(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 last week’s contest:
Woohoo!! Over the years I’ve figured out the right window once, coming pretty close a few other times ... how nice to finally win!
I’d love two free years of Dish. The VFYW book would be tempting, but as we’re moving in a few months, we’re working hard to find homes for many of the books we already have, and trying not to allow any more physical objects into the house.
Thanks so much!
From the recent winner of contest #457, “Border Dispute”:
I received the VFYW book — love it! I can see the care that went into its magnificent construction. It was innovative to organize by time of day rather than pages, so you get a day-in-the-life of the VFYW community.
I could taste the bananas of Costa Rica, hear the thunder in Houston. I could feel the ocean breezes of Paia, Hawaii. West Hollywood looks like a set from Boogie Nights! Being a North Carolinian, I am partial to the beauty of the photo in Clyde, a place I’ve never been, but that Charlotte neighborhood is a very typical one (older Charlotte, anyway). I’ve been curious about Haifa, Israel, because it was featured as a waypoint port in the wonderful novel The Oceans and the Stars by Mark Helprin, so was nice to see a photo.
If you’d rather not wait to win the contest to get the book, it’s always available to buy on Blurb. Yes, it’s rather expensive, but that’s the nature of print-on-demand books, unfortunately. When we launched the book way back in 2009, we bought a few thousand copies in bulk, thus lowering the price significantly. The Dish has never made any money from the books; we sell them at-cost.
Also traveling back in VFYW time is our movie sleuth in Berkeley:
This is where I filed my cinema report last week: Room 8 at Tickle Pink Inn in Carmel Highlands (you may recognize it from contest #233):
[His followup:] In my haste to get to our dinner reservation, I fell into the trap of pointing to the wrong balcony! So the photo was taken from the room BELOW the one designated by the arrow.
Here’s the view from the aforementioned #233:
Our married couple in Falcon Heights has a retroactive entry for last week:
Bah, County Humbug, Ireland.
Reading through the winning responses sure looked familiar — yes, we were in the same area on Google last week, but didn’t recognize it as our target. Darn it.
Here’s another Ireland followup — from our super-sleuth in Augusta, GA:
Easter Greetings! Also, Happy Lima Bean Respect Day!
Still no time to sleuth, but I do have some quick followups to last week’s contest, courtesy of the pupils of St. Bride’s:
St Bride’s was one of the many incarnations of a rather mysterious 1980s female collective that reinvented itself nearly as often as its members changed their names. Their Burtonport lodgings had been previously occupied by a group dubbed The Screamers (who later relocated to Colombia, with tragic results), before being reborn as a dubious “school” that eschewed modern luxuries and embraced the Victorian lifestyle.
Oh, and they also made computer games. Yes, these ladies who lived by candlelight also created a series of text adventure games for the Commodore 64 and ZX Spectrum, beginning in 1985 with The Secret of St. Bride’s. Here’s the ad:
Their 1987 game, Jack the Ripper, was the first game to receive an “18” certificate after the BBFC began rating games. Exactly who among them actually made the games is as elusive as every other bit of information about the group. They left Burtonport in the early ‘90s not long after “Miss Martindale” the “headmistress” had been convicted and fined by a local court for beating another group member.
For those with a little more time, this podcast is fairly detailed and has a lot of interviews (it’s a six-parter, but each episode is only around 20 mins); and this article covers another one of their games.
Our super-sleuth in Providence has a “minor kvetch”:
I just saved this week’s VFYW photo to my hard drive in case I end up having the time to go looking, only to find it’s a .webp format. Well, those only open in a web browser, at least on my computer, which SEVERELY limits my ability to zoom in on details, etc. The .jpg format, which opens in a photo viewer, is much more easily manipulated.
Pro tip: If you first click the VFYW image, and then right-click to “Save Image As,” then you should get the .jpg format.
Zooming out, the biologist in Milwaukee commemorates an impressive run so far:
Did you know that this is my 100th animal report? To celebrate, I’ve created a powerpoint of all the animals. If downloaded and viewed as a show in PowerPoint, it will be an interactive quiz. Folks can click on the animals to see their names and the places they were from. (I don’t have the wherewithal to share the show directly without downloading; it would require saving it on OneDrive, which I don’t have.)
Thanks for 100 weeks of fun!
Here’s a snapshot of the first 25 weeks:
So cool!
On to this week’s view, the super-sleuth in Vancouver, WA exclaims, “Wow, your readers certainly travel to some fascinating locations!” The UWS super-sleuth: “Wow, talk about remote! The VFYW sleuths sure do get around.”
Here’s how the super-sleuth in Brookline starts his entry:
A rather different ocean view this week — just a bit more tropical than Ireland, and possibly a popular scuba destination judging from the multiple dive boats. The large ship docked on the left seemed like a naval vessel, but more on that later.
Chini hovers above:
Here’s the VFYW Reimagined:
In the distance we see islands and water, and in the foreground we see more water and floating docks and boats, and palm trees. The Carville phrase “It’s the economy, stupid” comes to mind. But for this week’s Reimagined, “It’s the water, stupid”— the lovely blue water extending from the foreground out to the islands in the distance. But we should add more scuba diving boats:
From the A2 Team:
We missed the mountain views in the US that so many considered easy — like Truckee and Bend — but we did find last week’s view in Ireland, which so many found difficult to impossible. At first glance, this week’s view fell into that category as well, and finding it required a concerted multi-location effort, with one of us at home and the other visiting our daughter on the East Coast, plus our son-in-law on a separate video call at times held up to the camera on Skype ...
And it took a while. Assuming that this was a place of tropical waters, we went searching glass-bottom boat tours. Turns out that’s not what we see here — look at all the oxygen tanks:
And look at the wet suits hanging in front of the shack to the left of our view:
Also focusing on that structure is the super-sleuth in Hinckley, OH:
Almost gave up on this view. I searched water taxis, battleship, and all manner of dead ends including “fuel island with palm tree through roof.” Then ... what’s that building at the end of the dock? Aha. Dive shop.
CO/NJ dives into the right ocean:
As long as I have played this contest, I continue to learn tips and tricks from the other sleuths. After spending a long, long time tracking down last week’s view, I was chagrined when I read Giuseppe’s method. I plugged in his search terms and the view was the very first result. Ugh.
This week did not lend itself quite so easily to this approach, but I did manage to find the locale without a lot of difficulty. Ironically, I’m going diving on Monday — I will not say where, as I might send you a candidate photo or two — and I recognize those covered boats in the photo as likely dive/snorkel excursion boats. The location looked tropical Pacific, so I searched a list of top dive spots in the South Pacific and then did a quick search of the top resorts at these places. After not too long, I was able to find our spot.
So did the super-sleuth on Park Avenue:
Well, it’s definitely somewhere warm and sunny. What look like dive boats are tied up at the wharf but not quite lux enough to be one of the fancy Caribbean islands. The Matson container in the distance helped narrow it down once I had worked out that the company, based in Hawaii, only operates in the Pacific.
Our Warrensburg historian also focused on the container:
A million thanks for leaving the Matson label exposed. The Matson shipping company, it turns out, has a very helpful website listing all the ports they service.
The super-sleuth in Albany narrows it down:
Tropical, but not Caribbean. The architecture is not very Asian or Polynesian, not super built-up or touristy. It has a general vibe of a bit ramshackle and rusty, with a utilitarian ship (repurposed military vessel?). Process of elimination leads to Micronesia or Melanesia.
Giuseppe, our super-sleuth in Rome, picks the right region:
The “Matson” sign is the key clue here. Matson, Inc. is a transportation services company that “provides a vital lifeline to the economies of Hawaii, Alaska, Guam, Micronesia, and the South Pacific.” This week’s picture is obviously not from Alaska, and my instincts tell me it’s not from Hawaii either. Here is a map of the islands serviced by Matson in Micronesia:
He got to the right island. Going with Guam is our super-sleuth in Riverwoods:
Seems too obvious if correct. “Matson” did not help me. Nonetheless, I love this shot and can’t wait to get the reveal.
Revealing the right country is our super-sleuth in San Fran:
We are in the South Pacific on a small port (that is big enough to handle containers and small warships/patrol boats). We are probably oriented generally east-west or west-east (can’t tell which) based on the sun. The blue roofs seem like they should provide some guidance. There are a lot of blue roofs on the waterfront in Noumea, but the port is too big. Same for Vanuatu. All the island atolls don’t have the right topography. ...
