Oakland Mayor-elect Jean Quan got her car booted outside City Hall on Tuesday for failing to pay more than $1,000 in parking tickets.

Quan, who remains the District Four councilwoman until her January swearing-in ceremony, had parked the 2009 Toyota Prius in her official City Hall spot. Around 9:30 a.m., a police technician ran a check on the car and discovered it had more than 10 outstanding tickets, according to police. The tech ordered the car, which is registered to Quan's husband, Floyd Huen, immobilized with the boot.

We visited Quan's office to ask about the situation. Her assistant, Maisha Everhart, took the message to the councilwoman, who was sequestered in her office. The staffer returned and said the mayor-elect would be tied up in meetings all afternoon and was unavailable for comment.

But Quan must have taken care of the outstanding tickets, because within hours the boot had been removed.

Quan and fellow council members set off a firestorm in the summer of 2009 when they increased metered parking rates in the downtown area to $2 an hour and extended meter enforcement until 8 p.m.

And Quan made parking news herself earlier that year when she got into a tug of war with fellow Councilwoman Desley Brooks over who should get the City Hall space they both wanted.

The battle became the subject of a five-page legal opinion from the city attorney.

Quan eventually lost the spot to Brooks in a coin toss.

Fool's luck: San Francisco sheriff's deputies were carrying out a foreclosure eviction out on 47th Avenue the other afternoon when they found something that stopped them dead in their tracks.

Inside a box in the garage was what appeared to be a hand grenade.

The deputies called the cops, who called the bomb squad, who came out and confirmed that, indeed, it was a live, World War II, Russian-made hand grenade.

It was also decided that the grenade was too volatile to transport, so it was blown up by the bomb squad in a special box.

Inspector Jeff Levin said the house's 60-year owner told him the grenade had been left in storage by his 40-year-old former son-in-law.

Levin tracked that man down to a Tenderloin hotel where he lives to ask how he got hold of the deadly explosive.

"A friend gave it to me back in 1993," the clueless ex-son-in-law said. "I thought it was a paperweight."

Then he added: "I'd tried a couple of times to pull out the pin, but I couldn't get it to budge."

What goes around: One of the twists involving the University of California's latest tuition hike is that about a third of the increase goes to help students so they won't have to pay it.

Here's how it works:

The 8 percent increases approved by the Board of Regents are expected to generate about $180 million a year.

Of that, $64 million will be set aside for financial aid.

As a result, 81,000 qualifying undergrads - or about 46 percent - will pay no tuition next year.

And another 14,700 whose families make up to $120,000 a year will get a one-year pass on the tuition hike.

Bigger bag theory: San Francisco SupervisorRoss Mirkarimi is moving to greatly expand the city's drive to get rid of disposable bags.

The champion of the ban on plastic grocery bags has submitted legislation calling on all retail outlets - including places like Safeway and Macy's - to charge 10 cents per paper bag. He wants more people to bring their own bags, cutting down on the use of both paper and plastic.

Just one thing: Grocery stores don't bag up until after you pay. So how are they going to know how many bags to charge you for?

"They just will," said Mirkarimi, after pondering the matter.

"They just will."

Turkey time: The real process of selecting the new San Francisco mayor hasn't even started, and City Hall is already showing signs of fatigue.

"We just spent four hours talking about taking public comment on a motion about whether to have public comment on a motion to include public comment in the process of appointing an interim mayor," a very tired Supervisor Sean Elsbernd said following one particularly long meeting.

EXTRA! Catch our blog at www.sfgate.com/matierandross.