The Bay Area may be known for Silicon Valley’s innovations, but it was another breakthrough altogether that gave it a permanent spot on the international heavy-metal map: thrash. The early years of such seminal local bands as Metallica, Exodus, Testament, Death Angel and Vio-lence — plus their Los Angeles brethren Megadeth and Slayer — are captured in the new photo book “Murder in the Front Row: Shots From the Bay Area Thrash Metal Epicenter,” by Harald Oimoen and Brian Lew, out this week. Read More

Rita Kearns lies back as her midwife measures her gravid belly. Maria Iorillo presses a fetoscope to Kearns’ side and finds the baby’s heartbeat. “It’s perfect,” she says, passing Kearns the earpieces. Kearns, 43, is 41 weeks pregnant — one week past her due date. By now, many obstetricians would suggest inducing labor. Iorillo is content to wait. And, when the contractions begin, Kearns will give birth at home, as she’s done twice before. Read More

The family of a woman killed by a falling redwood branch in Stern Grove last April is suing The City on the grounds that the tree was a known hazard, attorneys for the family said Tuesday. Resident Kathleen Bolton was loading her car in the grove’s concert meadow parking lot April 14 when the branch fell onto the car, crushing it and killing her. Read More

The Recreation and Park Department knows that nearly 140 of its facilities are contaminated by lead, but it says a tight budget means it will be years before cleanup is completed. City agencies are required by the Department of Public Health to remove lead from buildings constructed before 1978. Recreation and Park fell behind, and in 2003, the department was required to step up its efforts and report quarterly to the Board of Supervisors on its progress, said Karen Cohn, a children’s health manager at DPH. Read More

Literary agent Elise Proulx is also the executive director of San Francisco's LitQuake, which runs this year Oct. 3-11. How has LitQuake evolved since its beginning? In 2002, it was a two-day festival and we only had a few events at the library and nearby venues, and to us it seemed like frantic activity. Now it’s around 20 times bigger. Read More

Elections director John Arntz is always nervous when election season looms, but in November he’s anticipating the largest voter turnout in San Francisco history — and those voters may be using new voting machines that still have not been certified by the state. Sequoia Voting Systems, the maker of the machines San Francisco intends to use this November, submitted its ranked-choice systems to Secretary of State Debra Bowen’s office late this summer and testing of those systems is complete, according to Bowen spokeswoman Kate Folmar. Read More

San Francisco may have a reputation as a health-conscious city, but a recent study found that kindergartners in local public schools were more likely to be overweight than kids their age nationwide. A sample of 4,000 kindergartners entering school in the fall of 2007 showed that 18 percent of girls and 20 percent of boys were overweight, compared with 13 percent of girls and 15 percent of boys nationally, according to an Applied Survey Research study commissioned by First 5 San Francisco and the San Francisco Unified School District. Read More