Angeles Times.
