(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.)
Even with the extra time, last week bested me. Who knew there were so many Ford dealerships in the US? I love reading your email each week, especially learning how others came up with the correct location. Analyzing the 24-hour ATM bank sign was brilliance.
Our super-sleuth in College Park had a close encounter that he’s now kicking himself over:
Triple shame on me, as I was in Tunkhannock as recently as late last summer, when we went to the Apple Wagon antiques store. But who studies the Community Bank, etc. as they drive through town? By way of apology for my acute stupidity in not recognizing the view, here’s a photo I took of the Tunkhannock viaduct (called the Nicholson Bridge by one of your sleuths):
Also, I laughed out loud at the sleuth who fumed over the telephone poles and wires everywhere. The various counties, boroughs, and townships in Pennsylvania are often too poor to bury the lines, so they make a sort of virtue of them. Scranton is, after all, the Electric City (tm). I had a running joke that I couldn’t take a photograph of the often heartbreakingly beautiful country in and around Scranton without having a screen of wires in the way. But ogni tanto, as the Italians would say, the wires sometimes work in one’s favor, as below, where the summer sun catches the insulators and makes them glow:
That’s the light-bulbed halo of the Virgin Mary statue over the gate to Scranton’s Marywood University.
On to this week’s view, first up is our “mediocre super-sleuth in NYC”:
Two weeks ago in contest #354 from Mongolia, I thought the white triangle crosswalk sign with three zebra stripes was a key clue that would get me close to the answer. Nope. It was the first time in all the years I’ve been playing that I submitted a response without knowing the location. What did it get me? The top spot for worst guess. (I missed Mörön by 3,200 miles.) Now, this week, we have another white triangle crosswalk sign, this time with five zebra stripes. According to Wikipedia, potential countries are China, Indonesia, Liberia, Thailand and several in Europe, but none seem right.
That’s another top spot this week, but he went on to get the correct location, so no shame there. A newcomer has a worse guess:
I’ve never seen a VFYW contest I thought I had a shot at — until this one. I grew up in Tampa, and I’m 99% certain this is somewhere on the east coast of the Sunshine State. Hard to say where exactly, but I’ll guess Miami. In the photo, there’s clearly a building with the word “casino,” and all the casinos in Florida are owned by the Seminoles, and that definitely doesn’t look like the big glamorous casinos I’m familiar with. But maybe it’s a smaller building related to one of the big casinos? I thought maybe Calder Casino, which is in Miami. So, that’s my guess! Fingers crossed!
Our long-time sleuth in Bend gets to the right region:
This is somewhere in Latin America or the Caribbean. The license plates have an aspect ratio like American plates (so it likely isn’t Europe, Asia, or Africa), but many of those car models are not sold in America (so it isn’t Florida). It looks more like the Caribbean than Mexico, and the Dominican Republic has posh-looking stuff and casinos. So I’m going with the DR.
Not the DR, but definitely the Caribbean. The view from your Chini:
Oh cruel, cruel contest, why dost thou mock with images of tropical bliss and remembr’d notes of Beach Boys’ long gone as I’m sat here, mired neath the gloom of rain-lashed New York. Oh be some other view!
From a sleuth in Atlanta who senses a family connection:
This is a picture of the main road by the harbor in Gustavia on the Caribbean island of Saint Barthélemy (St. Barth or St. Barts).
When my father retired, my parents purchased a (very) small house in St. Barth where they spent several months a year. My father passed away a few years ago, but my mother has kept the house and lives on the island a few months a year. She’s become good friends with a number of ex-pat Americans, French citizens, and Brits on the island, even becoming closely involved with the Anglican church there (we’re good Episcopalians).
While St. Barth is terribly expensive, I’ve spent some fantastic vacations there with my wife and various friends over the years — mornings at the beach; a late, lazy lunch (with plentiful and affordable French wine from the local market); and then a fabulous dinner at one of the many outstanding restaurants on the island. C’est magnifique.
Our regular sleuth in Japan reads the signs:
I’ve had a couple of weeks off, as I’m currently supervising 15 students through their graduation theses, due in 10 days, and causing not a few sleepless nights. But this week’s picture just drew me in and I decided to have a go, since they say a change is as good as a rest …
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