VFYW: Rock Out With Our Dock Out

In contest #326, we find ports, poets, and our postcard maker!

(For this week’s View From Your Window contest, the post exceeds the content limit for Substack’s email service, so to ensure that you see the full results, just click the headline above.)

From the winner of last week’s contest in Kaş:

Thanks again for all the work you do running VFYW. It’s always a fun and interesting read, and searching for the windows has become a bit of an obsession. I now find myself looking out windows for details that would give away where I am. And I’ve been meaning to look through my photos to see if I have anything potentially worthy of the contest. I remember reading recently that you could use new submissions, so I’ll be on the lookout.

Yes please: the inbox is always open to your window views (though please remember to include part of the window frame, and horizontal photos are ideal — as are the exact details of the window’s location): contest@andrewsullivan.com. If we pick your window for the contest, I’ll add six months to your subscription as an extra thanks. And photos that aren’t quite right for the contest could be perfect for the main Dish.

On to this week’s view, our Coloradan sleuth in NJ writes:

First, I thought about the Berkeley super-champ’s quote last week: “Just watch — one of these days you’re gonna pull a fast one and give us Brooklyn one week and Staten Island the next. Everybody’ll lose their minds.” And I thought, this is it: Turkey two weeks in a row! But despite the initial resemblance to the Bosporus, I quickly dismissed any notion that this week is Istanbul.

Though I confirmed the right country and city shortly thereafter, I spent far more time searching the city streets on Google Earth than I care to admit. The view is obviously dated and accordingly has red herrings that made geolocation a particular challenge. I put the VFYW next to my approximate Google Earth 3D view:

I am embarrassed to admit looking for that colorful dome, marked with the green arrow in the VFYW, only to realize much later that it was an illustration on the front of the scaffolding curtain surrounding the white building across the square — with renovations now complete!

Even more mystifying is the large, barn-shaped building circled in green. That one really threw me, as I search and searched for it, to no avail. Could it be some sort of temporary structure covering buildings that were undergoing renovation? I would love some insight from others on this one.

Our super-sleuth in Hawaii has some great insight toward the bottom of this post, related to something called the “Gold Visa Plan,” but her entry now would give away the game too soon. So on to our super-sleuth in Eagle Rock, who quotes a reader from last week:

“Is this the first time an AI has explicitly been used in attempting to solve a VFYW?” Dude, Chini *is* AI. 

AI connected to a fleet of drones:

Next is our super-sleuth in Brookline — whose birthday is today!