I lived part of my teen years in Brasília, the capital built from scratch whose architecture and urban planning have drawn equal parts fascination and disdain. Over the years I’ve grown accustomed to comments about how “wild” the spaceship-like buildings designed by Oscar Niemeyer must have looked, how “alienating” the car-centric city must have been. But when I first heard these kinds of comments, I was admittedly surprised, because my memories of living in the city were much more mundane — eating hot dogs on the dusty sidewalks, hanging with friends at the base of our apartment building, movie-hopping at the mall. In other words, I was just living my life.

Now that I live in L.A., I sometimes hear echoes of what I used to hear about Brasília. They are both places with a mythic allure that nonetheless draw the same kinds of criticisms. How do you live in such a sprawling city where you have to drive everywhere? Isn’t it isolating? But as with Brasília, I’ve found that the way L.A. is perceived is much different than how it is lived.

Our April issue is about the lived experience of the city and its architecture. A postmodernist house in Baldwin Hills becomes a place for a family to dream. A billboard on the drive home becomes a personal landmark. A therapist’s room becomes a container for everything. A museum is held up as much by its walls as the people who work within them. We are part of our built environments, and nothing encompasses this more than our cover story on Lauren Halsey and her much-anticipated sculpture park, “sister dreamer lauren halsey’s architectural ode to tha surge n splurge of south central los angeles,” which is literally etched with the faces and stories of people from South-Central, where the artist grew up and still lives. On the cover photo, the artist stands in the back, in the shadows, allowing the people who shaped her project to take center stage.

Architects, I’m told, are obsessed with the idea of thresholds — corners, crossings, the in-between. This makes sense to me when I look at this cover, the group standing between four walls that don’t quite meet, the sky above and around them, inside and outside at the same time. It is a moving illustration of how a space can hold and contain — feel safe — while also holding an open sense of possibility.

A federal jury in Manhattan found that Ticketmaster and its parent company, Live Nation, have been acting as a monopoly, stifling competition and overcharging consumers.

But that doesn’t mean your next concert ticket will automatically be a better deal.

Wednesday’s verdict is a legal win for the 33 states and Washington, D.C., that accused the company of wielding its immense power over too many aspects of the live entertainment industry, from concert promotion and artist management to venue operations and ticketing services.

And it’s vindication for the many disgruntled artists, venues and fans who say they have been paying the price. The verdict has the potential to reshape the live music industry in the U.S. But the fight isn’t over.

States’ attorneys general now have to argue in favor of specific “remedies and financial penalties” — as many of them put it in celebratory press releases — at a separate trial. The lead lawyer for the plaintiffs, Jeffrey Kessler, declined to comment to NPR because that trial has not been scheduled.

One remedy that many ticketing advocates and Democratic lawmakers want is for the government to force the breakup of Live Nation and Ticketmaster — which merged in 2010 — separating the concert promoter from the ticket seller.

Meanwhile, Live Nation said in a statement that “the jury’s verdict is not the last word on this matter.” It has not responded to NPR’s request for comment.

The company said several motions are still pending in front of the court, including one to strike some expert testimony from the trial.

“Of course, Live Nation can and will appeal any unfavorable rulings on these motions,” it added.

Rebecca Haw Allensworth, a visiting professor at Harvard Law School who specializes in antitrust law, said a verdict from a jury is generally harder to fight successfully than one from a judge. In any case, she said, whatever remedy the court orders would likely be paused while an appeal plays out.

“So it’s not like next month … certainly not in 2026, will Live Nation be severed from Ticketmaster,” she said.

What about the long-term? 

Thales Teixeira, a professor at UC San Diego’s Rady School of Management, says this next phase is “a little bit complicated because there’s so many parties involved … that might want different things out of a potential settlement or a trial.”

Beyond major restructuring, Live Nation could be forced to take steps like end exclusive contracts, cap service fees and open booking at its venues to competing platforms like SeatGeek and AXS.

The company is also likely to face financial penalties, which could include payouts to some consumers: The jury found that Live Nation overcharged customers by $1.72 per ticket in 22 states. Live Nation said that applies to only a fraction of tickets sold, and estimated total damages below $150 million (which it says the court would triple, per legal standards).

But that money most likely won’t go directly to consumers, Allensworth says, unlike in a class-action lawsuit (which the company also faces). She says any judgment amount would go back to the participating states, which can use it as they see fit — most likely for some sort of consumer-related issue, not back into ticket-buyers’ pockets.

“Really, here, the win for the consumers is the future and the restoration of competition, if that happens, which is why I think it’s so important for the remedy to go beyond this dollar amount,” she says.

A young fan tries her luck outside Taylor Swift’s concert in London in August 2024. A chaotic Eras Tour presale in 2022 crashed Ticketmaster, canceled the general fueled calls for the platform to be held accountable.

Alishia Abodunde/Getty Images Europe

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Teixeira says consumers in the U.S. have gotten used to the high cost of concert tickets, not to mention food, parking and other expenses. If anything, he says some of fans’ anger may have been alleviated by Ticketmaster’s implementation (to comply with federal regulations) of all-in pricing in 2025, labeling fees upfront rather than revealing them at checkout.

And he doesn’t think the outcome of this case will lower ticket prices in the long term. For one, he says Live Nation can make up any lost fees in other ways, like upping the cost of a parking spot at one of the many venues it controls.

“My view is that even in the best-case scenario, if the states that have gone forward with the trial win most of their claims, I’d say very little will change for the average concertgoer,” he said.

What about the settlement? 

While many states’ attorneys general have uniformly referred to their effort as a “coalition,” Teixeira says it’s possible that some could leave the process early, depending on which of their demands are met.

A version of that has happened in this case already: About half a dozen states joined a tentative $280 settlement between President Trump’s Justice Department and Live Nation last month, just days into the trial.

As part of the settlement, the company agreed to do things like cap service fees at 15% and divest exclusive booking agreements with about a dozen amphitheaters, which ticketing organizations and Democratic lawmakers say does not go nearly far enough. That settlement must undergo a 60-day public comment period and get federal court approval before it can be finalized.

Just this week, several of the most vocal Democrats on this topic — including Sens. Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota, Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts and Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut — submitted a letter urging the judge in the case to “closely scrutinize this settlement,” which they called insufficient.

Live Nation said in its Wednesday statement that it is confident “that the ultimate outcome of the States’ case will not be materially different than what is envisioned by the DOJ settlement.”

Allensworth says that Live Nation can point to the settlement to show the judge that it is already taking steps to restore competition, in hopes of less intrusive remedies. But she expects states to have the same response as the Democratic lawmakers: “It’s a slap on the wrist and, your Honor, you need to impose something more meaningful here.”

Even if the company is forced to split up, she says, it’s not clear how long it would take for the live events landscape — which Live Nation and Ticketmaster have dominated for so long — to feel the effects. But she says the pressure of competition would undoubtedly improve the experience for venues, artists and fans alike.

“It’s one of the wonderful, and I think frustrating, things about organizing our whole economy through competition, is that we don’t know what new ideas will come forward,” Allensworth says. “We don’t know how they will affect consumers. But we do know that the best way to provide long-term consumer welfare is to have a place for new ideas to come to life.”

There were 200 people on the back patio of Glassell Park’s Verdugo Bar, and John Ayala had a hug for all of them.

Wiping tears from his eyes as he slowly made his way through the intergenerational crowd, he recognized almost everyone in attendance — if not by name, then definitely by address.

For four decades, the 61-year-old Ayala delivered mail to their homes, and now he was finally retiring, to the great surprise of everyone, including himself. He’d been talking about it for years — working it into the many conversations he had each day with the friends he’d made along his mail route in the hills of Mount Washington, a small residential community in northeast Los Angeles.

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The folks at the retirement party were glad that he would finally get some well-deserved downtime, but they were also wistful. For them, Ayala’s departure represented the end of an era when mail delivery came with a side of conversation.

“He talked with everyone,” said Jonathan Sample, a graphic designer who grew up in Mount Washington and now lives there with two kids of his own. “He was a really unifying presence.”

At a time when just 26% of Americans say they know their neighbors, according to a recent Pew Research study, Ayala helped create a sense of community in Mount Washington, even if it was only through the shared experience of having an unexpectedly personal relationship with the local mailman with a gruff voice and a gregarious disposition.

Over the years, Ayala would invite people from his route to the shows he played with his metal band Horns Up, and whether or not they liked the music, they‘d come out because they liked him. He would frequently talk about sports (especially the Dodgers and the Packers) and many on the hill knew he had two knee replacements — a result of a job that required him to hop in and out of a truck all day — because he would share updates on his recovery.

And when he started delivering reams of college marketing materials to families with high school seniors, he’d often inquire where the soon-to-be graduate was headed.

Ayala, center, celebrates with friends at his retirement party at Glassell Park’s Verdugo Bar.

(Carlin Stiehl / For The Times)

“He’s amazing. He knows my kids — my daughter is 40 and my son is 37 — and they love him,” said John Amour, a Mount Washington resident who has known Ayala since the ’90s. “They’ve grown up with him. He remembers their name. He says, ‘How is Brianna?’”

Because Ayala made daily visits to the homes on his route, he also knew who was on vacation, who was moving and who was having a medical crisis.

A few years ago, he was delivering mail to a man whose wife had been in the hospital. When Ayala asked “What’s up with Sandy?” the man shared that she had just passed away.

“I was the first one to see him after that and I just had to hug him,” Ayala said. They still text occasionally.

“If people are sick, he’ll tell people in the neighborhood,” said Laura Lee, who has lived in Mount Washington for 40 years. “If I start wondering about someone I haven’t seen in a while, I’ll ask him, just to make sure they’re OK.”

For Ayala, connecting people with one another comes naturally.

“I’ll find out someone is a Red Sox fan and I’ll tell them, you know your neighbor Neil up the street is from Boston too. You guys should talk,” he said.

Ayala, who grew up in El Sereno and is married with two sons, has deep family roots in the United States Postal Service. His mother, Yolanda, worked for the agency for 39 years, as did each of her four brothers and a sister-in-law. Ayala’s uncle was the first Latino vice president of finance for the Postal Service in the 1990s.

Ayala was an honors student at South Pasadena High School, but he wasn’t interested in college. Toward the end of his senior year, his mom saw a job opening at work and encouraged him to apply. He’s been working for the Postal Service since 1984 — even during the time his metal band Lace was selling out the Whiskey a Go Go and the Roxy in the mid ’80s.

Neighbors made a USPS-themed cake for Ayala’s retirement party.

(Carlin Stiehl / For The Times)

“I always wanted to be a rock star, but I probably wouldn’t be alive today if we’d made it,” he said.

He started delivering mail in Mount Washington in 1987 and never looked back. He loved the people and taking a break by the Self-Realization Fellowship’s verdant headquarters to read the newspaper. “It’s a neighborhood I could never afford,” he said. “It’s like a different world.”

Also, he said, “I never had to buy lemons. My customers always gave me lemons.”

The Postal Service changed his route once in 2008, but a few years later, he was able to return to Mount Washington. “I couldn’t wait to get back up there,” he said. “It was just like, oh man, I’m going to be in heaven again.”

After 42 years of service, Ayala’s pension couldn’t get any higher, so he decided to retire at the end of 2025. He could have retired in 2020, but as he wrote in a Facebook post in 2023, “I’m having too much fun.”

On a rainy day in December, Ayala maneuvered his truck one final time through Mount Washington’s narrow streets. Even as he emptied it of mail, it gradually filled up with gifts from his longtime customers — a bottle of vodka, a few bottles of wine, a six-pack of craft beer, homemade biscotti, a signed farewell poster, several thank you cards and a giant foam cheese hat from one of the many residents who knew he was a Packers fan.

Graphic designer Jonathan Sample made dozens of signs saying “Rock on Mailman John” for neighbors who wanted to send well wishes to Ayala on his last day.

(Ronaldo Bolaños / Los Angeles Times)

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And then there were the signs, stuck on stakes, posted on telephone poles, taped to mailboxes all over the hill.

Good Luck John! We’ll Miss You!

Mailman John!! Thank you!!

Rock on Mailman John! Enjoy Your Retirement. We Love You!

Not everyone who made signs and delivered gifts knew each other, but they all knew Ayala.

Even after he retired, Ayala was still bringing the people of Mount Washington together. The farewell party at the Verdugo Bar was put together by a trio of neighbors who got to know each other because they all wanted to be involved in celebrating their beloved mailman. At the bar, residents who live on the same street finally got around to introducing themselves.

“See that group in the corner?” said Penny Jones, an artist who helped organize the party. “That’s the Glenalbyn contingent. They are just getting to know each other.”

Also among the many people who had come to wish Ayala a fond farewell? Alex Villasenor, the neighborhood’s UPS driver, wearing an Iron Maiden shirt in Ayala’s honor.

“I had to represent,” he said. “We always chat and clown around and block each other and honk at each other on the hill. He goes for the Raiders and I go for the Packers. I’ll be sad not to see him.”

I was at the party, too — and not just to report this story, but because for the last 18 years, Ayala was my mailman. More than anyone else in my life — even my parents — he religiously read my stories in The Times, always commenting when I had a piece on the front page.

“Great story, Deb!” he’d yell from his truck after putting some real estate fliers in my mailbox. It always made my day.

Ayala has a hug for everyone at his party.

(Carlin Stiehl / For The Times)

Like everyone else, I’m going to miss him.

A few months after his retirement, I called Ayala to see how he’s been doing. It’s been a difficult adjustment.

“I just miss everybody, “ he said. “It’s hard. You lost a friend. One person. I lost like 2,000 friends.”

Two hundred residents attended John Ayala’s retirement party after 40 years with the USPS.

(Carlin Stiehl / For The Times)

He said sometimes in the middle of the night when he’s tossing and turning, he imagines traveling street by street, just thinking about everyone on his mail route.

But he is committed to staying in touch. He still texts some of his friends about sports, and he’s planning to make a trip up the hill soon just to walk around and greet people.

Ayala may have stopped delivering the mail, but he’s not done delivering connection.