(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.)
Entirely unexpected! I had assumed I’d need a few more correct guesses before I was really in the running. I’ll humbly accept the book, to proudly adorn my naked coffee table.
Below is this morning’s view from my window — of an 18' DBH Incense Cedar tree — though technically there are no true cedars in America, so the Greek term Colacedrus literally translates to “cedars from California.” I just call it beautiful:
Stand by your guns, Chris! Sure, you were way off about the floor numbering, but then so was the submitter who raised the objection (the persistent sleuth near San Francisco with 14+ entries). Okay, he or she was only off by one floor, but still ... horseshoes and hand grenades:
This was a perfect example of what I said would happen, that you’d receive submissions with both pre- and post-expansion versions of the hotel. Confusion would reign. (“Some will show a wall with 220 windows, some will have only 132. Good luck picking a winner.”)
The persistent sleuth near San Francisco (PSNSF) was absolutely right about the sight angles being “consistent with … a vantage point from the center of the building” — yes, the center of the wider, post-expansion, 220-window version, but absolutely not the center of the skinnier 132-window version. So it doesn’t clarify anything to then go and circle a window on an out-of-date photo of the 132-window version, but that’s what both the winner and the PSNSF did.
The difference in windows per floor between the two incarnations of the building is substantial: a dozen rooms per floor in the earlier version as opposed to 20 per floor in the current one. In choosing a window near the north end of the earlier version, 11 windows from the right, the winner’s choice turns out to be right around the center of the current building (although several floors too high). But in choosing a window near the center of the earlier version, six windows from the right, the PSNSF’s choice turns out to be way off to the right of center of the current building (although he or she got the floor exactly right).
Now, as to identifying the correct floor, the PSNSF helped a lot by citing the post from Flyertalk, which established that the rooftop bar is on the 16th floor. But that led the PSNSF to conclude, based on an assumption that “rooftop bar” means “bar on the roof,” that the 16th floor must therefore be the roof. But it isn’t. The pool is up there, but the open-air “rooftop bar” is one level below the roof behind the row of apertures that look like top floor guest room windows.
Now, from this reassessment of the floor numbering, the happy result both for the PSNSF and for me is that not only were our guesses not “clearly aim[ing] too low,” as you alleged, nor were they even one floor too low on the seventh, as the PSNSF concluded. Our guesses were smack dab on the correct floor — the eighth! (Which was satisfying to learn, because I generally tend to be stronger on the horizontal than the vertical.)
Unfortunately for the PSNSF, even though the winner’s choice of window is three floors too high, the PSNSF’s is five or six windows wide to the right on the expanded building (even though it's on the correct floor). If he or she had used a current photo of the building, one with 20 windows per floor, and circled one on the same floor and near the center of that one, things would be different. But as things stand, just eyeballing the photos that were submitted, I’d have to say the winner’s is the winner.
You said you love the obsessive entries, Chris, and I’m nothing if not obsessive.
Another obsessive is our previous winner “way out west,” and his followup is much shorter:
The dissenting sleuth last week used a satellite view to argue window positions, which I reproduced here:
But if you examine this image, you will see that the building identified as the Hyatt Centric spans the entire city block between 11 Calle and 12 Calle, whereas the hotel façade submitted by the winner spans maybe half the block (with about 12 windows per floor), which you can easily verify by taking a Google “drive” around the block in “street view,” or looking at aerial shots of the hotel on the web.
Thus the dissenting sleuth’s Hotel Centric is much longer than the Hotel Centric submitted by the winning sleuth, resulting in the dissenter misidentifying the location of the winning window (incorrectly shown at the intersection of the green lines, above). Hopefully the image, below, clarifies this discrepancy (note that I've flipped the dissenting view 180 degrees and inset it into a web-supplied image of the hotel. The lower image of the three is the winner’s submission):
Compensating for this discrepancy, the dissenting sleuth’s preferred window actually lines up closely (referenced horizontally) with the winner’s window.
That “way out west” sleuth was also persuaded to dine at last week’s featured restaurant:
Below is a shot of last Sunday’s dinner special at Nate’s on Marsh: a fork-tender Osso Buco on a bed of polenta. My wife knows that if there’s a braised dish on a restaurant’s menu, I’m going for it — delicious! And a huge meal, too, since it was also the next morning’s breakfast:
Another followup comes from the super-sleuth in Lafayette, CA:
Okay, so I’m a bit annoyed with myself for skipping over the NAPA Auto Parts in San Luis Obispo as I scoured the gajillion stores in California. Sigh. But I’m also a bit surprised that the musical sleuth in Indy didn’t come up with the Mountain Goats. Though the band is not “officially” from SLO, “Dance Music” reflects on John Darnielle’s younger years when his dad was a prof at Cal Poly:
I’ve loved the Mountain Goats since college, and “No Children” is one of the most devastatingly dark, beautiful songs I know:
From the “average super-sleuth in NYC”:
Last week our Burner sleuth in Seattle said the new building across the street from Nate’s on Marsh looked like the Barneys store in Beverly Hills, now Saks. Well, as it happens, early in my career my firm sent me to live in Beverly Hills for eight months to oversee construction administration on the store. Best job ever.
It’s kind of nice to think that all these years later, Barneys is now the iconic SoCal Italianate building that others are compared to. Personally, I think it’s the similar style awnings. Here’s a couple of photos from 1994 — one of the of the exterior, one of the very cool interior atrium:
From our Russian-American super-sleuth:
Yesss!!! I have finally achieved super-sleuth status! Thanks for mentioning this in the last post. I haven’t counted all my submissions since I joined the contest four years ago, but lately life has been too busy, so I was on an extended break dealing with work, kids, life, and whatnot. But I am back now!
Also, I’m sending you the view from MY window today:
If you look closely, you’ll see an assortment of cicadas, which have overwhelmed our neighborhood lately. Apparently, we have a year when several broods are coming out, including the one that gets out just once every 17 years! I’ve lived in the Chicago area for only 10 years and never experienced cicadas before moving here. For a while I had no idea what they were, and that THEY were the source of this bizarre noise outside. This year is still different. These creatures came out more than a month earlier than usual, and it seems like there are hundreds of times more of them than ever before. I have never seen them on the tree in front of my house, but here they are now!
I am taking a couple of short trips this summer, and will try to take some pictures worthy of the contest :)
Yes please. As a reminder to all sleuths, please send any window submissions to contest@andrewsullivan.com. And please include part of the window frame, ideally a horizontal photo, and ideally accompanied by another photo showing the building with the window circled (to prevent the kind of confusion we had for Guatemala City). And the full address is also nice, as are personal details about the view. If I end up selecting your photo for the contest, I’ll extend your subscription by six months for free.
Another newly anointed super-sleuth comes from Sydney:
The joy of being in Sydney is I get the Dish email first thing Saturday, so I can crack onto solving early. Keep up the great work, and if you or Andrew ever get to Sydney, dinner is on me.
He hates to travel, let alone to another hemisphere, but I can’t wait to go Down Under someday. On to this week’s view, the super-sleuth in San Mateo reimagines it:
For San Luis Obispo last week, the VFYW Reimagined swung realistic: red-tile roof; palm trees; gas station; and white SUV. This week we were presented with the Brutalist architecture of the brick apartment building across the street, and given that this city is known for having one of largest collections of impressionistic art outside of Paris, I’ve decided to go impressionistic for the VFYW Reimagined this week:
Here’s the beginning of the entry from a previous winner:
Well of course my first reaction was, “What the hell is that?” I tried various online searches for it, and ended up going down a rabbit hole of virtual cruising all around the Fulcrum sculpture outside Liverpool Station in London. That turns out to be a really cool place, and maybe I need to check it out IRL someday, but there’s nothing there that resembles the rest of the VFYW photo.
“QUICK READS” from Team Bellevue:
USA for sure
Strong collegiate town vibes (emergency phone outside what looks like a dorm, bikes/bike lanes everywhere, etc)
Distinctive piece of art in foreground
What seemed at first to be light traffic cams, maybe lighting the art?
LBB (little brown bird). No help, but hey there.
More clues are listed by a sleuth in Alexandria:
I wish I had a little more time for this one, so this is a guess based on what appears to be an urban college/university campus. Some clues:
emergency call box across the street — but unfortunately, the model is used on many campuses.
looks like a residence hall sign outside the brick building, but I can’t make out what the writing says.
the flowering dogwood tree, which says “East Coast” to me.
the bike lane design is used in Boston, though also likely in other cities too.
despite what Ian Faith of Spinal Tap says, Boston is a college town ...
So I’m going with Boston, MA.
A previous winner goes with Ann Arbor:
It’s a college town in the USA because of the sign and the blue light in front of college-looking building, but which one? Not enough clues for me, but always fun to take a guess!
Another previous winner confirms it’s a college building:
Yet another previous winner:
Well, I’ve now looked at more brick apartment buildings than I would ever care to. The one advantage turns out to be that, while rather plain in appearance, this one does seem to stand out when you’re looking for it in a sea of other brick apartment buildings. Perhaps it’s just the starkness of it compared to the attempts at ornamentation in other buildings.
Chini presents a sea of other brick apartment buildings:
The grand champion adds:
As for a clue, I’d simply say it comes down to what type of steel you’re using. See, some weeks you have to use a machete to cut through a thicket of detail; other times, a scalpel will suffice. But for this one you really need a serrated blade in your tool kit …
Another sleuth just knows it:
I’m sure in the long history of the Dish, someone has looked at a view and said, “Hey, that picture was taken from my building!” While that’s not the case here, I looked at the picture and immediately knew the street, intersection, building, and the series of windows from which it was taken. The intersection has a special place in my heart because the restaurants and (former) bars on that block were favorite places to hang out during my time as an undergraduate 20 years ago.
“Hey that’s my building!” came from several sleuths all the way back in September 2010, for contest #14, at an apartment building in Brookline, Mass. I don’t have time right now to read through that super-long post again, but it looms large in my memory as having many amazing moments of serendipity from sleuths who either lived there or had friends who lived there.
The mixologist in Austin names the right city for this week’s window:
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