VFYW: Wasted Away

You don't want the ibis to serve up the lost shaker of salt. There's a lot to drink in for contest #466, including the creepiest story in VFYW history.

(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.)

There wasn’t a winner last week — a first for the VFYW, I believe — because all of the entries for the super-challenging view were sent by sleuths who’ve already won the contest. Nevertheless, the Asunción write-up generated 28 new paid subscriptions — one more than the popular Dishcast episode with Jake Tapper and Alex Thompson. That’s a true testament to the appeal of all the fascinating entries from you sleuths every week, especially the regular columnists. Thank you!

Here’s a followup from our super-sleuth in Sydney, who creates a mini-podcast episode every week featuring the view’s location:

Because this week’s contest didn’t take long, I had time to make up for my lack of a AI podcast last week by doing one for Asunción, Paraguay. So it’s a week late, but nevertheless, here it is — and it’s only five minutes long (Google NotebookLM added a feature that lets me better control the length of the podcast).

Our super-sleuth in Alexandria has fond memories of Paraguay:

I’m so sorry that I ducked out of contest #465 ... too busy. My husband Brett and I lived in Paraguay for a month in a southern town, Pilar, working with the citizen science group, Para La Tierra.

It was a really fun time. We lived in a group house with other interns and staff doing basic research on the plants and animals in the Neembucu wetlands and Atlantic forests. We recorded bird sightings on daily walks, wrote up howler monkey observations, did dragonfly surveys, helped with toad studies and worked with environmental educators in afterschool children’s programs. I illustrated dragonflies for a guide they were putting together.

Paraguay doesn’t have spectacular, Instagrammable scenery. It’s hot and flat without volcanoes, cloud forest, or Spanish colonial architecture — but the Atlantic forests and wetlands are very biodiverse and gorgeous. The culture is fascinating, since the indigenous Guarani people have retained their language and customs. The conquistadors apparently didn’t find Paraguay worth dominating. Everyone drinks terere and eats chipa throughout the day.

We loved our time there. Para La Tierra is a first-class environmental non-profit. Thanks for keeping this wonderful contest going!

From our Burner super-sleuth:

I got very close two weeks in a row. I made it as far as Chesterfield Mall and Asunción, but just couldn’t confirm the biggest visual clues. I ran out of time looking for bland suburban office buildings (it didn’t help that the BofA sign is now a Merrill Lynch sign), and I gave up clicking on every hotel in Asunción looking for a hotel with a logo that matched the impossible-to-read logo (hats off to those who were able to determine what it said). I’m both annoyed and thrilled I got so close.

Burner hugs from finally-rainless Seattle!

From the A2 Team in Ann Arbor:

It makes me feel better to see that we weren’t the only ones to give up on last week’s window. Lots of searches for brutalism in Latin America didn’t get us anywhere, and being on a visit with the granddaughters gave us an easy excuse to drop out.

San Mateo exclaims, “Argghh! Contest #465 was Brutal(ist).” From the super-sleuth in Bethlum:

The last two weeks were a bust for me — not enough time to do the digging, even though I was pretty close on both. I tend not to send anything unless I have the exact spot, so no entry. I, too, was thinking about SSIS (Super-Sleuth Imposter Syndrome), like the SS on the UWS.

On to this week’s view, the super-sleuth in Chicagoland breathes a sigh of relief:

Interesting editorial choice to transition from last week’s tropical Brutalist hellscape to this week’s tropical hedonist hellscape. At least this time I don’t have to search through thousands of images of concrete poured into entirely unnatural positions.

Our super-sleuth in Tucson writes, “I’m not entering this week, but I will say that you are going from a contest that no one got, to one that everyone will get!” Almost everyone. Here’s meta guess from a sleuth: “COMMERCIAL STREET, Provincetown Massachusetts, USA?” Nope, but below is a view I captured two weeks ago just outside Ptown, at the Dune Crest Hotel, where I stayed for a few nights after the annual Dish sojourn (Andrew posted pics from that roadtrip here):

Here’s the beginning of the entry from our mixologist sleuth:

Pretty easy contest this week. My first thought when looking at the photo was that it’s somewhere in the Caribbean, with the colonial-style house. Then my wife took one look at the photo and said that it looked like [redacted] — somewhere she’s been to several times in the past.

Scroll down to see his original cocktail this week. Here’s the first hunch from our super-sleuth on Park Avenue:

I initially thought this was Isle of Pines in South Caroline — similar vibes, and there is a place down there that looks just like this. After a bit of looking, I decided it wasn’t there, or Hilton Head, or the Gulf Coast.

Our super-sleuth in Albany names the right state:

Palm trees, with American vibe rather than Caribbean (due to the more developed nature), outdoor bars, Victorian architecture, walkable area. That points to Florida. Not the Art Deco/Modern/Mediterranean of Miami, or the stucco/Spanish colonial of West Palm Beach. More laid-back, older, and no skyscrapers.

This week Chini has an especially revealing aerial view:

From the super-sleuth in Riverwoods:

Another fun one this week. My first inclination was New Orleans, so I dug around there for a while, but my main search idea of “outdoor bar Bourbon Street” was a dead end. Where to go next? I was clueless, but started digging for more clues. The balcony bar rail truly wanted me to get back to the Big Easy, because it just seemed to fit Mardi Gras so well and I assumed it was about time for NOLA to be a view, because I couldn’t remember one. [CB: the VFYW went to NOLA last November.] I couldn’t find much, except the letters on the hostess stand.

That stand was also the, um, key to the solution for the Baltimore super-sleuth:

I zoomed in on the bar across the street trying to find some definitive giveaway when I came across the green sign on the front of the hostess stand that appears to say “MILF U”:

Image by the super-sleuth in Tewksbury

That’s funny, I thought; I wonder how many others noticed the MILF sign.

After mulling it over a while, I figured out that Mile 0 is the end of Highway 1 down there in the Florida Keys. The rest was pretty elementary.

Eagle Rock says of MILF U, “Why didn’t I go to that college? Golf clap to the submitter for that framing of the photo.”

The Mile 0 sign made the super-sleuth in Tewksbury think of his home state — and he names the right city here:

I was fairly certain that “Mile 0” was a Key West thing, though I did for a moment think there was an outside shot that this could be Cape May, NJ, which also takes quite a bit of pride in being at the very end of a road. However, the Christmas wreath on the lamppost made it quite clear we were not looking at my home state. And, as it turns out, my instincts were correct: Cape May leans into its Exit 0 identity, not Mile 0:

And while I know that the trivia this week is going to be about Key West — a place that has to be drowning in interesting and quirky facts — let me use this opportunity to give a shout-out to Cape May, which is a unique and spectacular family-friendly summer destination with beautiful beaches. I’ve been going to different places on the Jersey Shore my entire life, but after having been to Cape May a few times in recent years, it’s always my family’s first choice.

Plus, you get souvenir shirts like this one, which I have to admit got a genuine chuckle from both me and my teenage sons:

That second image on the right I found online, because I pass by that prolific t-shirt design every time I walk down Commercial Street in Ptown. (By the way, a new sleuth officially guessed, “Cape May, Cape May County, NJ.”)

Out of the gutter and back to Key West, here’s a “Mile 0” sign from the Brookline super-sleuth:

From a long-ago local:

Excited to see this one! I am a real-life “conch” — truly born in Key West. Though I moved away as a toddler with no real memory of the place, I did finally came back to visit in late '90s as an adult and had a great time with my friends and classmates. I had Key West vibes from the start looking at the pic, and the “0 Mile” sign was the clincher.

From the A2 Team again:

At one point we found a house in Key West with similar details:

And then the same Christmas decorations popped up here:

After that, it was just a virtual stroll up and down Duval Street.

The super-sleuth in Asheville recalls, “I’ve been to Duval Street a few times, most memorably on New Years Eve one year. What a celebration!” Another sleuth aims for the right building on Duval:

The photo has to be of Mangoes Restaurant on Duval Street at Angela Street in Key West. It was taken across Duval from the roof of Effusion Art gallery — if it’s still there. Many great memories of Fly-In with my husband at the LGPA when I was still in the Air Force — retired now. Good times.

This next sleuth names the right building:

I’m thrilled to submit my answer to the VFYW contest — my second ever! The photo is a view of Fogarty’s on Duval Street in Key West, and it was taken from The Whistle Bar, which is on the second floor above The Bull, on the corner of Duval with Caroline St.

I recognized the street and buildings immediately because Key West has become an annual visit for me and my partner since we moved to Florida the first year of COVID. We now live in Marco Island, which is lovely — but very very very quiet, particularly considering that we moved from New York. The local joke is that Marco Island is so sleepy that they roll up the sidewalks at 9 PM!

For that reason, we “escape” to Key West each winter for a long weekend. There’s a ferry that goes directly from Marco to Key West in three hours or less, but it’s a universe apart in terms of activity and nightlife. Big hugs from Southwest Florida!

Sixty-nine sleuths correctly guessed the Whistle Bar. Our ski nerd further strips down the joint establishment:

The are three named bars of this establishment. The first-floor Bull features local musicians. The second-floor Whistle has pool tables, games, and a balcony for people watching. The third-floor Garden of Eden is clothing optional with a $10 cover — not my style:

The Yelp reviews (3.3 stars) are quite contradictory, with 55 five-star reviews — most mentioning the friendly, warm service. But there are 44 one-star reviews from people who thought the staff were rude, physically abusive, and/or racist, and a few said they contemplated filing assault charges. Is this an edgy branding strategy to attract more tourists by making the place seem more Hemmingway-esque “authentic”?

The “a-maize-ing sleuth” in Ann Arbor has more on the nudist bar:

I wonder if the view’s submitter visited the attraction one floor above, as explained by the owner: