La Jolla Cove

This guide to La Jolla Cove in San Diego opens with restaurant owner George Hauer telling the city that the smell drifting up from the rocks below was more than an inconvenience. It follows the so-called Cove Stench of the early 2010s, when the reek of sea lion droppings got strong enough to cancel anniversary dinners and send guests checking out of a three-hundred-dollar-a-night hotel early, and the lawsuit Hauer and the La Valencia Hotel filed against the city. It also raises the odd legal wrinkle at the center of the case: federal law protects the sea lions from being moved, touched, or even startled. Look over the railing and see if you notice it yourself.