• Participants aboard the “Rising Together” Rose Parade float on New Year’s Day, which paid tribute to the 19 victims killed in LA’s Altadena neighborhood during the Eaton Fire, were censored when a protest banner was pulled off their float. The banner urged California Attorney General Rob Bonta to investigate why Altadena residents weren’t evacuated during the wildfire and to hold Los Angeles County officials accountable for the lives lost. [Pasadena Now]
• Three men were fatally shot after a fight broke out in Oakland around 3 am Saturday morning inside a market on the 8400 block of International Boulevard; at least 12 customers were in the store at the time of the shootings. [Bay Area News Group]
• About 3,400 homes and businesses in SF’s Seacliff and Richmond District neighborhoods experienced yet another power outage Friday evening, lasting about 90 minutes, which officials say was related to maintenance work. [KPIX]

• Twelve people were injured in a two-vehicle crash near Mission Street and Onondaga Avenue in San Francisco’s Excelsior District Friday around 5:35 pm, four were taken to the hospital with non-life-threatening injuries, and eight were treated at the scene. [NBC Bay Area]
• Two former employees of a local nonprofit, Kenisha Roach, 41, and Robert Lacy Jr., 47, are accused of stealing over $115,000 from San Francisco homeless shelter, Oasis Family Shelter, as part of a kickback scheme they carried out in 2022, involving the transfer of payments for maintenance work that was never completed. [KRON4]

Image: Leanne Maxwell/SFist

Monterey County CBS affiliate KION appears to be the victim of some local TV downsizing, abruptly killing its news department Wednesday morning, and their news will now be called KPIX News on KION, which sounds like just KPIX News.  

What with the whole Jimmy Kimmel dust-up over the last week, some of the public is just learning about the existence of chains of local TV station owners we were not familiar with, like Nexstar and Sinclair. The latest of these to enter the lexicon is a Missouri-based parent company called News-Press & Gazette Company, which owns 13 small-market stations in the western US. And we learn of them as KRON4 reports that the Salinas-Monterey CBS affiliate KION has laid off their entire newsroom staff, and will be sourcing their morning and evening news out to San Francisco’s KPIX, aka CBS5.

The news site Monterey County Now reports that 13 employees have lost their jobs, from news anchors, to reporters, to meteorologists, and producers. That site also adds that employees of the Spanish-language sister station Telemundo 23 are also among those who lost their jobs.

To hear KION brass (what’s left of them) tell it, this is some exciting and bold new development.

“KION is entering a new chapter in local news by partnering with KPIX CBS San Francisco to bring expanded news coverage to viewers across the Central Coast,” the station said in a Wednesday press release. “Starting today at 5 pm, KPIX News on KION will deliver the most significant stories from across Northern and Central California, while continuing to highlight local reporting, weather forecasts and community updates that matter most to residents of Monterey, Salinas, Santa Cruz, and beyond.”

But fired employees tell the website Lookout Santa Cruz a much different story. That outlet notes that the news staff had just had an all-hands retreat this past weekend where they “passed around slices from Pizza Factory and discussed how they could improve their operation.” Staff were not informed of the layoffs until their 10 am editorial meeting Wednesday.

“I couldn’t believe it,” KION assistant news director Victor Guzman told Lookout Santa Cruz. “I still can’t believe it. I ended my morning show by saying, ‘We’ll have more news at 5.’ I had no idea.”

According to KRON4, "KPIX had no involvement with the news department decision,” though it seems KPIX broadcasts will be used for the morning and evening news slots. Lookout Santa Cruz notes the laid-off employees will be paid the remainder of their contracts, and may be offered positions at other News-Press & Gazette Company stations, of which there are two in California.

Related: Something Odd Is Happening at KGO's AM Radio Station, Which Is Suddenly Playing Only Gambling- and Money-Related Songs [SFist]

Image: KION

A sea lion attacked a nine-year-old girl who was taking a surf lesson at Monterey County’s Asilomar State Beach, though the young surfer is doing just fine, except for a few sea lion-bite puncture wounds.

There are not many sea lions down at Fisherman's Wharf’s Pier 39 in San Francisco right now, after last year’s spring and summer surge. The Pier 39 sea lion live webcam shows only about two dozen of them there on this early August day, though it is normal that they’re gone this time of year, and they may be thousands strong again by late August or early September. They have simply decamped to the south for the mating season, and there are many sea lions 100 or more miles to the south, in places like, say, Monterey County’s Asilomar State Beach.

We mention Asilomar State Beach, because that’s where this weekend saw the highly unusual incident of a sea lion biting a nine-year-old girl, according to Monterey’s KSBW. The girl was one of five youngsters who were in the ocean for a surf lesson, and the quick thinking of their surf instructor may have saved the young surfers from a much worse outcome.  

“It was right next to me, and I was like ‘Oh my gosh, something really bad is going to happen.' Then it just bit me,” the nine-year-old sea lion-bit victim Corale Olsen told KSBW. “It was pain, and then I was screaming.”

The five kids’ surf instructor Alex De Marignac said he had no idea the attack was coming.

“I have surfed in these waters since I was about 6-years-old, but never ever seen something like that,” De Marignac said to the station. “I feel like most kids kind of like go after sea lions lightly, and nothing happens.”

This time something did happen, and De Marignac quickly hauled the little one to shore. “I had two kids under each arm and then one hanging off my neck, and yeah, we all made it in,” he told KSBW.

Young Corale Olsen was treated for puncture wounds from the bite, and received ER medical care for the remainder of the day. Sea lions biting people is an extremely rare phenomenon, though not unheard of. Aggressive behavior can be linked to domoic acid poisoning from toxic algae blooms, or maybe the animal was just being territorial.

Or this could be a situation like summer 2023’s exploits of the surfboard-stealing Otter 841 not far from there in Santa Cruz. After that otter spent months menacing surfers and kayakers, we learned that she was pregnant the whole time, and the behavior was likely due to hormones.

Related: Record Pier 39 Sea Lion Population Explodes Even Further, Now There’s More Than 2,000 of Them [SFist]

​​Image: Close up of an Australian fur seal with its mouth wide open barking at the camera (Getty Images)

In 2023, teen-led group Protect Monterey Bay successfully lobbied the Monterey City Council to impose new restrictions on cruise ship passenger landings in an effort to curb environmental damage to the bay, including wastewater dumping, air pollution, and harm to marine life.

While ships can still anchor offshore, cruise companies refused to hire staff at the dock, halting cruise tourism.

Local merchants opposed the city council's decision, citing the economic loss of passengers who spend an average of $125 per visit, which Monterey City Manager Hans Uslar characterized as a "drop in the bucket" compared to the amount of revenue the city receives from non-cruise based tourism.

Prior to COVID, an average of 7–12 ships per year docked in Monterey Bay, and 21 ships were booked in 2023 before the new changes.

Media outlets have recently been criticizing the teens for the city's loss in revenue over the past two years, while glossing over the cruise industry’s decision not to comply with the new regulations — on top of their history of environmental violations.

Protect Monterey Bay argues that no amount of money justifies the risks. Aliya Denton, a student leader for the group, said in the group's original appeal to the city council:

We have thousands upon thousands of tourists who visit and look at our beautiful bay. It takes their breath away, and they call it priceless. Well, according to the cruise industry, it isn’t priceless. It has a price: $125 average per passenger. My friends, no amount is worth sacrificing our integrity.

Monterey's policy mirrors restrictions in places like Amsterdam, Venice, and Key West, where communities have resisted overtourism.

Image: Joe Ross/Flickr

A man is dead in Santa Cruz after being trapped under the debris of the pier-smashing waves, and two people are missing near Monterey after being swept into the ocean, as the raging high surf conditions take a deadly toll.

The latest news as high surf conditions continue to wallop the NorCal coast is that evacuation orders were lifted Tuesday morning in the Santa Cruz County areas of Rio Del Mar, Beach Drive and Las Olas. But coastal conditions remain incredibly dangerous after Monday’s stunning collapse of part of the Santa Cruz Wharf, and officials are still scrambling to contain the wreckage.

NBC Bay Area reports that one man was killed in Santa Cruz County after being trapped under debris, while KPIX adds that two people remain missing near Monterey after being swept into the ocean on Monday. And ominously, both of those searches are currently halted because surf conditions are so dangerous.

Per NBC Bay Area, police received a report around 11:30 am Monday of a man trapped under debris at Sunset State Beach in Watsonville. The debris may have been flotsam from the wharf, or could have been other wreckage that’s occurring all across that coastline. The man was rescued, but pronounced dead upon arrival at a hospital, and his name has not been released.

While rescuers were responding to that incident, another man was pulled into the Pacific Ocean by a huge wave at Marina State Beach, some eight miles north of Monterey, at around noon Monday. US Coast Guard and the California Highway Patrol air unit rescuers were forced to abandon their mission at around 2 pm Monday because the current and waves just kept getting increasingly stronger. The unidentified man remained missing as of Monday night.

KPIX adds that in Pebble Beach, south of Monterey, one person was swept off the rocks and out into the ocean along Ocean Road. Cal Fire and the Coast Guard were also forced to suspend that search because conditions became too dangerous.

Those high surf warnings remain in effect through noon Tuesday, not just in Santa Cruz, the Monterey Bay, and Big Sur Coast, but also right here in San Francisco, San Mateo County, and the North Bay coast. Some coastal areas are expected to see breaking waves as high as 30 to 35 feet.

Related: Three Rescued as Piece of Santa Cruz Wharf Falls Into Ocean [SFist]

Image: @StrictlyChristo via Twitter

There’s already dirty laundry galore with many of Trump’s cabinet picks, and the latest shoe to drop comes from Monterey County, where Secretary of Defense nominee Pete Hegseth was investigated for sexual assault in 2017.

We should probably expect more of this kind of thing, with the incoming Trump administration’s cabinet picks already facing sworn testimony that they had sex with a 17-year-old girl, or are known to be Russian propaganda parrots, or are the walking scandal machine that is RFK, Jr. And we have more of this kind of thing with Trump’s nominee for Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth, as Vanity Fair broke the news late Thursday that Hegseth was investigated for sexual assault in 2017, over an incident that happened in the city of Monterey.  

Hegseth was already quite an unusual pick, as while he is a veteran, he was never in any senior military leadership position, and he’s been a Fox News TV personality longer than he was active military. He’s also against women serving in combat positions, and per Vanity Fair, he “once called liberals ‘domestic enemies’ who want ‘trans-lesbian black females [to] run everything!’”

The Chronicle digs into the details of the 2017 sexual assualt investigation. The alleged incident happened on October 7 that year, sometime between midnight and 7 am at the Hyatt Regency Monterey Hotel and Spa on Del Monte Golf Course Road. The alleged victim is not identified, nor are the allegations detailed, but the victim apparently did suffer “contusions to right thigh,” according to police reports. No criminal charges were ever filed.

The City of Monterey put out a statement Thursday night saying, “The Monterey Police Department investigated an alleged sexual assault at 1 Old Golf Course Road,” and “no weapons or property [were] involved.” They added that “The City of Monterey will not be making any other remarks related to this inquiry.”

Hegseth's attorney Timothy Parlatore said in a statement to CBS News that “This allegation was already investigated by the Monterey police department and they found no evidence for it."  

This incident happened the same year that Hegseth was divorcing his second wife, though that divorce may have been more because Hegseth was having an affair with a Fox News producer at the time, whom he’d impregnated and would eventually marry.

Related: Latest Sean ‘Diddy' Combs Sex Assault Allegations Come From an Incident in Orinda [SFist]

Image: NEW YORK, NEW YORK - JULY 19: FOX anchor Pete Hegseth and meteorologist Janice Dean are on stage as Phil Vassar performs on "FOX & Friends" All-American Summer Concert Series on July 19, 2019 in New York City. (Photo by John Lamparski/Getty Images)

A chef and caterer based in Monterey is in hot water with the feds over an alleged $4 million that he bilked from the government during the pandemic, which prosecutors say he used to buy real estate in Belize and fund a new business venture.

Restaurateurs and caterers were certainly among the hardest hit businesspeople when the COVID-19 pandemic first prompted the lockdown orders in March 2020. Many sought relief in the form of PPP (Paycheck Protection Program) loans and other programs meant to keep small businesses afloat. But some tried to take advantage of the chaos and the lack of oversight of the programs, and we're now hearing of another of those cases from a local chef and caterer.

Dory Lindsay Ford, 57, a former executive chef at Big Sur's Ventana Inn and Spa and at the Monterey Bay Aquarium, was indicted last week on charges of bank fraud, wire fraud, and money laundering among others, related to some alleged COVID-relief fraud from 2020 and 2021.

Ford is alleged to have obtained PPP loans, as well as funds from the Restaurant Revitalization Fund (RRF) and the Economic Injury Disaster Loan Program (EIDL), all totaling $4 million, "by using false and fraudulent, representations, promises, and omissions," and prosecutors accuse him of "concealing material facts."

Ford owns and operates Aqua Terra Culinary, a catering company that won out in a public bidding process in 2017 to get a three-year contract to provide catering services to the Monterey Convention Center. Edible Monterey reported on the deal at the time, and Ford told them that he expected the contract would double his company's revenue — which already included gigs catering the prestigious Pebble Beach Concours d’Elegance.

In addition, Ford opened a restaurant, Point Pinos Grill, at Pacific Grove Golf Course.

Federal prosecutors say that Ford applied for relief funds for Aqua Terra (and presumably for the restaurant, by extension), but those funds were not used to keep the catering business afloat. Instead, Ford allegedly "purchase[d] real estate properties in the country of Belize, [and] invest[ed] in the stock market," in addition to launching a new company, a mushroom-farming business.

And Ford wasn't secretive about his businesses. He openly told Edible Monterey in early 2022 that he had shut down Aqua Terra and Point Pinos Grill in February 2020, ahead of the statewide lockdowns, because he'd seen a slew of cancellations already and could see the writing on the wall.

"I had a great business and it didn’t exist anymore, which was wrenching," Ford told the magazine. "After 35 years grinding life away at food service, I had nothing."

Ford explained that he slipped into a depression, and he sought out therapy by way of psilocybin (mushrooms), which led him to growing his own mushrooms at home, and this then led to an idea for a new business.

Ford launched the mushroom business MycoSci in 2021, and was apparently already selling non-psilocybin mushroom tinctures through the company by 2022. He told Edible Monterey that the plan was to expand into psilocybin products as state regulations made the legal market for them for feasible.

MycoSci is not mentioned by name in the Department of Justice release about the indictment, that appears to be Ford's only business if you look at his LinkedIn.

The official shutdown of Aqua Terra listed on LinkedIn is October 2022.

Ford now faces a maximum statutory sentence of 30 years in prison and a maximum fine of $1 million for the bank fraud charge alone. If convicted, the other charges could bring 30 more additional years and another half-million dollars in fines. Restitution of the allegedly ill-gotten funds would also likely be part of any sentence.

His next court appearance is on Wednesday, January 31.

The wheels of justice have moved slowly on some of the PPP-loan fraud cases, though it seems like the feds went after the most egregious ones first, and are now getting around to those with lesser dollar amounts.

For instance, one Southern California man, 53-year-old Robert Benlevi of Encino, was indicted in July 2022 for seeking $27 million in fraudulent loans for eight companies that did not exist. He only succeeded in getting $3 million, and he was convicted and sentenced to 11 years in prison.

Photo via LinkedIn

A twin-engine Cessna plowed right into a house near the Monterey Airport Tuesday morning, and while the house was empty, the pilot, a passenger, and a dog all did in the crash.

We’re sure you’ll feel very safe sitting in your home today with the news that an airplane crashed straight into a house some five miles southeast of Monterey late Tuesday morning. The Monterey County Regional Fire Protection District reports that a small aircraft took off from Monterey Regional Airport this morning, but at 10:45 a.m. crashed directly into a house in the Monterra Ranch subdivision near Highway 68.

Local TV station KSBW reports that the craft was a “small, twin-engine Golden Eagle Cessna plane." KPIX adds that the resulting fire spread to a second home, and also started a brush fire which has since been extinguished.

SFGate reviewed data from the plane-tracking FlightAware and that the “flight that departed Monterey Regional Airport shortly before 10:40 a.m. was only in the air a few minutes before tracking dropped out.” In the above video from KSBW, you can hear the air traffic controllers discuss the dangerously low altitude of the plane and the crash itself, in tones far calmer than I would be able to maintain in that situation.

Per another local station, KION, the Monterey County Sheriff's Office originally said that the pilot was the only person onboard the plane, but that has since turned out not to be the case.

As KSBW reported Wednesday, the plane was owned and being piloted by Mary Ellen Carlin of Pacific Grove. She was flying her friend, 61-year-old Alice Diane Emig of Rancho Cordova to Mather, near Sacramento, when the plane crashed. Emig's dachshund Toby was also reportedly onboard.*

One relief is that no one was home inside the house at the time of the collision. Monterey County Weekly tracked down the owners Roger and Julie Goulart, for whom this is a second home. "I don't know anything yet. We weren't home," Roger Goulart told the paper. "My daughter was staying there but fortunately she wasn't home at the time this happened."

*This post has been updated with information about the crash victims.

Related: Small Plane On Weird Course Over City Tailed By Fighter Jets Causes Stir, Mild Panic [SFist]

Image: Monterey County Regional Fire Protection District via Twitter

Our extra-special right-wing vice-president Mike Pence is making a couple of Republican fundraising stops in California next week, and dropping by the San Francisco Bay Area for a quick, not-easily-protested speaking engagement.

The undisputed homophobia czar in the current administration, Pence will making stops in Santa Ana and Monterey, as the Chronicle is reporting, with the not-publicized Monterey fundraiser happening on Wednesday, November 13. He's then set to stop by NASA's Ames Research Center in Mountain View on Thursday, November 14, before taking off from there — likely from Moffett Field, which is right there, and which is where President Trump  flew into and out of on his Peninsula fundraiser visit in September.

Pence has made more trips to the West Coast than Trump since the 2016 election, coming for a fundraiser back in October 2017 in Los Angeles, and returning in March 2019 for a visit that included a stay in Monterey and a trip to an Oracle event in Redwood City that was closed to the press. Pence was back in the state in July at events in San Diego and a fundraiser in Rancho Santa Fe.

Tickets to next week's fundraiser in Monterey start at $1,000 and top out at $35,000, according to the invitation obtained by the Chronicle. Proceeds will benefit the PAC called Trump Victory.

Meanwhile, let's never forget the time Trump tried to go in for a kiss with Pence on stage at the Republican National Convention, and Pence deflected about as hard as Melania on an average Saturday.

Photo: Gage Skidmore/Wikimedia

A rare albino dolphin calf, specifically a Risso's dolphin, was just spotted last week in Monterey Bay among a pod of Risso's dolphins. The sighting was captured on video on June 7 by Princess Monterey Whale Watching, and on the YouTube video description they say the dolphin could either be albino or "possibly leucistic," which is a similar condition of partial loss or reduction in multiple types of pigmentation.

As ABC 7 notes, adult Risso's dolphins grow to about 10 feet long.

The little white guy can be seen even better in the video below, which was shot on Friday, June 9.

Albino dolphins have occasionally gotten worldwide fame, like one named Angel who was captured by dolphin hunters in Japan and sold to an aquarium in 2014. She's been the subject of considerable activism because she's been forced to live ever since in a small, chlorinated tank.

Related: Killer Whales Continue Putting On Show In Monterey Bay With Multiple Killings

An insane clown a little too reminiscent of Pennywise took the tomfoolery too far Wednesday afternoon, as a grown man in an evil clown costume holding what appeared to be a bloody machete menaced motorists along Highway 101 in Monterey County. Numerous freaked out drivers on a stretch of road between Aromas and Prunedale called 911, requiring the Monterey Sheriff’s Department to come out and diffuse yet another clown threat.

“It can be fun to dress up as a clown, right? However, if you do please don't stand in the side of highway 101 at San Juan Rd holding a machete,” says some wise guidance from the Monterey Sheriff’s Office, via Facebook. “Larry Tovey, from Gilroy, did this today and startled a few people who called 911. Two deputies contacted Larry, with their guns drawn, and eventually figured out what he was up to.”

Which poses the question: What was he up to? “He stuck his thumb out with one hand, as if he was trying to hitchhike, and held a machete covered in fake blood with his other hand,” reports KSBW in Monterey.

Sheriff’s deputies drew guns on the clown at 3:20 p.m., who was then identified as the 61-year-old Larry Tovey noted above. He was questioned and handcuffed, but deputies determined he was merely clowning around and let him go.

“He didn't actually threaten anybody. He just had a sick sense of humor," sheriff’s commander John Thornburg told KSBW. "They let him go home.”

While this clown failed to amuse, the comment thread on the Monterey Sheriff’s Department Facebook post does elicit a few laughs as the department attempted to calm the alarmed Monterey residents’ complaints. “Just carrying it doesn't make it a deadly weapon,” the Sheriff's deputies explain one comment. “It's actually a tool and since he didn’t use it as a deadly weapon to threaten someone, there was no crime.”

“If it's not concealed (the knife, fixed blade not a folded knife) then no arrest,” explains another post. “In this case we don't have a victim of a brandishing, which includes threatening a person with the weapon.”

In related news, all this menacing clown business needs to stop. According to the evil clown crime statistics on Wikipedia, there were 12 evil clown incidents in California in 2016, primarily during the October Halloween season. These include an attempted clown child abduction in Concord, clowns threatening schools in Fairfield, and an attempted armed robbery by clowns in the Westfield Mall. Additionally, the SFUSD was forced to robocall parents to address clown concerns amid the creepy clown outbreak of October 2016.

Related: Clown Protestors Block Google Shuttle With Colorful Dance Numbers

A pod of at least nine killer whales, with some other individuals joining in, have had a busy week of feeding in Monterey Bay, all as tourists excitedly watched. On Monday we saw this video of the pod feeding on the carcasses of two dead gray whales, and now as SFGate reports via the Monterey Bay Whale Watch Facebook page, the pod has hunted and killed four separate times in seven days, including a gray whale calf that they killed in front of a boat of whale watchers on Wednesday.

Nancy Black, a marine biologist with Monterey Bay Whale Watch, tells SFGate that this is "unprecedented" and "This has never happened in my thirty years," saying that she's never seen such a spate of binge feeding as this.

The whale watching group explains that migrating gray whales are a "very important food source for these killer whale families," and it appears that the group is both ravenous and teaching some younger killer whales how to hunt in the process.

The hunt on Wednesday, Black said, only took about twenty minutes, possibly because the calf and its mother were skinnier and weaker than most. The hunts can last up to several hours as the mother gray whale "desperately tries to protect her calf, using her tail to fight back and rolling over belly-up with the calf on top."

Also giving whale watchers a thrill are about 60 to 70 humpback whales that are also in the area. And the humpbacks get in on the hunts as well, though not to eat. "Humpbacks like to interfere with the killer whales for some strange reason," Black tells SFGate. "They seem to want to protect the prey."

You can sort of see this happening in the video above.

A group of killer whale mothers and calves were seen feasting over the course of four days last week and over the weekend on the carcasses of two dead gray whales just off the Monterey Coast. Drone footage by Monterey Bay Whale Watch captured the feast on Sunday, and a rep for the group, Nancy Black, tells NBC Bay Area that this type of group behavior so close to the coast is "pretty rare."

The killer whales have been feasting on the remains of the dead whales since Thursday, and some humpback whales also got in on the action as the killer whales swarmed in such a large number.

This is whale migration season right now, as whales of multiple species work their way up the Pacific coast toward Alaska where they'll feed for the summer, and last spring saw multiple dramatic whale sightings in and around San Francisco Bay, including several humpbacks which do not typically tend to enter the Bay at all.

From February through June, hundreds of harbor seals sleep, mate, sleep, give birth, and then sleep some more on beaches like one at the center of the Monterey Bay national marine sanctuary, Hopkins Beach. Maybe you thought this was months ago — those were elephant seals, harbor seals' uglier cousins. The time is a delicate one for the harbor seals, and experts at the Marine Mammal Center encourage humans to give them plenty of room. This year, for the first time according to a report by KQED, the Sausalito-based center has received complaints about drone hobbyists flying their aircrafts near seals. That's added a new layer of concern to the stressful time period.

"Drones are totally foreign to these animals," Laura Chapman, a rescue coordinator with the Marine Mammal Center, tells KQED Science. "They make a sound that they [the animals] don’t expect."

It's not just interrupted mating sessions that experts want to avoid — although presumably that, too. Mostly, pups need to be safely kept with their mothers. In the past decade, the center has handled 140 cases in which humans caused harm to seals or sea lions, KQED reports. Disturbances can cause seals to abandon their pups — or people can separate them by "rescuing" pups they see, as has too often occurred.

Humans are required by the federal Marine Mammal Protection Act to give the creatures 150 feet of space, and those flying drones should heed that rule too, Chapman seems to say. “What we want people to be aware of is that if an animal is looking at you, if they’re looking at the drone, that animal is being harassed.”

A Hopkins Beach docent, Thom Akeman, tells KQED he's had to shoo away drone pilots. “About half the time they’re very cooperative,” says Akeman. “Other times they’re very belligerent because they think they have a right to fly anywhere.”

Not exactly: Federal Aviation Administration rules ban drones within five miles of airports, and there's one 3.5 nautical miles from the Monterey Bay Aquariums harbor seal rookery, for example. If you're headed there, leave the drone at home. The marine sanctuary, for its part, is monitoring drone use.

Related: Where To Watch Elephant Seals Doing Their Annual Mating And Birthing Thing Along The NorCal And Central Coast

It's hardly the largest deception on Big Little Lies, the HBO drama starring Reese Witherspoon, Nicole Kidman, Laura Dern, and Shailene Woodley as a quartet of Monterey mothers, but it's an emblematic one. To dazzle and impress viewers, director Jean-Marc Vallée flaunts area sights like the dramatic Bixby Creek Bridge, the frequently photographed structure along Highway One — not to be confused with the Pfeiffer Canyon Bridge, which has been in the process of being demolished today after it was irreparably damaged by storms, interrupting the highway for the rest of the year.

Beguiled by appearances, viewers might not ask what, exactly, the show's characters are doing driving across the beautiful, 1932-completed Bixby Bridge to take their children to and from school in Monterey. But that's one of the show's many mysteries. The bridge, after all, is almost 20 miles south of Monterey, and about 15 south of Carmel-by-the Sea, isolated along the Big Sur coast.

"Unless for some reason Celeste and Perry are going to a therapist in Big Sur, I can't imagine why they'd be driving over that bridge," writes one commenter with a working knowledge of the area on a forum at Previously.tv (where you can find commentary on the show from SFist's own Eve Batey.) "Of course, this show is playing fast and loose with geography anyway," the commenter adds, "so I guess it's no big deal that they want to work in as many scenes as possible of one of the more photogenic bridges in the world."

It's not the first such stretch: Carmel Magazine recalls that the Clint Eastwood breakthrough flick Play Misty For Me depicts his character hurrying from Carmel Rancho to the Highlands, driving north on the bridge that's several miles south of his supposed destination.

Big Little Lies, adapted by David E. Kelley from the novel by Liane Moriarty, was transplanted to Monterey from Australia, and as it did in a small town down under, it probes the highly mannered denizens of a picturesque community. As characters deceive one another — and to a degree themselves — with beautiful appearances, from bodies and clothes to homes and landscapes, we too are lured into the deception by the power of these images. In fact, the Monterey Film commission says it's brought in more than $100 million to local communities from film productions since the Monterey County Board of Supervisors created the Film Commission in 1987.

"We get calls all the time from people who saw Monterey, Carmel or Big Sur in a film or on television and say ‘I want to go there on vacation.’ It’s spin-off tourism,” Karen Nordstrand, the Commission’s director of marketing and film production, tells Carmel Magazine. In 2016 alone, according to the commission's website, nearly $6 million came into Monterey County from on-location spending, and more than $2.5 million was from production for Big Little Lies.

Big indeed — but spinoff tourists, do note that you won't get a great view of the Bixby Creek Bridge from your Monterey hotel room, and Big Sur is going to be a bit of a detour nightmare for the next nine to 12 months.

Related: Bridge In Big Sur Gets Wrecking Ball Treatment, Highway 1 To Remain Interrupted For Rest Of Year