(For the View From Your Window contest, the results below exceed the content limit for Substack’s email service, so to ensure that you see the full results, click the headline above.)
Some highlights from this week’s writeup:
The largest aviation gathering in the US.
A creepy spider mascot and a monstrous spider on screen.
“America’s fastest girl drummer” of the early ‘40s — who lived to be 107.
Wow! What a fun surprise. I look forward to this contest every week and enjoy reading how others solve these things, so it’s a delight to finally hit the jackpot myself. I’m tempted by the book, but we are trying to pare down our library here, so I’ll take the free Dish subscription. Thank you!
Our ski-nerd sleuth had a rare week off last week:
Instead of filing the ski report for Calgary, I was camped at 11,100' at the Chalfant Lakes in the central Sierra, with the entire basin all to myself:
I just got back from my annual 9-day solo backpacking trip, and when I got into cell range, my phone was flooded with all the heartbreaking, depressing events of the past 10 days. But then I saw your Mental Health Break, “Bohemian Rhapsody in isiZulu”:
A wonderful example of cultural appropriation!
One of my favorite MHBs in a while. Another stalwart of the VFYW — our super-sleuth in Boulder who sends stories of historical fiction — is also taking a break:
Hey Chris, I’m on a road trip for a couple weeks with my new puppy Kora, so hopefully this cute photo will suffice in the meantime!
Impossibly cute. Here’s a followup from a new sleuth in Alexandria:
I just read last week’s VFYW and chuckled at the Kingdom Come: Deliverance note from the Augusta sleuth. Great game. They really integrate 14th century Holy Roman Empire/Bohemian politics into the story line. I recently bought the sequel but haven’t had time to play through it yet.
Next is our Alaskan globetrotter, who writes a weekly column on ecotourism:
Thanks as always for including my efforts in the blog. I’d also like to pile on the kudos for the cocktail sleuth in the aftermath of his decision to hang-up the shot glass. He had a nice run finding Views and creating an astonishing variety of cocktails that linked to those places. Valya and I only made a few of his concoctions, but the specialization and refinement he brought to the table was impressive.
On my own beat, I also recognize the relentless pressure to find the Views and something interesting to say as a contribution. How many ways are there to report about the same activities in different locations? I’ve been playing for so long I’ve forget what I’ve written; I count on you to edit or toss a repeat that could happen at any time.
I also worry that my persistence in covering this beat may discourage others from contributing about similar topics. For the record, I welcome any treading or re-treading on the jaded ideas I’ve been shoveling at you for over a decade.
Someone this week treads on the mixologist beat. But first, our super-sleuth in Riverwoods:
Solving a clue in a crossword puzzle is satisfying, but it can’t beat matching up that window view! I got two in a row and even hit the window last week. Some stiff competition hanging around :) I like your sleuth’s idea to go through the archives and get a bucket list for future travel. I think I’m going to do the same.
Cat Ba, Vietnam (contest #399) is high on my list:
On to this week’s view, here’s the self-described wine geek in San Francisco deducing the country we’re in:
When I first looked at this VFYW, I drew a complete blank. I thought it probably was somewhere in North America, and since the contest was just in Calgary, that meant the United States. But it didn’t look like any place that I had been to before … and that turned out to be kind of true.
How the Yakima super-sleuth starts his entry:
I’m back from my almost three weeks in the Grand Canyon with no internet or cell service. Fantastic trip! I left the day you posted the view from Guangzhou (letting me off that hook), came home last night, and spent the morning unpacking. That leaves me with half a day to puzzle out this week’s view. Luckily it’s in a place with no hot springs, so I might have time to complete my entry before tonight’s deadline.
My first response when viewing any conical roof like the one gracing the Queen Anne building in the background is always, “Can that be Nelson BC?” Nelson has an iconic conic-topped building downtown that I used to pass by on climbing trips from Spokane:
But the answer is no; it can’t be that building. It doesn’t really look like the one in Nelson, the topography is too flat for BC, and you already visited Nelson in contest #327. The building, though, was my key to locating the view.
But a previous winner is stumped:
Last week I felt like Chini when I discovered a video taken from inside the hotel room looking out at the contest view (OK, it was the room next door … ). This week I can’t identify even a single clue. A Google search did find a company in New Orleans that rents blue porta-potties with a yellow roof. So that is my “informed” guess.
Another goes with simply “Cincinnati, Ohio, USA.” Another bid for Ohio comes from the UWS super-sleuth:
I totally missed this week. Chalking it up to a) recovering from two weeks in Europe, and b) too many big Rosh Hashanah meals. I’m not Jewish, but my husband is, and I’m fully on board with the eating holidays. (The fasting ones, not so much.)
I’m just throwing in a guess so I can fill the gap in my spreadsheet: Cleveland, Ohio.
On a better note: I have two views to send you for the contest. Getting a view of the windows was tricky in both cases, which is why I think they may be useful for you during the diabolical weeks.
Much appreciated. If you’d like to join the UWS super-sleuth by submitting a view, please email contest@andrewsullivan.com. Horizontal views are preferred, and please make sure part of the window frame is showing. If you can, also send a photo of the building with the window circled, which makes the contest go much smoother. If we pick your view, you’ll get six months added to your subscription.
Here’s Chini with his aerial view:
Our super-sleuth trio in Vancouver, WA:
Our “trio” has found ourselves so busy recently. Life and work keep getting in the way of our therapeutic sleuthing program! Last week, we nailed the window at the Courtyard Calgary Airport, but none of us managed to submit our answer in time!
This week, however, the New England member of our trio came through — all from a mobile device while on an airline flight from New York!
The Brookline super-sleuth narrows down the US:
The fencing is from Federal Rent-A-Fence, whose website gives their service area as “all markets east of the Mississippi” — so that helps rule out a big chunk of the country:
Also, the windows in the building across the street are from Parrett Windows & Doors, who describe themselves as a “nationwide manufacturer” and are headquartered in Dorchester, [state redacted].
Our Burner super-sleuth names the right area of the US — “Anywhere in the Upper Midwest, USA”:
I’m traveling through the German Alps and had limited time this week. There were plenty of queues (a truck with partial logo, Parrett windows, a unique church steeple, etc.), but I never got there, no time. Hard to compete against Oktoberfest and Neuschwanstein. Tschüss!
“I’ve lost count of how many steeples I’ve searched for in the VFYW contest,” says Giuseppe, our super-sleuth in Rome:
They are probably the feature I google most frequently to find a location. I suspect I’ve seen a good percentage of every steeple in the U.S. When I saw this week’s one, I felt a little déjà vu; maybe I had encountered it long ago?
I excluded the website he linked to revealing the church, to keep the city hidden for now, but here are the old photos he linked to:
Our ski nerd names the steeple:
The key clue was the DACCO logo on the storage container. DACCO’s website says they serve “ALL of Wisconsin (Milwaukee, Madison, Appleton, Green Bay, Eau Claire, Steven’s Point, Wausau), Upper Michigan, and Bordering States (Illinois, Iowa, Minnesota).”
With the region in hand, I soon enough found a picture of St. Peter’s Lutheran Church’s distinctive steeple with four clock faces, on a page titled, “Places to visit on your Daytrip to Fort Atkinson” (sic). A bit more searching brought me to the actual location:
Interestingly, the building now contains professional office space.
The aforementioned “(sic)” is unpacked by our super-sleuth in Raleigh — who also names the right state:
Boy, I picked a hell of a week to poke my nose back into the contest after a long absence. I have been super busy at work, and I had a pretty significant health scare this summer that completely wrecked my productivity. To make a long story short, I had a pleural effusion: half of my right lung was filled with fluid and I couldn’t breathe. Not a good thing, especially when you are a quadriplegic. I luckily avoided intubation and a ventilator. I feel like a new man now that everything has cleared up, but the doctors really don’t know what caused it.
I have been playing along with the contest most weeks; I just haven’t submitted entries because it takes too long to submit one worthy of the contest. But I finished teaching a five-week class last week, so I figured I have some extra time to write things up (and I have been itching to get back to the contest anyway).
When I first see a view, I often have a general idea of where we are — this week, not so much. I mean it looks like we are in the good old USA, but I have to download and enlarge the picture to get any clues of where we might be in the USA. My first clue was the unique church steeple located in the distance from our window. So, I did a Google search for various iterations of “green church steeple with clock tower,” but this got me nowhere, since there are probably tens of thousands of church steeples with clocks in the USA.
The next clues are the two signs at the bottom of the view. One’s on the fence:
But it’s a national company, so not much help in narrowing down the location. The other sign reads “DACCO”, and according to their website, “DACCO is a family-owned business serving Wisconsin and the Midwest for over 40 years with quality Wells Cargo Utility Trailers and Mobile Offices.” That’s a BINGO! — said in my best Christoph Waltz’ German accent:
When I add Wisconsin to my church steeple search, an image of the matching steeple pops right up. Location solved, right?!?
Well, not quite. The steeple image is from a web page that suggests the church is located in Fort Atkinson, WI. After 20 minutes of searching Fort Atkinson, I cannot find any church with the distinctive clock tower steeple. Luckily, there are a few other images of the steeple in my Google search, one of which takes you to a page for the Wisconsin Historical Society, which states that the church is in [city redacted].
San Mateo gets cheesy:
We’re in Wisconsin, and Wisconsin is famously associated with cheese because of its agricultural roots, abundant dairy farms, and tradition of cheesemaking.
The state’s fertile land and favorable climate made it ideal for raising dairy cows, and by the late 19th century, Wisconsin had shifted from wheat farming to dairy production. Immigrants from Germany, Switzerland, and other European countries brought with them cheesemaking skills that quickly became central to the state’s identity. Today, Wisconsin produces more cheese than any other U.S. state, crafting hundreds of varieties and winning international awards for quality. This strong heritage has made cheese a cultural symbol of Wisconsin, earning its residents the nickname “Cheeseheads.”
Because Wisconsin’s residents are identified as Cheeseheads, and given the ugly white/cream glazed-brick building in the foreground we wish would disappear, I thought we should combine the two ideas for the Reimagined (and just to be clear, in spite of the holes, this is cheddar cheese):
He follows up:
I again realized I had stopped too soon. The green steeple in the distance was among the more interesting features of the VFYW, and arguably was the key to solving it this week. So why should I stop with just cheddaring the white/cream glazed brick building in the foreground? But simply cheesifying the green steeple in the distance seemed unsatisfactory, so I decided to zoom in for a supplementary Reimagined:
Sending yet another followup, things get out of hand:
Then there’s the Cheddar Cheese Virus; it converts everything, including even the atmosphere, into cheddar cheese:
Our resident chef focuses on butter:
This was an excellent photo because it managed to capture a foreground rundown quality combined with a distant church that made me want to go to Central or South America initially. But the logos were a giveaway, especially once I guessed that the cut-off word was “Capelle”.
This was also another VFYW where the dinner was something I would never have thought to cook and was way better than I hoped for, as I gloomily contemplated yet another homily to Midwestern cuisine. Daughter no. 3 saved the day when she sent a recipe for Wisconsin Butter Burgers, which she stumbled across because she was reading a book about butter:
Here is the recipe, with the subtitle “Spoiler alert: The more butter, the better.” It turns out that this is a very good idea. You mix soy sauce infused butter into chopped sirloin, put more butter on the cooked patty, topped with onions cooked in butter, and then put the patty on buns fried in butter on a griddle.
Daughter no. 1 thought it was the best burger she had ever eaten, and I don’t disagree, despite having 30 more years of burger eating experience than her.
A word of caution about the recipe: the food processor method for grinding the butter into the sirloin didn’t work for me. I had to warm the mixture up to where the butter was beginning to soften and then use a stand mixer to get the properly emulsified blend. This meant I violated the principle of not handling the hamburger meat too much, but I was happy with the results:
To go with the burger, my wife made a “Vietnamese-Inspired Cabbage Salad” (without the tofu) and the old family favorite of cookie-sheet potatoes. The recipe for the latter dish, which I am pretty sure nobody has ever thought of before, is to overlap sliced potatoes on an olive oil coated cookie sheet, dot them with butter and salt and pepper (lots of butter), and roast them in a hot oven for 45 minutes. The secret is slicing the potatoes not too thick and not too thin (technical term) and pulling them out when they are exactly the right combination of soft and crispy.
Daughter no. 1 made Wisconsin State Fair Cream Puffs for dessert. The recipe was strangely lacking in sugar but she saved the day by also making a delicious chocolate cream filling for half the puffs.
Here’s a sophomore entry from a sleuth:
Thanks again for the month’s subscription, and also for the mention in the VFYW results message. Really great to see it there!
I can see I was only scratching the surface of the Dish experience without a subscription. It’s fascinating to discover extra detail on others’ ideas and techniques for narrowing down the VFYW location. There’s a lot more when you’re not freeloading.
You can join him here — and get the full Dish offerings. The A2 Team in Ann Arbor reveals the name of our VFYW city:
This might be the first time, at least as far as I can remember, that the name of the town in question is actually in the photo. Or has that happened before?
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