(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.)
Amazing — thank you! I should get lucky more often!
Happy to continue supporting the work that you and Andrew do, so I’ll go for the book please.
Thanks for the continued support! You can join him here, if you’d like to read the full VFYW results every week, or just feel supportive.
From last week’s submitter:
I really enjoyed seeing how people tackled my view in Tempe last week. Using the Tram stop was clever! I’m glad I got to hear about the Sun Devils mascot, and I’d like to make that Tequila Sunset while watching Raising Arizona (one of my faves!).
I also didn’t know I had made super-sleuth status! Sweet.
From our self-described wine geek in San Francisco:
I enjoyed last week’s write-up about Tempe (and the Oakland-Berkeley border dispute). My daughter would throttle me if she found out I didn’t submit an entry last week because she went to ASU and I’ve been there a bunch of times. There was a moment when I thought about sending her the VFYW and asking her if it was in fact in Tempe, which was my guess, but I got flummoxed trying to match up the mountains around Scottsdale and gave up.
My wife also would have throttled me for giving up, because she works for the Omni in SF and probably could have identified the Omni in Tempe as the source of the photo. For Pete’s sake, I had all these resources and I blew it. What can I say.
Another followup comes from the super-sleuth in West Orange (responding to the one in Albany who “also happens to be from West Orange, presuming that he’s from the one in NJ — small world”):
What a small world, how funny! Please give my best to her.
West Orange is a good little town. We’ve got Edison’s workshop and claim Mark and Scott Kelly as hometown heroes. (There’s even a school named after them!) Lately it’s a town in transition, but in a good way. We’re a middle-class town sandwiched between a rich towns on all sides (Maplewood, Montclair …) and lots of folks are moving here from NYC because they can’t afford a house in those towns but want their amenities within reach. That’s what we did!
A quick correction from the VFYW chef:
By the way, last week you edited my typo into a howler. All I meant is that the Claremont used to be a hotel, not a resort and spa, but I typed Fairmont by mistake. Oh well, at least I didn’t send you war plans.
Dish encryption is very secure. If you’d like to submit a view for the contest (and, if selected, get six free months of Dish), this is the way: contest@andrewsullivan.com. Please include part of the window frame and, if you can, an image of the building with the window circled. Horizontal/landscape views also preferred.
Here’s a beautiful landscape from the super-sleuth from Seville:
A few weeks ago during Spring Break, I took a roadtrip through Arizona, Utah, and Colorado. (Lots of incredible hikes and views!) I took the following photo (landscape this time!) from the Southern Rim of the Grand Canyon for the contest. It’s probably too easy, but I figured it’s worth sharing just in case:
I will also take this opportunity to mention that the pod with Mike White was very enjoyable.
On to this week’s view, here’s a sleuth on the Correct Guesser list (for those who haven’t gotten a tiebreaker for the prize yet):
I was amused to see I wasn’t alone in my vague dissatisfaction over the Berkeley vs Oakland location of the Claremont Hotel two weeks ago. Of course, for me, there was EXTRA dissatisfaction in the fact that the two guesses I sent in were the window above and the window to the right of the actual window. Sigh … some day.
I’m stuck this week. This view looks a LOT like Turkey, or at least my memories of the Turkey I lived in 25 years ago. But I searched at some length in Izmir, Istanbul, and Ankara and couldn’t make it work. The trees are wrong for Izmir. It’s too flat for most of Istanbul. And I cannot find any bus lanes in any of those three cities marked like the one we see here. Of course, this could be elsewhere in Turkey, but in my experience, the farther away you get from those cities, the less tidy the roads and sidewalks get, and this road and sidewalk are pretty tidy.
So I give up. I’ll look forward to reading on Friday where it is.
A previous winner (the “Intrepid Couch Traveler”) sent the following entry last week, in a blind guess for this week’s contest:
Somehow, I seem to have gotten better at this contest than I used to be. Either that, or you are about to humble me with a view from some the rustic AirBNB near an active volcano that no one whose name is not Chini has any chance to get. So, just in case you are, here is next week’s guess — from Alajuela, Costa Rica near the Poás Volcano:
Only about 5,500 miles from this week’s location, as the crow flies. Another guess: “Tropical/Latin American vibes plus the English language … somewhere in Belize?” Another goes with simply “São Paulo, Brazil.” Another: “Queens, NY.”
The super-sleuth on Park Avenue names the right continent:
The photo suggests Europe with that style of apartment building, and somewhere warm given the visible AC units. But was the “Bus/Taxi” sign suggesting an English-speaking local? No.
Here’s a sleuth who “just subscribed (to the free level, alas)”:
Lutsk, Ukraine? I’m really hoping that’s the world’s longest apartment building. If it is, shoutout to The Amazing Race, which featured it (and a few of its residents) in an episode. If not, I look forward to trying again next time.
Here’s Mike White and his dad on The Amazing Race:
A previous winner sends a “flash answer”:
Given that you had Budapest a few months ago, I’m going to the same part of the world: Bucharest. I’ll get back to you later when I have a chance to dig deeper!
The super-sleuth in Yakima organizes a bunch of clues:
If the Khabarovsk contest a couple weeks ago had been taken looking the other direction, it might have been about as daunting as this week’s view:
I decided to disassemble this week’s view to find the low-resolution bits and pieces that might distinguish it from a generic Wall-o-windows:
The awnings, the relatively lightweight rooftop structures, the number of air conditioners and high ratio of window to wall, and a pine tree indicate we’re in a sunnier, warmer, drier climate than the Russian Far East.
From the Burner super-sleuth:
I was close last week but didn’t have time to confirm the clues. I’ll take solace in knowing I was heading in the right direction. This week’s pic didn’t take long at all, and the key to solving it was the “Cube” sign. You probably should have engaged the services of Dusty for this one ;)
Giuseppe, our super-sleuth in Rome, writes:
A fun one. First, I googled “bus taxi lane” — not a very promising query, but it took me to the right city. Then I checked if that city has yellow traffic lights (it does), and finally I looked for that “Cube” sign with the blue lettering.
A previous winner identifies another blue clue:
There is clearly a Banco Sabadell branch visible in the right of the view:
So I set about looking at Sabadell branches — and couldn’t find one that matched. So maybe it’s a Sabadell branch that no longer exists?
From the super-sleuth in Asheville:
It seemed obvious to me that we are in an urban residential area in Europe, but the only clues I could identify were the sign with the word “Cube” and the logo for Sabadell bank. There are far too many Sabadell locations in Europe — also too many businesses in Europe with “Cube” in the name.
After unsuccessfully looking for urban blocks with both a Sabadell and a “Cube” business, I tried a different approach; I focused on the yellow awnings and balconies in an urban area. I didn’t expect success, but this is what I got:
So Lisbon was a detour, but not for too long.
Another sleuth names the right country: “It looks a lot like a neighborhood in Seville, Spain — near the train station where a friend of mine lives.” Our super-sleuth in Eagle Rock drools:
Spain. Oh Lord, the ham. Sigh of longing.
The super-sleuth in San Mateo reimagines our view building remodeled by a famous artist from this city:
The Louisville super-sleuth teases the city:
Considering it’s one of the most interesting and most visited places, I suspect you will get plenty of correct entries and plenty of good content for the weekly post. My wife and I visited there about two years ago and had a blast — figuratively, not literally, as I understand that it is now common for locals to shoot water guns at the tourists as a form of protest.
But I certainly understand the sentiment, since despite the fact that we are always tourists when we visit a country, we always try our best to not reinforce any of the stereotypes and respect the places we visit. I know it’s completely hypocritical, but I find most tourists to be fairly insufferable (and at the risk of sounding xenophobic, just about everything said about British tourists is pretty spot on).
By the way, I have to apologize for not getting you any new view candidates. We just got back from Amsterdam and Ireland, and we once again we booked hotels and AirBnbs that were too much in the center of everything to be viable candidates. (I’m disregarding Dublin, since there was a contest there not too long ago.)
Here’s Chini with the aerial view — and a clue of his own:
As is sometimes the case, being a fan of pro cycling can be helpful for spring and summer views. This week’s shot, for example, comes from the finishing town in this year’s Volta a Catalunya — a major stage race that finished here just ten days ago.
From a first-time entrant:
OK, I’m a former subscriber (I know, I suck) and longtime fan, and for 1,000 years I’ve checked the VFYW pic every damn week. Every week. And I despaired and despaired. Your super-sleuths dazzle and shame and crush and amaze me. I don’t know what they’ve got, but I do NOT have it.
Until this week. I spent a summer in this city back in '96, so the streets rang a bell. And then — you already know where this is going, I’m sure — bingo! “Cube" probably should’ve been blurred out. You threw me a bone. I KNOW I WON’T WIN, but I’m thrilled I got close.
I know your psychotic geniuses are going to pin it to the exact elevation, like the nearest millimeter, and I’ll lose. And that’s fine. I can’t tell you how excited I am even to be in a position to send in a credible but losing guess.
Please keep up the contest, Chris, and please know that lowlife lapsed subscribers like myself are grateful for Andrew’s voice still reaching us through all the hell of 2025.
Our super-sleuth from Seville names the city in view:
Of course you were going to reel me back in with a VFYW in Spain! But I must say, my skills have atrophied, because while the Banc Sabadell logo and the Correos post in front of the building made me cocky, it took me far too long to narrow down the view.
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