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Viral hotel confrontation and a new seafood boil spot. Today’s top stories

By Edited by Kaytlyn Leslie. Story produced with AI assistance.
Sally and Presley Lara of Porterville give a thumbs up May 23, 2026, to their new Crab It While It’s Hot seafood restaurant in Morro Bay. It’s tentatively scheduled to open in July in a location near the Groggy Scallywag Coffee House. The couple, who have three other restaurants in the Central Valley, are doing a lot of the eatery’s remodeling prior to the launch.
Sally and Presley Lara of Porterville give a thumbs up May 23, 2026, to their new Crab It While It’s Hot seafood restaurant in Morro Bay. It’s tentatively scheduled to open in July in a location near the Groggy Scallywag Coffee House. The couple, who have three other restaurants in the Central Valley, are doing a lot of the eatery’s remodeling prior to the launch. Crab It While It’s Hot

From a viral hotel confrontation in Cambria to a poll worker shortage threatening polling places, San Luis Obispo County saw a busy news day on Wednesday.

Here’s a roundup of the top stories from The Tribune:

  • Hotel clerk confronts guests over Israel-Palestine: A clerk at Cambria’s Oceanpoint Ranch resigned after filming a confrontation with a couple at check-in, asking if they were Zionists and “baby killers” and whether they had served in the IDF. The employee, who identified as a “Free Palestine advocate,” launched a GoFundMe that raised more than $15,000 by Monday afternoon.
  • Seafood boil chain headed to Morro Bay: Central Valley restaurant Crab It While It’s Hot is opening a new location in the former Beach Burger oceanfront space at 517 Embarcadero, with soft and grand openings anticipated in July 2026. Owners Presley and Sally Lara already run three locations in Porterville, Visalia and Hanford after starting the business in their backyard in 2019.
  • Grocery chain stores closed by outage: Both California Fresh Market locations in SLO County temporarily closed Wednesday at 10:30 a.m. due to a company-wide server outage. The Foothill Boulevard store in San Luis Obispo and the 5 Cities Drive store in Pismo Beach were shut down by an internal computer system issue.
  • Downtown SLO plant shop closing after one year: Understory Plant Shop, which opened May 9, 2025, next to SLO Creek, will close June 14 due to low foot traffic and declining profits since October 2025. Owner Samantha Huntley said she will refocus on her interior plant design business, Happy Plant Company.
  • Critical poll worker shortage before primary: San Luis Obispo County faces a “critical” poll worker staffing shortage with eight facilities short-staffed just six days before the June 2 primary election. Some North County polling places could be consolidated if the elections office cannot recruit enough poll workers.
  • Cal Poly rattlesnake project adds new live cam: Project RattleCam, a partnership between Cal Poly and Dickinson College, launched a 24-hour livestream camera in Pennsylvania on May 18 to observe timber rattlesnakes in their natural habitat. The species is endangered or threatened in 12 of the 30 states where it lives, and researchers hope the public can help collect behavioral data from home.

The summary points above were compiled with the help of AI tools and edited by journalists. The source reporting referenced above was written and edited entirely by journalists.

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