City Attorney Dennis Herrera is hinting that he might file suit against the Oakland A's to keep them from moving to San Jose, which is technically part of SF Giants' territory, reports the East Bay Express. If the A's went through with their proposed move, Herrera argues, it would financially hurt the Giants, and therefore hurt the City of San Francisco as well.

Meanwhile, a group of Giants fans in San Jose is fighting public funding of the proposed move, and Oakland Mayor Ron Dellums has been outmaneuvering A's owner Lew Wolff, undermining his claim that there are no viable stadium sites in the East Bay by proposing two potential sites near Jack London Square. Dellums also pledged redevelopment funds to assemble land, improve infrastructure, and build parking for a new stadium. So, maybe Oakland will get to keep its baseball team after all?

Prompted by City Attorney Dennis Herrera, notorious Tenderloin strip club Pink Diamonds was forced to shut its doors yesterday. According to SFGate, a judge ordered the, eh, burlesque club to officially close for a year and "directed its operator, Damone H. Smith, to pay at least $688,500 in fines after he violated a court agreement to bring the club into compliance with local and state laws." (The club actually ceased operations in early October, but this final nail in the strip pole, a request Herrera made to a SF Superior Court judge on on Sept. 30, made the closure official.)

Pink Diamonds, if you recall, played host to a June 27, 2009 murder in addition to other lawlessness that required more than 230 service calls by the San Francisco Police Department this year alone.

How could a place so sweet sounding be so violent? When that place operates in the Tenderloin, it's damn easy. And, as he's done before to other heavenly establishments, City Attorney Dennis Herrera wants to shut the place down. According to the CA Office, Herrera moved one step closer yesterday "to shutter the Pink Diamonds nightclub, a notorious public nuisance in the Tenderloin where a brutal June 27, 2009 slaying represented only the worst episode so far in a pattern of lawlessness that has required more than 230 service calls by the San Francisco Police Department in the last six months alone."

Most troubling, the nightclub has refused to cooperate with authorities in murder of 30-year-old Harris Fulbright, which happened just outside the club. According to SF Chronicle, authorities are "stymied by the club's security personnel refusing to hand over security footage and the names of club employees." Which: strange.

Anyway, the 220 Jones skin venue has played host to "scores of documented illegal acts since the nightclub's operator agreed to obey all laws in a stipulated injunction last March."

"The operators of this club have demonstrated shocking disregard for public safety, for the law, for the court, for the police, and for neighboring residents," Herrera said. "With our motion [yesterday], we're saying enough is enough -- Pink Diamonds needs to be shut down before another life is lost. It is obvious that the operators of this nightclub have no interest in running a business within the parameters of the law, and it is equally obvious that this extraordinary step is necessary."

No word yet on when, exactly, the club will close its doors for good. We can't imagine anytime soon. Pink Diamonds' most recent Twitter message, much to our sheer delight, reads thusly: "We got too many women customers... damn where dey come from? and they tippin! aint trippin! keep com n."

Oh boy. We just got work from Dennis Herrera's office that the SF Department of Health will come down hard on over three hundred San Francisco restaurants today, invalidating their food safety certifications. According to the City Attorney's Office, "the San Francisco Department of Public Health (DPH) will be notifying 345 San Francisco restaurants that their certification for food safety managers will no longer be recognized as valid as a result of inappropriate testing and certification procedures." Oops. The City Attorney's Office goes on to say, "Officials from DPH also informed state and county public health authorities throughout California of at least 183 additional restaurants outside of San Francisco whose certifications are similarly affected. Another 78 certifications whose holders list no address have also been identified."

While the food safety certification takesies-backsies doesn't allege any "wrongdoing or immediate food safety problems on the part of restaurants or individual certificate holders," it does mean that "affected certificate holders must be recertified." (That is to say, don't stress about where you plan on having lunch today.) See, Herrera's investigation, the official press release goes on to say,"found that numerous Food Safety Certifications had been issued to individuals who never actually took the examination. Other examinees were given the correct answers during the course of the exam, and in still other instances test materials and correct answers were shared with examinees before the test was administered."

Herrera's investigation into SF food safety remains ongoing. So, you now, let's try to be on ourbest behavior, SF food vendors.

Read more about today's big announcement and the press release in its entirety over at Eater.

North Beach strip club Heaven, the strip/prostitute club that had City Attorney Dennis Herrera (rightfully) slammed as "a public nuisance, having allegedly violated city codes and having been cited for prostitution," was ordered to cease operations starting today. According to SF Appeal, "In a release sent by his office, Herrera says 'Today's ruling should send a message to other would-be operators of illegal businesses that even Heaven is subject to temporal laws here in San Francisco.... It's regrettable that this business chose to expend so much effort to flout the law rather than to follow it, and that a preliminary injunction was necessary to shut it down.'" Will other strip club that allow whoring (i.e., most all of them) fall like dominoes? Only time will tell. If you recall, the owner of Heaven, Peter Lambertson, says that the only reason his club was targeted was because he didn't pony up freebies to "patrons who identified themselves as off-duty officers asked to be comped on extras" -- i.e., receiving sex for free.