This week’s biggest Winners & Losers

Forget the Hamptons or Miami: The nation’s hottest waterfront housing market, according to Realtor.com, is Pennsylvania’s own coastline. Erie, whose harbor views have long been eclipsed in the public imagination by its lake-effect snow, ranked No. 2 on the real estate website’s June list of America's hottest housing markets, second only to Hartford, Conn. – and up a whopping 17 spots over the previous month. The Gem City’s online home listings garnered 330% more views than the national average, with the median home selling in less than a month for roughly $240,000 – close to half the national median price.

July has been a good month for Allentown. Jefferson announced plans to build a new four-year medical school campus in the city, set to enroll students beginning in 2029. And at U.S. Sen. Dave McCormick’s Defense and Innovation Summit this week, Allentown-based Mack Trucks announced that its subsidiary Mack Defense, also based in Allentown, received an additional order for 115 heavy dump trucks from the U.S. Army that – coupled with an order last month for 91 trucks – amounts to a total order of 208 trucks worth $84 million.

Pittsburgh’s Canton Avenue recently made National Geographic’s “Wonders of America” list – a collection that celebrates the “grandest, wildest, strangest bits of geography and culture” across America. The Pittsburgh road – one of the steepest streets in the U.S. – has a maximum grade of 37% and reportedly brings out a neighborly atmosphere among its residents, who have been known to help each other with groceries and even administer first aid to cyclists.

Democratic state Sen. Vincent Hughes is making headlines after a PennLive investigation found he spent nearly $80,000 in taxpayer money on invite-only lunches for lawmakers and staff from 2023 to 2025 – a sum that almost matches the combined amount that Senate President Pro Tempore Kim Ward, Senate Majority Leader Joe Pittman and Senate Minority Leader Jay Costa all spent over the same stretch. Next time you’re hungry, consider swinging by Hughes’ Capitol office for some coconut chicken tenders, baked salmon fillets and assorted cheesecakes.

Generations of horror fans are mourning the impending demolition of the Monroeville Mall, the site of the 1978 cult classic “Dawn of the Dead,” a bloody cinematic critique of capitalism whose memorial is falling victim to private equity. The mall’s $34 million sale to Walmart and a private-equity firm sounds the death knell for the Living Dead Museum, which, it appears, has drawn more live traffic than many of its retail neighbors – including thousands of pilgrims for the annual Living Dead Weekend.

When President Donald Trump rails against fraudulent double-voters, he definitely doesn’t want you to Google Matthew Laiss. The Bucks County man was sentenced this week to six months of house arrest for illegally voting twice in 2020 for Trump –  in Pennsylvania by mail, a method Trump has called out for enabling such fraud (though he uses it himself…), and again in person in Florida, Trump’s own adopted home state.