(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.)
From the winner of the contest two weeks ago, the Burner sleuth in Seattle:
My VFYW book arrived today and realized I never got around to sending pics from Black Rock City that you asked about. Rats! As it turns out, I have very few pics. I hate the Instagramification of Burning Man (and life), so it’s very much in character to not have that many pictures.
Here’s a pic of me and a friend I met in the Mediterranean in 2004:
We ran into each other on the playa 14 years later (turns out we have quite a few friends in common). I’m also including a pic of my Mexican-made yurt (I made it!):
It was the height of luxury: electricity (solar powered), queen-size bed with high-count sheets, and the most important part: air conditioning (technically a swamp cooler, also made by me). My first two Burning Mans were in a two-man tent under a shade structure. Whew … that was a long time ago. While I’m glad I experienced that, I’m glad the last few times had air conditioning. I donated it to BAAAHS shorty after I moved to Seattle. I hope it continues to bring people comfort (stays warm in the cold, cool in the heat, and dry in the rain).
And finally, people on the playa:
I’m in all white, standing on the “a”. For me, the subtitle for Burning Man is “more shit to climb.” Thanks for urging me to walk down memory lane.
I, too, only have a handful of pics from the three years I went to Burning Man, for the same reason as our Seattle sleuth’s. (I actually joined the same camp he did, BAAAHS, but we didn’t overlap.) Most of them were Polaroids, but a few were digital:
From the super-sleuth on the UWS:
Let’s get this critical piece of business out of the way first: I’m see that I’m eligible for the new “trifecta” honor that your sleuth proposed last week! I’ve won a contest (#312); I’ve received the designation of “super-sleuth” (although I still feel like a pretender); and I’ve had a window featured. Two, actually: Sacramento and (the diabolical) Santa Fe. As you would say, I’m chuffed!
Jeff writes:
I probably don’t need to tell you that I’ve attained what “your average super-sleuth in NYC” calls the VFYW Trifecta, but if you’re tallying, count me in. I won the coffee table book for contest #226 in Providence, RI, and attained “super-sleuth” status for the Bamako, Mali contest — #301. I’ve also had six of my photos selected for the contest.
In fact, I may have been responsible for the “super-sleuth” moniker. Back in October 2021, for the Mali contest, here’s how I responded to your request for how to refer to me in your write-ups: “How about the super-sleuth in Austin?”. In that week’s write-up, that’s how you referred to me. I searched through a few earlier entries that year and did not find that term referenced, but I didn’t look through every entry, so you may have used that term earlier.
I attained super-champ status the following year for the Palestrina, Italy contest, where I was one of four correct guessers — Chini (Grand Champion), Giuseppe (already a super-champ at the time), the winner, and me. I know there are a couple more super-champs like Berkeley and the Chef, but not sure how many have been added to the list. I’m sure your readers (including me) would love to know the identities of that elite group. I know this sounds a bit self-aggrandizing, but I’m really proud of how well I have performed on your amazing contest. I’ve professed before how much I love the contest, and I’m gratified to have become a part of it.
My six photos you posted for the contest may or may not be the most, but it’s up there. Let your readers know that the best way to get your window photo selected is to take photos from your windows when you travel. Lord knows I’ve sent dozens that haven’t been used, but the more you send, the better your odds.
And lastly, if you want, you can let your readers know my name is “Jeff” — the super-champ mixologist from Austin.
BTW, if you use this photo for the contest, please do not extend my subscription. Ditto if I ever win. I’m fine with paying to keep good journalism going. I’m a Dish, Dispatch, Free Press kinda guy. My ideal writer is the love-child of Jonah, Andrew, and Nellie.
If you’d also like to support the Dish, now going into our fifth year, this is the way. From our super-sleuth in Bend:
The most surprising part of last week’s contest was when the Alaskan globetrotter wrote, “Outdoor climbing is a relatively fringe sport.” Apparently being a half hour from Smith Rock gives one a distorted view:
Smith Rock is generally considered the birthplace of modern American sport climbing, and is host to cutting-edge climbing routes. It is popular for sport climbing, traditional climbing, multi-pitch climbing, and bouldering. In 1983, Alan Watts began to use sport climbing ethics, which pushed American climbing to new levels. Shortly after, between 1992 and 2009, about 500 new climbing routes were added. This brought climbers from all over the world as Smith Rock became the world capital for sport climbing. To this day, the park still attracts climbers from around the globe.
Condolences to our globetrotting sleuth:
It’s been a tough week in our family. Our 12-year-old family dog passed last weekend after breaking a leg due to underlying cancer. We didn’t have a clue until it was too late, but that meant he lived a good life. He broke his leg on a camping trip in the Sawtooths. Here he is in his prime, in the Chugach:
On to this week’s view, here’s the super-sleuth in Eagle Rock:
I saw this photo and I thought: Man, I love a hard one, with no giveaway features. I speculated to myself about where this is, based on the usual cues: satellite dish position, architecture, topography, and so on. I was still a full continent off when I did my customary googling and, lo, there was the answer. Honestly, I was bummed. I might need to impose limitations to keep it fun.
Here’s the super-sleuth in San Mateo with his latest remix:
After my VFYW Reimagined featuring the garden arch with the Monet-inspired water lilies, I thought this week I’d vamp on the double street names at this location — by creating a type of double image called an anaglyph. An anaglyph is two superimposed images taken from slightly offset positions and rendered with different colors to create a 3D effect when viewed with special glasses:
Frazzles would dig it:
That comedy trio, The Lonely Island, went on to SNL Digital Shorts fame, and Andy Samberg went on to greater fame. From the super-sleuth in Sydney:
This week’s view instantly had me thinking of the song “One Night in Bangkok” from the musical Chess:
“Time flies, doesn’t seem a minute Since the Tirolean spa had the chess boards in it.”
Alas, turns out we’re not quite in the Tyrol region, but it was a great starting point, and that distinctive streetlight helped.
The super-sleuth in Winnipeg found a similar streetlight on iStock:
Here’s the beginning of the entry from the super-champ in Berkeley:
The week’s view is full of jerkinheads. I just learned that term today. It’s one of many names for a type of roof that’s more often called clipped-gable (meaning having foreshortened and sloping gable ends on a peaked roof, two examples of which can be seen on the roof of the sunlit house to the left in our photo). That kind of roofline — combined with all of the more-or-less Bavarian-style balconies in our view — had me immediately thinking of Bavaria or Austria (but hoping it would turn out to be Bavaria, because of a certain video clip I’d love to use in a cinema report).
Except there’s a single fly in the ointment: that raggedy-ass utility pole on the right looks like somebody dragged a random tree out of the forest, stripped its bark and limbs from it, then planted it beside the road and strung wires on it without giving a tinker’s cuss over how round and straight it wasn’t. Somehow such a thing seemed un-Austrian to me (and definitely un-Bavarian). And when I went to look around in the Austrian Alps for comparable examples, I found none.
The Brookline super-sleuth was also getting Bavarian vibes:
This week’s view is driving me nuts. It seems like it should be pretty straightforward compared to last week, but instead I’m looking at charming buildings and beautiful mountains and ornate balconies and colorful flowers that are all starting to look alike ... argh.
My initial reaction was to suspect trickery, so I wondered whether this scene that looks European is actually in Japan, so I started poking around Karuizawa — the popular summer retreat destination not far from Tokyo that was developed by a Scottish-Canadian missionary to look and feel like a European summer resort. European expats (especially Germans) were known to congregate there, so a fair number of German-looking houses remain. Parts of Karuizawa did indeed look similar to the VFYW — except the chimneys. Most of the VFYW buildings have older brick chimneys, but these seem relatively rare in Karuizawa, so it dawned on me that these houses are not German-style in Japan but just plain German in Germany, or somewhere in the German cultural world.
The Alps Building of Mampei Hotel in Karuizawa
Karuizawa was said to remind German visitors of the Schwarzwald (Black Forest), so this was a logical place to start. The balcony in the VFYW looked distinctive, along with the structure on the right with the busy multi-sectioned jerkinhead roof, so I focused on places of lodging that looked similar. In particular, I thought that the cute heart shapes formed at the top of the wooden planks would help me nail down the right building.
I found plenty of cute balconies with overflowing flower boxes, but none with hearts came up in my searches. To try to narrow things down, I also tried to assess topography and direction. If the satellite dish on the left is pointing south-ish and the sun is shining from behind the photographer illuminating the white house on the left but leaving the houses on the right in the dark, then this must be the morning sun from the east. So the VFYW is facing northwest-ish from relatively high ground without a mountain behind casting a shadow.
So much for narrowing down. Too many places, not enough time or eyesight to explore all of the nooks and crannies in the Black Forest. Then I soon realized there are many similar landscapes and buildings and balconies in Bavaria, as well as in Austria, so I wandered around Upper Austria, Salzburg, Tyrol ... then into South Tyrol in Italy ... but I did not have the appetite to chase down every hotel, apart, aparthotel, pension, frühstückspension, landpension, landhof, gasthof, gasthaus, ferienwohnung, etc., in every possible location.
Anyway, I'll stop wasting your time with this fusillade of futility. The other day I was driving with the classical FM station on and they played a piece by Leopold Mozart (Wolfgang’s dad), so I’ll go for the proximity guess and say somewhere near Salzburg, Austria, where he spent most of his professional career and family life.
Here’s the view from Chini:
Another bid for Austria:
Sigh. I’m feeling like an inept sleuth again.
Pretty sure it’s some newish housing development somewhere in Austria (Tyrolean balconies) — and that the ski nerd will have more fun this week! For the sake of “proximity counts,” let’s say Hallstatt, since it’s kinda centrally located in Austria (and it looks like an über-lovely town).
P.S. Thanks for punching-up my “somewhere in India” prose last week. How cool to have a real editor!
I try to have a light touch. And speaking of the ski nerd, he writes:
Someone asked last week, “Is this view the farthest we’ve been from snow skiing?" Indeed it is. Ever since I’ve been contributing the closest skiing (starting with contest #366 — Riyadh, Saudi Arabia in March 2023), here are the locations farthest from lift-served skiing:
The sleuth also wrote, “For that matter, I wonder where on earth is the farthest away from a proper ski slope.” Of places with a window that someone might conceivably visit, the farthest from lift-served skiing might be the Marquesas Islands in French Polynesia — about 3400 miles from the ski resorts in New Zealand, Southern California, and Mexico. Nearly all places in the world, including Antarctica, are less than 3000 miles from ski lifts in North America, Europe, Scandinavia, Japan, China, Nepal, Chile, Argentina, Morocco, Lesotho, New Zealand, and Tasmania.
The super-sleuth in Ridgewood knows this week’s location, but here’s only part of his entry:
This contest might feature the weirdest town name to date. At first glance, this location looked like a mix of Switzerland and Vermont. It took a bit of time to find the exact area, but that weird trapezoidal house popped up in the Google Street View, which sealed the deal:
I’m hoping to keep an exact window streak going (think it’d be #6)! Also, I have the “Trifecta”: I won contest #363 (Ventura, CA), was designated “the Ridgewood super-sleuth, and submitted the photo for contest #394 (Courmayeur, Italy)!
Another writes:
Hi Chris! This window looks soooo much like my memory of staying in Garmisch-Partenkirchen while traveling in Germany with my wife for a nearby wedding. If I recall correctly, off to the left of this view should be a large and hilariously named mountain called the Wank. I remember my wife making fun of me for gesturing with a sleeve of Ritz crackers while driving in after a very long day, while she was looking through the guidebook, poking the book with the plastic and demanding that she find a restaurant where we could eat — now. We wound up staying at a hotel with an outdoor deck, where we got this bacon-bedecked German pancake that was literally as big as a salad bowl, and folks with lederhosen were strolling by.
The morning we were set to depart, we went for a hike on the Wank before checkout and mis-timed it a bit. You could take a ski lift up the mountain and walk down, but we took it too far up and had to run down the whole thing for miles, and barely made it back to the hotel. I was sore for days.
I know there are probably hundreds of towns like this, so we may be way off — and I don’t have a specific recollection of the hotel we stayed in anyway, much less a window. Nonetheless, thanks for the trip down memory lane.
The super-sleuth in San Francisco names the right country:
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