(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.)
Lol, I’m so psyched to win. The odds/zeitgeist/synchronicity of this contest has rocked my world, and now I’m a subscriber because this is such a fun idea. This whole thing has been hilarious and made me feel even closer to one of my very best friends.
A longtime sleuth remarks on the Instagram lady from last week:
Sorry if this is ratting someone out, but it’s just too funny to pass up. During my search for the window, I found a short video file uploaded to Instagram that almost matched the VFYW precisely. That, in and of itself, is not altogether uncommon. What is uncommon, however, is the comment section to this particular image/video. Take a look:
It appears to have been posted at least 37 weeks ago, as this is when the second comment is dated. Then, nothing for about 36 weeks — not until contest #397 went live, when no less than three other comments landed, all within the past week, and all asking the name of the hotel from which the video. Unfortunately, the OP never responded.
Another followup:
I cracked up in this morning’s email reading about that poor lady on Instagram. I had found the Instagram post but don’t have an account, and I’m never getting one, so I couldn’t actually find the contest photo because Instagram kept wanting me to sign in. Personally if I had posted random pictures of a street scene in Mexico and had a bunch of random strangers asking where exactly that was/reaching out about it, I would be worried I had captured some sort of drug deal and had the friendly folks from the cartels wanting a chat …
Another kind of followup from last week:
I hope Chini will give us an explanation of his cryptic statement, “it’s not my success that will help you, but rather a Chini failure; one without which this view might not have been possible … ” Maybe it has something to do with the fact that — if I remember this correctly — one of his ancestors first explored and mapped this area? (Of course not a direct ancestor, since the person in question was supposed to live in celibacy). Here is a map by Fr. Eusebio Kino (1645-1711) showing Baja California and Mexico, including the town of Loreto:
One more followup:
Please pass on my thanks to Berkeley for solving what I’m calling the “Dolphin of Nags Head” mystery. Amazing sleuthing to work out it was a windshield shade. It goes to show that sometimes the things you think are clues are not!
On to this week’s view, here’s our super-sleuth in Eagle Rock:
Great, I see a BARBIE poster on the street, which clearly puts this view… uh, anywhere in the world.
Another sleuth guesses simply, “Crystal City, Arlington, Virginia,” and another, “Vancouver, Canada.” Another:
San Francisco? Feels like this is Market Street, near the Bay Bridge. But not super confident.
Our super-sleuth on the UWS exclaims, “So if this contest took me less than five minutes to solve, then Chini already knew the exact location before the Weekly Dish showed up in his inbox!” Here’s his circled window from on high:
The Berkeley super-champ names the right continent:
We seem to be dealing with a modern European city on a substantial harbor with at least one ferry. But it demanded some leaps of logic to conclude this was likely to be an especially green city, from the evidence of upgraded, downward directed, LED streetlights, and infrastructure for e-vehicles, including all-electric taxis and e-bike sharing. Thin reeds to base assumptions on, but possibly suggestive of a country with an especially high e-vehicle adoption rate:
This sleuth names the right country:
It’s been a while since I’ve had much time to devote to window sleuthing! And to be honest, I’ve been stymied recently by some of the non-city views the few times I’ve made an effort. This week, after checking out a few German cities on lakes, I quickly pivoted to Norway due to the architecture and small islands.
The super-sleuth in San Francisco names the right city:
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