The 57th annual Comcast Light Up Night took place on Fri., Nov. 17, officially kicking off Pittsburgh's holiday season. Check out our photo highlights from the celebration below.

When Pennsylvania state Rep. Rick Saccone (R-Elizabeth) won the Republican endorsement the state's 18th Congressional District, on Nov. 11, most people following the race were shocked. That day, the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette reported, “many observers assumed [state Sen. Guy Reschenthaler (R-Jefferson Hills)] was the frontrunner,” but Saccone overtook Reschenthaler in the second round of voting to win 123-91.

Saccone canceled his bid to take on U.S. Senator Bob Casey (D-Scranton) after former U.S. Rep. Tim Murphy (R-Upper St. Clair) resigned amidst scandal in October, and instead campaigned for the open congressional seat. Saccone is arguably one of the most conservative legislators in the state house, noted for consistently attempting to bring Christianity into government and public schools, as well as for his fervent pro-gun stances.

As for Saccone's opponent, Democratic committee members in the 18th District will decide who represents the party come the March 2018 special election. With the Democrats picking their nominee this Sunday, Pittsburgh City Paper wanted to provide a brief rundown of all seven candidates for the vacated seat. (The 18th district encompasses southern Allegheny County, Washington County, Greene County, and the southern half of Westmoreland County.)

From being the backdrop for films like The Dark Knight Rises and The Perks of Being a Wallflower, Pittsburgh is known for its small but mighty role in the film industry. But it all started in 1905, with a small storefront theater begun on Smithfield Street by Harry Davis and John P. Harris.

The Theatre Historical Society of America (THS) is honoring that history in time for Light-Up Night beginning tonight with a pop-up nickelodeon at 811 Liberty Ave., transforming the former Arcade Comedy Theater space into a 20th-century theater with donated banquet chairs from the David Lawrence Convention Center and a fresh coat of paint.

“There isn’t a whole lot of exposure in Pittsburgh about the nickelodeon and Pittsburgh’s role as the birthplace of the commercial movie-theater industry,” says THS executive director Richard Fosbrink. “We thought, ‘What can we do to make the public aware of this?’ so we decided to do a recreated nickelodeon.”

The Nickelodeon will screen classic silent short films, including Edwin S. Porter's "The Great Train Robbery," from 1903, Georges Méliès' groundbreaking 1902 short "A Trip to the Moon" and a 1910 silent version of Charles Dickens' “A Christmas Carol,” plus short films introducing the Theatre Historical Society of America — all for just a nickel.

The Nickelodeon also features an exhibit on Pittsburgh’s role in the film industry, beginning with Harris and Davis’ Nickelodeon.

The pop-up Nickelodeon runs through First Night festivities — Sunday, Dec. 31 — and is open from noon to 7 p.m. every day except Monday, when it is closed.

THS, which recently relocated to Pittsburgh, is a non-profit organization dedicated to celebrating the history of America's theaters, and showcasing their role in American architectural, cultural and social history.

For more information about the pop-up, visit www.historictheatres.org.

In 2016, Pittsburgh City Council voted unanimously to create the Housing Opportunity Fund to help address the shortage of affordable housing in the city, but a year later, council has been unable to come together to decide on a way to put any money into the fund.

“It’s a shortage of over 20,000 units for the lowest income people. It’s a crisis. Everybody knows it’s a crisis,” Celeste Scott, the affordable housing organizer at social justice organization Pittsburgh United, said at a City Council meeting yesterday. “We’re seeing it in Penn Plaza...We see it visibly in the East End, but there are folks in other communities that are facing it that we don’t see as often as the East End communities.”

The Pittsburgh-premiere production of the iconic playwright’s most recent work is a splendid staging. It couldn't have been easy to handle Stoppard’s combination of personal journey, social critique and intellectual inquiry into the nature of mind, but Quantum makes it look that way.

The play concerns a grad student’s new job at a neurological research institute where the big philosophical divides include the one between those who think of the human mind as an opportunistic machine designed by evolution to maximize the propagation of its own genes, and those who think more agency is involved – free will, perhaps, or even, in young Hilary’s case, spirit.

There’s much more to the story, but fans of The Real Thing and Arcadia know that Stoppard writes dialogue like no one else. And while it seemed pretty clear to me what his answer to “the hard problem” is, he gives all sides a chance to make their case with a wit that’s hard to match.

Meanwhile, director Rachel M. Stevens, her design team and cast create a visual spectacle to remember, turning a big, under-renovation room at the Energy Innovation Center into a kind of walk-through memory chamber, and the stage in particular into a multi-level, multimedia feast for the eyes.

Here’s Michelle Pilecki’s review for City Paper.

The remaining performances of The Hard Problem are tonight, tomorrow, Saturday and Sunday. (Friday’s show is sold out.)

Tickets are $42-48 and are available here. The Saturday and Sunday shows included a gourmet boxed-dinner option for an $18 surcharge.

The Energy Innovation Center is located at 1435 Bedford Ave., in the Hill District.

On Nov. 14, Braddock Mayor John Fetterman announced his campaign to run for the state’s second highest office, lieutenant governor. The seat is currently held by Mike Stack (D-Philadelphia). Stack has been criticized for allegedly abusing his staff, as well as for trying to expense thousands of dollars in hotel stays in Philadelphia, where he owns a home. Fetterman, also a Democrat, is hoping to unseat Stack, and join Gov. Tom Wolf (D-York) on the 2018 general election ticket.

In a Nov.14 phone call with Pittsburgh City Paper, Fetterman acknowledged the infighting between the Democratic Party and arguments over how the left should move forward to secure votes in the era of President Donald Trump. The neoliberal side of the Democratic Party, which is more aligned with the policies of Hillary Clinton, believes a more moderate, while still generally progressive, approach will succeed. The Democratic Socialist side, which is more aligned with the policies of Bernie Sanders, feels that drastic changes must take place in order to win elections.

But Fetterman believes his record shows that the two sides can come together. In 2016, he was one of the first U.S. Senate candidates to endorse Sanders, but after Sanders lost the primary, Fetterman started to campaign for Clinton. (He even started campaigning for his senate-election opponent Katie McGinty when he lost in the primary election.)

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ANTIfest is a two-day celebration and music festival featuring current musicians on Pittsburgh-based label A-F Records. It will also showcase several reuniting bands from the label’s history like Tabula Rasa, The Code and Ma Jolie. All the proceeds from the event will go to The Persad Center and Pittsburgh Action Against Rape.

A-F Records was founded in 1997 by the members of Anti-Flag. The band wanted to create a platform to spread the music of socially conscious and politically active punk bands. As the years have passed, the scope of genre and style has widened, but the mission of giving back remains the same.

CP sat down with label runner and ANTIfest organizer Chris Stowe in advance of the festival to talk about the history and potential future of ANTIfest and A-F Records.

What the future sounds like: a playlist featuring all of the artists in the music section of tomorrow's issue. In it, we're covering new music from Short Fictions, Pale Waves, Donora, David Bazan and more. Listen up!

Hello Neighbor, a Big Brothers Big Sisters-like program for native-born residents and refugees, has received acclaim from all over. The program has been covered by Pittsburgh City Paper, local daily newspapers and TV stations; national publications like the Washington Post and NBC News have covered the program, too. Over the summer, the Pittsburgh Pirates even hosted a Hello Neighbor night.

Hello Neighbor creator Sloane Davidson says the response has been overwhelming, in a good way. Now, Pittsburgh Mayor Bill Peduto and Pittsburgh City Council are hosting a Hello Neighbor dinner at the City-County Building tonight, at which immigrants, refugees and native-born residents can mingle and get tours of the building (in six different languages).

“It's just so amazing, a year ago Hello Neighbor didn't exist and now we have this event with the city,” says Davidson.