VFYW: Wanna Get High?

As the contest rolls past #324, we squeeze in a little sin before Easter Sunday.

(Heads up: this week’s post exceeds the content limit for Substack’s email service, so if you want to ensure you see the full contest results, just click the headline above, “Wanna Get High?,” to jump to the web version.)

Last week’s winner rejoices:

I am the champion, my friends!
And I’ll keep on sleuthing to the end.

Another sleuth rises from the dead:

I’m salty about Nairobi last week — I searched there for a bit but couldn’t find the view, so I ultimately moved on, convinced until the end that it was Mumbai ...

But a new week brings an opportunity for redemption! 

Here’s a lament from our favorite married team:

S: I was so mad at myself for having forgotten to email two weeks ago. I even had a memory about El Paso. Bel Air High School has a bagpipe band, and about 25 years ago our pipe band went down there to compete. At that time I think their pipe band consisted entirely of young Hispanic women. Very cool. It was a good band, too.

G: Very heartening, and I guess nobody complained about cultural appropriation.

Speaking of which, Kirby Ferguson, the filmmaker most known for his series “Everything is a Remix,” just posted an excellent new video on the history of so-called cultural appropriation:

Money quote: “People listening on the radio thought Elvis was black, and Chuck Berry was white.” In other words, the Father of Rock & Roll “appropriated” country music, while the King of Rock & Roll “appropriated” rhythm and blues — meeting in the middle. Fast-forward to this century, perhaps my favorite artist is the King of Mashups, a DJ named Gregg Gillis (aka Girl Talk). I wrote about him in 2007, back when I was a Dishtern at The Atlantic. On one album alone, Gillis samples from 167 artists and dozens of subgenres — all across the cultural spectrum. Back then the controversy surrounding Girl Talk was copyright infringement, not cultural infringement.

Last month he released a more conventional rap album, Full Court Press — a collaboration with Wiz Khalifa, Big K.R.I.T., Smoke DZA:

But I digress. On to this week’s view, from on high, here’s a long-time sleuth in NYC:

Look at that huge parking lot! It can’t be anywhere else than these United States. I lived in Florida for a few years, and those cookie-cutter resort facades just scream Florida. It’s sad that I (still!) didn’t have time to figure it out this week, but Florida is my hunch.

Another gets more specific with Orlando: “Just a total stab, based on nothing but a look at huge parking lots, sun shields for parked cars, palm trees, and recently built apartments.”

Our super-sleuth in Southport isn’t so super this week: